The Varieties of Psychonautic Experience: Erik Davis’s ‘High Weirdness’

Posted on September 8, 2019 by Reid Mukai

Art by Arik Roper

By Michael Grasso

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
By Erik Davis
Strange Attractor Press/MIT Press, 2019

Two months ago, I devoured Erik Davis’s magisterial 2019 book High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies the same weekend I got it, despite its 400-plus pages of sometimes dense, specialist prose. And for the past two months I have tried, in fits and starts, to gather together my thoughts on it—failing every single time. Sometimes it’s been for having far too much to say about the astonishing level of detail and philosophical depth contained within. Sometimes it’s been because the book’s presentation of the visionary mysticism of three Americans in the 1970s—ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna, parapolitical trickster Robert Anton Wilson, and paranoid storyteller-mystic Philip K. Dick—has hit far too close to home for me personally, living in the late 2010s in a similarly agitated political (and mystical) state. In short, High Weirdness has seemed to me, sitting on my bookshelf, desk, or in my backpack, like some cursed magical grimoire out of Weird fiction—a Necronomicon or The King in Yellow, perhaps—and I became obsessed with its spiraling exploration of the unfathomable universe above and the depthless soul below. It has proven itself incapable of summary in any linear, rationalist way.

So let’s dispense with rationalism for the time being. In the spirit of High Weirdness, this review will try to weave an impressionistic, magical spell exploring the commonalities Davis unveils between the respective life’s work and esoteric, drug-aided explorations of McKenna, Wilson, and Dick: explorations that were an attempt to construct meaning out of a world that to these three men, in the aftermath of the cultural revelations and revolutions of the 1960s that challenged the supposed wisdom and goodness of American hegemony, suddenly offered nothing but nihilism, paranoia, and despair. These three men were all, in their own unique ways, magicians, shamans, and spiritualists who used the tools at their disposal—esoteric traditions from both East and West; the common detritus of 20th century Weird pop culture; technocratic research into the human mind, body, and soul; and, of course, psychedelic drugs—to forge some kind of new and desperately-needed mystical tradition in the midst of the dark triumph of the Western world’s rationalism.

A longtime aficionado of Weird America, Davis writes in the introduction to High Weirdness about his own early encounters with Philip K. Dick’s science fiction, the Church of the SubGenius, and other underground strains of the American esoteric in the aftermath of the ’60s and ’70s. As someone who came late in life to a postgraduate degree program (High Weirdness was Davis’s doctoral dissertation for Rice University’s Religion program, as part of a curriculum focus on Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism), I find it incredibly easy to identify with Davis’s desire to tug at the edges of his longtime association with and love for the Weird in a scholarly context. This book’s scholarly origins do not make High Weirdness unapproachable to the layperson, however. While Davis does delve deeply into philosophical and spiritual theorists and the context of American mysticism throughout the book, he provides succinct and germane summaries of this long history, translating the work of thinkers as diverse as early 20th century psychologist and student of religious and mystical experience William James to contemporary theorists such as Peter Sloterdijk and Mark Fisher. Davis’s introduction draws forth in great detail the long tradition of admitting the ineffable, the scientifically-inexplicable, into the creation of subjective, individual mystical experiences.

Primary among Davis’s foundational investigations, binding together all three men profiled in the book, is a full and thorough accounting of the question, “Why did these myriad mystical experiences all occur in the first half of the 1970s?” It’s a fairly common historical interpretation to look at the Nixon years in America as a hangover from the cultural revolution of the late 1960s, a retrenchment of Nixon’s “silent majority” of middle- and working-class whites vs. the perceived chaos of a militant student movement and identity-based politics among racial and sexual minorities. Davis admits that the general mystical seeking that went on in the early ’70s is a reaction to this revanchism. And while he quotes Robert Anton Wilson’s seeming affirmation of this idea—“The early 70s were the days when the survivors of the Sixties went a bit nuts”—his interest in the three individuals at the center of his study allows him to delve deeper, offering a more profound explanation of the politics and metaphysics of the era. In the immediate aftermath of the assassinations, the political and social chaos, and the election of Nixon in 1968, there was an increased tendency among the younger generation to seek alternatives to mass consumption culture, to engage in what leftist philosopher Herbert Marcuse would term “the Great Refusal.” All three of the figures Davis focuses on in this book, at some level or another, decided to opt out of what their upbringings and conformist America had planned for them, to various levels of harm to their livelihoods and physical and mental health. This refusal was part of an awareness of what a suburban middle-class life had excised from human experience: a sense of meaning-making, of a more profound spirituality detached from the streams of traditional mainline American religious life.

To find something new, the three men at the center of High Weirdness were forced to become bricoleurs—cobbling together a “bootstrap witchery,” in Davis’s words—from real-world occult traditions (both Eastern and Western); from the world of Cold War technocratic experimentation with cybernetics, neuroscience, psychedelics, and out-and-out parapsychology; and from midcentury American pop culture, including science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and pulp fiction. Davis intriguingly cites Dick’s invention of the term “kipple” in his 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as a key concept in understanding how this detritus can be patched together and brought new life. Given Dick’s overall prescience in predicting our 21st century world of social atomization and disrepair, this seems a conceptual echo worth internalizing a half-century later. If the late 1960s represented a mini-cataclysm that showed a glimpse of what a world without the “Black Iron Prison” might look like, those who graduated to the 1970s—the ones who “went a bit nuts”—needed to figure out how to survive by utilizing the bits and scraps left behind after the sweeping turbulence blew through. In many ways, McKenna, Wilson, and Dick are all post-apocalyptic scavengers.

All three men used drugs extensively, although not necessarily as anthropotechnics specifically designed to achieve enlightenment (Davis notes that Dick in particular had preexisting psychological conditions that, in conjunction with his prodigious use of amphetamines in the 1960s, were likely one explanation for his profound and sudden breaks with consensus reality in the ’70s). But we should also recognize (as Davis does) that McKenna, Wilson, and Dick were also, in many ways, enormously privileged. As well-educated scions of white America, born between the Great Depression and the immediate aftermath of World War II, they had the luxury to experiment with spirituality, psychedelic drugs, and technology to various degrees while holding themselves consciously separate from the mainstream institutions that would eventually co-opt and recuperate many of these strains of spirituality and individual seeking into the larger Spectacle. As Davis cannily notes, “Perhaps no one can let themselves unravel into temporary madness like straight white men.” But these origins also help explain the expressly technocratic bent of many of their hopes (McKenna) and fears (Wilson and Dick). Like their close confederate in Weirdness, Thomas Pynchon (who spent his early adulthood working for defense contractor Boeing, an experience which allowed him a keener avenue to his literary critiques of 20th century America), all three men were adjacent to larger power structures that alternately thrilled and repelled them, and which also helped form their specific esoteric worldviews.

It would be a fool’s errand to try to summarize the seven central chapters of the book, which present in great detail Terence (and brother Dennis) McKenna’s mushroom-fueled experiences contacting a higher intelligence in La Chorrera, Colombia in 1971, Robert Anton Wilson’s LSD-and-sex-magick-induced contact with aliens from the star Sirius in 1973 and ’74 as detailed in his 1977 book Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati, and Philip K. Dick’s famous series of mystical transmissions and revelations in February and March of 1974, which influenced not only his fiction output for the final eight years of his life but also his colossal “Exegesis,” which sought to interpret these mystical revelations in a Christian and Gnostic context. Davis’s book is out there and I can only encourage you to buy a copy, read these chapters, and revel in their thrilling detail, exhilarating madness, and occasional absurdity. Time and time again, Davis, like a great composer of music, returns to his greater themes: the environment that created these men gave them the tools and technics to blaze a new trail out of the psychological morass of Cold War American culture. At the very least, I can present some individual anecdotes from each of the three men’s mystical experiences, as described by Davis, that should throw some illumination on how they explored their own psyches and the universe using drugs, preexisting religious/esoteric ritual, and the pop cultural clutter that had helped shape them.

Davis presents a chapter focusing on each man’s life leading up to his respective spiritual experiences, followed by a chapter (in the case of Philip K. Dick, two) on his mystical experience and his reactions to it. For Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis, their research into organic psychedelics such as the DMT-containing yagé (first popularized in the West in the Cold War period by William S. Burroughs), alternately known as oo-koo-hé or ayahuasca, led them to South America to find the source of these natural, indigenous entheogens. But at La Chorrera in Colombia they instead met the plentiful and formidable fungus Psilocybe cubensis. In their experiments with the mushroom, Terence and Dennis tuned into perceived resonances with long-dormant synchronicities within their family histories, their childhood love of science fiction, and with the larger universe. Eventually, Dennis, on a more than week-long trip on both mushrooms and ayahuasca, needed to be evacuated from the jungle, but not before he had acted as a “receiver” for cryptic hyper-verbal transmissions, the hallucinogens inside him a “vegetable television” tuned into an unseen frequency—a profound shamanic state that Terence encouraged. The language of technology, of cybernetics, of science is never far from the McKenna brothers’ paradigm of spirituality; the two boys who had spent their childhoods reading publications like Analog and Fate, who had spent their young adulthoods studying botany and science while deep in the works of Marshall McLuhan (arguably a fellow psychedelic mystic who, like the McKennas and Wilson, was steeped in a Catholic cultural tradition), used the language they knew to explain their outré experiences.

Wilson spent his 20s as an editor for Playboy magazine’s letters page and had thus been exposed to the screaming gamut of American political paranoia (while contributing to it in his own inimitable prankster style). He had used this parapolitical wilderness of mirrors, along with his interest in philosophical and magickal orientations such as libertarianism, Discordianism, and Crowleyian Thelema as fuel for both the Illuminatus! trilogy of books written with Robert Shea (published in 1975), and his more than year-long psychedelic-mystical experience in 1973 and 1974, during which he claimed to act as a receiver on an “interstellar ESP channel,” obtaining transmissions from the star Sirius. His experiences as detailed in Cosmic Trigger involve remaining in a prolonged shamanic state (what Wilson called the “Chapel Perilous,” a term redolent with the same sort of medievalism as the McKenna brothers’ belief that they would manifest the Philosopher’s Stone at La Chorrera), providing Wilson with a constant understanding of the universe’s playfully unnerving tendency towards coincidence and synchronicity. Needless to say, the experiences of one Dr. John C. Lilly, who was also around this precise time tuned into ostensible gnostic communications from a spiritual supercomputer, mesh effortlessly with Wilson’s (and Dick’s) experiences thematically; Wilson even used audiotapes of Lilly’s lectures on cognitive meta-programming to kick off his mystical trances. Ironically, it was UFO researcher and keen observer of California’s 1970s paranormal scene Jacques Vallée who helped to extract Wilson out of the Chapel Perilous—by retriggering his more mundane political paranoia, saying that UFOs and other similar phenomena were instruments of global control. In Davis’s memorable words, “Wilson did not escape the Chapel through psychiatric disenchantment but through an even weirder possibility.”

Philip K. Dick, who was a famous science fiction author at the dawn of the ’70s, had already been through his own drug-induced paranoias, political scrapes, and active Christian mystical seeking. Unlike McKenna and Wilson, Dick was a Protestant who had stayed in close contact with his spiritual side throughout adulthood. In his interpretation of his mystical 2-3-74 experience, Dick uses the language and epistemology of Gnostic mystical traditions two millennia old. Davis also notes that Dick used the plots of his own most overtly political and spiritual ’60s output to help him understand and interpret his transcendent experiences. Before he ever heard voices or received flashes of information from a pink laser beam or envisioned flashes of the Roman Empire overlapping with 1970s Orange County California, Dick’s 1960s novels, specifically The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) and Ubik (1969), had explored the very nature of reality and admitted the possibility of a Gnostic universe run by unknowable, cruel demiurges. Even in these hostile universes, however, there exists a messenger of hope and mercy who seeks to destroy the illusion of existence and bring relief. These existing pieces of cultural and religious “kipple,” along with the parasocial aspects of Christian belief that were abroad in California at the time, such as the Jesus People movement (the source of the Ichthys fish sign that triggered the 2-3-74 experience), gave Dick the equipment he needed to make sense of the communications he received and the consoling realization that he was not alone, that he was instead part of an underground spiritual movement that acted as a modern-day emanation of the early Christian church.

After learning about these three figures’ shockingly similar experiences with drug-induced contact with beyond, the inevitable question emerges: what were all these messages, these transmissions from beyond, trying to convey? One common aspect of all three experiences is how cryptic they are (and how difficult and time-consuming it was for each of these men to interpret just what the messages were saying). It’s also a little sobering to discover through Davis’s accounts how personal all three experiences were, whether it’s Terence and Dennis’s private fraternal language during the La Chorrera experiment, or mysterious phone calls placed back in time to their mother in childhood, or a lost silver key that Dennis was able to, stage-magician-like, conjure just as they were discussing it, or the message Philip K. Dick received to take his son Christopher to the doctor for an inguinal hernia that could have proven fatal. But alongside these personal epiphanies, there is also always an undeniable larger social and political context, especially as both Wilson and Dick saw their journeys in 1973 and 1974 as a way to confront and deal with the intense paranoia around Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon (in his chapter setting the scene of the ’70s, Davis calls Watergate “a mytho-poetic perversion of governance”). In every case, the message from beyond requires interpretation, meaning-making, and, in Davis’s terminology, “constructivism.” The reams of words spoken and written by all three men analyzing their respective mystical experiences are an essential part of the experience. And these personal revelations all are attempts by the three men to make sense of the chaos of both their personal lives and their existence in an oppressive 20th century technocratic society: to inject some sense of mystery into daily existence, even if it took the quasi-familiar and, yes, somewhat comforting form of transmissions from a mushroom television network or interstellar artificial intelligence.

Over the past nine months I’ve spent much of my own life completing (and recovering from the process of completing) a Master’s degree. My own academic work, focusing on nostalgia’s uses in binding together individuals and communities with their museums, tapped into my earliest memories of museum visits in the late 1970s, when free education was seemingly everywhere (and actually free), when it was democratic and diverse, when it was an essential component of a rapidly-disappearing belief in social cohesion. In a lot of ways, my work at We Are the Mutants over the past three years is the incantation of a spell meant to conjure something new and hopeful from the “kipple” of a childhood suffused in disposable pop culture, the paranormal and “bootstrap witchery,” and science-as-progress propaganda. At the same time, over the past three years the world has been at the constant, media-enabled beck and call of a figure ten times more Weird and apocalyptic and socially malignant than any of Philip K. Dick’s various Gnostic emanations of Richard Nixon.

Philip K. Dick believed he was living through a recapitulation of the Roman Empire, that time was meaningless when viewed from the perspective of an omniscient entity like VALIS. In the correspondences and synchronicities I have witnessed over the past few months—in the collapse of political order and the revelation of profound, endemic corruption behind the scenes of the ruling class—this sense of recurring history has sent me down a similar set of ecstatic and paranoid corridors as McKenna, Wilson, and Dick. The effort to find meaning in a world that once held some inherent structure in childhood but has become, in adulthood, a hollow facade—a metaphysical Potemkin village—is profoundly unmooring. But meaning is there, even if we need technics such as psychedelic drugs, cybernetics (Davis’s final chapter summarizing how the three men’s mystical explorations fed into the internet as we know it today is absolutely fascinating), and parapolitical activity to interpret it. On this, the 50th anniversary of the summer of 1969, commonly accepted as the moment the Sixties ended, with echoes of moon landings and Manson killings reverberating throughout the cultural theater, is it any wonder that the appeal of broken psychonauts trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered world would appeal to lost souls in 2019? High Weirdness as a mystical tome remains physically and psychically close to me now, and probably will for the remainder of my life; and if the topics detailed in this review intrigue you the way they do me, it will remain close to you as well.

‘Deaths of despair’ soaring among Gen Z & millennials: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Helen Buyniski

Source: RT.com

Young Americans are killing themselves in record numbers, the victims of a confluence of economic and sociological factors that have singled them out – even above a nationwide surge in so-called “deaths of despair.”

Suicide rates among teens and young adults aged 15 to 24 – the older end of “Generation Z” – spiked in 2017, reaching their highest point since 2000, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). They’ve risen 51 percent in the past 10 years, buoyed by rising rates of anxiety and depression along with social media and drug use, and the figures may be even higher, since some intentional overdoses are not counted as suicides.

Young men saw the steepest rise in deaths, according to the JAMA study, though women are catching up to them at an alarming pace. Teens and young adults report higher rates of anxiety and depression than previous generations, and multiple studies in recent years have shown that social media use exacerbates both conditions, creating a self-perpetuating feedback loop that can have tragic consequences.

But Generation Z is simply following in the footsteps of its predecessors. The much-maligned millennial generation, defined by the Census Bureau as those born between 1982 and 2000 (meaning some are included in the JAMA study), are also killing themselves in record numbers. Drug-related deaths among ages 18 to 34 have increased 108 percent since 2007, while alcohol-related deaths are up 69 percent and suicides are up 35 percent, according to a report published last week by Trust for America’s Health. While millennials have long been written off as entitled, spoiled snowflakes, the media and society are belatedly realizing that they aren’t just layabouts unmotivated to exit their parents’ basement – this “despair” has a cause, and it’s primarily economic.

The rise of millennial and Gen Z “deaths of despair” can be traced to the yawning gap between reality and expectations. Raised on the myths of the American Dream, these are the first Americans to experience a markedly lower standard of living than their parents, the Baby Boomers who grew prosperous on the fruits of the postwar economic boom. The national debt has ballooned, driven by two decades of an unwinnable war whose cost is poised to top $6 trillion, and the Pentagon’s budget has swollen to an unprecedented size even as cuts to social services have decimated what little social safety net Americans could once count on. Multiple rounds of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations destroyed the government’s revenue base, and perhaps unsurprisingly, economic inequality has grown to exceed even the rates seen during the Great Depression.

And even these concerns are beside the point for a generation that left college already shackled with student loan debt that can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and cannot be canceled even by declaring bankruptcy. Millennials who graduated in the aftermath of the 2008 crash entered the “real world” to find no jobs waiting for them. Lucky if they could find an unpaid internship or a waitressing gig, they were forced to retreat back into their parents’ basements, a crushing blow for anyone but particularly for a generation told since birth that they were special, that they could do anything they wanted, that the world was their oyster.

The US, perhaps uniquely in the developed world, views poverty as a sin, and many millennials suffer in silence, believing they are the only ones in their peer group to “flunk out” of the “real world.” Instead of finding support from friends and family, they take advantage of the ready availability of alcohol and opioids, a factor that has caused the number of “deaths of despair” to skyrocket. Some economically-depressed states, like West Virginia, have seen drug overdoses increase more than fivefold in the last 12 years, according to a report published earlier this month by the Commonwealth Fund, and many more have seen their number double and triple. That pharmaceutical companies flooded the market with opioids at the same time the rise of social media devastated the quality and complexity of human relationships is a particularly deadly coincidence.

Since 1996, the average net worth of “consumers” under 35 has declined 35 percent, according to management consultancy Deloitte. Advertisers are starting to realize that targeting this group, while it may seem like a savvy marketing decision – they constitute a quarter of the US population, after all – doesn’t make sense, since they can’t afford to buy anything. Student debt is up 160 percent since 2004 for the under-30 population, and the home-ownership rate for millennials is only 37 percent – fully eight percentage points lower than their parents. Fully 89 percent would like to own a home, according to a survey conducted last year, but nearly half have zero dollars in savings – let alone the 20 percent most mortgages require for a down payment.

Young people aren’t the only ones afflicted by the “deaths of despair” phenomenon. Life expectancy nationwide is down for the third year in a row, and a report from Trust for America’s Health published last year projects that this “epidemic” – which they define as drug and alcohol deaths plus suicide – is on track to kill more than 1.6 million people by 2025 if it continues to grow at its current rate. As the Baby Boomers start to retire only to find they cannot live on their meager savings – assuming they still have any – they, too, are killing themselves more often, with suicide rates up 40 percent from 2007 to 2015.

This is not only a young people’s problem, nor is it an easy one to solve, but acknowledging the systemic poverty afflicting the “richest country in the world” – where two-thirds of the population doesn’t have enough saved to cover a $500 crisis – is a good place to start.

WHY WE’RE A CULTURE OF ADDICTS

Posted on June 23, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Leslie Garrett

Source: Waking Times

If there’s one constant among addicts of all types, it’s shame. It’s what makes us lie and hide. It’s what keeps us from asking for help – though we don’t think we need it because we’re also good at lying to ourselves.

About why we eat. Or shop. Or gamble. Or drink.

Dr. Gabor Maté knows the feeling well. Maté, a renowned doctor, speaker, and author, has seen it in the heroin-addicted men and women he treats in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He sees it in the behavior of well-respected workaholics. The cosmetic surgery junkies. The power seekers. The ‘I Brake for Garage Sales’ shoppers.

He’s seen it in the mirror.

Maté, author of the groundbreaking book In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, believes shame is behind our unwindable ‘war on drugs.’ Our ‘tough on crime’ policies. Our judgment of addicts. Our marginalization of street junkies.

Maté knows, as so many of our spiritual teachers have tried to teach us, that our judgments of others are really all about us.

Maté, who serves as resident doctor at The Portland Hotel, a Vancouver housing project for adults coping with mental illness, addiction, and other challenges, saw himself in the stories of the women and men who, day after day, came to see him for treatment and who slowly, over years, revealed to him their pain.

Those of us still hiding and denying? Gabor Maté sees us too.

Haunted

Gabor Maté was born into the Jewish ghetto of Budapest in 1944, just weeks before the Nazis seized Hungary, to a loving but overwhelmed mother and an absent father, who had been sent to a forced-labor camp. Just months later, his grandparents were killed at Auschwitz. At a year old, he was handed by his mother to a gentile stranger who was assigned his safety.

Maté understands now that those early experiences – or, more accurately, his mother’s frantic state of mind – guided the neural circuitry in his still-developing brain. Impaired circuitry that virtually prescribed a future of addiction and its close cousin, attention-deficit disorder (ADD).

Over years of hearing the stories of street drug users, examining his own past, and putting it together with his medical training, Maté became convinced that – as he says in a recent interview:

both addiction and ADD are rooted in childhood loss and trauma.

It’s a novel – and surprisingly controversial – approach, examining not the addiction but the pain behind it. Fighting not the substance but the circumstances that lead someone to seek out that self-soothing.

Circumstance Over Substance

Addiction, says Maté, is nothing more than an attempt to self-medicate emotional pain.

Absolutely anything can become an addiction… It’s not the external behaviors, it’s our relationship to it.

Maté calls addicts ‘hungry ghosts,’ a reference to one of the six realms of the Buddhist Circle of Life. These hungry ghosts are depicted with large empty bellies, small mouths, thin necks — starving for external satisfaction, seeking to fill but never being full, desperate to be soothed.

We all know that realm, he says, at least some of the time. The only difference between the identified addict and the rest of us is a matter of degrees.

It’s a view that has earned him some critics, not least of which is the Canadian Conservative government, which has sought to shut down the safe-injection site he helps oversee. The conventional medical community certainly hasn’t embraced his ideas. Addiction is typically viewed through one of two lenses: as a genetic component or as a moral failure.

Both, says Maté, are wrong.

And he says he’s got the brain science to prove it.

“A Warm, Soft Hug”

Maté points to a host of studies that clearly show how neural circuitry is developed in early childhood. Human babies, more than any other mammals, do most of their maturing outside the womb, which means that their environment plays a larger role in brain development than in any other species.

Factor in an abusive, or at least stressful, childhood environment and you’ve produced impaired brain circuitry – a brain that seeks the feel-good endorphins and stimulating dopamine that it is unable, or poorly able, to produce on its own. A brain that experiences the first rush of heroin as a “warm, soft hug,” as a 27-year-old sex trade worker described it to Maté.

It’s the adversity that creates this impaired development, says Maté, not the genetics emphasized by the medical community.

And our response to addicts – criminalization, marginalization, ostracism – piles on that adversity, fueling the addictive behavior.

The good news is that addiction can be prevented, but only if you start early. Maté writes in Hungry Ghosts:

[Prevention] needs to begin in the crib, and even before then… in the social recognition that nothing is more important for the future of our culture than the way children develop.

What about those children who are now addicted adults? Unprecedented brain research has revealed that brains can, essentially, be rewired. He continues:

Our brains are resilient organs… Some important circuits continue to develop throughout our entire lives, and they may do so even in the case of a hard-core drug addict whose brain ‘never had a chance’ in childhood.

What’s more, Maté, unlike many of his medical counterparts, factors in our potential for recovery, even transformation:

something else in us and about us: it is called by many names, ‘spirit’ being the most democratic and least denominational.

The Illusion of Choice

We’d like to think that addicts have a choice, that they can just choose to stop — even if it’s hard.

But Maté insists that the ability to choose is limited by the addict’s physiology and personal history. He states:

The more you’re driven by unconscious mechanisms, because of earlier defensive reaction to trauma, the less choice you actually have… Most people have much less choice in things than we actually recognize.

These unconscious impulses are why we find ourselves with our hands in a bag of chocolate after an argument with our spouse. It’s why we’re on Craigslist arranging a sexual encounter while our wife sleeps beside us. It’s why a respected medical doctor finds himself lying to his wife. Again.

“‘Have you been obsessing and buying?’ she’s asked me a number of times in the past few weeks,” Maté writes in Hungry Ghosts. “I look directly at my life partner of thirty-nine years and I lie. I tell myself I don’t want to hurt her. Nonsense. I fear losing her affection. I don’t want to look bad in her eyes. I’m afraid of her anger. That’s what I don’t want.”

For years, Maté struggled with a shopping addiction, spending thousands of dollars on classical music CDs in a single spree, then unable to resist the impulse to do it again weeks later after promising his wife he’d stop. It’s an addiction he refers to as wearing ‘dainty white gloves’ compared to the grinding drug abuse of his Downtown Eastside patients.

But, he writes, “I’ve come to see addiction not as a discrete, solid entity – a case of either you’ve got it or you don’t got it – but as a subtle and extensive continuum.”

Unless we become fully aware of the drivers of our addiction, he says, we’ll continue to live a life in which ‘choice’ is an illusion.

“Passion Creates, Addiction Consumes”

Is there a difference between a drug addiction and being hooked on a behavior — like sex? The medical community continues to debate the question, but Maté is adamant.

All addictions, whether to drugs or to behaviors such as compulsive sexual acting out, involve the same brain circuits, the same brain chemicals and evoke the same emotional dynamics… Behavior addictions trigger substances internally. So (behavior addicts) are substance addicts.

Where do we draw the line between addiction and, well, passion? What about the Steve Jobs of the world, who drive themselves — and others — to push harder, work longer, produce more and do everything better?

Daniel Maté, Gabor’s son and an editor of his books, says:

A lot of people make wonderful contributions to the world at their own cost… We often lionize unhealthy things.

To determine whether we’re serving a passion or feeding an addiction, Daniel Maté suggests that it comes down to a simple question, answered honestly: Are you free or are you not free?

His father takes it further.

What function is the addiction performing in your life? What questions is it answering . . . and how do we restore that?

Or, as he writes in Hungry Ghosts, “Passion creates, addiction consumes.”

Compassion for the Addict — and Ourselves

Responding to addiction requires us not only to care for the body and mind but also the soul, Maté says. The spiritual element of his practice is critical, he says, not only to understand the hard-core street addict but also our own struggle.

We lack compassion for the addict precisely because we are addicted ourselves in ways we don’t want to accept and because we lack self-compassion. – Gabor Maté

And so we treat the addict as an ‘other’ – this criminal, this person making poor choices – to whom we can feel superior.

Compassion is understanding, and to understand is to forgive.

We need, he says, to turn compassion into policy.

Maté summed it up nicely in a 2010 talk at Reed College:

To . . . point the finger at that street-corner drug addict who’s in that position because of that early trauma is blind to say the very least… I think that if we developed a more compassionate view of addiction and a more deep understanding of the addict and if we recognized the similarities between the ostracized addict at the social periphery and the rest of society, and if we did so with compassion both for them and for the rest of us, we would not only have more efficient, more successful drug treatment programs, we would also have a better society.

First Do No Harm

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By Emmy Bee

Source: Dissident Voice

Let me preface what I am about to say by stating that I have the utmost esteem for mainstream medicine’s skill in emergency situations — the do or die surgeries, the dispensing of powerful life-saving drugs necessary in that setting are second to none; and its mastery of cosmetic surgery in cases of deformities and the advances made in prosthetics are nothing less than spectacular. These are what make mainstream medicine great.

I would also like to add that I am not an expert of any kind. I hold no degrees or certifications, and neither do I represent, belong to, or work for any party, organization or corporation. I speak for myself, a sixty-two year old woman, and from my experiences with, and extensive research of, a topic I find fascinating, intriguing and bothersome — mainstream medicine and how the belief in its infallibility harms us in so many ways.

The pompous certainty of mainstream medicine’s powerful proponents — be they multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies, medical associations, disease-specific charities, government agencies, Madison Avenue selling the diseases and the pills, TV or magazines, the news media parroting its cash cow’s every claim — combined have most people, hook, line and sinker, believing in the impeccable record of mainstream medicine. No questions asked.

Here, I would like to throw out some alarming statistics — ones that can be easily found in a variety of journals from Forbes to JAMA to CounterPunch, etc.

The estimated annual mortality rate for adverse drug reactions to “correctly” prescribed drugs is the 5th leading cause of death in the U.S.¹ Over the counter (OTC) cold medications are among the top twenty substances causing death in children.² Used according to direction, NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs) are responsible for more than 20,000 deaths every year.³ There are over 400,000 deaths each year from drug and medical errors and tens of thousands more deaths from unnecessary procedures.⁴ Add those together and mainstream medicine is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

So, why is it that most people trust, without question, the omnipotence of mainstream medicine in the same way religious zealots believe in their chosen religion or atheists in theirs? When well over 200,000 people die in the U.S. each year from prescription drug use alone — not abuse, but use; when we spend more, per capita than any other nation on earth and yet our health indices and life expectancy are near the bottom of all other developed nations⁵ why is there no sense of outrage (except for price gouging!) or, at the very least, a sense that something is not right, that something is terribly wrong?

Yet, as has happened many times, should a doctor, a scientist, a researcher or a curious layperson question conventional medical creed the herald is quickly battered down with jeers of derision, and swiftly “discredited” and shunned by the medical community. The media then parrots what they are told and soon everyone is asking, “How dare they question science? Haven’t they heard of collateral damage? Every war (and they are constantly reminding us of the war we are fighting against diseases) has collateral damage”. Yet when a few people die from dirty spinach, improper use of some herbal product, or a handful of people (some even vaccinated) catch the measles (and live to tell about it!) panic overruns the media.

Does anyone remember or know of the ad campaigns telling us that “nine out of ten doctors smoke Camel cigarettes” or that DDT pesticide spray is “good for you!”? We may laugh now but what about the more recent debacles such as HRT (hormone replacement therapy), Vioxx, swine flu vaccines and GMOs — all of which received the seal of approval from industry scientists, government agencies and all were pushed by Madison Ave. — just like the cigarettes given to my father for heart disease and the DDT sprayed on everything in sight, including children.

The number of TV commercials for drugs, medical clinics, hospitals, and doctor-related reality TV shows is mind blowing. It is a constant barrage of “a pill for every ill” and “don’t forget to ask your doctor about it”, while people with vapid eyes move in slow motion through white rooms or a meadow filmed through gauze, while a voice, soft and soothing, tells you of the pill’s benefits and then the same voice, just as soft but at breakneck speed, spews a partial list of possible side effects and a series of unwanted symptoms, some of which sound, and are (such as death) worse than the “disease” itself.

And interspersed between the ad for an over-the-counter (OTC) medication that had not long ago been given “by prescription only” and another ad for the new six story billion dollar specialty clinic are yet more commercials inviting us to join in what has become a celebration of you fill in the blank disease. There’s a “walk” or a “run”, even a paddle! for this disease and a different colored “ribbon” for that disease. It is almost as if having a disease has become the new “in” thing — fashionable, admirable, heroic even. Are we being groomed to embrace our diseases, while at the same time being told to give, give, give to find a “cure”? According to Dr. Robert Sharpe, author of The Cruel Deception, a book about animal testing in medical research,” . . . in our culture treating disease is enormously profitable, preventing it is not.”

We have been told we are living longer but the sad fact is that the trend has reversed and now for the first time in decades life expectancy has dropped in the U.S.⁶ Even more alarming is that, along with adults, the number of children with chronic diseases has risen sharply. Think about it. How many of us make it past seventy (hell, even sixty!) without some major medical catastrophe (or two) requiring surgery and/or special apparatuses to help us do what used to come naturally and/or prescribed no less than three or four drugs? And how many “new” (iatrogenic) diseases do we then acquire from taking those drugs or undergoing those procedures that require even more drugs and/or more procedures?

And just what is conventional medicine’s track record for curing disease — any disease — not palliation or suppression or masking (all of which suppress and weaken the immune system) — but curing? Forty years ago I knew one woman with breast cancer while today I know dozens, all of who underwent tortuous procedures, surgeries and drugging, and yes, some of them died. And why is it that when people die after making use of conventional medicine — surgery, chemotherapy, drugs, etc. — there are no cries of foul against their choice of healthcare? Instead they are hailed as heroes who fought a courageous battle, but when someone dies after trying an alternative medicine the cries against their choice are nothing less than vitriolic, as if no one ever dies using mainstream medicine, when in actuality many thousands die each year from mishaps alone, never mind the many hundreds of thousands who die from the diseases that have remained rampant — heart disease, cancer and diabetes, etc.⁷

Despite unprecedented technical and scientific advances, mainstream medicine’s only answer to disease is to destroy—with toxic substances, ingested or injected, with life-threatening procedures and with the removal of diseased (and often times healthy) body parts. Kill germs, fight cancer, destroy cells, kick (name a disease)’s ass, crush, terminate, rub out, blast; never build up, heal, cure. Are we, as a society, even capable of imagining alternatives to mainstream medicine? I once told an MD I knew that a friend’s kidney stone passed with relative ease after drinking a herbal tea prescribed by an Acupuncturist. “If there was something out there that can do that,” he told me, “we would know about it”. Not with that attitude!

When contemplating all that led up to the economic debacle of 2008, I would venture to guess that most people would be leery now (if they weren’t already!) of any advise given by the banking industry and Wall Street concerning, let’s say, home loans. And the same wariness would prevail when listening to the oil or coal industries’ take on environmental issues, or the weapons makers’ spin on whether to go to war or sell arms, or the pesticide- producing conglomerates on the safety of their products. The conflict of interest in each case should be obvious because when one considers that the very ones who profit by limiting the field of allowable research, who selectively choose among research papers to discredit alternative theories or boost their own are the very ones who control the message, it becomes obvious that we are seeing conflict of interest on a massive scale.

And, what of the research done by pharmaceutical companies that tell us a certain drug, or procedure, or vaccine is safe and effective? Does it make you comfortable to know that President Obama’s pick for FDA (Food and Drug Administration) Commissioner, Robert Califf, had received research funds from twenty-five drug companies while director of Duke University clinical research department where a major research fraud scandal had erupted under his watch⁸ or that Julie Gerderding, former head of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) concealed and then destroyed evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American boys⁹, and yet congress refuses to subpoena her and the whistleblower from the CDC and the media never mentions it, and that this same Julie Gerderding left the CDC to become the president of Merck’s vaccine division and then executive VP of Merck, the sole manufacturer of the MMR vaccine? These examples are just two of many that are not only about a colossal conflict of interest but also about a dangerous threat to true scientific discovery affecting millions of lives.

So, why is it that pharmaceutical companies (which, by the way, have more lobbyists than there are members of congress and the senate combined) and which have a woeful track record when it comes to conflict of interest in medical research, drug research and alternative medicine viability research, are given a pass, a green light, a pat on the back of confidence and, besides, are vehemently defended and vociferously cheered on? What marketing magic do they spin that makes people overlook their complicity in fraudulent research, their over-the-top demonizing of opposing viewpoints, and above all their abhorrent safety record?

Why can’t we question the effectiveness, the safety or the necessity of some vaccines without being rudely shouted down? I wonder if those who shout the, “Shut up! They are safe!” mantra have ever taken the time to study the long history of infectious disease and the history of vaccine use? Do they know there are no long-term studies on the effects of vaccines, or that vaccinated people are not necessarily protected from the diseases they are vaccinated against, or that the pharmaceutical companies and the government agencies refuse to do a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated population study as to their overall health indices, that vaccines, unlike other drugs are not tested against a placebo but against another vaccine, or that childhood infectious diseases had been on a downward trend for many years (measles deaths had declined by almost 100 percent!) well before vaccines were introduced as had many of the other infectious diseases — running their course, improving as our sanitary conditions and treatment of the illness improved? So, why not let them continue to decline until they naturally disappear? Why introduce crude disease substances and a mixture of lethal chemicals (of which no one knows or bothers to test their long-term effects) into our bodies in an attempt to eradicate diseases that seemed to be doing a fine job of doing just that naturally?

Could there be a connection between the plethora of “new” or increasing diseases and the crude drugs (including vaccines) we have been putting into our bodies for decades now? If we stop to think about it does it make sense to inject ourselves with hazardous material we know nothing about to prevent diseases like the measles, mumps and the flu and others that are now so simple to treat?

But we are told, ad nauseam, to, “Shut up and just get your shots! All your questions have already been answered!” However, when you look behind the scenes of medical research and find the pharmaceutical companies paying the bills, writing the reports and working closely with government agencies, research colleges, medical journals and the media to get their message out, it should raise a red flag.

What is the great harm brought about by this absolutism of the proponents of mainstream medicine? There are many but two are outstanding. One is that freedom of choice in one’s healthcare decisions can and will be taken away — it has begun already and is picking up momentum. I do not use conventional medicine except in some emergency situations, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t fight for the right of others to choose to use it exclusively if they believe it to be their best or only option. Being comfortable with one’s healthcare choice is, I firmly believe, of utmost importance. Yet if it were up to many people I should not be allowed to choose the kind of healthcare I want for my family and me.

And secondly, that same vitriolic certainty and insular thinking is truly harmful to the very essence of scientific inquiry. Great discoveries could be ignored simply because of a refusal to look beyond what we are told is scientifically acceptable today, the realm of inquiry having been limited by the greed of those in power and their manipulation of the masses by way of the fear factor.

To Err is Human: Building a Safer Healthcare System: Institute of Medicine, Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, 2000.
2009 annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (27th report).
Healing the NSAID Nation, E. Goldman, 2012.
Leah Binder, Stunning News on Preventable Deaths in Hospitals, September 23, 2013; see also: Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD. Death by Medicine, Integral Options Cafe, January 12, 2010.
Numbeo. Health Care Index for Country 2016.
Public Health, Life Expectany in the U.S. drops for First Time in Decades, Report Finds, Health News from NPR, December 8, 2016.
The Marshall Protocol Knowledge Base, Autoimmunity Research Foundation.
Martha Rosenberg, Obama’s Latest FDA Nominee: No Hidden Big Pharma Links, They are all in Plain Sight, Counterpunch, November 19, 2015.
Sharyl Attkisson, CDC Scientist: “We scheduled Meeting to Destroy Vaccine Autism Study Documents“, March 23, 2016.

3 Questions You’re Not Supposed to Ask About Life in a Sick Society

Posted on July 23, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Sigmund Fraud

Source: Waking Times

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~J. Krishnamurti

Society is directed by a never-ending mainstream narrative which is always evolving, and always reaching new dramatic peaks in sensationalism and hype. They fill your mind with topics they select, they keep your attention on these topics, and they invite and encourage you to argue amongst each other about these topics. In this way our collective attention is permanently commandeered, preventing us from diving too deeply into matters which have more than a superficial impact on day-today life.

Free-thinking is the ability and willingness to explore of ideas and areas of the mind which are yet undiscovered or are off-limits. It is a vanishing art that is deliberately being stamped out by a control system which demands conformity, acquiescence and obedience of body, mind, and spirit.

For your consideration, here are three questions you’re not supposed to ask about life in our profoundly sick society.

1. Who owns the money supply, and the world’s debt?

Pretty much the entire world is in financial debt, an insidious form of slavery which enables the exploitation of human beings and of all things in nature. It’s maddening when you think about it. The United States alone supposedly owes some $20 trillion, while the world at large owes a shocking $215 trillion?

But to whom, precisely?

Money is just a medium of exchange which facilitates transactions between people. In and of itself it has no intrinsic value as we could just as easily use sea shells instead of dollar bills and still be able to get things done. But today’s money is the property of private third-parties who rent it out to national governments, who then use the labor of their citizens as collateral against these loans. This is a highly refined form of slavery, which has already put future unborn generations of human beings in debt.

But who, exactly does the human race owe? Who are our debt-slave masters?

2. Who owns your body?

Ownership means having the explicit right to use, control and dispose of something in the manner of your choosing. The one thing you are born with that you take with you to your death is your own body, but do you own it? If not you, then who does own your body?

If this question were already settled in our society then there wouldn’t be ever-increasing pressure on those who choose to refuse vaccines. Children battling cancer and other serious illnesses wouldn’t be forced to take chemo and radiation under penalty of law and under threat of being taken from their parents. Water wouldn’t be fluoridated without our consent. Natural medicines wouldn’t be outlawed under threat of fines and prison time.

We are rapidly approaching a time when people will be required by law to take psychotropic medications as citizens were in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic, Brave New World.

Do you own your body, or does it belong to the state?

3. Why is the exploration of consciousness restricted and illegal?

The most effective prisons are not material, but are constructed inside the mind. Perception, opinion and understanding are all dynamic concepts, not at all static. These can all change in the blink of an eye just because a new idea or experience resonates with you in a special way. Our evolution depends on our ability to expand the frontiers of what’s possible, and when the mind is held in confinement by an entrenched system and powerful cultural paradigm, progress, even happiness, is stunted.

In this societal trap you are given free rein to debase your consciousness and your spirit with alcohol, dangerous drugs, pharmaceuticals, television, pornography, theatrical violence, and then some, yet many natural medicines which elevate consciousness and provide a window into the soul are illegal.

“This is the way freedom is hijacked—not all at once, out in the open, but stealthily, little by little, behind closed doors, and with our own agreement. How will we be able to resist when so many of us have already willingly handed over the keys to our own consciousness to the state and accepted without protest that it is OK to be told what we may and may not do, what we may and may not explore, even what we may and may not experience, with this most precious, sapient, unique, and individual part of ourselves?

If we are willing to accept that then we can be persuaded to accept anything.” ~Graham Hancock

The War On Consciousness

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Graham Hancock

Source: Body Mind Soul Spirit

We are told that the “War on Drugs” is being waged, on our behalf, by our governments and their armed bureaucracies and police forces, to save us from ourselves. “Potential for abuse and harm” are supposed to be the criteria by which the use of drugs is suppressed—the greater a drug’s potential for abuse and harm, the greater and more vigorous the degree of suppression, and the more draconian the penalties applied against its users.

In line with this scheme drugs are typically ranked into a hierarchy: Schedules I, II, and III in the US, Classes A, B, and C in the UK, and so on and so forth all around the world. Thus, to be arrested for possession of a Schedule I or Class A drug results in heavier penalties than possession of a Schedule III or Class C drug. Generally if a drug is deemed to have some currently accepted medical use it is likely to be placed in a lower schedule than if it has none, notwithstanding the fact that it may have potential for abuse or harm. In the absence of any recognized therapeutic effects, drugs that are highly addictive, such as heroin or crack cocaine, or drugs that are profoundly psychotropic, including hallucinogens such as LSD, psilocybin, or DMT, are almost universally placed in the highest schedules and their use attracts the heaviest penalties.

The notable exceptions to this system of ranking according to perceived “harms” are, of course, alcohol and tobacco, both highly addictive and harmful drugs—far more so than cannabis or psilocybin, for example—but yet socially accepted on the grounds of long customary use and thus not placed in any schedule at all.

The Failed War

When we look at the history of the “War on Drugs” over approximately the last 40 years, it must be asked whether the criminalization of the use of any of the prohibited substances has in any way been effective in terms of the stated goals that this “war” was supposedly mounted to achieve. Specifically, has there been a marked reduction in the use of illegal drugs over the past 40 years—as one would expect with billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money having been spent over such a long period on their suppression—and has there been a reduction in the harms that these drugs supposedly cause to the individual and to society?

It is unnecessary here to set down screeds of statistics, facts, and figures readily available from published sources to assert that in terms of its own stated objectives the “War on Drugs” has been an abject failure and a shameful and scandalous waste of public money. Indeed, it is well known, and not disputed, that the very societies that attempt most vigorously to suppress various drugs, and in which users are subject to the most stringent penalties, have seen a vast and continuous increase in the per capita consumption of these drugs. This is tacitly admitted by the vast armed bureaucracies set up to persecute drug users in our societies, which every year demand more and more public money to fund their suppressive activities; if the suppression were working, one would expect their budgets to go down, not up.

Inventory of Harm

Such matters are only the beginning of the long inventory of harm caused by the “War on Drugs.”

Western industrial societies, and all those cultures around the globe that increasingly seek to emulate them, teach us to venerate above all else the alert, problem-solving state of consciousness that is particularly appropriate to the conduct of science, business, war, and logical inquiry, and to such activities as driving cars, operating machinery, performing surgery, doing accounts, drawing up plans, accumulating wealth, etc., etc., etc. But there are many other states of consciousness that the amazing and mysterious human brain is capable of embracing, and it appears to be a natural human urge, as deep-rooted as our urges for food, sex, and nurturing relationships, to seek out and explore such “altered states of consciousness.” A surprisingly wide range of methods and techniques (from breathing exercises, to meditation, to fasting, to hypnosis, to rhythmic music, to extended periods of vigorous dancing, etc.) is available to help us to achieve this goal, but there is no doubt that the consumption of those plants and substances called “drugs” in our societies is amongst the most effective and efficient means available to mankind to explore these profoundly altered states of consciousness.

The result is that people naturally seek out drugs and the temporary alterations in consciousness that they produce. Not all people in every society will do this, perhaps not even a majority, but certainly a very substantial minority—for example the 2 million Britons who are known to take illegal drugs each month³ or those 20 million people in the US who have been arrested for marijuana possession since 1965. And these of course are only the tip of the iceberg of the much larger population of American marijuana users, running into many more tens of millions, who have, by luck or care, not yet fallen foul of the law and are thus not reflected in the arrest statistics.

Needless to say, it is of course exactly the same urge to alter consciousness that also impels even larger numbers of people to use legal (and often extremely harmful) drugs such as alcohol and tobacco—which, though they may not alter consciousness as dramatically as, say, LSD, are nevertheless undoubtedly used and sought out for the limited alterations of consciousness that they do produce.

For the hundreds of millions of people around the world whose need to experience altered states is not and cannot be satisfied by drunken oblivion or the stimulant effects of tobacco, it is therefore completely natural to turn to “drugs”—and, since the “War on Drugs” means that there is no legal source of supply of these substances, the inevitable result is that those who wish to use them must resort to illegal sources of supply.

Herein lies great and enduring harm. For it is obvious, and we may all see the effects everywhere, that the criminalization of drug use has empowered and enriched a vast and truly horrible global criminal underworld by guaranteeing that it is the only source of supply of these drugs. We have, in effect, delivered our youth—the sector within our societies that most strongly feels the need to experience altered states of consciousness— into the hands of the very worst mobsters and sleazeballs on the planet. To buy drugs our sons and daughters have no choice but to approach and associate with violent and greedy criminals. And because the proceeds from illegal drug sales are so enormous, we are all caught up in the inevitable consequences of turf wars and murders amongst the gangs and cartels competing in this blackest of black markets.

Instead the powers that be continue to pursue the same harsh and cruel policies that they have been wedded to from the outset, ever seeking to strengthen and reinforce them rather than to replace them with something better. Indeed the only “change” that the large, armed bureaucracies that enforce these policies has ever sought since the “War on Drugs” began has, year on year, been to demand even more money, even more arms, and even more draconian legislative powers to break into homes, to confiscate property, and to deprive otherwise law-abiding citizens of liberty and wreck their lives. In the process we have seen our once free and upstanding societies— which used to respect individual choice and freedom of conscience above all else—slide remorselessly down the slippery slope that leads to the police state. And all this is being done in our name, with our money, by our own governments, to “save us from ourselves”!

Freedom of Consciousness

What is Western civilization all about? What are its greatest achievements and highest aspirations?

It’s my guess that most people’s replies to these questions would touch—before all the other splendid achievements of science, literature, technology, and the economy—on the nurture and growth of freedom.

Individual freedom.

Including, but not limited to freedom from the unruly power of monarchs, freedom from the unwarranted intrusions of the state and its agents into our personal lives, freedom from the tyranny of the Church and its Inquisition, freedom from hunger and want, freedom from slavery and servitude, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to elect our own leaders, freedom to be homosexual—and so on and so forth.

The list of freedoms we enjoy today that were not enjoyed by our ancestors is indeed a long and impressive one. It is therefore exceedingly strange that Western civilization in the twenty- first century enjoys no real freedom of consciousness.

There can be no more intimate and elemental part of the individual than his or her own consciousness. At the deepest level, our consciousness is what we are—to the extent that if we are not sovereign over our own consciousness then we cannot in any meaningful sense be sovereign over anything else either. So it has to be highly significant that, far from encouraging freedom of consciousness, our societies in fact violently deny our right to sovereignty in this intensely personal area, and have effectively outlawed all states of consciousness other than those on a very narrowly defined and officially approved list. The “War on Drugs” has thus unexpectedly succeeded in engineering a stark reversal of the true direction of Western history by empowering faceless bureaucratic authorities to send armed agents to break into our homes, arrest us, throw us into prison, and deprive us of our income and reputation simply because we wish to explore the sometimes radical, though always temporary, alterations in our own consciousness that drugs facilitate.

The reason the anti-marijuana campaigns have failed is that millions of users know from their own direct, long-term experience that marijuana does not do them any great harm and (with reference to the most recent anti-marijuana propaganda) most definitely does not drive them mad.

Other than being against arbitrary rules that the state has imposed on us, personal drug use by adults is not a “crime” in any true moral or ethical sense and usually takes place in the privacy of our own homes, where it cannot possibly do any harm to others. For some it is a simple lifestyle choice. For others, particularly where the hallucinogens such as LSD, psilocybin, and DMT are concerned, it is a means to make contact with alternate realms and parallel dimensions, and perhaps even with the divine. For some, drugs are an aid to creativity and focussed mental effort. For others they are a means to tune out for a while from everyday cares and worries. But in all cases it seems probable that the drive to alter consciousness, from which all drug use stems, has deep genetic roots.

Other adult lifestyle choices with deep genetic roots also used to be violently persecuted by our societies.

A notable example is homosexuality, once punishable by death or long periods of imprisonment, which is now entirely legal between consenting adults—and fully recognized as being none of the state’s business—in all Western cultures. (Although approximately thirteen US states have “anti-sodomy” laws outlawing homosexuality, these statutes have rarely been enforced in recent years, and in 2003 the US Supreme Court invalidated those laws.) The legalization of homosexuality lifted a huge burden of human misery, secretiveness, paranoia, and genuine fear from our societies, and at the same time not a single one of the homophobic lobby’s fire-and-brimstone predictions about the end of Western civilization came true.

Likewise, it was not so long ago that natural seers, mediums, and healers who felt the calling to become “witches” were burned at the stake for “crimes” that we now look back on as harmless eccentricities at worst.

At the deepest level, our consciousness is what we are—to the extent that if we are not sovereign over our own consciousness then we cannot in any meaningful sense be sovereign over anything else either.

Perhaps it will be the same with drugs? Perhaps in a century or two, if we have not destroyed human civilization by then, our descendants will look back with disgust on the barbaric laws of our time that punished a minority so harshly (with imprisonment, financial ruin, and worse) for responsibly, quietly, and in the privacy of their own homes seeking alterations in their own consciousness through the use of drugs. Perhaps we will even end up looking back on the persecution of drug users with the same sense of shame and horror that we now view the persecution of gays and lesbians, the burning of “witches,” and the imposition of slavery on others.

Meanwhile it’s no accident that the “War on Drugs” has been accompanied by an unprecedented expansion of governmental power into the previously inviolable inner sanctum of individual consciousness. On the contrary, it seems to me that the state’s urge to power has all along been the real reason for this “war”—not an honest desire on the part of the authorities to rescue society and the individual from the harms caused by drugs, but the thin of a wedge intended to legitimize increasing bureaucratic control and intervention in almost every other area of our lives as well.

This is the way freedom is hijacked—not all at once, out in the open, but stealthily, little by little, behind closed doors, and with our own agreement. How will we be able to resist when so many of us have already willingly handed over the keys to our own consciousness to the state and accepted without protest that it is OK to be told what we may and may not do, what we may and may not explore, even what we may and may not experience, with this most precious, sapient, unique, and individual part of ourselves?

If we are willing to accept that then we can be persuaded to accept anything.

Government, Terrorism, Money, Education and Other Important Discussions

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Phillip J. Watt

Source: The Mind Unleashed

The elite power structure – which uses the monetary system, war, false flags and the monopolized media as their primary mechanisms of control – has infiltrated every major government of the Western World. How do we know this? It’s simple; if they hadn’t been hijacked, then governments would have already begun a process of revolutionizing the way in which our societies are organized so that it benefits all of us, not just a select few.

The US Presidential race and two of its candidates have shown a small amount of hope for real change in America, something that not just its citizens desperately need, but the entire world too. Once the game is changed in the US – so that the government no longer works for those in control of the multinational and banking corporations – it will undoubtedly reverberate around the world.

Clinton is obviously a mouthpiece of the status quo and therefore cannot be trusted to enact real change. After all, she is an oligarch. On the other hand, Sanders and Trump appear to be anti-establishment, but are they really? It’s difficult to really know, because they could be controlled opposition. Yet even if they are separate to the existing order, can we really trust that they’ll do the job that the world’s peoples, and the environment, truly need?

Actions always speak louder than words, so regardless of the rhetoric of Trump and Sanders, does their policy agenda actually align to the truths that have been exposed by the many independent social researchers who are doing a wonderful job for the betterment of humanity?

Read below and decide for yourself.

The Real Policies for Change

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it reflects the fundamental shifts that we should be implementing in the short term to move into a new era of health and prosperity for humanity, and the environment we inhabit. In other words, these changes are the first essential steps if we want to overcome the dysfunction and deception that plague the hearts and minds of the people, as well as the systems that guide our collective activity.

If a political party or politician does not discuss these topics in general, then they are not aligned to the changes that we need, and therefore true progress. This is most likely because of two reasons; ignorance and/or corruption.

In any case, the exact way forward in each area is of course open for debate, but there must be an open and transparent dialogue held among the people. Simply, we all need to understand not just the issues, but the potential solutions to them.

This is obviously happening within conscious circles and progressive movements, however it’s not yet active within the mainstream mentality. This is just more evidence which illustrates that our politicians have failed us; that’s because it’s their job to bring these issues to the light of day so that everybody can participate in their resolution, if they so choose.

1. Monetary Policy: The way the economy is designed must rid society from the saturation of debt, move beyond indebtment to the oligarchs, cease the creation of fake currency by banks, overcome economic slavery by making the currency supply one of value and guarantee that local economies prosper.

2. Taxation Policy: The tax burden put on the people and the evasion of tax by multinational corporations needs to be resolved. One such method is abolishing all taxes and implementing a 2% debit-transaction taxso that citizens pay less tax, all individuals and businesses pay their fair share and there is an abundance of revenue to heal the wounds of a decaying society.

3. Budgeting Policy: Government revenues must be effectively and efficiently utilized to ensure the development of robust social services, increased wealth equality, the eradication of poverty, widespread sustainable practices, appropriate national defense programs and necessary infrastructure.

4. Defense and Foreign Policy: With unjust wars and false flag terrorism being the norm of the 21st Century, any decision to go to war must be sanctioned by the people via referendum. The reasons must be transparentally documented and validated as based in truth. All events at home and abroad that impact the decision-making of defense and foreign relations must be subject to robust and open investigations. Because national security is the first priority, all international relations should be treated diplomatically as the first line of defense.

5. Media Policy: The way in which information is disseminated throughout society must not be managed by monopolies, or a government. Media must be an open source platform where independent investigations are implemented and presented without bias. Any monopoly on the media must be disassembled so that the populace has unrestricted access to all the information necessary for the health and well-being of each individual and the community as a whole.

6. Education Policy: The way in which our children are educated is an indoctrination into the status quo, particularly economically and politically. The education system must therefore ensure that all children exercise their right to gain access to information that will help them to grow into healthy, happy and honorable adults, as well as question the way in which we organize society so that we can evolve it in alignment with our needs.

7. Governmental Policy: The amalgamation of government and business needs to be dissected. Politicians and bureaucrats are servants of the people and therefore must be representative of the needs and wants of the people. Moreover, government intervention of individual liberty and the free market must be also reduced.

8. Energy Policy: There is no longer any need to rely on fossil fuels, so creating the energy that society needs must be replaced with renewable resources – such as solar, air, water, wave, plant and free-energy technologies. Energy must also be made cheaply available to the public.

9. Health Policy: All foods and so-called medicines which impact the long-term health of the people must be labelled appropriately. Health programs that support emotional, psychological, philosophical, physical, spiritual, social and behavioral vitality must also be deeply embedded into schooling and other educational platforms. Holistic and preventative approaches to dis-ease must also be brought to the forefront of health education instead of relying on a symptomatic and prescriptive medical framework.

10. Medicine Policy: The pharmaceutical monopolies must be transformed into meeting the needs of the people, not shareholders and their profits. All natural and cheap remedies to disease – such as plant-based medicines and meditation – must be fully documented and reincorporated back into health education.

11. Housing Policy: Every person has a right to live in safe, comfortable and affordable housing. No individual should be homeless, unless by choice. Employment and Housing Policy must also be designed to ensure that the purchase of land is affordable and achievable for all.

12. Food Policy: The damaging impacts of industrial agriculture on earth’s natural systems, as well as the erosion of local economies (which is the direct result of trade agreements that primarily benefit the multinationals), needs to be reversed. One such way is by replacing it with a localized/regionalized Permaculture model where individuals and communities are supported to grow their own produce. This will help to increase local employment, as well as reconnect people to nature, the food they eat and their health requirements. In addition, all foods must be properly labelled and contain no toxic ingredients. GMOs must also be abandoned and organic foods must be readily available.

13. Water Policy: All citizens have a right to access safe and clean water. They should be supported to capture their own water needs. Where this is not possible, no toxins such as fluoride will be added to the water supply.

14. Animal Policy: All animal agriculture systems must respect the health and happiness of those animals. They must not subject them to any conditions in which they consistently suffer. One particular approach would be to incorporate it into a widespread permaculture model, in which animals are treated humanely.

15. Environmental Policy: Any practice that is environmentally unsustainable and negatively impacts the health and diversity of our natural systems is to be transformed into the opposite. The increasing extinction of animal and plant life must be reversed, as well as the trends of deforestation, ocean acidification and desertification.

16. Drug Policy: The war-on-drugs has been an epic failure because it has generated more crime, addiction, mental health problems and sent the market underground. It has also stigmatized the natural right to explore one’s own body and consciousness. The therapeutic and developmental aspects of so-called illegal drugs must be holistically researched so that society can be educated on both their positive and negative impacts. All illegal substances must be made legal, as they have begun to do in some countries, and a thoroughly-informed society must have safe access to pure substances for their own therapeutic, developmental and leisurely needs.

17. Sovereignty Policy: All citizens have natural rights, some of which have eroded through the recent policies of Western Governments. One example is privacy and another is the right to protest. This stripping of our rights needs to immediately stop and all rights aligned with natural law are to be reintroduced. No flesh and blood person should be treated as a legal fiction that works for a corporation impersonating as a government. This means that no legislation can impede on the natural laws that all individuals have a right to exercise.

18. Immunization Policy: All vaccines must be robustly studied independent of the pharmaceutical industry and the results made available to the public. All previous disease and death resulting from vaccines must also be publicly available. None will contain any ingredients other than to immunize against a specific disease. In addition, no child or adult will be forced or coerced into taking vaccines; every person must have their natural right to choose intact.

19. Atmospheric Policy: All geoengineering and chemical spraying programs are to immediately cease. The impacts that these programs have already had on the health of humanity, as well as the environment, must be holistically investigated and reversed.

20. Social Security Policy: Pensioners, people with a disability and other persons who require financial support must be treated with respect and must be able to comfortably live above the poverty line. Where possible, they will be supported to increase their education, training and skills so that they reenter the workforce. There should also be widespread volunteering programs with inherent incentives so the knowledge, skills and services of the elderly can be utilized for the benefit of the community.

Further Thoughts

There are many more areas that need to evolve, but its important to focus on the priorities in such as short piece. No doubt, many of you reading this would have been shocked and confused by some of the information herein. You might have even rejected elements to it, because it might have seemed too conspiratorial or challenging to believe. That’s okay; every single one of us who have woken up to these realities felt the same the first time we heard them too.

In any case, if you’d like to do follow up research, the links provided above will help you to initiate the process. Go deep too; it’s only when we individually undertake our own independent and robust research that we can come to a solid understanding of the true state of the world. The tip of course is to not be fooled by the propaganda narratives of the matrix-media and ensure we undertake research through the independent channels and progressive social researchers.

Furthermore, the above plans of attack are designed for the short to mid term. This does not discount the deeper agenda of moving from an economy of scarcity, to one of abundance. There are many models to achieve this, such as several resource-based economies, but until we build the foundations and start moving in that direction we have to work with what’s in front of us, right now.

In addition, of course it’s necessary to build new systems outside of the existing model to make the old ones redundant, yet we still need to use the systems that we’ve got and aim to transform society from within. After all, a balanced and holistic approach, is always the right approach.

Final Thoughts

Never has a government exposed all of the above issues. They might touch on some of them to some degree, but unfortunately we don’t have so-called leaders who actually call out the real challenges that we collectively face. There’s no doubt that some politicians know about these actualities, but the reality is they don’t publicly disclose it in fear of losing their credibility, or their livelihood.

But things are changing. Not only are more and more people joining the awakening community by educating themselves and taking action in response to these dysfunctions, but there are also political parties forming who dare to expose these truths to their audience and design robust policies in response. One such group is The Australian Sovereignty Party (ASP); in fact, many of the links above will direct you to the policies they’ve designed to rectify the failures of past governments.

Many parties around the world could learn a thing or two from this political force.

If you’re Australian, I highly encourage you to read the policy material at their website and join if their ethos resonates with you. Any person from around the world can join as an affiliate member too, so anyone is more than welcome to sign up to learn about how a true political party works. In addition, share this article and the ASPs progressive policies among your friends and family so that the momentum builds to bring Australians (and others) up-to-date with a political outfit that actually represents the real needs of you, me and all of us.

If you also believe in transforming our world into a better place, then at the very least research their policies. I know you’ll be pleasantly surprised (view their website here and follow them on facebook here). Furthermore, following is an interview I did with the President of the ASP, Daniel Huppert. In it he discusses many of the issues found in this article and the ASPs policy response to them. Enjoy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phillip J. Watt lives in Australia. His written work deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook or visit his website.

Closing the Doors of Perception

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Dylan Charles

Source: Waking Times

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” -William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

We, the people, are the foundation of a vast human pyramid, at the top of which comfortably rests a world elite that manipulates the human population and world events to broaden and maintain their power. The main agents of this global cartel are the banking elite, the military industrial complex, the medical establishment, the mainstream media, the entertainment industrial complex, and the hundreds of corrupt and co-opted world governments that act as henchmen and watchdogs for the unelected world rulers.

Over our heads they hang the constant specter of war, financial collapse, terrorism and pandemic disease, and to keep us from reacting to their deeds they enlist evermore advanced forms of mind control, biological control and social engineering.

The key to their dominance over the human race is the management of public perception, and how the public mind, in turn, affects the individual mind. Reality for us is very narrowly defined, which magnifies the perception of division between human beings, between humans and nature, and between individuals and their own true spiritual nature. As such we are all too easily sidelined or conquered altogether, and doomed to toil as relatively well-off slaves in their matrix of control, constantly struggling with and murdering each other.

They recruit us to enforce this prison of the mind on ourselves, and are creating a rising class of those who willingly support them in their efforts. The rest of us are merely subjects of their tyranny, whether we acknowledge it or not, and until a major cultural upheaval occurs, there is little chance of liberating the human race. Thus we must for now focus on liberating the individual and freeing human consciousness.

This realization is a powerful motivator, for it challenges all life-loving, courageous and compassionate people to hastily wake up, discover who we really are as spiritual beings having a human experience, and then become the best possible version of ourselves so that we me may contribute to the awakening and help to cast light on that which thrives in shadows.

“Sometimes I think this whole wide world is one big prison yard. Some of us are prisoners, the rest of us are guards.” – Bob Dylan

Slamming the Doors

To gain administrative access to our consciousness and constrict our perception to such a narrow band, our vibration is kept humming along chaotically in the lowest possible frequencies of fear, panic, anger, blame, hate, uncertainty and limitation. To parry this onslaught, it is essential that we recognize the many negative influences that invade our minds, bodies and spirits, and fortify ourselves against the shallowness and negativity being marketed to us at every corner.

The mind is the agent of the spirit, and the body is the vehicle of the mind. By attacking first the body, the mind and spirit are thus duly compromised.

We are under continual barrage from industrial environmental pollution, toxic pesticide-laden and overly processed foods, DNA altering genetically modified organisms and vaccines, chemtrails, radiation, EMF’s, pharmaceuticals and so much more. The body’s immune systems are quite capable, but the deliberate trashing of our environment, food supply and health is one of the foremost challenges we must overcome in order to be able to move beyond the limitations imposed upon us. A full rejection of these pollutants (as best as is possible) is warranted in order to detoxify the body, decalcify the pineal gland and prepare the body to support the mind and spirit in its natural evolution of consciousness.

Stress is the weapon of choice for the elite, and the stress of living sedentary, material-driven, worker-bee lifestyles in pursuit of manipulated currencies keeps us focused completely on our personal interests and affairs, and always in competition with our neighbors, peers, friends and family. When our mind and spirit falter and our mental health suffers, we are herded to the clinics for mass-produced psychiatric evaluations that aim to hook us on psychotropic medications which numb us to life’s beauty and keep us entranced in the day-to-day work of supporting the economy with our time and energy.

Human imagination is crushed as today’s children are hammered with rigidity and mind-numbing repetition from an early age, and with the introduction of Common Core, our education system has become even more intolerant, close-minded and non-sensical. This system produces conformists who are good at following directions and working hard for material and superficial rewards. The ability to think clearly, focus, and imagine new possibilities are absolutely critical to understanding who you are, and to understanding your inherent power and flexibility as a human being.

The law and those who enforce it are there to add to the stress and confusion of living in the matrix, and the law is used overtly to cut us from organic and chemical substances which have the potential to help us quickly see through the grand illusion that is crafted for us. Human consciousness, however, naturally pushes to thrive, grow and expand, and as such it has triggered a wave of interest in the spiritual gifts of iboga, ayahuasca, psilocybin and shamanic medicine traditions. We have open access to alcohol, pharmaceuticals and are deliberately over-exposed to other consciousness debilitating substances like aspartame, fluoride, and high-fructose corn syrup, and there is an abundance in availability of parasitic street drugs like cocaine, heroin and meth-amphetamines.

Government plays the roles of spy, censor and thought police, thus robbing the psyche of the freedom of the exploration of thought. Religion seeks to homogenize spiritual experience and externalize divinity. The mind worms of the entertainment-industrial complex pollute the psyche and suck away our precious time by hammering us with insane amounts of celebrity worship and trifling entertainment options, usually in the form of sit-down-and-watch programming that lulls the mind and sub-conscious mind into deep, hypnotic states of trance and suggestiveness. Television has become a theater of the absurd, and constantly works at further blurring the lines between reality and false-reality, tinkering with our ability to accurately perceive the difference between the important and the trivial.

The dogs of war and the military industrial complex are there to enrich the elite while dominating the poor and insubordinate. They heavily propagandize our world to create the perception of constant threats, working to corral us into the narrowest possible ‘us-versus-them,’ reptilian modes of consciousness, and to distract from legitimate issues and concerns.

Heavily beaten down by all of this, most people seek security in the comfort of being part of a collective, some sort of like-minded group, no matter what it may be. As survival mechanisms, people attach labels to themselves and embellish their egos, picking teams and choosing sides, following the leader wherever he may go. Some join the Democrat team or the Republican team, some side with their particular race, some take trivial associations like sports teams and university associations far too seriously. The divisions among us are are driven into the collective conscience which wields heavy influence over the individual by way of peer pressure and conformity. The result is robotic closed-minded madness.

Your Task at Hand

It’s simple to control someone’s reality when you have unlimited resources, a sophisticated media apparatus at your fingertips, and a monopoly on currency and security. Doubly so when you can dumb people down with toxic lifestyles and mindless distractions. The point of this conversation, however, is to promote the simple idea that awareness offers opportunity, and when we acknowledge the many limitations which are criminally placed on most of us here on earth, we give ourselves the creative freedom to seek out and discover ways of being and living that defy heavy currents of conformity.

It is now your personal responsibility to do your best to mitigate the effects of your exposure to all of this insanity, and to fortify yourself physically, mentally and spiritually. By doing so, you’ll quickly become a wizard of sorts, someone who develops a new kind of immunity to the insanity and toxicity of modern life. You’ll become resilient and fearless, a new kind of warrior, if you will. Take this message with you and detox, purge, cleanse, renew, revitalize, reconstruct, restart, and re-awaken yourself, so that the infinite and wonderful experience of being a human being, alive on this amazing planet at this particular time, will not have been stolen from you.

The top of a pyramid is an insignificant part of its structure when compared to the base, for, if even one cornerstone crumbles the capstone itself falls.
Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist esoteric arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com, the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com, a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. His remarkable journey of self-transformation is a testament to the power of the will and the persistence of the human spirit. He may be contacted at wakingtimes@gmail.com.

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After the Crash

Dispatches From a Long Recovery (Est. 10/2024)

Tag Archives: drugs

The Varieties of Psychonautic Experience: Erik Davis’s ‘High Weirdness’

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
By Erik Davis
Strange Attractor Press/MIT Press, 2019

WHY WE’RE A CULTURE OF ADDICTS

Haunted

Circumstance Over Substance

“A Warm, Soft Hug”

The Illusion of Choice

“Passion Creates, Addiction Consumes”

Compassion for the Addict — and Ourselves

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies By Erik Davis Strange Attractor Press/MIT Press, 2019

Haunted

Circumstance Over Substance

“A Warm, Soft Hug”

The Illusion of Choice

“Passion Creates, Addiction Consumes”

Compassion for the Addict — and Ourselves

1. Who owns the money supply, and the world’s debt?

2. Who owns your body?

The Failed War

Inventory of Harm

Freedom of Consciousness

The Real Policies for Change

Further Thoughts

Final Thoughts

Slamming the Doors

Your Task at Hand

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
By Erik Davis
Strange Attractor Press/MIT Press, 2019