Friday, November 21, 2008

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1960s - I

In the early sixties, the first astronauts and cosmonauts were launched into space on Earth-orbiting satellites, bringing back dramatic photographs of the whole Earth from space. Emblematic of the aspirations for space exploration, the television series Star Trek, with an alien as one of the main characters, began airing on NBC, and became a cult classic in American science fiction. In 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. Multiple close conjunctions and alignments of the planetary archetypes Uranus, Pluto and Saturn, as described in Richard Tarnas’s book Cosmos and Psyche, characterized the revolutionary, liberating and creative energies of this period.
As far as I know, the concept of consciousness expansion was first used by Tim Leary and his associates (of which I was one) at Harvard, to describe the effects of drugs like psilocybin and LSD, which were also later termed psychedelic (“mind-manifesting”). Leary and his associates began their research in the early 1960s, carrying out studies with “normal” people in supportive, naturalistic settings that were neither clinics nor laboratories. Participants in these studies could clearly confirm that these substances, although called hallucinogenic by some, did not induce hallucinations in the sense of seeing illusions of things objects that weren’t “really there.” Rather, they seemed to affect the actual psychophysiology of perception in such a way that one would see everything that was there, as ordinarily, and in addition much more: vibrating fields of subtle energies, or associated thought-forms and patterns that related to one’s personal history, or our relationships with other beings, human and non-human in the world around us.
The process of consciousness expansion induced (with the appropriately favorable set and setting) by these drugs, was in some ways analogous to the process of awakening: when we awaken from sleep, our perceptual world opens up and we emerge from the closed cocoon-like state of dream and sleep to become aware of our body, the bed we’re in, our sleep companion, the room, perhaps the garden outside the window, the greater world beyond – potentially all the way to the infinite cosmos. As we do, our sense of identity changes, we may remember the more limited dream world we had been in, and find that we have a greatly enhanced freedom of choice – freedom to think and see differently, to move and do things hitherto impossible.
Later studies with LSD or peyote in the treatment of alcoholism, or ibogaine or ayahuasca in the treatment of cocaine addiction, were based on the finding that experiences of expanded consciousness could be, depending on set and setting, associated with insight into one’s own character and deeper needs, and therefore lead to more healthy and positive choices. Addictions and compulsions, whether consumptive (drugs, alcohol, food) or behavioral (sex, gambling, shopping) can be understood as involving contracted states of consciousness, where attention and awareness is fixated on repetitively and ritualistically taking in something or doing something. The treatment of addictions and compulsions with psychedelic, consciousness-expanding drugs was (and is again now) one of the most promising applications of these substances in health care.
One of the studies carried out as part of the Harvard research, involved the “experimental mysticism” study of Walter Pahnke, in which theology students took psilocybin in a religious setting, and reported a high proportion of classic mystical experiences. This study of religious-mystical experience induced by psilocybin has recently been replicated in research at Princeton University. Mystical experiences involve a complete transcendence of the usual boundaries of time, space and the physical body and a sense of oneness with the divine and the cosmos – representing the ultimate expansion of consciousness. In my view, a second major application of psychedelics in the future is likely to be in the psychological preparation of people for dying, enlarging their awareness and sense of identity beyond the confines of the body and personal ego-mind.
Through the discoveries of R. Gordon Wasson and others in Mexico, and Michael Harner and others in South America, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, the psychological and medical researchers who first applied LSD and other consciousness expanding drugs in Western laboratories and psychiatric clinics, found themselves unexpectedly connected to ancient lineages of mystical, spiritual and shamanic teachings and practices. Both the shamanistic and the Asian yogic traditions are based on worldviews vastly expanded in comparison to the standard materialistic paradigm accepted in the West. In these worldviews there is a recognition of many levels of reality, many dimensions of being, equal in reality to the time-space-matter dimension, which is the only one recognized as real in Western science. Furthermore, these Asian and indigenous traditions also recognize the reality of beings, called “spirits” or “deities,” existing in these multiple dimensions, that have their own independent, autonomous existence, and are not merely symbols or archetypes in human consciousness.
Thus, the discovery of consciousness-expanding drugs in the West and the re-discovery of the role of consciousness-expanding plants and fungi in shamanistic societies, along with other modalities of exploring consciousness such as the shamanic drumming journey and yogic meditation practices, led to significant expansions of the Western materialist scientific worldview – at least in the thinking and writing of many individuals, if not the academic establishment and mainstream media.
One of the studies carried out as part of the Harvard research, involved the “experimental mysticism” study of Walter Pahnke, in which theology students took psilocybin in a religious setting, and reported a high proportion of classic mystical experiences. This study of religious-mystical experience induced by psilocybin has recently been replicated in research at Princeton University. Mystical experiences involve a complete transcendence of the usual boundaries of time, space and the physical body and a sense of oneness with the divine and the cosmos – representing the ultimate expansion of consciousness. In my view, a second major application of psychedelics in the future is likely to be in the psychological preparation of people for dying, enlarging their awareness and sense of identity beyond the confines of the body and personal ego-mind.
Through the discoveries of R. Gordon Wasson and others in Mexico, and Michael Harner and others in South America, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, the psychological and medical researchers who first applied LSD and other consciousness expanding drugs in Western laboratories and psychiatric clinics, found themselves unexpectedly connected to ancient lineages of mystical, spiritual and shamanic teachings and practices. Both the shamanistic and the Asian yogic traditions are based on worldviews vastly expanded in comparison to the standard materialistic paradigm accepted in the West. In these worldviews there is a recognition of many levels of reality, many dimensions of being, equal in reality to the time-space-matter dimension, which is the only one recognized as real in Western science. Furthermore, these Asian and indigenous traditions also recognize the reality of beings, called “spirits” or “deities,” existing in these multiple dimensions, that have their own independent, autonomous existence, and are not merely symbols or archetypes in human consciousness.
Thus, the discovery of consciousness-expanding drugs in the West and the re-discovery of the role of consciousness-expanding plants and fungi in shamanistic societies, along with other modalities of exploring consciousness such as the shamanic drumming journey and yogic meditation practices, led to significant expansions of the Western materialist scientific worldview – at least in the thinking and writing of many individuals, if not the academic establishment and mainstream media.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1950s

In this decade, alarmed by advances of the Soviet space program, the United States established NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Space exploration vastly expanded human knowledge, but also became an arena of Cold War competition, hand-in-hand with military armaments competition. The first birth control pill was introduced, making the management of contraception easier for millions, and opening up possibilities for exploring sexual experience beyond reproduction. Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the double helix of DNA, the fundamental molecular code of life. Crick later stated that ingestion of LSD sparked some of his creative insights. The polio vaccine, developed by microbiologist Jonas Salk, was declared safe for use. Just three years prior, polio had stricken over 50, 000 Americans. Louis Leakey found the oldest hominid skull in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, suggesting that human evolution began on the continent of Africa, not Asia as previously believed.
Key books emblematic of the spirit of the 1950s: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea; James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain; Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot; Arthur Miller's The Crucible; Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita; Allen Ginsberg’s Beat classic Howl; Jack Kerouac's On the Road; Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago; John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society.
In the psychedelics sub-culture, the therapeutic applications of consciousness-expanding drugs such as LSD were further developed, especially in the treatment of addictions and compulsions, which involve states of contracted, fixated consciousness. By the end of the decade there were about a half-dozen alcoholism treatment centers in North America, which used LSD at the core of the program. Another significant application area for psychedelic drugs was in facilitating the creative and artistic processes, as in the work of psychiatrist Oscar Janiger in Los Angeles, who collected art work produced or inspired in psychedelic states of mind. The eminent English philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell appear in 1950. In these books Huxley describes his experiences with mescaline as genuinely mystical, a “gratuitous grace,” thus lending his enormous authority for the serious consideration of the potential spiritual significance of psychedelics.
For the psychedelic culture, the decade of the 1950s involved the finding of its roots in the shamanic traditions. Robert Gordon Wasson, the conservative New England banker who virtually founded the field of ethnomycology (the relationship between fungi and culture), rediscovered the sacred mushroom ceremony of the ancient Aztecs, which had been kept alive in remote mountain hamlets in Oaxaca, Mexico. Wasson participated in a ceremony with the magic psilocybe mushroom, conducted by an illiterate curandera and visionary poetic genius named Maria Sabina. Wasson wrote an account of his experience, suggesting that a psychoactive plant-based visionary experience may be at the original core of every religion, publishing his account, with photographs, in LIFE magazine in 1957. His account in LIFE triggers a movement in which tens of thousands North Americans and Europeans start experimenting with hallucinogenic mushrooms, at first wild and then also cultivated. Also in the 1950s, two separate Brazilian rubber tappers start urban churches (Santo Daime and Uniao de Vegetal) in which the Amazonian shamanic entheogen ayahuasca is the central sacrament, initiating a grass-roots religious revitalization movement that now has thousands of adherents worldwide.
Thus, in this decade, the psychedelic subculture moved into seeing these substances as adjuncts to psychiatry in the treatment of addictions and other psychopathologies. Consciousness expansion, it was found, could facilitate creativity and artistic expression; and it could also facilitate mystical and spiritual visions, with the appropriate set and setting. A culture that discovered a powerful tool for exploring the mind and aiding in psychological problem solution, found its roots in the animistic, shamanic traditions of indigenous cultures, and recognized its highest expression in the spiritual mystical dimensions of human existence.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1940s

I believe that the end of World War II and the explosions of two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 will be seen by future historians as the cusp of a new post-atomic era. It marked the beginnings of an awakening of global human identity, and the beginning of a series of cultural movements of expanding consciousness.
Already in the 1930s, and even earlier, there had been significant expansions of the Western worldview through the work of the cultural relativism school of anthropologists, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. They argued that we needed to abandon the ethnocentric superiority stance of Western science and scholarship toward the so-called “primitives,” and instead adopt the method of “participant observation.” In 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from the time of Christ, were discovered near Qumran in Palestine; they belonged to the ultra-orthodox Essenes, and shed new light on the historical origins of Christianity. Archaeologists too were enlarging our awareness of human origins: in 1942, Ice Age cave paintings, depicting shamanic animal themes, were discovered in Lascaux, France, and dated to 15, 000 years BP (before present), thus vastly extending and deepening our conception of human prehistory.
The increased frequency of UFO sightings in the 1940s attracted public and media attention, raising the astonishing possibility that Earth civilization may not be alone in the Universe. There were reports suggesting an alien craft crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947; and much later disclosures that some alien technologies were reverse engineered by ultra secret government programs. Reports of UFO sightings, alien contacts and secret government military cover-up programs continued over the following decades, and clearly represent, for those who take them seriously, an expansion of our collective worldview.
After the war, as US veterans return home, the birth rate increased by about 20% – the “Baby Boom” generation was born. Millions of new parents read Benjamin Spock’s The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care, forever changing Americans' attitudes on child rearing, making it less controlling and more respectful – with far-reaching positive consequences for the health and well-being of families and communities.
In an astounding synchronicity, the discovery of LSD, in April 1943, occurred within months of the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, which lead directly to the development of the atomic bomb. Was this most profound mind-altering substance destined to provide some kind of psychological counterpart to the nuclear death weapons? When Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the consciousness expanding properties of the drug LSD, he compared the experience to his mystical experiences in Nature as a child. His discovery marks a convergence of medicinal chemistry with the ancient tradition of spiritual development known as alchemy, from which it had become disconnected in the break between science and religion in the 16th century. The first research into the possible applications of LSD was performed by the military and the CIA, as one would expect from a scientific discovery made during war time and in the immediate post-war climate of cold war confrontation. The first civilian applications were in promoting understanding of psychosis – the psychotomimetic model, and as an adjunct to psychoanalytic therapy, for loosening of neurotic defenses and bringing about insight – the psycholytic model.
In considering the significance of this birth of a modern consciousness transformation movement and its subsequent spread, we can note that Hofmann found LSD in the fungal realm -- he was working on ergot alkaloids, and ergot is a fungus that infests rye and other grains. Having identified, on his own person, the profound convergence between science and mysticism that this substance afforded, he published his findings in the scientific literature of his profession, thereby bringing this modern version of the philosopher’s stone into the light of public knowledge. Attended by many paradoxes and mysteries, it was as if he had stumbled upon a remedy for an illness of civilization, that we didn’t know we had.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Historical and pre-historical roots of war and domination

No one can deny that the collective human manifestations of war and violence have horrifyingly long historical and pre-historical antecedents in the age-old, long-continuing struggles between tribes and societies for territory and economic survival. Many believe that all war is basically fought over resources: in historical times at first over land and animals; later, the extraction of valuable minerals and metals; still later, in the petroleum age, the biosphere’s stored carbon deposits. Contemporary indications are that water may turn out to be the most bitterly fought over resource in the era of global fever-heat and climate-change into which we are moving.
The cut-throat competition of the haves and the have-nots seems to be a deeply ingrained factor in the consciousness of the human race. Just how deeply ingrained is a question of intense debate among anthropologists, historians and archaeologists. Can we transform territorial and economic competition into peaceful and cooperative co-existence? Have we ever? Is there any evidence that peaceful societies have ever existed, which would give us hope that it can be done?
Here the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas on the matricentric, peaceful, goddess-worshipping cultures of Old Europe, in the 8th to 6th millennia BCE, is of great importance. Although her work is controversial because it goes far beyond the accepted academic paradigms in prehistory and archaeology, I am among those who find the massive accumulation of detailed evidence in her work to be convincing in a revelatory way. Around the 5th millennium BCE, the people she calls Kurgans, with their sky and warrior gods, their horses, chariots and weapons, started emigrating from their homeland in Central Asia, perhaps in reaction to spreading drought conditions (for which there is independent evidence). Gimbutas’ work shows, convincingly to my mind, that the Kurgan peoples’ practice of invading the rich farming communities along river valleys and taking what they wanted by force of arms, was not a form of culture that could have evolved naturally out of those peaceful, artistic cultures of Old Europe. It was imposed by violence and war at first, and later by forced assimilation and intermarriage. The historical outcome of this millennia-long transformation were the mixed cultures, in which there was a ruling class or caste of patriarchal warrior chiefs and kings, and a subordinate class of farmers and other workers. Some scholars have suggested that the ancient Indian civilization, with its rigid hereditary caste structure, was similarly a product of an layering of the dominant Aryans over the indigenous Dravidians.
In my book The Well of Remembrance I show how hybrid mythologies wove together the histories and religious cosmologies of the two kinds of cultures in Europe. In Nordic-Germanic mythology as related in The Edda, the deities of the Old Europeans, called Vanir, were all associated with the land, fertility, peace and wealth, including mineral wealth. The sky and warrior deities, called Aesir, were originally the protector gods of the nomadic herders, highly dependent on sun and weather changes. The Edda poems say that war came to mankind by extension from the competitive feuding between the Aesir and Vanir deities. These myths are religious stories that tell the histories of the peoples involved. The invaders and conquerors tell their justification stories – “they stole from us,” “they started the fighting,” “our supreme god told us do this.” The conquered also tell their stories of resistance and retaliation.
And then there are the myths of peace-making and reconciliation rituals – like the Mystery Celebration of Eleusis and the creation of the Mead of Inspiration. One of my favorites is the Iroquois story of how the legendary Peacemaker (who lived in what we call the Middle Ages), persuaded the savagely warring tribes of the Eastern woodlands, using magic words, to bury the hatchet and meet in council at the foot of the Great Tree of Peace. They formed a federation of seven tribes living peacefully together that inspired Franklin, Washington and the other founders of the United States. These federations have lasted, mostly though not completely peacefully, for several hundred years. Perhaps it is time for Americans to remember the unifying and peace-making myth that is also part of our national identity, besides the themes of freedom, wealth and power that seemingly loom so large in our public discourse.

War on Drugs, War on Terror

For years, ever since Nixon started using the “war on drugs” language, in the late 1960s, I couldn’t fathom the stupendous irrationality and wastefulness of this policy. 1.5 million non-violent offenders are in prison in the US for the victim-less crime of drug possession (two thirds of all inmates). Numerous studies have been published over the years, demonstrating conclusively that (1) the overall levels of drug use have remained constant; (2) treatments, where available, do help addicts/abusers recover; (3) the so-called “war,” a $19 billion-a-year boondoggle, whether waged on producers (in Mexico, or Columbia, or SE Asia) and on street-level consumers in the US, has not made a dent in the volume of drug traffic. (For insightful and informative histories see Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum; or Drug Crazy by Mike Gray; or www.DrugWarFacts.org)
As an psychologist, educator and parent, I was particularly amused (when not horrified) by the absurdity of the PR campaigns to scare people off drug-use: remember the image of the egg breaking, and the authoritative voice intoning “this is your brain on drugs”? Amused, because I knew that drug-using young people of my acquaintance were not scared – rather they derided the heavy-handed and mendacious pseudo-science of these campaigns. Horrified, because if the apparent purpose of these scare-campaigns was so obviously failing, why were they continuing? What was the real agenda? Why wasn’t drug abuse being treated as a public-health matter, which it clearly is, instead of as a law enforcement issue, with the attendant monstrous social costs.
I came to some understanding and (at least partial) answer to these question in the aftermath of 9/11, and the launching of the “war on terror.” First of all, as Gore Vidal quipped , having a “war on terror” makes about as much sense as having a war on dandruff. Military metaphors have entered into discussions of the politics and economics of medicine – we have wars on cancer, on heart-disease and other abstractions. Second, why wasn’t the crime of 9/11 investigated like any other crime, with concerted international police and law enforcement agencies? Like many observers, I was struck by the parallels between the attacks of 9/11, and the burning of the German Reichstag parliament in 1933. Both events led to a precipitous increase in police state measures, increased power of an authoritarian, fascist-leaning political party, and the quashing of internal dissent. In the US, a pervasive climate of fear settled over the land – with pointlessly humiliating airport security measures, color-coded “terror alerts” and the like. At the same time, we got vastly increased mobilization of money and technology for wars of aggression and invasion against “enemy” countries, belonging to a supposed “axis of evil.”
Clearly, the events of 9/11 had been used, by the US government, to provide a casus belli, a pre-text or excuse to launch an aggressive war of invasion, most probably, world opinion seems to agree, to gain control of Middle-Eastern oil resources. To get a population to agree to go to war you have to have a plausible threat – this is a principle well understood by ambitious militaristic leaders from the most ancient times. You had to have a Pearl Harbor to motivate Americans to enter WWII. Historians have shown that Roosevelt knew of the coming attack, and used it. Leaving aside the complex and unresolved question of who actually carried out the 9/11 attacks, and to what extent governmental entities were complicit in it – there is no question about the use to which the attacks were put. They functioned to support and rationalize a fascististic control agenda as a matter of policy, by stimulating fear. What should have been a law enforcement matter became instead an open-ended “war” on terror, with stupendous profits and growth opportunities for the American military-industrial complex.
The parallels with the war on drugs are striking: both “wars” don’t actually work to diminish the targeted “enemy” – drug use and trafficking are not declining; and terrorist attacks by rogue gangs and states all over the world have increased. Polls show that Americans feel less secure since these wars have been launched. Both wars have led to spiraling cycles of violence and retaliation in many countries, as well as profound moral corruption on the part of military and police personnel (Think: decapitated bodies on the streets in Mexico; teenage suicide bombers in Iraq). Since these wars on ill-defined abstractions have no clear declaration of what a “victory” or even an “end” might be, they offer the perfect program for the unending accumulation of profits and power in the military-industrial-prison complex.
With the launching of the internal propaganda campaign to spread fear (of terrorism) throughout society, I finally understood the paradox of the ridiculous fear campaigns against drug use. These campaigns are not actually addressed to drug-using young people. From the perspective of the prison-industrial complex, it doesn’t matter if you turn your brain to scrambled eggs – in fact, it would provide more fodder for the system. These campaigns are directed at middle-of-the-road average Americans, possibly with teen-age sons or daughters –playing on their fears and getting them to vote for and support prohibition legislation and punishment. For example, when MDMA (a psychotherapy adjunct) was criminalized in the 1980s, it was not primarily doctors or pharmacologists who testified in congress, but police officials and government agents. (The same thing happened with marijuana in the 1920s, LSD in the 1960s, GHB in the 1990s … etc). Please note that I am not saying these drugs are all perfectly safe; but prohibition and “war” does not increase safety.
So what do we do about these endless wars? First, what would be a public-health centered approach to the problems of drug abuse and trafficking? To think of “legalize” or “prohibit” as the only options is stupidly simplistic. The key strategies here are decriminalization, regulation and education, with the overall goal of harm-reduction. Increasing numbers of European countries (e.g. Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany), recognizing that drug use is not going away any time soon, are adopting such strategies. Prior to the 1960s, Britain used to have a system where opiate addicts could register with the National Health Service, and obtain their needed supply – in one fell swoop eliminating a vast and hugely profitable criminal underclass, and minimizing the health and social harm from addicts stealing to support their habits.
In the US, there is precedent for such strategies in how we deal with nicotine and alcohol – two powerful psychoactive drugs, widely used recreationally, but with high potential for abuse and devastating for health when used addictively. The use of these drugs is not prohibited or criminal – instead they have hugely profitable worldwide industries involved in their production and distribution. Certain behaviors associated with these drugs are punishable by law (driving while drunk, providing the drugs to youth) – and no one finds that an infringement of their freedom. The regulation provides a safer framework for distribution. In the case of tobacco, massive PR campaigns and legal prosecutions in recent decades have reduced the incidence of smoking and thus the costs in health and lost productivity.
Treatment and recovery programs for alcoholism and addictions of all kinds should be made widely available to all who need them – the benefits to society would far exceed the costs. Alcoholics Anonymous is an excellent model for one such program. Treatments with consciousness-expanding substances such as ayahuasca, ibogaine, peyote or LSD have been used successfully to counter the consciousness-contracting addictions and compulsions.
A case could be made (and I for one would support it) that there should be more education and stricter regulation of the sale of tobacco and alcohol. Perhaps a kind of licensing exam could be devised prior to obtaining a permit to buy these products, demonstrating that the adult purchaser fully understands the health consequences of use. My former colleague in the Harvard University studies of psilocybin, the much-maligned Timothy Leary, testified in 1962 before a Congressional Committee chaired by Robert Kennedy, that using consciousness-altering drugs responsibly and safely requires a similar level of education and skillful preparation as piloting an aircraft, and should be similarly tested and licensed.
What to do about the “war on terror?” What is our present situation? During the eight nightmare years (now blessedly coming to a close) of the Bush neo-con presidency, America’s imperialist ambitions have been overtly supported and publicly promoted. (For the longer historical view read Howard Zinn’s powerful recent illustrated People’s History of the American Empire). “Exporting democracy” and “regime change” have becomes the smoke-screen cover phrases for military intervention to bring about forced subservience to American corporate interests. So-called “free trade” agreements are a smoke-screen covers for neo-colonialist exploitation agendas which seek to assure free movements of finance capital, with elimination of any controls in favor of justice for workers or protection of the environment. In the name of expanding markets and controlling access to key natural resources we’ve seen the blatant undermining of democratic practice, contempt for international law, restriction of civil liberties and the use of state terrorism to further foreign policy objectives.
It is possible that the shocks to the body politic of the attacks of 9/11 will ultimately have the effect of strengthening the progressive momentum within civil society of the US and elsewhere. There is a global movement of resistance to wars of aggression and desire for peace; increasing commitment to racial and ethnic equality; increasing commitment to environmental preservation and conservation; support and protection of equal rights for women and children; recognizing the normality of diversity of sexual orientations; the flourishing of an incredibly rich global culture in the areas of the arts, communications, films, music and lifestyles. We could say also that the heightened knowledge we have of our extra-planetary environment, with space-faring scientific missions, and of our evolutionary cosmology, represents an enormous expansion of collective consciousness.
Perhaps the time has come when we will be able to live up to the founding declaration of the United Nations in 1945 – “to free mankind for ever from the scourge of war.” Perhaps we will manage to fully establish non-violence as the foundational principle of resolving our differences, following the teachings of Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi in the 20th century, and many other spiritual leaders throughout history, including Jesus of Nazareth. If and when this occurs, I believe it will make it possible for the human civilization on Earth to enter consciously into the evolving network of civilizations in our galaxy and beyond.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Barack Obama’s Spiritual Values

A revealing interview with Obama, on his religious beliefs and values, has come to light – that to my mind greatly enhances the significance of his ascent to the most powerful leadership position in the world. The interview took place in March 2004, when Obama had just won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate seat that he eventually won. It was conducted by Cathleen Falsani and published in the Chicago Sun-Times. It’s available, in a lightly edited version, at http://www.WantToKnow.info/008/obama_religious_beliefs_views.
Obama speaks of being rooted in Christian faith and his belief “that there are many paths to the same place, and that there is a higher power, that we are connected as a people. There are values that transcend race or culture that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.” He speaks of the influence of his mother, a Christian but “not a church lady,” who married an Indonesian who wasn’t a practicing Muslim, and going to Catholic school in a Muslim country. “My mother was a deeply spiritual person. She would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world's religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act not just for yourself, but also for the greater good.”
Obama speaks in the interview about how the community organizing work that he did in Chicago in the mid-1980s was primarily inspired by the Civil Rights movement. “The Civil Rights movement has a powerful hold on me. It’s a point in time where I think heaven and earth meet. Because it’s a moment in which a collective faith transforms everything. So when I read Gandhi or I read King or I read certain passages of Abraham Lincoln and I think about those times where people’s values are tested, those inspire me.” Gandhi, King and Lincoln are his three great role models that he returns to several times in the interview.
His commitment to Christianity is inclusive and definitely not fundamentalist: “I’m a big believer in tolerance…religion at its best comes with a big dose of doubt. … as somebody who’s now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart – there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.” On the positive side of religiousness, he speaks of how he came to appreciate “the power of the historic black church, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.”
In a beautifully nuanced statement on the role of religious faith in politics and public life, Obama affirms that “Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.”

In response to the interviewers question about prayer, Obama says “I have an ongoing conversation with God. Throughout the day I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. …The biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass. Those are the conversations I’m having internally. I’m measuring my actions against that inner voice… it tells me where I think I’m on track and where I’m off track.” The process of inner questioning that Obama describes is what I’ve been calling a simple direct form of divination: to speak of “asking myself” implies the belief that there is something or someone within me that knows more than I do, some higher, wiser or divine source of wisdom or intuition.
Later, he returns again to this theme, that in the time pressures of public life, instead of setting separate time periods for prayer or meditation, “it’s much more sort of as I’m going through the day trying to take a moment here and a moment there to take stock. Why am I here, how does this connect with a larger sense of purpose?” So meditation “on the run,” so to speak, and the constant conversation with your inner spiritual and moral intelligence – this is his practice. Gandhi, King and Lincoln are his guides. We are fortunate indeed to have elected this man President – he has the leadership qualities needed in this time of catastrophic change.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Ayahuasca – Vine of Spirits II

If we inquire into the basic model of reality that is revealed and implied by the visions and experiences of Westerners with ayahuasca (as well as other plant entheogens), we find they have developed (often implicitly) a worldview radically different from the prevailing Western paradigm of scientific modernism. A recognition of the spiritual essences inherent in nature is basic to the worldview of indigenous peoples, as it was for our own ancestors in pre-industrial societies. By contrast, our modern materialist worldview, obsessively focused on technological progress and on the control and exploitation of what are arrogantly called "natural resources", has become more or less completely dissociated from such a spiritual awareness of nature.
What does it mean that people in large numbers are now returning to these ancient traditions of spiritual and healing practice in our world of multinational industrial corporations, of computers and electronic networks?
There exists a vast gulf in common understanding between what we regard as sacred and what we regard as natural. And yet, out of the experiences of millions of individuals in the Western world with visionary plant sacraments, as well as other shamanic practices, we are seeing the re-emergence of the ancient integrative worldview in which all of life is a vast interdependent web of relationships that needs to be carefully protected and preserved. It is tempting to speculate that the introduction of powerful mind-expanding agents, both drug and plant, into the culture, might somehow relate, at some deeper cosmic-karmic level, to the mounting crisis in world civilization.
The rituals of the Brazilian ayahuasca churches, such as the Santo Daime and the Uniao de Vegetal, express a respectful and spiritual attitude toward the use of the visionary plant medicines, and a strong feeling of connection to their indigenous roots in shamanic healing practices. These groups, which along with the Native American Church (with peyote) and the African Bwiti cult (with iboga), can be considered genuine religious revitalization movements. During the 1980s and 90s, the ayahuasca-using churches spread from Brazil to centers in North America and Europe, and are attracting thousands of people. The US branch of the UDV in New Mexico won the legal right to use its hoasca sacrament in a case decided by the Supreme Court in 2004. On the face of it, ayahuasca, with its powerful emetic action and sometimes shattering self-revelations, would seem to be an unlikely candidate for a religious sacrament. But it has become just that and has acquired a near-legendary reputation for its healing and empowering attributes. I have myself seen remarkable transformations of personality in people who have become involved in one or another of these churches.
What is happening here? Could these churches become widely popular religions in the 21st century? Two thousand years ago, three monotheistic religions arose in the desert borderlands of the Middle East. As the ecologist Paul Shepard has argued the often harsh and unforgiving environment may have contributed to the idealization of transcendence found in monotheism, as well to its "authoritarian, masculinist and ascetic ideology" that has come to dominate the world stage. In the Brazilian hoasca churches, as well as the Amazonian shamanic traditions from which they originally, though indirectly, derived, the underlying ethos and imagery is very different. Here the essential imagery is of flowing waters and growing plants. The river flows, the inebriating vision-drink flows, the purging vomit flows, the feelings of joy and sadness flow; plant and animal life grows in the luxuriant green abundance of the richest rainforest on Earth. The ultimate theology of these churches is very different. There are hymns, prayers and invocations of Biblical figures, but also the spirits of the forest and the sea, the sun, moon and stars, and various indigenous deities. This is polytheistic, animistic nature religion, bringing about a re-unification of the sacred and the natural.
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An even more radical set of questions arises from the perspective of evolutionary and ecological biology. Why do these plants carry psychoactive tryptamines and other chemicals that are capable of producing profound consciousness-transforming perceptions in human beings, opening them up to the deepest mysteries of life and death? On one level this confirms the basic unity of all life on Earth, the oneness of the molecular genetic code. But the standard Darwinian view is that nothing evolves by chance – natural selection works to favor those structures and capabilities that are adaptive in some way. So how is it adaptive for plants to produce alkaloids that seemingly serve no other particular function, and yet provide profound healing or insight in the human? Some kind of strange symbiosis seems to be going on.
So with these "plant teachers", as ayahuasqueros call them, there must also be an exchange. We humans get knowledge, insight, psychic or physical healing from the plant teachers. In exchange, we should be giving something back. Individuals who have found themselves at this juncture may at first not know how or what to give back. If they then ask the plant teachers, or ask themselves, how do we give back, how do we repay what appears to be a gift of astounding generosity from the plant teachers, the answers are remarkably consistent. They have to do, as one might expect, with practices that reduce our adverse impact on the ecosystems, and with the preservation of wilderness and the essential diversity of life. That's why so many people who have experienced ayahuasca (as well as other etheogens, and other shamanic practices), become deeply involved in ecological preservation and sustainability projects, as well as in efforts to preserve the culture of indigenous peoples.
There may be a profound and mysterious shift occurring in the balance of life on this planet. The dominant and dominating role of the human in relation to the natural world has brought about unparalleled ecological disaster, degradation of habitats and loss of species. Could it be that the profound consciousness-raising and compassion-deepening effects of the visionary plant brews and tinctures are signaling an evolutionary initiative coming from other, non-human, intelligences on this planet? Those who have experienced ayahuasca and other entheogens are more likely to find themselves humbled and awed by the mysterious powers of nature, and strive to live in a simpler way that minimizes environmental harm and celebrates the astonishing diversity and beauty of life. The following poem came out of an ayahuasca experience I had in Manaus, Brazil a couple of years ago.

Omens for Our Planetary Future

For one hundred years now wise teachers and elders have urged,
“We must bring together the spirituality of the East,
With the energy and material mastery of the West.”

The Tibetan Oracle said: “When the iron horse flies,
The dharma will come to the Land of the Red Man.”
This prophecy has come to pass.

And behold, a new vision arises, for a new century:
The people of the Northern nations
Will relate with respect and justice,
Not violence and greed,
To the uncounted millions of the Southern countries,
And the land, the forests and riches of the earth.

The prophet seers of the Incas say:
“The Condor of the South and Eagle of the North
Will fly together, in freedom.”

The visionary serpent vine says:
“The Bear and the Wolf of the North,
And the Jaguar and Lion of the South
Will track together and hunt together,
For vibrant life and healing knowledge.

The great Serpent of the Amazon forest,
The wise Turtle of the California desert,
Will share their ancient secrets again,
With humans humble enough to want to learn
To live in balance with one another,
And with the Earth, Great Goddess Mother of All the Living,
Embracing and nourishing all her children.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Ayahuasca – The Vine of Spirits I

Ayahuasca is an hallucinogenic Amazonian plant concoction, that has been used by native Indian and mestizo shamans in South America for healing and divination for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Western trained physicians and psychologists have acknowledged that psychedelic or entheogenic substances like ayahuasca can afford access to non-ordinary, spiritual or transpersonal dimensions of consciousness. In the Brazilian churches using ayahuasca, which by now have thousands of followers, including in North America and Europe, we have seen the development of an authentic folk religious movement that incorporate the hallucinogenic plant extract as a sacrament - developing both syncretic and highly original forms of religious ceremony.
In the context of Amazonian traditional healing practice the drinking of ayahuasca, combined with a highly restrictive diet, is something like a master cure for all illnesses, both physical and psychological. Not that the medicine itself is a panacea, but that it functions as a guide or teacher or instrument for the healer, pointing him or her to other herbs that might be needed, allowing him to counteract sorcery or extract poisonous infections. Clearly such practices presume a completely different understanding of illness and medicine than what we are accustomed to in the West.
Even from the point of view of Western medicine and psychotherapy it is clear from the literature that remarkable physical healings and resolutions of psychological difficulties can occur with this medicine. There have been ancedotal accounts of the complete remission of some cancers after one or two sessions with ayahuasca. Since these occurred in the context of traditional healing ceremonies, it is impossible to separate out the pharmacological effect from the psychosocial and shamanic elements.
On the psychological level also, there is intriguing evidence of positive therapeutic changes being induced by the ritualistic ingestion of ayahuasca. The research with the Brazilian hoasca church known as UDV showed that long-term users of hoasca reported making positive changes in their behavior (less drinking and drug use, more responsibility) as a result of their participation in the ceremonies. Many of the stories recounted in my book on ayahuasca – Sacred Vine of Spirits - and elsewhere, support the notion that under the influence of ayahuasca people are able to see and understand themselves better, to think more clearly about their relationships, the nature of the cosmos and their own place in it.
The combination of physical and psychic purging that occurs quite regularly with ayahuasca has lead me and others to suggest that potentially the most useful application of this medicine in Western society may be in the treatment of addiction and alcoholism. The Brazilian hoasca project with long-term members of the UDV reported a marked decline in alcoholism and drug addiction among church members. Similarly, among members of the peyote-using Native American Church in the United States, it has regularly been reported there is a significant decline in the alcoholism that is otherwise so devastating to the Native American population. Looking back at the history of Western research with psychedelic drugs, the most widespread therapeutic applications of LSD was found in the treatment of alcoholism. At one point during the late 1960s, there were about five or six hospitals in North America with an LSD alcoholism treatment program; the efficacy rate was on average about comparable to other forms of treatment.
Since the psychedelic (entheogenic, hallucinogenic) drugs and plants as consciousness-expanding, heightening awareness and providing self-insight, they are the logical and natural antidotes to the consciousness-contracting, fixating, narcotizing effect of addictive drugs and alcohol. And because of the purging effect (found in peyote and ayahuasca) there is reason to believe that such plant combined emetic-hallucinogens may be even more effective in treating alcoholism and addiction than LSD. The addict needs to purge not only the toxic residues of alcohol and other drugs from their system, but also the mental, emotional and perceptual reaction-patterns and habits. I believe there is a strong possibility that an alcoholism and addiction treatment program using ayahuasca in the context of a holistic approach that also uses nutrition, exercise, and psychospiritual group therapy can be established some time in the next ten years; if not in the United States, then perhaps in Mexico or Canada, where anti-drug political hysteria is less intense.
In the Amazonian shamanistic cultures, there is a deep association between the ayahuasca medicine and the serpents. Visions of giant or multiple serpents, in and around the body, as well as in the environment, are often reported – and portrayed in the tribal art. The shamans say that the power and knowledge to heal comes through the vine, but comes from the serpent – the serpent is the mother of ayahuasca. Jeremy Narby, in his fascinating book The Cosmic Serpent has made a powerful case for the idea that when the shaman-healers take ayahuasca, their perceptions are attuned to the cellular and molecular level, like a virtual electron microscope, where they can see the double helix forms of DNA – the basic evolutionary code of all life on Earth, coiled into the nucleus of every one of the trillions of cells of our body. The following poem describes a vision I was shown when I participated in an ayahuasca ceremony in Manaus, Brazil, a few years ago.

Ayahuasca Serpent Vision

I pray to the serpent vine of visions:
Help me heal the ancient wounds.
Slowly, the glittering snakes glide and slide,
Insinuating intimately into my deepest roots.
I’m inside the Serpent Mother now,
Coiling, writhing, turning, squirming,
Our bodies merged – one skin, one spine.

The space within expands to spaciousness,
Our little band of travellers on the spirit boat,
Are in the house, on the river, in the snake,
Sailing serenely along the darkening stream.

The Great Serpent’s body expands once more,
Encompassing now the River of Time,
The barque of human civilizations:
Whole villages & towns, I see, temples & palaces,
Pyramids & towers, kingdoms & nations:
Egypt, Rome, India, America,
Carried by the currents of collective fate,
Through the millenia, one great stream, one great Snake.

Now – continents & oceans, cloud montains, I see,
Vast deserts, rain forests, river deltas,
Are only the shimmering body of Diamond Rainbow Serpent,
Mother of All Organic Life on Earth.

And now – the great Earth with all her sibling planets,
Companion worlds, Moon, Mercury and Mars,
Spinning and whirling in stately serpentine orbits,
Around Primordial Mother-Father Sun.

The barque of hundreds of millions of years sails on,
Great Cosmic Star Sun Serpent,
Wheeling majestically around the Milky Way
Galactic Center, Dark Source of All Radiance.

Friday, November 14, 2008

The Gonzo Journalist

Alex Gibney’s film Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is about a very different kind of man and journalist, one who tested the edges of human possibilities, while staging a spectacular career critiquing the mind-control matrix of the political power structure. The Gonzo journalist is the same character that Native American myth calls the Trickster or Coyte – telling stories of his misadventures and “bad boy” capers, designed to shock you ouf of your accustomed reality framework and assumptions. In the book Ram Dass and I have just written about our Harvard and Millbrook psychedelic explorations with Tim Leary, we describe how our project of careful consciousness exploration with mind-expanding drugs, in a quiet setting, differed from the Ken Kesey and Merry Prankster approach of going as far-out as possible on a creative limb, with huge doses of a variety of hallucinogens and high-volume rock music. “The drugs were beginning to come on as we drove across the desert…” writes Thompson in his insanely brilliant book (made into a film with Johnny Depp), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, describing the escapade that made him famous, where his acid-addled brain caused him to see the hotel lobby filled with two-legged reptiles sitting at their cocktail tables. I’m not making invidious comparisons here, although this approach to working with psychedelics would not be my chosen way. He took what I would consider reckless amounts, in chaotic settings, but he did not use the drugs to surreptitiously brainwash other people.
Thompson’s infatuation with guns and shooting is also alien to my nature, although as the film makes clear in the interviews with his wives, friends and admirers, he never used them to hurt or threaten others, and in general seemed to limit his violence to verbal abuse. In his writings on the 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns he used his writings like a rapier to ferociously and hilariously skewer the pretentiousness of the candidates he detested (Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon) and to support those he admired (Jimmy Carter, George McGovern). I believe that Thompson’s bravoura persona masked a sensitive soul who reacted keenly to the injustices and inequalities of American society. When he came home from reporting on the 1968 Demcratic convention in Chicago, where Mayor Daley’s police clubbed demonstrators with bloody brutality, Thompson’s wife Sandi says it was the only time she saw him weep – tears were streaming down his face. Unlike the French aerialist Philippe Petit, the Gonzo journalist did not retire gracefully: the contradictions he found in himself and in his country seemed to finally get to him, and he shot himself at age 67. I can’t help but admire his high-spirited and zany contribution to our culture.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Man on a Wire

Man on a Wire is the story of Philippe Petit, the French aerialist who in 1974, when the World Trade Center towers had just been constructed, tricked his way into the building with his accomplices and equipment, strung a wire between the two towers, and then walked or rather danced back and forth in thin air for about an hour, 1350 feet above the ground, while spectators below gaped in amazement, including the police who, had to wait(!) to arrest him for trespassing. They knew they were breaking the law, but they were not robbing or hurting anyone – “so, it’s wonderful,” as one of Petit’s friends says; but they had to plan the whole “coup” (as Petit calls it) as if it were a bank heist, complete with disguises, and waiting for hours in a cramped space for the night-watchman to leave the top floor. It’s an astonishing synchronicity that now, seven years after the debacle of 9/11, when a growing chorus of voices is questioning the official story of the Towers’ destruction and pointing to much more sinister agents and motives behind the attack (and hats-off to James Marsh, the filmmaker, for not even mentioning that story) we see the Towers again, in their pristine architectural glory. And there is the 25-year old sky-dancer with the lithe body of a cat and the concentration of a sphinx, who takes a few steps into the air, pauses, smiles and waves with one hand, and then lies down on the wire – so you see his form, tiny from below, like a dragon-fly high up in the mist swirling between the towers. It was an act of astonishing beauty and playful daring, inspiring all who saw it then (and now, in retrospect) to expand their sense of human possibilities. “Why did you do it?” the journalists crowding around him asked Petit, as he was being driven off to jail (he was booked and released), unable to fathom that here was an action with no ulterior financial motive. “There are no whys” he replies. Petit, now in his sixties, is the main narrator of the film, and is charmingly voluble in describing the years and months of preparation and elaborate planning. There is a scene where he and his friends are confronting the enormous technical challenges and the emotional charge between them (one of them says “I don’t want to be involved in something where he’s going to end up dead”), “It was impossible” Petit says, “so we had to do it.”
Next week: Gonzo – The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson