A Meditation on Oneness and Wholeness

There are those, associated with political, religious, corporate or military organizations, who proclaim the need for oneness of purpose and goals. The resulting hierarchical structures of leadership and control can be efficient and productive – but run the risk of degenerating into authoritarian domination systems that violate the foundational ethical principle known as the Golden Rule.

There are those who seek to experience oneness by becoming absorbed in blissful states of deep meditation, aesthetic contemplation, or erotic union. The resultant states of oneness can be supremely satisfying and inspire creative expression – but run the risk of degenerating into detached and superior attitudes that fail to adequately engage the physical and social realities of our world.

I prefer to go with those who follow the path of inclusive wholeness, accepting of the diversity and multiplicity of their own being, and all other beings they encounter, human and non-human; as well as the diversity of communities and cultures and worlds. Such a one would be practicing respectful balanced interchange of giving and receiving in relationship to all other beings and with the Macrocosmic Creator Source Oneness.

Sonoma, Feb 2009

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1960s - II

It is possible to apply the consciousness expansion of concept to the forms and patterns of collective consciousness: to mass-mind images and memes, to scientific paradigms and worldviews, to the ideologies of spiritual practice and religious devotion. In my book The Expansion of Consciousness (2008), I pointed out that the decade of the 1960s was a time of several interconnected movements of socio-cultural transformation that profoundly changed Western society, and more indirectly other countries in the world as well: the environmental movement, the women’s liberation movement, the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the revolution in sexual and family relations and an explosion of new forms of expression in music and the visual arts. Even though there is no evidence of a direct causative connection between ingestion of psychedelics and these socio-cultural transformation movements, each of them represents an expansion of collective consciousness, a transcending of existing limited conventions, attitudes and norms, similar to what is classically associated with psychedelic experiences in the individual.

The historian Theodore Roszak, in his very influential 1968 book The Making of a Counterculture, identified and described these transformation movements as constituting a kind of quasi-revolutionary culture in opposition to the mainstream. Although these social movements were countercultural or even, at times, revolutionary, in that they challenged unjust, limiting or outmoded attitudes and practices of the dominant social order, it is important to recognize that being against something was not the primary intention behind these movements.

In an infant’s struggle to be born, ultimately into a larger world and way of being, there may be a phase of intense and sometimes violent opposition to the limitations of the existing order (represented by the mother’s body). This kind of opposition, which may even threaten the mother’s life, is not however the ultimate aim of the neonate’s struggle – which is rather to emerge from a condition that has become intolerable, too limiting, into an expanded world of greater freedom and possibilities for growth. Let us look at these movements, which continue in various ways to this day, through the dual lens of counterculture and expanding consciousness.

Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, raised awareness of environmental despoliation and is generally considered the beginning impetus for the American environmental movement, and for major conservation and preservation organizations and policies that persist to this day. The very title Silent Spring refers to an experience of expanded consciousness: if we do not hear the singing birds we are accustomed to hear, we naturally ask – why not? This question in turn leads us to investigate environmentally destructive processes caused by human technology – which we then engage as activists to ameliorate, for the health and wellbeing of humans and the integrity of the ecosystems which we inhabit along with other animal and plant species of life.

This process is analogous to the kind of therapeutic “course-correction vision” that drug addicts and alcoholics often report when relating their experience with plant-based entheogens such as peyote or ayahuasca: under the influence of these botanical sacraments, a person may report becoming clearly aware of hitherto hidden patterns of thought and behavior that are leading them in a self-destructive direction – and therefore feel empowered to make health preserving new choices. I have published several accounts of this kind of healing vision in my edited volumes on the sacred mushroom and on ayahuasca. Also in these books are accounts by individuals who in the early 1960s were powerfully affected by their psychedelic experiences and became committed environmental activists for the rest of their lives (including myself).

Many individuals and groups integrated their expanded conscious visions for a food supply free of chemical additives and pesticides into the development of the organic food movement, which in the ensuing decades emerged as a wide-spread and viable alternative to industrial factory farming. Similarly, the recognition of the industrial pollution of the atmosphere and water supply was channeled into political advocacy for clean air and water preservation. Thus, we see that the environmental movement counters and critiques the destructive and polluting effects of industrial corporations and seeks to preserve and enhance the integrity of both wilderness and built environments.

The women’s liberation movement critiques and counters the sexist discrimination of deeply entrenched patriarchal attitudes and institutions and seeks to establish equality in work and pay and to protect the rights of women to make their own choices in the areas of sexuality and child-bearing. The 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique launched the women’s liberation movement, with its “consciousness-raising” groups, in which women-only groups met in council to discuss issues of identity and relationship. Questioning themselves and each other – who am I, besides being someone’s wife, daughter, sister, lover, secretary? And such consciousness expanding questions would naturally lead to making new and healthier choices in life-style, work and creative expression.

The anti-war movement countered the American war-machine, with all the formidable power and resources that it disposes – and this opposition could and did result at times in flare-ups of public violence between state authorities and countercultural rebels and dissidents. But the underlying intention and vision of the anti-war movement is to be oppositional only temporarily, and then to further the peaceful unfolding of the civilization’s potentials in all their diversity.

Similarly, the civil rights movement countered racist discrimination practices, the legacies of slavery, principally in schools and housing. But its ultimate intention vision, as in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963), was to see a society in which black children and white children, and those of other races, could go to school together in freedom and peace. In the 19th century, waging war against the slave-holding South was not the ultimate intention of the abolitionist movement -- rather it was the emancipation of slaves.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” was one of the Reverend King’s memorable inspired sayings. And it is probably because of King’s unshakeable commit to the practice and advocacy of non-violence that the counter-cultural impulse in the civil rights and anti-war movements did not lead to more violence than it did. Even so, the repressive forces of the established power-elites, who saw their positions and wealth threatened by the counter culture, exacted a heavy toll: the assassination of four dynamic and popular leaders – the Kennedy brothers, and M.L. King and Malcolm X. Interestingly, at the present time of 2009 and beyond, American society again will examine the atavistic residues of slavery and racial discrimination under the presidential leadership of a younger, and multi-cultural African-American.

The movement for increased freedom of sexual expression, supported also by the women’s movement, by the invention of the contraceptive pill, and by the books of zoologist Alfred Kinsey on human sexual behavior (1943, 1953), countered and critiqued many unexamined and prejudicial religion-bound conventions of marriage and family; but ultimately aimed for wholesome, non-patriarchal alternatives to the so-called “nuclear household.” There was a wave of communitarian experimentation, as has happened periodically in American history. Intentional communities sprang up, such as the one Leary, Alpert and myself participated in for a few years at Millbrook, New York, experimenting with new forms of extended family relations, sexuality and child-rearing, A conversational memoir by Ram Dass and myself of the Harvard and Millbrook years is forthcoming under the title Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (Synergetic Press, 2009).

The vision motivating the counterculture of the 1960s was pioneering innovation, reform and liberation, based on an expanded awareness of the needs of the whole society (as in the civil rights, women’s liberation and sexual revolution), of all of humanity (as in the peace movement) and the regional ecosystem and biosphere (as in the ecology movement). The innovative and pioneering aspects of these socio-cultural transformations are particularly obvious in the breakthroughs that occurred from new discoveries in the sciences, and new forms of celebratory expressions in the arts. Here we don’t necessarily see opposition to an existing order, but simply a highly energized, innovative and creative “moving beyond” into an expanded worldview.

On the other hand, the countercultural and revolutionary elements in these movements, especially in the political and economic sphere tends to produce violent backlash and repression by the dominant culture, as “the empire strikes back.” This in turn leads to intensification of the rebellious oppositional forces, bringing about an escalation of violence and destruction – all tendencies that we can see being played out in subsequent decades, to the present day.

Undoubtedly, an energizing and amplifying influence in the growth of the expanding consciousness culture during the 1960s was the widespread availability of inexpensive psychedelic drugs, as well as cultivated mushrooms, for personal use by increasingly large numbers of people. This certainly amplified the innovation and creativity in the arts and sciences and added much larger numbers of spiritually committed individuals to what before were relatively small minority movements. Whether psychedelics also amplified the rebelliousness and confrontational resistance movements of the 1960s, is impossible to say. Some would argue that the greater physical violence of the revolutionary movements was more connected to amphetamine use.

American society had developed into a highly stratified and diversified system, with multiple internal divisions of class, race and religion, and competing interest groups, both overt and covert. Multiple traumatic shocks to the body politic occurred during the sixties: the assassinations of two white leaders (JFK and Robert Kennedy) and two black leaders (Martin Luther King and Malcolm X). The revolutionary changes in society and culture envisioned and initiated by the counterculture, were met with violent backlash from the establishment forces of empire, domination and control. As part of this backlash, possession and use of psychedelic drugs was criminalized and all legal research on their consciousness expanding possibilities came to a halt.
Perhaps this is the impact of a very different series of developments that also started at the end of WWII: the expansion of the global military hegemony of the American Empire. Outgoing US Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of this development in his presidential farewell speech (1961), in which he spoke of the threat posed by the “growing and unwarranted power” and influence of the “military-industrial complex.” In the light of later developments his warning was chillingly prescient.

Going beyond the political and economic changes brought by the counter-cultural movements of expanded consciousness, our global human civilization may be involved in change processes at the level of planetary evolution. Processes of desertification, deforestation and the destruction of habitats have plunged planet Earth into what has been called a “sixth extinction.” At the same time, industrial civilization’s addiction to carbon fuels as energy source has brought the biosphere to the brink of catastrophic collapse through global over-heating.

Many individuals who have worked in a respectful and spiritual way with plant and fungal teachers, as well as working shamanically with animal spirit guides, have reported increasing communication from the spiritual realms of Nature in response to their divinatory questioning. Their messages and visions have to do, as one might expect, with practices that reduce our adverse impact on ecosystems, with the preservation of wilderness and the essential diversity of life, and with the development of sustainable, bioregional economies and communities.

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? Instead of the usual attitude of arrogant and exploitative superiority, those who have experienced mushrooms, peyote, 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 protects and celebrates the astonishing diversity and beauty of life.

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.

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.

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.

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.