Last week saw another great evening of ranting and decanting at the Old Gloucester Street Salon, sipping wine amidst stunning artwork and listening to Paul Devereux lead us down some very tangible spiritual paths on his beautifully illustrated talk about "Shamanic Landscapes".
This month, Tuesday 31st March, at the October Gallery we have one of the greatest lateral thinking scientists of our time, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, coming to talk to us about "Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature." Rupert will be giving us some fresh insights from the updated reissue of his fascinating yet shocking book "A New Science of Life", which when it was first published in the early '80s it received a review from the senior editor of the leading science journal, Nature, under the title "A book for burning?", clearly indicating an open-minded and scientifically objective reaction to new ideas.
The editor in question, John Maddox, later commented that Sheldrake was a scientific heretic as much as Galileo was a religious heretic for the pope, thereby rather absurdly condemning his own dogmatism. But Sheldrake's approach to his own rather radical ideas about the organisation of life and the location of memory is scientific and Sheldrake has been extremely vocal about trying to get scientists to test his claims, but like those who refused to look into Galileo's telescope, Sheldrake's radical hypotheses have been tested by merely a few scientists other than himself. Ex research fellow at the Royal Society, the bastion of establishment science, Rupert's most recent attempts to verify his theories have adopted a particularly parapsychological methodology and he has published numerous positive findings on his experiments into household psychic abilities such as telephone telepathy and the sense of being glared at. A definite treat.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
A New Science of Life: Morphic Resssonance and the Habits of Nature
According to Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation, all self-organizing systems, including crystals, animals and societies contain an inherent memory, given by a process called morphic resonance from previous similar systems. All human beings draw upon a collective human memory, and in turn contribute to it. Even individual memory depends on morphic resonance rather than on physical memory traces stored within the brain. This radical hypothesis implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits, and evolution, like human life, depends on an interplay between habit and creativity.
Not content with having lived to the ripe old age of 102 before he died last year, the inventor of LSD, Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann, has reportedly announced that he is still going strong in the after life. I’ve been studying the paranormal effects of psychedelics for quite some time, but this is probably the biggest claim yet to be made for the astonishing capabilities of LSD. According to an article posted on a mediumistic circle's blog, psychedelic explorer Lucius Werthmueller travelled 400km to a séance to try and communicate with Dr. Hofmann around about the time of the late chemist’s birthday. Lucias was one of the organisers of the two recent World Psychedelic Forum conferences, which attracted over 2,000 scientific psychedelic researchers, therapists and other delegates to Basel, Switzerland for the event, and he had been a friend of Dr. Hofmann for 25 years.
During the séance it appeared as though no contact was going to be made and that Werthmueller would leave empty handed but, on the contrary, after hearing two loud raps Lucias found a wax object had “somehow softly” been placed into his hand. Inspecting the object (what is known as an “apport” in psychical research) it was found to contain a thimble with a small paper note inside on which was inscribed, “Lucius, look and beware of this wonderful nature. It lives. I live. Albert.”
As can be seen from the short video of the event, Werthmueller announced his astonishment at the message and indicated that that was just the kind of thing that Albert would write. Throughout his very long life, Dr. Hofmann (as highlighted in a new bulletin devoted to psychedelics and ecology) had always been a serious lover of nature, had had a mystical experience of nature as a child, and had been quite vocal on humanity’s ecological imperatives (so certainly the information supposedly provided by Albert was not unknown to anyone who cared to represent him… I hasten to add wearing my sceptical hat). Perhaps more impressively, the text appeared to be written in Albert’s hand and was even signed with a signature closely resembling Dr.Hofmann’s own, but perhaps only an expert graphologist can comment any further on this.
Watching the video of the séance group opening the apport I was surprised at how early the opener managed to identify a thimble inside it, whilst it was still mostly obscured, but it should be said that neither was this “sitter group” unfamiliar with the appearance of such cryptic objects at their meetings, so it may have been easily identified due to its familiarity. What is clear is that fraud cannot be ruled out, nor yet proved, and the case remains a very curious anecdote. Having lived to 102, invented LSD, discovered the chemical structure of psilocybin and psilocin (the active ingredients in certain “magic mushrooms”) and invented and discovered numerous other useful chemical compounds, perhaps Albert Hofmann is now capable of some really quite astonishing feats. I wouldn’t rule it out either. One thing is for sure, Hofmannhad long had an interest in the paranormal in relation to psychedelic substances.
A very similar case occurred, but perhaps one that is more convincing because of its accidental nature, shortly after the death of the psychedelic researcher Dr. Walter Pahnke. Best known for his infamous Good Friday experiment that practically proved that psychedelics do give rise to genuine, meaningful and long lasting mystical experiences, Pahnke had managed to obtain a PhD, an MD, a psychiatry residency, and a Masters in Divinity, ALL from Harvard, before dying in a scuba diving accident at the tender age of 40. Less well known, Pahnke had also attempted psychic experiments with participants on LSD but was unsuccessful.
During an LSD psychotherapy session with pioneering therapist Dr. Stan Grof, the late Pahnke’s wife had an apparent encounter with the spirit of Walter Pahnke and he told her that he had a book located in a particular place in their attic that he wished her to retrieve and give back to a friend of his. Quite amazingly, after the LSD therapy session Pahnke’s wife located the lost book, of course, and returned it to the late doctor’s friend. Somehow, as an anecdote of psychedelic spirits apparently communicating from beyond, I find this account rather more feasible than the Hofmann one (…if only he had given us the chemical formula to a new wonder drug instead of a postcard message…), but we’re only likely to find out the absolute truth when we all have our own permanent paranormal experience at the end of this life. Happy travels.
Having a conversation with a professor of social psychology the other day concerning the two recent papers about voodoo neuroscience (voodoo neuroscience & snake oil), I was told something like, “At its best neuroimaging can tell us something interesting things about human psychology and the brain, but at its worst its nothing more than high-tech phrenology. I think the best thing it could do however, would be to locate the part of the brain that makes neuroscientists die-hard reductionists and then have it surgically removed”. Interesting food for thought, but only if you like the taste of brains! Material reductionists, however, would have us all believe that we are deluded zombies devoid of any free will and real consciousness anyway, so perhaps they would be happy with brains on the menu after all? For anyone taking offence, remember science is a method not a belief.
This month, Tuesday 24th February, at the October Gallery we are lucky enough to have Paul Devereux come and speak about "Shamanic Landscapes" in a beautifully illustrated talk. Paul has authored oodles of great books, most recently "Mind Before Matter: Visions of a New Science of Consciousness" and a reissue of "The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia", and he has been one of the most active people in the field for many years chipping away at the bejeweled coalface of Earth Mysteries research.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Shamanic Landscapes
Did the ancient American Indian soul leave its mark on the land? In this profusely illustrated presentation, Paul Devereux will argue that it did by exploring a range of sacred geographies scattered through the Americas. From the Nazca lines to many other "lines", from the spirit paths of the Kogi Indians to the giant ground drawings of California and Arizona, to the vision quest places of the old shamans, to the strange "place where God sits" in Canada. And more. A unique travelogue that traces an interior journey.
Paul Devereux's main areas of interest are archaeo-acoustics (study of sound at ancient places), ancient and traditional lifeways, the anthropology and archaeology of consciousness, sacred sites and landscapes, general consciousness studies including psi phenomena, unusual geophysical events, and what are loosely termed 'earth mysteries'. This is work he has been involved with at a 'front line' level for almost four decades. Paul has published oodles of books, most recently The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia, and Mind Before Matter: Visions of a New Science of Consciousness.
In collaboration with Dr. Slawek Wojtowicz, Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna, and Dr. Ede Frecska; Dr.Rick Strassman's new book Inner Paths to Outer Space is the natural sequel to his first book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, in which Strassman documented his extraordinary medical research administering the potent endogenous psychedelic neurochemical, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), to human volunteers. After receiving intravenous injections of DMT, Strassman’s participants reported a range of exceptional phenomena from entity encounters and alien abduction-like experiences to near-death like experiences. Inner Paths considers the DMT-induced entity encounters and alien abduction-like experiences from Strassman’s research in further depth, particularly in the contexts of quantum physics, science fiction and shamanism, proposing that access to alien worlds in outer space occurs in the inner space of the psyche. A full review of the book appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
On the topic of Voodoo, there's a salty-looking exhibition just started in London last week entitled Voodoo: Hoochie choochie and the creative spirit. It's on until April, so mooch your vévé feet down to Regent Street...
The exhibition features those artists, writers and musicians who acknowledge the need to reach a heightened or 'altered state' in order to create their work. We look at the mystery of the creative act; not the inexplicable 'spark', aka inspiration, but the fire; the non-doing before the doing, the summoning up of elemental spirits from within, or without, during the preparation of some visual or musical work, some theory or idea. This welling-up or 'possession', this 'fever in the heart of man', this spirit, this spell, might sometimes be referred to as Voodoo.
Following up on an older post on the pseudoscientific appeal of neuroscience (Brain imaging: Old snake oil in new bottles?) an article due for publication in Perspectives on Psychological Science demonstrates how numerous brain imaging researchers have been fudging the books to show very strong relationships between personality correlates and specific-brain region activity. Given the already enormous complexity of the cortex, etc. and the intractable difficulty mapping the mind to the brain, it doesn’t help matters when social neuroscientists and the like just conveniently report only the most significant relationships in their studies and ignore the huge bin full of unrelated data they’ve collected.
Such selective reporting, which appears to be rife in social neuroscience according to this new research by Harold Pashler and his team at MIT and the University of California, violates principles of probability and grossly distorts what can be understood about neuropsychology, thereby painting a far brighter and clearer image of personality in the brain than the genuinely muddy picture we really have. Honing in on particular correlations is all well and good in voodoo, which works based on acausal associative principles, but in science this kind of misreporting is just mumbo jumbo. Perhaps neuroscience isn't actually any more scientific than magic, but at least voodoo sticks to its principles!
Thanks to the BPS Research Digest Blog...
Do you do Voodoo?
They are beloved by prestigious journals and the popular press, but many recent social neuroscience studies are profoundly flawed, according to a devastating critique - Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience - in press at Perspectives on Psychological Science (PDF).
The studies in question have tended to claim astonishingly high correlations between localised areas of brain activity and specific psychological measures. For example, in 2003, Naomi Eisenberger at the University of California and her colleagues published a paper purporting to show that levels of self-reported rejection correlated at r=.88 (1.0 would be a perfect correlation) with levels of activity in the anterior cingulate cortex.
According to Hal Pashler and his band of methodological whistle-blowers, if Eisenberg's study and others like it were accurate, this "would be a milestone in understanding of brain-behaviour linkages, full of promise for potential diagnostic and therapeutic spin-offs." Unfortunately, Pashler's group argue that the findings from many of these recent studies are virtually meaningless. (Read more…)
Following up on the sold-out lecture on "shamanism through the ages" that was given by Pablo Friedlander at the October Gallery at the end of November, the series of lectures on Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness we are organising continues this year, every last Tuesday of the month. Next up on 27th January is Dr. David Luke (yeah, I had to take the slot to get things started) who will be giving a talk entitled "Death, and the God of a thousand eyes". I´ll be there, obviously.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
This talk discusses both the scientific and the mystical understanding of people's experiences of visionary encounters with discarnate beings. In all times and places people have had profoundly real experiences of deities, demons, angels, elves, aliens, and ghosts. Sometimes these occur when a person is in altered state – dreaming, on drugs, or is near death. The connection between the altered state and the 'visitation' is explored in a vivid illustrated talk, which takes a personal tour through folklore, mythology, neurochemistry, magic, shamanism, the Luciferian witch cult, brain anatomy, Tibetan demonology, the pineal gland, art, the Reg Veda, psychoactive toads and a cauldron full of other odd ingredients. A lively slide lecture format followed by discussion.
Dr. David Luke lectures in psychology at several London universities and is a writer and researcher with a special interest in parapsychology and altered states of consciousness. He has studied paranormal phenomena and techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Hackney.
Well much like the myth of Santa Claus being based upon the shamanic use of the psychedelic mushrooms, Christmas has generously provided us with the announcement of the first official UK research project into the use of psychedelic mushrooms with humans since prohibition. After a long hiatus of about 40 years, official human research with psychedelics is about to resume in the UK following a collaboration between a leading London research institute (presently undisclosed to deter negative media) and the Beckley Foundation of Oxford, a leading drug policy think tank and foundation for the research of consciousness and its altered states.
Certain types of magic mushrooms such as Psilocybe semilanceata (known as the 'liberty cap'), in which the chemical psilocybin is found, grow naturally in the UK, one of the country’s few indigenous psychoactive plants. Yet the consumption of dried mushrooms in the UK has been illegal for decades and, tying up a loophole in the law, the picking and consumption of fresh psilocybin-containing mushrooms was made illegal in 2005.
Resuming the scientific psychedelic research that was stopped by prohibition virtually the world over in the late 1960s, the Beckley Foundation (logo pictured above) has initiated a research project at a leading London academic institution into the potentially beneficial effects of psilocybin on psychophysiology and consciousness.
The project is entitled “A study investigating changes in blood flow and remote memory access brought about by psilocybin” and aims to investigate the reported effects that psilocybin has in helping people access forgotten memories, which, along with the profound mystical experiences that can be occasioned with psilocybin may have great potential in helping people in psychotherapy, particularly for resolving trauma-related anxiety disorders, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In their Christmas newsletter the Beckley Foundation wrote “This study will investigate, with the latest brain imaging technology, both the changes in cerebral blood flow brought about by psilocybin and how psilocybin affects regional activation and emotional responses. In so doing, this study will help inform the psychotherapeutic applications for this fascinating and important compound.”
At Christmas time it is always worthwhile pondering the origins of certain myths, such as our dear old philanthropic friend Santa Claus. Over the years similarities have been made between Santa’s antics and the activities of Siberian shamans, who consume the red and white-spotted psychedelic mushroom, Amanita muscaria, for 'magical' purposes.
For instance it is known that reindeer eat the mushroom and that eating the flesh or even drinking the urine (the liver transforms the mushrooms’ ibotenic acid into the even more psychoactive muscimol) of such ‘flying’ reindeer can give rise to 'profound' changes in consciousness. So not only do the reindeer fly, but with their help so can the Siberian shaman. One of the roles of the shaman is to bring back wisdom and healing from the other side (the underworld or the upperworld), and these can be considered as 'gifts' for the health of the community. So why does Santa wear that silly red and white outfit, and why is he helped by elves? Surely there can’t be anything shamanic about old Santa,... can there?
Beautifully weaving together all the various tales of parapsychology, anthropology, archaeology, altered states, belief, magic and culture that thread this blog together like the tails of the snakes in the mudusa's hair, the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness is next year bringing together all my favourite stories for its annual conference.
Set in the idyllic setting of the entrance to Columbia Gorge in Portland, Oregon, the theme for April's conference of 'Bridging Nature and Human Nature' mingles ecopsychology with parapsychology, anthropology with folklore, mythology with dreaming, psychedelics with species-connectedness, and a wealth of other healthy confluences all into one happy pot. Still accepting submitted papers until January 9th, the meeting runs from April 1-5th and looks set to be unique. I certainly hope to go, so I hope to see you there.
1. The History and Future of Ecopsychology 2. Bateson, Postmodernism and Shamanism 3. Entheogens and the Legacy of Albert Hofmann 4. Cross-Cultural Inquiries of Eco-Dreaming and Eco-Anthropology 5. Mind/body Approaches to Biomedicine and Medical Anthropology 6. Psi and Species-Connectedness 7. Mythology, Folklore 8. Poetry and Ecocriticism 9. Landscapes of Consciousness and Paleolithic Cave Art 10. Ethnomethodology.
Seems it's psychedelic season in London after all, and all with a nice parapsychological twist. Next month at my favourite London boookshop, Treadwells, Dr. Ornellla Corazza will be giving a talk on her PhD research on ketamine and near-death experiences. I won't be there, unfortunately, because I'll be in Ecuador doing my own parapsychopharmacological research, but I was lucky enough to catch a similar talk by Ornella back at the beginning of last year, which I wrote a review of for the Paranormal Review.
10 December 2008 (Wednesday) Near Death Experiences Exploring the Mind-Body Connection Ornella Corazza (SOAS) £5.00 in advance 7.15 for 7.30 start
In this illustrated slide lecture, Dr Ornella Corazza will share the fruits of her groundbreaking research on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). Along with the reports and studies of NDEs, she refers to accounts of sessions with the powerful dissociative drug, ketamine, and draws from contemporary Japanese philosophies of embodiment to argue against the traditional "survivalist" interpretation of NDEs and offers us a new perspective on what human life is and also what it can be.
Ornella Corazza, PhD, is a NDE researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. In 2004-5 she was a member of the 21st Century Centre of Excellence Program on the Construction of Death and Life at the University of Tokyo. She teaches on the Lampeter MA on The Body: Eastern and Western Perspectives. Academic publications include Remember (2006), on ritual practices in North-East Italy. Her latest is Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection (2008). She lives and works in London.
Suddenly Tuesday evenings in London don't look so dull. Following on from the Goldsmiths College lecture on Psychoactive plants and psychic people this coming Tuesday, a group of us have begun organising a series of public lectures on ecology, consciousness and the cosmos to be hosted at the amazing October Gallery in Bloomsbury, London. The first of many evenings begins with a lecture by South American ayahuascero Pablo Friedlander on the following Tuesday (25th November) entitled From Ancient Eleusis to Modern Ecstasy: Shamanism Through the Ages.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk
Entry £7/ £5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Pablo's talk will consist of a brief and deep analysis of a mysterious evolution: from shamanic practices to the rise of the first philosophical schools. Beginning with the symbolisms of shamanism in prehistoric times, a process of sophistication is followed that leads from the visionary art of caves in different continents to the theories about nature in archaic Greece. This comparative study between ancient European beliefs and contemporary shamanic practices in the Americas’ focuses on the relationship between magical plants, cosmological chants, iconography and insights. The constants and changes in the cultivation of mystical trances through key moments of history serve to explain what the Ecstatic Wisdom is and what it means.
Well, after warming up my ranting reflexes at the Day of the Dead extravaganza I now feel up for a bit more "whanging on" about my pet subject - psychedelics and the paranormal. So I will be giving a public lecture this coming Tuesday 18th November for the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, University of London, entitled Psychoactive Plants and Psychic People: Does Psilocybin really cause Psi? - which, as a title, is my best work of excessive alliteration yet. The talk takes us on a journey trough archaeology, history, anthropology, ethnobotany, comparative theology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, neurochemistry, psychopharmacology, and, of course, parapsychology. Anyone left standing at the end is invited for drinks (the non-psychedelic drug type - just alcohol) round the pub afterwards.
Brace yourselves for a night of magic, ancestor veneration, voodoo, visionary art and music, brought to you by those titans of weirdness and bastions of peculiarity - Strange Attractor, Dreamflesh and Liminal Nation. Themed talks on altered states, magic, death and the archaeology of consciousness by Gyrus, Donal Ruane and Dr David Luke, and Voodoo shamanigans by Stephen Grasso. Raagnagrok All Stars will be providing sonic succor and sustenance. Saturday, 1st November, 7pm till late at the Horse Hospital, London. It's likely to sell out so reserve a place, below the flyer, by flying to the place below...
In relation to “The Sacred Mushroom” film in the last post, the Wassons’ classic and rare book “Mushrooms, Russia and History” has been made available online by the New Alexandria Archive (Vol1 & Vol2). The original two-volume book, published by Pantheon Books in 1957, was limited to 512 copies and was never reprinted, although some university libraries (such as the Bodlian, Oxford) hold copies. This digital edition was scanned from the original and hand corrected by Igor Dolgov, Zachary Jones, and Greg Golden, with thanks to a generous contributor.
Among the intriguing sections on Russian mycophilia and other beautifully illustrated fungal curiosities, this classic text notoriously describes Gordon and Valentina Wasson’s search and discovery of a sacred mushroom cult in Mexico - following a tip off from the English poet and pagan icon Robert Graves. The book describes how the Mexican shaman most often associated with Wasson and the discovery of the psychedelic Psilocybe cubensis cult, Maria Sabina, was actually encountered on R.G. Wasson’s second trip to Huautla, Oaxaca, when he was accompanied by his photographer, Alan Richardson (who had an apparently true prophetic vision when they ate the mushrooms for the first time – see previous post).
However, on his first trip in 1953 Wasson observed a divinatory mushroom ceremony being held by Don Aurulio in which this ‘bemushroomed’ indigenous shaman, to his surprise, told him two things about his son back home that even Wasson could not have known, which later turned out to be true. So even from the very first discovery of psychedelic psilocybin and psilocin-containing mushrooms in the West we have reports of paranormal phenomena (clairvoyance and /or precognition in this case), echoing the ostensibly paranormal experience (out-of-body) of Dr Albert Hofmann when he discovered/invented LSD ten years earlier (read more about this) – though I suppose this is just coincidence?
Take a look at this classic, late 1950s film footage of the hunt for clairvoyance-inducing mushrooms in the (then) remote wilds of Mexico. Remaining out of the public domain until recently when it surfaced on YouTube in 3 parts, this vintage half-hour show was aired in the US on January 4, 1961 as one of the 96 episodes of the One Step Beyond series.
This episode, “The Sacred Mushroom”, takes its name from a 1959 book by the rogue parapsychologist and US defence intelligence asset, Dr. Andrija Puharich, who conducted research into the use of Amanita muscaria mushrooms for inducing paranormal abilities in the laboratory. The film shows rare footage of Puharich accompanying the director John Newland, an Hawaiian kahuna and some academics, on a journey to the inaccessible regions of rural Oaxaca in search of the magic mushroom-using curanderos - discovered a few years earlier in 1953 by the amateur mycologist Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina.
Puharich had met up with Gordon Wasson in 1955 and arranged for them to conduct a long distance clairvoyance/telepathy experiment between the curanderos on (Psilocybe cubensis) mushrooms in Mexico and the ‘senders’ in Puharich’s lab in the United States. The experiment never happened because Wasson and his photographer, Alan Richardson, ended up taking the mushrooms themselves, becoming the first Westerners to do so, and Richardson had a prophetic vision that apparently came true shortly after - so a different parapsychology experiment occurred.
Not having experimented with Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms himself, Puharich joined Newland in a trip to Mexico for the film sometime between 1959 and 1960, and the footage shows the mushroom shaman apparently revealing paranormal information about the medical history of one of the academics present, Dr Barbara Brown. It appears from her comments at the end of the show that Dr. Brown was certainly convinced by the experience. Amazingly, all the research team also take the mushrooms themselves (apart from Brown) and another Psilocybe shaman tells them where to find a stolen donkey, which looks rather more spurious, particularly due to Puharich’s obvious rigidity in front of the camera (check out his appalling cue card reading at the beginning of the show). In any event this fascinating film is courageous and unique, and no show since has attempted to do anything similar. I'll be giving a public talk on this at Goldsmiths Univeristy, London, on November 18th, 2008.
The director and host of the series, John Newland, remarked in a 1999 interview with television historian John Muir, “That was our most popular episode. It was a spooky trip. We landed in a tiny airstrip in Mexico near a mission. From there, it was a donkey trip of four days to reach the village. It was a dangerous journey, but we got phenomenal footage.”
When sponsor Alcoa (Aluminium Corporation of America) got antsy about airing the episode (even though psychedelic mushrooms were not illegal at the time) Newland suggested that he should visit a laboratory to take the mushrooms himself and prove that they were not only safe, but might enhance psychic abilities, which was what the show was trying to prove (from realityportal.info).
I hope the show is just as good on the other side...
Is it goodbye or is it welcome back? Eternity makes love to hapless time We just stand still while racing down the track At once something here, at once just sublime At once a mother, a daughter, a wife All sunrise, all moonlight, all day, all night All of everything that becomes a life Breathing out pure love, breathing in delight Assembled from the dust of infinite stars Merely composed of everything that shines Everything of our gods is also ours We’re the grapes when we drink the finest wines Death is the life that living cannot lack Is it goodbye or is it welcome back?
OK so apologies (to both my readers) for the inordinately long delay in logging any posts. Things sure do move fast outside blog time and I’ve been busy making the most of summer, among other things, going to festivals, giving talks, writing papers, going to conferences, giving more talks, and planning and getting funding for some pretty exciting research projects. On the festival scene it was great to go back to Glastonbury this year for the first time since 2003 and view the stone circle from a liberated perspective - this one spot alone changed my life three times already over the years. Mighty blessings to the Bimble Inn crew for greasing the wheels of my adventures.
I also had a great time in Brazil for most of July giving papers at a fascinating conference on parapsychology and altered states in Curitiba. I had a chance to talk to the directors of an amazing Spiritist hospital where they use mediums to channel the voices of conventionally untreatable schizophrenics while the psychotherapist puts the voices in therapy, thereby treating the (absent) patient. I also got to take part in an Umbanda incorporation ceremony (pictured above), a Sante Daime ayahuasca ceremony, and a Guaraní tobacco ceremony as well as a dream workshop-workshop by Prof. Stan Krippner. With the great support of many people in Brazil I was lucky enough to run some preliminary parapsychology experiments with ceremony participants on ayahuasca, the Amazonian psychedelic decoction that was once called "telepathine" because of the typical paranormal experiences people encounter on it. More on that when the research is complete.
Probably the most adventurous thing that happened in Brazil was a narrow escape from the scalpel of a psychic surgeon who had me terrified at the prospect of an operation where I might have a had a pair of forceps slid all the way into my nasal cavity and twisted round a few times. There wasn’t even the slightest thing wrong with me, though I soon developed apoplectic fear. More on that too some other time. A few more talks at festivals and conferences and I’m back in cyberspace again, so expect a spate of posts…
