Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[American Dream]

[Simulist]

Thank you for your recent post concerning The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Timothy Leary, American Dream.

Having read it, I guess what I am interested to know from you is what you're seeing as particularly significant about this. Clearly LSD is a powerful drug, but I'm sure that the article struck you for more than just that reason.

Can you please offer some insight into what it said to you and why you find it important to share with us?

[American Dream]

Thank you for your recent post concerning The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Timothy Leary, American Dream.

Having read it, I guess what I am interested to know from you is what you're seeing as particularly significant about this. Clearly LSD is a powerful drug, but I'm sure that the article struck you for more than just that reason.

Can you please offer some insight into what it said to you and why you find it important to share with us?

I think these articles mostly speak for themselves, or at least I prefer to let them do so- so that the reader may draw their own conclusions, whether the articles are as well formulated or parapolitically deep as I might like or not, whether they all propose the same things and/or contradictory things...

I see in this narrative regarding the Brotherhood of Eternal Love lots to chew on- sincere mystics backed somehow by spooky forces- are some spooks themselves? Did the spooks infiltrate and/or start it? Did it do more harm than good? More good than harm? What covert agenda were accomplished?

Lotsa questions- very few answers...

[Simulist]

Thank you for your recent post concerning The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Timothy Leary, American Dream.

Having read it, I guess what I am interested to know from you is what you're seeing as particularly significant about this. Clearly LSD is a powerful drug, but I'm sure that the article struck you for more than just that reason.

Can you please offer some insight into what it said to you and why you find it important to share with us?

I think these articles mostly speak for themselves, or at least I prefer to let them do so- so that the reader may draw their own conclusions, whether the articles are as well formulated or parapolitically deep as I might like or not, whether they all propose the same things and/or contradictory things...

I see in this narrative regarding the Brotherhood of Eternal Love lots to chew on- sincere mystics backed somehow by spooky forces- are some spooks themselves? Did the spooks infiltrate and/or start it? Did it do more harm than good? More good than harm? What covert agenda were accomplished?

Lotsa questions- very few answers...

Those are good questions. In fact, they are thought-provoking questions.

LSD evokes an aspect of the human experience that is normally unavailable or, at the very least, hidden from plain view. Do you see this hidden aspect as in any way "real"? Or do you think the LSD experience is simply a part of what we might term "delusional"?

[American Dream]

LSD evokes an aspect of the human experience that is normally unavailable or, at the very least, hidden from plain view. Do you see this hidden aspect as in any way "real"? Or do you think the LSD experience is simply a part of what we might term "delusional"?

Clearly it has the potential for both- it can lead to "real" insights which promote lasting (and positive) changes in peoples' lives- and it can also lead towards various blind alleys such as cult-based mind control. These differing potentials were understood by a number of military/intel-linked scientists and clinicians since the 50's, for sure...

[American Dream]

http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/ ... gyoga-com/

Newly Launched: DecolonizingYoga.com
Posted by: Katie Loncke Posted date: May 07, 2013 In: Liberation By Any Means Necessary





Yoga: Not Just For Young, Skinny White Girls.
A Trans Guy Walks Into a Yoga Class.
Project Bendypants: Practicing Yoga While Fat.

Just a few intriguing titles from popular articles in a new online project: Decolonizing Yoga.




Remember the controversy over Yoga Journal and the Hyatt boycott? And how some yoga practitioners staged an asana protest outside the hotel? That compassionate confrontation is the origin of this new project, a web site for spirituality and social justice. Founder Be Scofield is a transgender writer, activist and Dr. King scholar, a contributor to Turning Wheel Media, and very much involved in the engaged Buddhist world.

Poking around the beautiful D.Y. site, I also noticed a video with food justice activist and cookbook author Bryant Terry, who we featured as a “Secret Buddhist” last year on TWM. Lovely! There’s also a video with Shoken Michael Stone on Buddhism and Social Action: “talking to the 35 under 35 project with Lodro Rinzler about materialism, transcendence, situational ethics, the occupy movement, compartment alizarin, intimacy and action.” So, although Decolonizing Yoga focuses on yoga traditions, there seems to be a strain of Buddhadharma in there, too.

Appreciating this new resource for spiritual activists! Go check it out, and let us know what you find that’s especially, wonderfully shareworthy.

[American Dream]

Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances:

New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality


By Lisa Aldred

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Consuming Native American Spirituality

Commercial exploitation of Native American spiritual traditions has permeated the New Age movement since its emergence in the 1980s. Euro-Americans professing to be medicine people have profited from publications and workshops. Mass quantities of products promoted as "Native American sacred objects" have been successfully sold by white entrepreneurs to a largely non-Indian market. This essay begins with an overview of these acts of commercialization as well as Native Americans' objections to such practices. Its real focus, however, is the motivation behind the New Agers' obsession and consumption of Native American spirituality. Why do New Agers persist in consuming commercialized Native American spirituality? What kinds of self-articulated defenses do New Agers offer for these commercial practices? To answer these questions, analysis from a larger social and economic perspective is needed to further understand the motivations behind New Age consumption.

In the so-called postmodern culture of late consumer capitalism, a significant number of white affluent suburban and urban middle-aged baby-boomers complain of feeling uprooted from cultural traditions, community belonging, and spiritual meaning. The New Age movement is one such response to these feelings. New Agers romanticize an "authentic" and "traditional" Native American culture whose spirituality can save them from their own sense of malaise. However, as products of the very consumer culture they seek to escape, these New Agers pursue spiritual meaning and cultural identification through acts of purchase. Although New Agers identify as a countercultural group, their commercial actions mesh quite well with mainstream capitalism. Ultimately, their search for spiritual and cultural meaning through material acquisition leaves them feeling unsatisfied. The community they seek is only imagined, a world conjured up by the promises of advertised products, but with no history, social relations, or contextualized culture that would make for a sense of real [End Page 329] belonging. Meanwhile, their fetishization of Native American spirituality not only masks the social oppression of real Indian peoples but also perpetuates it.


The Rainbow Tribe: New Agers Identifying with Native American Spiritual Traditions

The term New Age is often used to refer to a movement that emerged in the 1980s. Its adherents ascribe to an eclectic amalgam of beliefs and practices, often hybridized from various cultures. New Agers tend to focus on what they refer to as personal transformation and spiritual growth. Many of them envision a literal New Age, which is described as a period of massive change in the future when people will live in harmony with nature and each other. Only in this New Age will they realize the full extent of human potential, including spiritual growth, the development of psychic abilities, and optimum physical health through alternative healing. Most New Agers contend that this transformation will not take place through concerted political change directed at existing structures and institutions. Rather, it will be achieved through individual personal transformation.

The New Age is only a movement in the loosest sense of the term. There is no circumscribed creed or defined tenets in the New Age movement. Nor are there any requirements for membership, although studies show most tend to be white, middle-aged, and college educated, with a middle- to upper-middle-class income. Estimates of people identifying with the New Age movement tend to run from ten to twenty million. Exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, however, because many New Age books have seeped into the mainstream and have influenced the views of people not consciously identified with the movement. The New Age is thus not a strictly defined community headed by formally recognized leaders with an articulated dogma. Rather, it is a term that is applied to a heterogeneous collection of philosophies and practices. There is a wide and burgeoning number of practices associated with the New Age, including interests in shamanism, goddess worship, Eastern religions, crystals, pagan rituals, extraterrestrials, and channeling spirit beings. "Native American spirituality" is among the most popular interests. 1

It is my contention that the New Age is primarily a consumerist movement. There are a minority of adherents who live together and try to incorporate New Age philosophies and practices into all aspects of their lives. Some incorporate these practices into part of their lives by taking workshops and engaging in New Age practices in their spare time. However, the majority of those who identify themselves as New Age (or who could be reasonably labeled as such by others) participate primarily through the purchase of texts and products [End Page 330] targeted for the New Age market. Native American spirituality is one of the most popular and profitable sectors of this New Age commercialism. 2

In this essay, the term New Agers is used to refer to the sector that is interested in Native American spiritual traditions. Certainly, not everyone involved in the New Age movement is interested in Native American spirituality. Moreover, there is diversity among those interested New Agers. A small percentage constructs their essential identity around Native American religion. A number of those who identify themselves as members of "the Rainbow Tribe" arguably fit into this category. Some Rainbow Tribe members spend time in communities they form, engaged in their own version of Native American rituals. However, many New Agers interested in Native American spirituality participate only through commercially run seminars or the purchase of texts and products. This article is primarily concerned with New Agers whose interest in Native American spirituality is expressed through commercial pursuits. Although entrepreneurs will be discussed in the overview of New Age commercialization of Native American spirituality, their motivations are not the subject of this analysis (arguably, they are shrewd businessmen and women who know how to tap into lucrative markets). Rather, this essay seeks to explain why New Age consumers seek spiritual meaning through purchase.


Plastic Medicine Men for Hire

A number of "Plastic Medicine People" have surfaced in the New Age movement, typically Euro-Americans claiming mentorship by "authentic Native American medicine people." These "Shake and Bake Shamans," as some Native American activists have dubbed them, write best-selling books and lead expensive workshops claiming to teach their consumers "how to practice Native American spirituality."

By far, the biggest business in New Age appropriation of indigenous spirituality transpires in the publishing industry where plastic medicine authors are big sellers. Perhaps the most successful, not to mention notorious, is Lynn Andrews. Andrews has been dubbed the "Beverly Hills Shaman" by some of her New Age supporters and the less flattering epithet "Beverly Hills Witch" by a number of Native Americans criticizing her commercial exploitation of indigenous spiritual traditions. Controversy aside, she is a best-selling author, having made The New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-seller lists on numerous occasions. Andrews claims that her books are true accounts of her mentoring experiences with two Canadian Cree medicine women--Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs. In the first two books, these two elderly women supposedly teach Andrews Native American shaman techniques to help [End Page 331] her battle an evil sorcerer. In subsequent books, the trio encounters a flying horse capable of turning into rainbow colors and dolphins, who transmit Australian aboriginal dream visions via a eucalyptus tree antenna.

Another plastic shaman author, Mary Summer Rain, has a lucrative career, having published over fifteen books based on Native American spiritual themes and her mentor, a blind Indian woman she calls No-Eyes. 3 Interestingly, one of Lynn Andrews's mentors, Ruby Plenty Chiefs, is also blind. In Phantoms Afoot: Helping the Spirits Among Us, Summer Rain claims that No-Eyes entrusts her with a mission to help lost spirits find their way to the afterworld. In a stereotyped Tonto Speak, No-Eyes tells Summer Rain, "No-Eyes gonna be speakin' 'bout spirits who be stupid-dumb." 4

Native American activists have greatly castigated these works for their trivialization and commercialization of Native American spirituality. Nevertheless, the number of plastic shaman authors, not to mention their commercial success, continues to swell. Jamie Samms is a former country-western singer who claims to channel Leah, an entity supposedly living on Venus six hundred years in the future. Samms later seized on Native American spiritual themes. Samms claims that she was taught by the "thirteen clan mothers" who took human form during the Ice Age and then disappeared, leaving the "thirteen crystal skulls," one of which Samms claims to have seen. Samms teaches her readers how to call up the thirteen clan mothers by focusing on them, each of whom has her own shield and her own special abilities. 5 Don Le Vie Jr., who writes about Iron Thunderhorse, is supposedly of Algonquin heritage. Thunderhorse's teachings are a mishmash of Native American religion and other New Age favorites, such as Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, and Ancient Druidism. 6 Mary Elizabeth Marlow writes about Beautiful Painted Arrow, a Picuris Pueblo-Ute who tells Marlow he has seen two kachinas landing in a space machine and explains his philosophy through allusions to Dances with Wolves. 7 Doug Boyd has written on two Native American medicine men, Rolling Thunder and Mad Bear, both affiliated with the New Age. 8 Taisha Abelar is a former anthropologist who encountered a Mexican sorceress while wandering through the mountains of Tucson in the 1960s. She traveled to the woman's home in Sonora, Mexico, to live with this woman who turned out to be from the same family of sorcerers that instructed Carlos Castaneda. 9

Not all those designated as "plastic" by Native American activists publish books. There are quite a number who run workshops, seminars, or centers claiming to teach Native American spiritual practice. For example, one non-Native American woman who calls herself Mary Thunder runs a New Age center in Texas where she conducts sweats, pipe ceremonies, and talks with space aliens through Max, the crystal skull. Another woman referred to as Oceana, or sometimes O'Shinna, claims to have been born in a crystal spectrum in Colorado; [End Page 332] she mixes Native American teachings with references to Atlantis, Tibetan Buddhism, and theosophy. Some "plastics" produce videos explaining their philosophies and offering "do-it-yourself" instructions for Native American ceremonies such as sweats. 10 There are also a number of New Age "channelers" who claim to channel Native American spiritual entities. If paid the requisite sizable fee, these channelers access the wisdom of their Indian guides for their clients. One woman claims to channel a Hopi Indian named Barking Tree (as well as Bell Bell, a giggling six-year-old from Atlantis, and a being named Aeffra from Western Europe). A New Ager in Tampa, Florida, claims to channel an entity named Olah, who is supposed to be a reincarnation of both Edgar Cayce and the revered Lakota spiritual entity White Buffalo Calf Woman.

Many Native Americans have been offended by the mockery these bastardized versions make of their sacred ceremonies. Some of the incidents denounced as most offensive include Sun Dances held on Astroturf, sweats held on cruise ships with wine and cheese served, and sex orgies advertised as part of "traditional Cherokee ceremonies." A typical advertisement for such a workshop promises an introduction to "core shamanism--the universal and basic methods used by the shaman to enter non-ordinary reality for problem solving, well-being and healing." 11 Others make even more specific promises; for example, one workshop guarantees that you will retrieve your own personal power animal in a trance. 12 These workshops are also incorporated into theme adult camps, wilderness training programs, and New Age travel packages. 13 Native American activists have been greatly angered by the commercial exploitation of their spirituality represented by these workshops. A weekend vision-quest workshop, for instance, can currently run anywhere between $250 to $550 (accommodations and meals not included). In 1988, Singing Pipe Woman of Springdale, Washington, advertised a two-week pilgrimage that included study with a Huichol woman and was priced at $2,450. Native Americans have commented on the bitter irony of these plastic shamans profiting from the degrading, twisted versions of Native American rituals while many indigenous people still live below the poverty level. 14 New Age interest in Native American cultures appears more concerned with exoticized images and romanticized rituals revolving around a distorted view of Native American spirituality than with the indigenous peoples themselves and the very real (and often ugly) socioeconomic and political problems they face as colonized peoples.


Purchasing Spiritual Power Through Products

New Age interest in Native American spirituality has spawned numerous products over the years. Some products claim to assist the dabbler in Native American spiritual practices. For example, those who do not want to take the time [End Page 333] and trouble of building their own sweat lodges can call 1-800-36-SWEAT to order a "sweat tent." Or the following kit can be ordered to obtain a more "total experience" of Native American spirituality:

YOUR PERSONAL NATIVE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE . . . Sage and cedar smudge sticks come with holy herb tea. The Spirit of Native America book, and the Desert CD or tape--all collected in a specially designed green box, made from recycled materials, honoring Mother Earth and providing you the opportunity to experience Native American ritual and wisdom. 15

Note that the catalog description promises the consumer "the experience" of Native American ritual and wisdom through multisensory consumption. The purchaser can drink up the sacredness of Native American spirituality while creating the right ambiance with the scent of sage smudge sticks and the proper New Age music evoking the proper locale. Meanwhile, he or she can read the kit's book The Spirit of Native America, which the catalog asserts is amplified by Anna's authoritative text so that the "'spirit voices' of her people speak clearly to you." The catalog promises that, through purchase and consumption of this product, the consumer can have a direct experience of Native American ritual and wisdom without ever leaving their armchair. Moreover, they are relieved of any guilt over their indulgent feast since the box is made from recycled materials and "honors Mother Earth."

Entrepreneurs have found ways to blend American Indian spiritual themes with other New Age objects, such as "Native American Tarot Cards." They have even tapped into new markets, such as "care crystals" for domestic pets. Medicine shields have been turned into earrings and the sacred figure of Kokopelli now serves as a wall clock. The advertisement asserts that "Southwest Native America's playful 'Spirit Guide to the Fourth World' adds a touch of almost-eerie immortality to home or office!" 16 Perhaps the eeriness stems from the unsettling irony of imperialist nostalgia. In "Interrupted Journeys: The Cultural Politics of Indian Reburial," Pemina Yellowbird and Kathryn Milun refer to these types of objects and attitudes toward them as "imperialist nostalgia," which they define as a romanticization that assumes a pose of innocent yearning thus concealing its complicity with often brutal domination. 17


Native American Resistance, New Age Defenses

Many Native Americans are outraged at the commercialization of their spiritual traditions. At least two intertribal groups of Native American elders have issued proclamations warning the public that the teachings of these commercial profiteers may harm them. 18 As stated in the Resolution of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Traditional Elder Circle, "[M]edicine people are chosen by [End Page 334] the medicine and long instruction and discipline is necessary before ceremonies and healing can be done . . . profit is not the motivation." 19 Some Native Americans have taken a harder stand. Leaflets denouncing the commercialization of Native American religion have been distributed at lectures given by "plastics" and their workshops disrupted by confrontations instigated by Native American activists. 20 The Southwestern American Indian Movement (AIM) Leadership Conference held in Window Rock in the Navajo Nation condemned those who profited from American Indian spirituality. The document noted the "dramatic increase in the incidence of selling sacred ceremonies, such as the sweat lodge, and the vision quest, and of sacred articles, such as religious pipes, feathers and stones." These acts were denounced as "constituting . . . insult and disrespect for the wisdom of the ancients." They characterized the commercialization of Native American spiritual traditions as follows: "[T]he attempted theft of Indian ceremonies is a direct attack and theft from Indian people themselves." In this denunciation, a number of "plastics" were listed by name. The document concludes: "[W]e condemn those who seek to profit from Indian spirituality. We put them on notice that our patience grows thin with them and they continue their disrespect at their own risk. 21 The National Congress of American Indians went a step further, issuing what they term "a declaration of war against 'wannabees,' hucksters, cultists, commercial profiteers, and self-styled New Age shamans." 22

Although some New Agers interested in Native American spirituality may not be aware of Native American protests, a significant number have heard the objections. Why would New Agers continue to consume Native American spirituality when so many Indian people have expressed their reprehension of this commercialization? 23 I set out in my fieldwork to find out how New Agers rationalized their misappropriations and consumption of Native American spiritual traditions. A brief note on my research methods might prove elucidating here. I first encountered New Agers while working as an attorney on the Manybeads case for the Big Mountain Diné in 1986. This initial encounter raised a number of questions that could not be answered by the usual ethnographic methods delineating a specific cultural group in a particular locale. It became increasingly clear to me that the New Age was a national movement whose membership and participation was largely defined by consumption. Therefore, the usual ethnography conducted among a sociocultural group of people in a given area would not be enough to unpack the myriad manifestations of the New Age Movement. My ethnographic research then led me into places I had not anticipated, such as New Age bookstores across the country, weekend workshops led by New Age "gurus," and even to cyberspace New Age chat rooms. My investigative methods extended well beyond the usual participant-observation and interview techniques. My "informants" were no longer limited [End Page 335] to New Age individuals, but extended to New Age publications, such as self-help books, advertising catalogs, and products.

In my ethnographic fieldwork, as well as other resources, the most frequent defense New Agers made to Native Americans' objections against misappropriation of indigenous traditions was couched in First Amendment terms. New Agers consistently argued that their right to religious freedom gave them the "right" to Native American religion. 24 Andy Smith, Native American scholar, activist, and former president of Women of All Red Nations (WARN) refutes the New Age claims that they have a "right" to Native American religion through their "right to freedom of speech." In "For All Those Who Were Indian in a Former Life," Smith aims her attack specifically at New Age practices and misappropriation of Native American spirituality among white feminists arguing:

Many white feminists have claimed that Indians are not respecting "freedom of speech" by demanding that whites stop promoting and selling books that exploit Indian spirituality. However, promotion of this material is destroying freedom of speech for Native Americans by ensuring that our voices will never be heard. . . . Feminists must make a choice, will they respect Indian political and spiritual autonomy or will they promote materials that are fundamentally racist under the guise of "freedom of speech"? 25

Smith's argument is compelling. Given a history and continued social structure in which Native Americans' voices are often overpowered by dominant white discourse, is "freedom of religion" as egalitarian as New Agers suggest? Moreover, white New Agers' claim to freedom of religion must exasperate Native Americans in light of the history of suppression of Native American spiritual practices by the U.S. government. Even recent Supreme Court decisions interpreting the First Amendment and the American Indian Religious Freedoms Act have made it clear that protection of Native American religious freedoms and practices is a low priority in this country. 26

Some New Agers have based their claim of a right to Native American religion on the reasoning that spirituality and truth cannot be owned. "No one has the right to own the Truth," stated one of the New Agers I interviewed. Gary Snyder, who has won literary awards for poetry written from the self-proclaimed persona of a Native American shaman, makes a similar argument: "Spirituality is not something which can be 'owned' like a car or a house. Spiritual knowledge belongs to all humans equally." 27 Snyder's argument implies that something has to be a "property right" before someone's request that it be respected as private can be recognized. More ironically, it overlooks the fact that through Snyder's profiting from a claimed Native American shaman persona, work that is copyrighted, he is "owning" at least a piece of Native American [End Page 336] spirituality. The commercialization of Native American spirituality in both books and products also suggests that consumers "own" Native American spirituality in some sense. This point is made even clearer by the fact that some entrepreneurs have incorporated Native American ceremonies, copyrighted material on Native American spirituality, and sought trademark protection of Native American spiritual themes. The Southwest AIM Resolution observed that a group of non-Indians operating under the name Vision Quest, Inc. were "stealing the name and attempting to steal the concept of one of our most spiritual ceremonies." 28

New Agers have other defenses against Native American objections to consumption of their spirituality. Some deny this commercialization altogether. Others mask it. For example, in an introduction to a book he coauthored, one plastic shaman claims, "We offer you this book to you now as our giveaway." 29 A giveaway is a practice in tribes where material goods are given away to others; there is no exchange, only the gift. However, this "giveaway book" is a commercial publication for profit. Other New Agers defend their commercial exploitation by arguing that they are "good people" who "give to Native American charities and support their causes." Consider, for example, the following excerpt from the owner of a New Age Native American bookstore:


Eight years ago, I started a "New Age" bookstore with very limited funds and an enormous amount of faith in God. A little over a year ago, adjacent to the store, I opened a Native American book and gift store. Both fit very well together, just as we people can work well together. . . . I have donated large amounts of food and money to Native Americans and hold continuous clothes drives through my New Age store. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, I have food and toy drives which are distributed to four different reservations. I subscribe to Native American newspapers and pray so your struggles will cease. I support Native Americans by buying and selling your crafts, so you are able to help yourselves. 30

This defense seems to rely on the old Puritanical standby that "good intentions" and "charitable acts" somehow absolve someone from the political implications of their actions for an oppressed group.

In addition, a significant number of people defend the commercialization of Native American religious practices with an argument that is characteristic of many New Agers' views toward money. They argue that it is "good medicine" to make money or that "money is just spiritual energy anyway." A good example of this kind of argument is found in the following excerpt from Sun Bear. Of Native American descent, Sun Bear, now deceased, wrote a number of plastic shaman texts and attracted a large following of white New Agers who have legally incorporated themselves into a "tribe" with stock offerings. Shawnodese, [End Page 337] referred to in the following passage, is a white New Age entrepreneur in the Sun Bear tribe.

Shawnodese, who is now my subchief, and director of the Apprentice Program, came here in 1979, with a background in about every new-age philosophy available. He had some progressive ideas that have helped us in many ways. For one thing, even though I had, at various times in my life, been an operator (such as selling real estate or men's clothes) in order to survive, I still had some reservations about being tainted by having a little extra cash. I felt that money was somehow bad. Shawnodese had the idea that money was just energy, and it was how you used it that counted. He took over the bookkeeping for a while and started writing affirmations on everything having to do with money. 31

New Agers' own statements defending objections against commercialization of Native American spirituality shed light on the rationalizations in their own psyches. However, to understand more fully the consumerist nature of their obsession with Native American spirituality, an analysis of their actions in a larger social and economic framework is needed.

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.ph ... 991.5;wap2

[American Dream]

This Is Madness

[American Dream]

Posted this in Economic Aspects of "Love" but it also deserves to be here:

http://www.classism.org/thinking-positi ... y-classism

Thinking Positive Thoughts as the Ship Sinks: Oprah, Tolle & New Age Classism

April 9th, 2013 by Nicole Braun

I’m concerned about classism in the new age, self help and spiritual movements. Oprah Winfrey’s show and “lifeclass,” which many people study religiously, promote individualistic “create your own reality” ideas, including the philosophy of guru Eckhart Tolle. “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it,” Tolle writes. These ideas can be very harmful, in particular to people struggling with financial hardship.

As one example, I recently met a woman who lost her job. She could not find another job at the same pay rate, so she wound up losing her home. She is currently homeless but finding “gratitude” in the moments which make up her life. “I am lucky to have friends I can stay with, and a couch to sleep on,” she says. “Many people are not as lucky.”

Her gratitude list continues; she is grateful she had a job for as long as she did. She does not blame her employer for moving the job overseas, as blame is “negative energy.“ Plus, she wants to “take personal responsibility for herself,” as “we are our thoughts.” “We all have choices, and today I am going to choose to let this experience make me into a better person,” she said. “The universe has something to teach me.” If she stays “open,” makes the “right choices,” and thinks the “right thoughts,” while releasing her chakras, she should be good to go.

She was not frustrated that there are no comparable paying jobs in her field, as that would involve spending time in negativity. And, she wishes no one any harm, as she has “compassion” for her employer.”

She was not angry that affordable safe housing is obsolete as that is just more negative energy. “Anger is a waste of energy, a form of negativity, and it keeps me from transcending spiritually,” she said. Throughout our conversation she continued to inform me that her economic crisis was her fault, as she had not been thinking the “right thoughts.” Had she thought the right thoughts, she would not be where she is.

But, she did not want to spend too much time on this thought as there are “lessons to be learned,” and the universe has something “better” in store for her, in the future, as long as she does everything “right” in the now. In addition, she theorized that she might be paying back a karmic debt from another lifetime, so in a way, she could deserve her poverty. Plus, it is “important to pay back one’s debt; karmic or otherwise.” Besides, the universe will not give her “any more than she can handle.”

I am all for having a spiritual life, but these ideas create yet another layer of psychological damage to the poor and working class. Most of us seek and need meaning and comfort, especially in hard times, but who ultimately benefits from these ideas? Oprah certainly does. “Live your best life,” she says, raking in the millions. Tolle is making millions off of his “spiritual” ideas as well. One thing is clear: these ideas sell.

New age thinkers might agree that the entire planet is in crisis, but radical change is going to take a lot more than thinking positive thoughts, unless the positive thoughts include collective action to eradicate classism. I wonder how much longer we as a society will continue to drown before we wake up to what is really going on in the US economically?

[MayDay]

Posted this in Economic Aspects of "Love" but it also deserves to be here:

http://www.classism.org/thinking-positi ... y-classism

Thinking Positive Thoughts as the Ship Sinks: Oprah, Tolle & New Age Classism

April 9th, 2013 by Nicole Braun

I’m concerned about classism in the new age, self help and spiritual movements. Oprah Winfrey’s show and “lifeclass,” which many people study religiously, promote individualistic “create your own reality” ideas, including the philosophy of guru Eckhart Tolle. “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it,” Tolle writes. These ideas can be very harmful, in particular to people struggling with financial hardship.

As one example, I recently met a woman who lost her job. She could not find another job at the same pay rate, so she wound up losing her home. She is currently homeless but finding “gratitude” in the moments which make up her life. “I am lucky to have friends I can stay with, and a couch to sleep on,” she says. “Many people are not as lucky.”

Her gratitude list continues; she is grateful she had a job for as long as she did. She does not blame her employer for moving the job overseas, as blame is “negative energy.“ Plus, she wants to “take personal responsibility for herself,” as “we are our thoughts.” “We all have choices, and today I am going to choose to let this experience make me into a better person,” she said. “The universe has something to teach me.” If she stays “open,” makes the “right choices,” and thinks the “right thoughts,” while releasing her chakras, she should be good to go.

She was not frustrated that there are no comparable paying jobs in her field, as that would involve spending time in negativity. And, she wishes no one any harm, as she has “compassion” for her employer.”

She was not angry that affordable safe housing is obsolete as that is just more negative energy. “Anger is a waste of energy, a form of negativity, and it keeps me from transcending spiritually,” she said. Throughout our conversation she continued to inform me that her economic crisis was her fault, as she had not been thinking the “right thoughts.” Had she thought the right thoughts, she would not be where she is.

But, she did not want to spend too much time on this thought as there are “lessons to be learned,” and the universe has something “better” in store for her, in the future, as long as she does everything “right” in the now. In addition, she theorized that she might be paying back a karmic debt from another lifetime, so in a way, she could deserve her poverty. Plus, it is “important to pay back one’s debt; karmic or otherwise.” Besides, the universe will not give her “any more than she can handle.”

I am all for having a spiritual life, but these ideas create yet another layer of psychological damage to the poor and working class. Most of us seek and need meaning and comfort, especially in hard times, but who ultimately benefits from these ideas? Oprah certainly does. “Live your best life,” she says, raking in the millions. Tolle is making millions off of his “spiritual” ideas as well. One thing is clear: these ideas sell.

New age thinkers might agree that the entire planet is in crisis, but radical change is going to take a lot more than thinking positive thoughts, unless the positive thoughts include collective action to eradicate classism. I wonder how much longer we as a society will continue to drown before we wake up to what is really going on in the US economically?

I've been avoiding this thread because it touches too close to home. These are topics that come up again and again in the circles of random wide flung cray cray beauty in which I travel far, deep, and wide. The closer you get to the so called center of the movement, the more plastic you will inevitably find. It's at the fringes where the true essence of the movement can be found- jon camaron mitchel of hedvig fame sitting indian style between myself and a piss poor chronic homeless dude who happens to be just as welcome here as anyone else. You have to go the extra mile to find the cracks in the facade of popular new age belief and practice to find the honey that hides in the true, free, accepting heart of the movement. It is here that these considerations are taken fully into account- the commercialism, the materialism, the plasticism that prevails- and in these moments of reflection amongst the wisest and most cunning among us the whole outer face of the movement melts into absurd and deplorable folly, while the inner core shines in all of it's seemingly infallible, all-accepting, anti-commercial, bliss.

I don't know where you've been or what you've seen. All I know is my own experience of the underground, psychedelic, do-it-yourself material and spiritual culture, and I've done everything I can to avoid anything that smacks of commercialism, insincerity, and the inauthentic. At the core, we see through the plastic simplicity of the Eckhart Tolle types to the timeless wisdom of those such as Alan Watts, even as that outer plastic funds our inner circles. We can't help what sells to the greater public, what they are ready to buy, but we are grateful those sales allow us to congregate in our inner sanctums of reality bending bliss. Think what you will, we are what we are, and we will continue in our blatant defiance of the spiritual status quo, rich poor, young and old, known and unknown. All that matters is that we found it. We found the true fringe, where the real ideas flow, where societal norms are dropped at the door and everyone is spiritually equal. And it doesn't cost a thing. But really, please bring some food or wisdom or something. Money would be nice, too.

[Sounder]

Thanks May Day for your report from the trenches.


We all apply our discrimination as best we can; given the material and context we are working in. While appeal can be seem in elements of the eastern wisdom tradition, it must be realized that their origins stem from systems with VERY authoritarian and primitive antecedents. Consciousness evolves only through the long process of improving ones decision making and the criteria for making those decisions. The primary impulse within authoritarian systems however is for the mucky-mucks to make decisions for ‘the lesser lights’.

These gurus are not primarily transmitters of deep wisdom, their primary task is as administrators, maintainers and salesmen for a feudal kind of subservience. OK, that might be overstating it, but the good folk that can turn this sows ear into a silk purse, like Alan Watts, Krishnamurti, or Faqir Chard, or Meister Echart, Thomas Merton and Spinoza and a few others in the west, (who deal effectively within western versions of authoritarian traditions) are a rare breed indeed.

It is an easy way out to blame mere victims like Echart Tolle and/or followers of folk like him for the perversions of spirituality rather than doing an examination of ones own adherence or involvement with the maintenance of authoritarian value sets.

It was mentioned up thread that Tibetan gurus have a low opinion of western seekers. Well its no wonder, here we have many determined ‘liberals’ declaring this liberality by giving up basic decision making powers to people that have a VERY authoritarian outlook on life?

WTF.

[American Dream]

Fingerprints by Chitra Ganesh | 2007 | 40 x 72 inches | digital print | edition of 5

http://www.chitraganesh.com/dc5.html

creative observation #17: 12/12/12 @12:12 AM

it curves. in heat it draws my attention closer as every fall and opening begin to tug at the senses of my awakened self. intimacy begets intimacy. between each atom, much exists. to feel that inbetweenness, that delicious emptiness- the emptiness of being exactly as inbetween is in that moment- empty of ego, conditioning, craving or delusion. i want to live in that space inbetween.

—

in observation of the movement of and senses within my fingers.



http://intheprocessofbeing.wordpress.co ... 2-1212-am/

[American Dream]

http://www.american-buddha.com/aciddreams.9brother.htm

ACID DREAMS, THE COMPLETE SOCIAL HISTORY OF LSD: THE CIA, THE SIXTIES, AND BEYOND

The Acid Brotherhood

"Bringing the war back home" the deeper resonance of the Weather motto returned to haunt the New Left. As millions of Americans took to the streets to protest the Vietnam debacle, the Defense Department was drawn ever more deeply into the problem of containing domestic violence. Military strategists recommended an array of bizarre weapons to quell civil unrest, including the psychochemical incapacitating agent BZ, which had been utilized on a limited basis as a counterinsurgency device in Vietnam.

In March 1966 French journalist Pierre Darcourt described in L'Express an action known as Operation White Wing, in which grenades containing BZ were deployed against a Viet Cong battalion of five hundred troops by the First Cavalry Airmobile; only one hundred guerrillas were said to have escaped. According to Dutch author Wil Vervey the superhallucinogen was used on at least five other occasions in Vietnam between 1968 and 1970. In all probability, however, the Vietnam experience showed the drug to be only marginally effective as a counterinsurgency agent, given its tendency to elicit maniacal behavior and the difficulties of controlling the amount of BZ absorbed in a combat situation. As one senior Defense Department official admitted, all the incapacitants "have dosage ranges into lethality. They can clobber people." Despite these drawbacks the army stockpiled no less than fifty tons of BZ, or enough to turn everyone in the world into a stark raving lunatic.

Documents prepared at the army's "limited war laboratory" at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, one of three major military installations where BZ is stored, indicate that the government seriously considered using the superhallucinogen as a domestic riot control technique. One scheme involved the use of tiny remote-controlled model airplanes nicknamed "mechanical bees." The bees, mounted with hypodermic syringes, would be aimed at selected protesters during a demonstration to render them senseless. Another plan called for spraying BZ gas to incapacitate an unruly mob. A CIA memo dated September 4, 1970, reaffirmed the importance of BZ-type weapons: "Trends in modern police action and warfare indicate the desire to incapacitate reversibly and demoralize, rather than kill, the enemy.... With the advent of highly potent natural products, psychotropic and immobilizing drugs, a new era of law enforcement ... is being ushered in."

While American soldiers were waging psychochemical warfare with BZ gas to subdue the Viet Cong, other GIs were dropping acid and tripping out on the battlefield -- an ironic development in light of the fact that a few years earlier the army had tested LSD on American servicemen to see if the drug would impair their ability to carry out military maneuvers. Now the soldiers were taking LSD voluntarily in order to incapacitate themselves. "I was stoned every day of my life in Vietnam," a GI acid veteran admitted, "stoned to the gourd. It was the only way to deal with all the horror and the insanity, and that's what everyone did. Everyone was stoned on something."

An authentic drug subculture thrived among American troops in Vietnam. Soldiers often wore beads and peace symbols on their uniforms and grooved to the same rock music that was popular in the States. Words such as "bomb" and "knockout" were coined by soldiers to describe the drug experience and were soon adopted by heads back home. Vietnamese reefer was especially potent, and its widespread use both in the barracks and in the field was a unifying factor among dissident Gls. Pot smoking was so prevalent (80% of American servicemen got stoned) that the military brass never even tried to crack down on it. There was also plenty of heroin available, and soldiers often smoked or injected it (15% of those who saw action in Vietnam returned home as heroin addicts). But nothing compared with getting high on LSD for the first time in a combat situation. "Apocalypse Now -- that's how it really was," said a former employee of the supersecret Army Security Agency. "After a while, Vietnam was an acid trip. Vietnam was psychedelic, even when you weren't tripping."

One type of acid was particularly popular among American ground forces in Vietnam. It was called "orange sunshine," and much of it was smuggled in from southern California during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Far from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia a group known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was waging its own holy war of sorts in their tireless efforts to turn the world on to LSD. During their heyday the Brotherhood ran the world's largest illicit LSD ring. Ironically their base of operations was Orange County, home turf of Richard Nixon, Disneyland, and the John Birch Society.

The saga of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is a bizarre melange of evangelical, starry-eyed hippie dealers, mystic alchemists, and fast-money bankers. Federal investigators described them as a "hippie Mafia" of approximately seven hundred fifty people that allegedly grossed $200,000,000. But the Brotherhood's secret network of smugglers lived by a code different from that associated with organized crime. They were fired with idealism, committed to changing the world by disseminating large quantities of psychedelics. At least that's how it was at the beginning....

It all started back in 1966 when a motorcycle gang from Anaheim, California, led by a stocky, intense man known as Farmer John Griggs, held up a Hollywood producer at gunpoint and robbed him of his stash of Sandoz LSD. A week later the bikers dropped the acid on a hill overlooking Palm Springs in Joshua Tree National Park. They must have seen the Burning Bush, for they threw away their guns and ran around the desert at midnight screaming, "This is it!" The next morning Griggs and company roared back to Anaheim, determined to begin a new life. They experimented with psychedelics on a weekly basis and dabbled in mysticism. Griggs was the proselytizer, the moving spirit of the group. In the summer of 1966 he traveled to Millbrook to meet with Leary, who was quite taken by the ex-hoodlum. "Although unschooled and unlettered he was an impressive person," Leary said of Griggs. "He had this charisma ... that sparkle in his eye."

Griggs looked to Leary for guidance, revering the older man as a guru. At the time, the High Priest of LSD was urging everyone to start their own church. This seemed like an excellent idea to Griggs. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, consisting of approximately thirty original members, was formally established as a tax-exempt entity in October 1966, ten days after LSD was made illegal in the state of California. The articles of incorporation announced the group's objective: "to bring to the world a greater awareness of God through the teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi, and all true prophets and apostles of God, and to spread the love and wisdom of these great teachers to all men.... We believe this church to be the earthly instrument of God's will. We believe in the sacred right of each individual to commune with God in spirit and in truth as it is empirically revealed to him."

The Brothers settled in Laguna Beach, a small seaside resort thirty miles south of Los Angeles. It was the pure scene, an electric beach community tucked against a semicircle of sandstone hills rising twelve hundred feet above the Pacific. The majestic landscape attracted an artist colony, and the sun and waves brought surfers. John Griggs supplied a lot of LSD for a growing Freaktown where hippies danced barefoot across beaches and mountains murmuring, "Thank you, God." In this exquisite setting the Brothers employed acid as a communal sacrament, hoping eventually to obtain legal permission to expand their consciousness through chemicals in much the same way that the Indians of the Native American Church used peyote. To support their spiritual habit, they opened a storefont in Laguna Beach called Mystic Arts World, which sold health food, books, smoking paraphernalia and other accoutrements of the psychedelic counterculture. The headshop became a meeting place for hippies and freaks of every persuasion, and soon more people wanted to join the fledgling church.

While Mystic Arts provided a steady income, it wasn't enough for the ambitious plans of the Brotherhood. They needed more money to purchase land for their growing membership, so they started dealing drugs -- mostly marijuana at first, which they snuck across the border in hundred-pound lots after paying off police officials in Mexico. Within the next few years the Brotherhood of Eternal Love developed into a sophisticated smuggling and distribution network that stretched around the globe. Huge quantities of hashish were brought in from Afghanistan by Brothers equipped with false ID and crew-cut wigs. They eluded the authorities by zigzagging across oceans and continents in transport outfitted with hollow compartments filled with contraband -- unloading at one port, sometimes traveling a short distance overland, then reloading at the next port and substituting yet another phony registration for the vehicle. They also sold LSD obtained from Owsley's lieutenants in Haight-Ashbury.

The dealing operation was already in high gear when Timothy Leary decided to pull up roots and head for the West Coast, the Mecca of hippiedom. By the spring of 1967 the Millbrook scene was collapsing. Three rival religious sects (the League for Spiritual Discovery, the Neo-American Boohoo Church, and a Hindu-oriented ashram) had taken up residence at the acid commune, and the entire place was under round-the-clock surveillance by the police. California beckoned, and Billy Hitchcock, the Millbrook patron, decided to move to the Bay Area. He gave Leary a parting check for $14,000 and sent him on his way after evicting everyone else from the estate.

Leary and his new wife, a young ex-model named Rosemary, had a standing invitation from John Griggs to visit Laguna Beach. He was greeted by the Brotherhood like a private heaven-sent prophet, and he acted the part, preaching to the group about love, peace, and enlightenment. Leary enjoyed the adulation as well as the town's mellow atmosphere. He and Rosemary rented a house near the ocean and spent much of their time dropping acid, lolling in the surf, and talking with the hippies on the beach. Leary was very conscious of his role as elder statesman of the town's burgeoning head colony. He tried to stay on good terms with everyone and never missed a chance to flash his trademark grin when he saw a policeman.

But there was one person Leary could not win over. Neal Purcell, a rookie cop, came to Laguna Beach in the fall of 1968. A squat, dark-complected man with a pencil-thin moustache, Purcell harbored a deep animosity toward long-haired skinny-dippers and young women without bras. He considered marijuana and LSD part and parcel of a generational corruption that was destroying the country's moral fiber, and it irked him to see Leary roam freely through town spreading his evil creed while America was going down the tubes.

Purcell had previously been assigned to entice and entrap homosexuals at a nearby beach, but he had bigger things on his mind as he patrolled the quiet residential section of Laguna. He was determined to put the screws to Timothy Leary. Shortly after Christmas 1968 Purcell spotted a station wagon blocking a narrow road. He later claimed that he did not realize it was Leary's until he approached and saw Tim roll down the window, releasing a thick cloud of marijuana smoke. Rosemary sat next to her husband in the front seat while Leary's son, Jack, frolicked in the back, making faces at the officer. Purcell searched the car and came up with two weather- beaten roaches and a few skimpy flakes of pot. "Big deal" said Leary when his nemesis produced the evidence.

Leary was charged with possession of marijuana and released on bail. It was his second drug bust, he was already facing a thirty-year sentence for the snafu in Laredo, Texas, in 1965. Despite his precarious legal status Leary announced his intention to run for governor of California in 1969 against Ronald Reagan. The High Priest had suddenly become political! Midway through his upbeat campaign he got a call from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were then conducting their "Bed-ins for Peace" in luxury hotels around the world. They wanted Leary to help them cut their antiwar song "Give Peace a Chance." Leary joined them at their bedside in Montreal while photographers flashed cameras for the international press. Lennon asked Leary what he could do to help his electoral efforts, and the candidate suggested that Lennon write a song. The Beatle began to improvise around Leary's campaign slogan, "Come together, join the party," and soon the song "Come Together" (on the Abbey Road album) was playing on California radio stations.

All the notoriety surrounding Leary's movements and pronouncements was something of a mixed blessing for the Brotherhood. They were happy to provide living expenses for the acid guru and finance his frequent travels up to Berkeley, where he rented another house, but Leary attracted a lot of attention -- which was exactly what a secret dope-smuggling outfit didn't need. Griggs and several of his cohorts decided to establish a second base of operations at a secluded ranch near Idylwild, California. They bought a three-hundred-acre plot at the arid base of the Santa Ana Mountains to provide a safe haven for their extralegal activities. The Brotherhood occupied a run-down farmhouse surrounded by a circle of seven teepees and grew their own vegetables, which their wives and girlfriends dutifully cooked. A wooden watchtower camouflaged by eucalyptus trees enabled the dealers to spot any unwanted intruders moving up the winding dirt road to their hideaway. They stayed high all the time, smoking as much as thirty joints per day per person and dropping acid whenever the spirit moved them.

The setup was ideal, and everything went smoothly. The Brotherhood even started to deal a new product -- hash oil, a gooey resin thirty times more potent than the bricks they were importing from Afghanistan at a rate of a thousand kilos a month. The Brothers were making a lot of money, but that wasn't their sole motivation. They believed they were carrying out a special mission. "It was the Dead End Kids who took acid and fell in love with beauty," stated Michael Hollingshead, who visited the Brotherhood commune in Idylwild. "They were totally committed. They had tremendous determination. They were all very tough; once they were moving dope, they were manic ... they did this nonstop thing."

There was just one hitch in the otherwise flawless operation: they lacked a sufficient quantity of LSD for wholesale marketing. Ever since Owsley's arrest in late 1967, a steady supply of high-quality street acid had been hard to come by. The king of the acid underground had been caught red-handed by federal agents at his tabbing factory in Orinda, California, with a large stash of LSD and STP that would have netted $10,000,000 on the black market. He was eventually sentenced to three years in prison and fined $3,000 for tax evasion.

While Owsley slugged it out in the courts, his former assistant, Tim Scully, vowed to carry on the chemical crusade. Flushed with the potential of consciousness expansion, Scully believed that LSD was the solution to man's inhumanity to man and all other problems caused by shortsightedness. His goal was to make as much acid as possible before the inevitable legal crackdown. But Owsley had kept him on a short string financially, and Scully lacked the necessary resources to set up an underground laboratory. His search for monetary support led him to Billy Hitchcock, who was then living in Sausalito, a scenic tourist town just north of San Francisco.

Hitchcock and Scully first became acquainted when the young chemist passed through the psychedelic menagerie at Millbrook in the spring of 1967. They hit it off immediately, and Hitchcock was pleased when Scully called on him again in Sausalito a few months later. They agreed to form a business partnership. Hitchcock would lend him money for supplies and equipment, and Scully would synthesize LSD and other psychedelics. At first Scully proposed that they give the acid away free of charge, but his financial mentor would hear nothing of it. People wouldn't appreciate what they didn't have to pay for, Hitchcock argued, and after all, he was the boss.

Hitchcock also bankrolled another chemist named Nick Sand, who began his illicit career by making DMT, a short-acting super-psychedelic, in his bathtub in Brooklyn. Sand got into the writings of Gurdjieff (a Russian mystic who had been a spy for the czar) and later wound up at Millbrook, where he served as alchemist to Arthur Kleps's Neo-American Boohoo Church. When the Millbrook scene unraveled, Sand followed Hitchcock out to the Bay Area and started making STP in an underground lab in San Francisco. He would have preferred to make acid, but he was hard-pressed, as was Scully, to find ergotamine tartrate (which they referred to as "ET"), one of the key ingredients of LSD-25. Hitchcock saw a way past the bottleneck. He contacted a European source with legitimate access, and Sand and Scully were off and running. The demand for street acid had skyrocketed ever since the Summer of Love, and these young men intended to fill the void created by Owsley's sudden demise.

Sand and Scully met at Hitchcock's house in Sausalito and agreed to work together at the instigation of their host. They were admittedly an odd couple -- Scully, the brilliant, sensitive soul with messianic visions, and Sand, the hard-nosed street tough eager for economic gain, who cultivated contacts among all manner of fringe types, including the Hell's Angels. Scully didn't want to have anything to do with the bikers, who had distributed STP for Sand, and a rift quickly developed between the two chemists.

Scully had already manufactured a sizable allotment of LSD when the police discovered his underground drug lab in Denver in June 1968. They seized and tagged all his equipment, which was returned to the young chemist after his lawyers got him off the hook. Shortly after the Denver bust a delegation of Brothers led by John Griggs first made contact with Sand and Scully. The powwow, which had been suggested by Leary, took place at Hitchcock's villa in Sausalito, with the ever-obliging Mr. Billy in attendance. The Brothers were looking for a good connection, and they couldn't have asked for a more righteous brew. A few weeks later Sand traveled south to Idylwild to finalize the arrangement.

With the Brotherhood ready to serve as their distribution arm, Sand and Scully embarked upon a full-fledged manufacturing spree. Hitchcock bought some property in Windsor, a small town sixty miles north of San Francisco. He helped Scully move to the premises, hauling large metal drums and wooden crates full of glass beakers, Bunsen burners, flasks, rubber tubing, chromatography columns, vacuum evaporators, and bundles of semiprecious compounds -- all the equipment necessary for a sophisticated drug lab. In January, 1969, Sand and Scully went to work, each on a modest $12,000 yearly retainer from Hitchcock. Scully was absolutely meticulous, keeping hour-by-hour logs whenever he made a new batch of acid so there'd be no chance of mistakes. His LSD was said to be purer than Sandoz. Sand, on the other hand, liked to take liberties. He cut his product with a pinch of this or that (usually Methedrine), and sometimes went on binges, working for thirty consecutive days with little sleep or rest. During these marathon sessions Sand inevitably got stoned to the gills from breathing dust particles of LSD and absorbing it through his fingers.

By the time the Windsor lab shut down in June 1969, Sand and Scully had turned out no less than ten million hits of the soon-to be-famous orange sunshine. The chemists protected themselves by keeping the drug off the streets until they liquidated the entire laboratory. They also experimented with new formulas, concocting a grab bag of psychedelics, some of them scarcely known to the scientific community, let alone narcotics officials. Hitchcock concurrently hired a prestigious New York law firm -- Rabinowitz, Boudin and Standard -- to research the legal status of obscure hallucinogenic drugs.

At a rock concert in Anaheim, the Brothers' hometown, it suddenly began to rain orange pills. A man in black leather trousers wearing a T-shirt that read "Orange Sunshine Express" was scattering LSD into the air, his long hair flowing behind him. The psychedelic sower was a member of the Brotherhood, and he was handing out as many as a hundred thousand doses in a single day. Leary, meanwhile, began to act as an unofficial publicist for the new product. During his frequent public lectures he made a. point of endorsing orange sunshine above all other brands. He even wrote an article for the East Village Other, "Deal for Real -- the Dealer as Robin Hood," in which he sang the praises of the Brotherhood. The High Priest suggested that as a moral exercise all psychedelic users ought to do a little dealing "to pay tribute to this most honorable profession, brotherhoods or groups of men."

Indeed, if a dealer wanted to impress his clientele, he'd often rap about the Brotherhood, but it wasn't always the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. There were many names: the Brotherhood of Light, or White Light, or whatnot. At one point nearly every hippie in Laguna Beach claimed to be a Brother, and who could dispute them? It was nearly impossible to separate the truth about this elusive organization from the romantic embellishments of stoned-out dopers. The tiny orange pills quickly acquired near-mythic status. "There have got to be cosmic influences connected with Sunshine," an acid buff effused. "There is a fantastic karma to this LSD. If you get on a dealing trip and do not abuse it -- trying to make outlandish profits -- you realize you have a lot of power on your hands with a tremendous responsibility for a lot of heads. You realize that you are not just selling drugs, but are selling to people a great and important part of their existence."

The magic caught on. In the late 1960s and early 1970s orange sunshine turned up in all fifty states and numerous foreign countries, including such far-flung outposts as Goa Beach in India, the mountains of Nepal, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, South Vietnam, Costa Rica, Israel, and the ancient Muslim shrine of Mecca. Sunshine was truly acid for the Global Village, and its worldwide popularity added to the growing mystique of the Brotherhood, who were already part of the underground mythology of California. If you smoked pot or dropped acid in the late 1960s or early 1970s, you probably heard legendary tales of this secretive group of dopers who were dedicated to making sure that primo stash was available at reasonable prices. "They were very good dealers on a spiritual trip," said a woman who lived on the Brotherhood commune in Idylwild. "They had a great reputation because they had the best dope."

But the image of the Brotherhood as saintly dealers did not tally with the seamier side of the fast-money crowd that gravitated around Billy Hitchcock, the sugar daddy of the LSD counterculture. Hitchcock, ostensibly acting as a broker for a small investment firm called Delafield and Delafield, managed his business affairs by phone from Sausalito. His specialty was setting up tax shelters for various business associates, and he knew exactly what to do with the proceeds from the Brotherhood's missionary work. The dirty cash would be laundered through Bahamian slush funds in the same way professional criminals hid their gains.

Hitchcock served as banker for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, although later he insisted he was nothing more than a financial adviser. In truth he had a lot to say about how things were done. According to Scully, he was involved in numerous planning sessions at his house in Sausalito. (Sometimes after these meetings they all got stoned and played Monopoly, Mr. Billy always won.) But Hitchcock never expected to make big money from LSD. He was in it more for the adventure. He enjoyed his status as the behind-the-scenes facilitator who brought people together and made connections. Most of all he liked to party, and he wanted to see more folks turn on to acid.

In the spring of 1968 Hitchcock and acid chemist Nick Sand journeyed to the Bahamas, where they stayed at the spacious mansion of Sam Clapp, chairman of the local Fiduciary Trust Company. Clapp was a college chum of Hitchcock's and they had been doing business together for years. They arranged for Sand to open an account under a false name at Clapp's bank. Hitchcock and Sand also looked into the feasibility of setting up an offshore LSD laboratory on one of Bahama's secluded cays -- which led some to wonder whether Mr. Billy was "on a Dr. No Trip."

Fiduciary's hermetic banking provisions also appealed to the likes of Bernie Cornfeld and Seymour ("The Head") Lazare, directors of the Swiss-based Investors Overseas Services (IOS), a fast-money laundry for organized crime, corrupt Third World dictators, wealthy expatriates, and freelance swindlers. Cornfeld and Lazare were both acid veterans. [1] Like everyone else, these hippie arbitrage experts needed a broker, and they found the boyish Mellon heir irresistible. Hitchcock took full advantage of his unlimited borrowing privileges at Fiduciary. At Clapp's urging he poured over $5,000,000 into unregistered "letter stocks" (the kind that aren't traded publicly but tend to show dramatic gains on paper) associated with the Mary Carter Paint Company, later known as Resorts International. It was the single largest chunk of money raised by Resorts, an organization suspected of having ties to organized crime. [2] Resorts International proceeded to build a casino on an exclusive piece of Bahamian real estate called Paradise Island. A star-studded cast was on hand for the grand opening of the gambling spa, complete with tennis courts, swimming pools, albino beaches, and the clear blue waters of the Caribbean. It was New Year's Eve 1968 and the guest of honor at this gala event was none other than Richard Nixon, who was about to launch a successful bid for the White House. James Crosby, president of Resorts International, contributed $100,000 to Nixon's campaign. Crosby and Bebe Rebozo, Nixon's best friend, mingled with a bevy of movie stars, jet setters, gangsters, and GOP faithful. Billy Hitchcock was also there, idling among the heavies with drink in hand.

In addition to his dealings with Resorts International, Hitchcock maintained a private account at Castle Bank and Trust, a funny-money repository in the Bahamas that catered to mobsters, entertainers, drug dealers, and Republican party fatcats -- the same crowd that boozed it up whenever Resorts threw a party on Paradise Isle. A certain Richard M. Nixon was among three hundred prominent Americans who used Castle to deposit their cash. The bank's clientele included actor Tony Curtis, the rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival, Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione's Penthouse, Chiang Kai-Shek's daughter and her husband, and billionaire eccentric Howard Hughes.

Castle Bank was no ordinary financial institution. Originally set up by the CIA as a funding conduit for a wide range of covert operations in the Caribbean, this sophisticated "money wash" was part of a vast worldwide financial network managed by American intelligence. Specifically the Agency used Castle Bank to facilitate the hidden transfer of huge sums to finance subversion, paramilitary operations, an occasional coup d'etat, bribery, and payments to foreign informants. Castle played a key role in funding the CIA's secret war against Cuba -- a campaign that drew upon the "patriotic" services of Mob hit teams assembled at the behest of the Agency to assassinate Fidel Castro. The Syndicate, seeking to return to the days when Havana was the brothel of the Caribbean, had a score to settle with the Cuban president. They also had much to gain from a cozy relationship with the CIA, whose clandestine financial network provided a perfect shield for criminal activities. In effect Castle Bank was an intelligence front that covered for the Mob. [3]

Billy Hitchcock wasn't the only figure in the Mellon clan who rubbed shoulders with the espionage community. A number of Mellons served in the OSS, notably David Bruce, the OSS station chief in London (whose father-in-law, Andrew Mellon, was treasury secretary during the Depression). After the war certain influential members of the Mellon family maintained close ties with the CIA. Mellon family foundations have been used repeatedly as conduits for Agency funds. Furthermore, Richard Helms was a frequent weekend guest of the Mellon patriarchs in Pittsburgh during his tenure as CIA director (1966- 1973).

But Billy Hitchcock was clearly the black sheep of the illustrious Mellon flock, and his high-powered family connections showed little sympathy when his luck began to falter. The first sign of trouble came when American authorities began to display an unhealthy interest in the financial affairs of Sam Clapp, the manager of Fiduciary Trust, which was headquartered on Jail Street, of all places. That was where Clapp feared he'd end up -- in jail -- unless he liquidated his bank. Hitchcock, who had been called to testify before the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding Fiduciary Trust, quickly shifted his assets -- which included the Brotherhood's drug profits -- into a series of new accounts (no names, just numbers) in Switzerland. A total of $67,000,000 illegally sloshed through Paravacini Bank in Berne.

Then something went amiss. Charles Rumsey, Hitchcock's bag-man, ran afoul of Customs as he reentered the US in the summer of 1969 with $100,000 in cash. Rumsey choked and fingered his boss, revealing that the money came from various Paravacini accounts in Switzerland. Customs officials alerted the IRS, which already had a thick file on Billy Hitchcock. Freddie Paravacini, owner of the bank, produced a letter stating that the money was a loan, but his credibility was suspect among federal agents. He and Hitchcock had garnered millions from fraudulent stock manipulations. The scam buckled later that year when they gambled on some chancy issues. Both men took a bath, and Paravacini was eventually forced to sell his bank. Most of the LSD booty was squandered in the process -- much to the chagrin of Nick Sand and the Brothers. A large chunk of Owsley's money, which Hitchcock had been managing, was also lost due to stock market chicanery.

Hitchcock's personal life was not faring any better. His wife, Aurora, had grown weary of LSD and other shenanigans. She filed for divorce in 1969, claiming in an affidavit that her husband hid profits from illicit drug deals in a Swiss bank. Hitchcock, heeding the advice of his lawyers and accountants, got out his checkbook and forked over $500,000 to the IRS for back taxes and potential fines, but it was too late to head off a full-scale investigation. With the feds breathing down his neck, Mr. Billy decided it was time to withdraw from the acid business. He moved back to the now tranquil Millbrook estate to gear up for a protracted legal battle with the government.

At the same time there were also problems at the Brotherhood commune in Idylwild. In July 1969 Charlene Almeida, a teenage friend of Leary's daughter, drowned in a pond at the ranch. An autopsy revealed traces of LSD in her blood, provoking a raid by the Riverside County sheriff. Leary was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and five Brothers were sent to jail on pot charges. But the greatest setback occurred in early August when Farmer John Griggs took an overdose of PCP. Griggs refused medical assistance as he lay dying in a teepee at Idylwild. "It's just between me and God," he muttered softly before passing away.

In the aftermath of Griggs's death there was a shakeup in the Brotherhood hierarchy. A different breed took over, and their approach to dealing was more competitive and cutthroat than before. Robert ("Fat Bobby") Andrist became the kingpin of the hashish operation. His counterparts in the LSD trade were Michael Boyd Randall and Nick Sand, who controlled a network that included over thirty regional distributors. They unloaded orange sunshine in parcels of eighty to two hundred fifty thousand, and the supply was quickly dwindling. Sand wanted to commence another manufacturing run, but he was stymied by a lack of raw materials. Hitchcock's source in Europe had dried up, leaving the Brothers in the lurch.

It was at this point that a mysterious figure named Ronald Hadley Stark appeared on the scene. The first time anyone heard of Stark was when one of his emissaries turned up in New York to see Hitchcock. The man claimed to represent a large French LSD operation. He was seeking to unload his product through covert channels. Hitchcock, who was then trying to distance himself from the drug trade, directed his visitor to the Brotherhood ranch. A few weeks later Stark and his assistant traveled to Idylwild.

The Brothers were hesitant initially, but after some verbal sparring Stark proved his sincerity by showing them a kilo of pure LSD. This was a rather impressive credential, to say the least. None of the Brothers had ever seen that much acid in one place before. Stark informed them that he had discovered a new quick process of making high-quality LSD. He laid out his plan to turn on the world -- not just the West, but the Soviet Union and the Communist countries as well. Stark had business contacts with the Japanese Mafia, and they could smuggle drugs into the Chinese mainland. He also knew a high-placed Tibetan close to the Dalai Lama. Why not offer him enough LSD to dose all the Chinese troops occupying Tibet? The CIA was then training Tibetan exiles for guerrilla actions in their former homeland, and the hallucinogen could come in handy. The Brothers dug his rap. "We were definitely very gullible in believing the stuff he told us," Scully said.

Stark's talent as a raconteur was enhanced by an insatiable appetite for intrigue and deception. He was adept at dropping names, dates, and places that would change depending upon the situation. At various times he passed himself off as a medical doctor, a gourmet cook, a professional chemist, a collector of fine art. Every story he told was slightly different, and no one knew for certain who he really was. His net worth in 1967 was a paltry $3,000, but a year later he was a millionaire. Stark claimed a relationship to the Whitneys, one of America's richest clans, and attributed his sudden wealth to the deft handling of a family trust fund.

Stark maintained an expensive apartment in Greenwich Village and liked to dine at the best restaurants in immaculate three-piece suits. Yet whenever he visited the Brotherhood ranch, he put on a smelly jellaba or a rumpled shirt and grease-stained tie. Five foot eight, with a bulging waistline, high forehead, and thick, brooding moustache, he could easily come off as a shlub, but his motley appearance belied a ruthless and cunning intelligence. Although only in his early thirties, Stark spoke ten languages fluently, including French, German, Italian, Arabic, and Chinese. He was, in short, a genius con artist who could talk circles around just about anybody.

Stark presented himself to the Brothers as the premier fixer, the man who could get anything done. He came across as someone who really knew his way around the world of international finance, claiming to sit on numerous boards of numerous corporations -- some legitimate, others illegitimate -- that he alone controlled. He promised to use his connections to help the Brothers. Stark warned them that buying real estate openly, as they had done, was much too risky -- but his lawyers could remedy the situation by hiding ownership in a maze of shell companies. Before long he assumed Hitchcock's role as banker and money manager for the Brothers' dirty cash.

But Stark got much more involved than Hitchcock, overseeing the production end of the LSD operation in addition to the finances. As eminence grise of the psychedelic movement, he had a lot going in his favor, principally a reliable source of raw materials from Czechoslovakia and an excellent manufacturing facility in Paris, which had already produced large quantities of LSD in crystalline form. The acid was dyed orange so as to continue the sunshine legacy, and the Brothers tabbed and distributed it.

Meanwhile the redoubtable Stark dashed to and fro, attending to various business scams in at least a dozen countries. Like a chameleon, he moved swiftly from underground drug factories and hippie communes to posh hotels and private clubs for the rich and famous. He maneuvered on four continents, leaving a trail of ambiguities at every turn. A master of innuendo and disinformation, he preferred to keep his range of contacts ignorant of each other's activities. Oftentimes he concealed the fact that he was an American. His European associates were not privy to his affairs in Africa, and those in Asia knew little about his work in the States. The Brothers, for example, had no idea that he was running a separate cocaine ring in the Bay Area.

Stark compartmentalized the different spheres of his life, managing everything on a "need to know" basis. His modus operandi was not unlike that of an intelligence operative. He often claimed to know exactly how things worked in the espionage community. He said he knew lots of spies, and to some of his friends he even boasted of working for the CIA. It was a tip from the Agency, he explained, that prompted him to shut down his French operation in 1971. A few months later he opened another sophisticated production center in Brussels, which masqueraded for two years as a reputable firm engaged in biomedical research. During this period Stark communicated on a regular basis with officials at the American embassy in London. He even elicited their assistance while setting up his Belgian drug lab. By the time it was all over, Stark had made twenty kilos of LSD -- enough for fifty million doses! It was by far the largest amount of acid ever to emanate from a single underground source, and most of it was sold in the United States.

Some of the Brothers began to have qualms about the way Stark operated. Scully, for one, decided to retire from the acid business not long after Stark entered the picture in the summer of 1969. There was something unnerving about this newcomer. His slick manner seemed worlds apart from the traditions of the psychedelic movement, and Scully distrusted him. A man with bisexual proclivities, Stark used drugs and sex to manipulate people. Occasionally he made overtures to one of the Brothers. This didn't bother Scully as much as the overall feeling that Stark was an unsavory character. His intuition proved correct, as Stark ended up with nearly all the money and property in his name after the feds broke up the Brotherhood network in the early 1970s.

"He must have pegged us as real softies," said Scully, who attributed much of his own naivete to an infatuation with LSD. "My friends and I thought that taking acid would necessarily make people very gentle, very honest, very open, and much more concerned about each other and the planet," he explained. "But, in fact, that was just a projection of our own trip. It had nothing to do with reality, and we were able to ignore what was actually happening for a number of years.... Many people had different reasons for what they were doing, and they were all coming from wildly different places. Because of the feeling you get when you're stoned on acid -- that you're one with others -- you think that the people you're with understand you and agree with you, even though that may not be the case at all. I'm sure that led a lot of people astray."

In retrospect Scully realized that the love-and-peace mythology associated with LSD made the scene especially attractive to hustlers and con men who claimed to have lofty motives. This in part explains how a complete stranger like Stark was able to insinuate himself with such ease into the core of the Brotherhood and assume a commanding position within the organization. His fateful appearance at the Idylwild ranch coincided with the unpleasant changes that began in the summer of 1969, when Griggs died and Hitchcock pulled away from the group. Ironically, things started to sour just when the acid generation was celebrating its greatest public triumph on a rain-soaked weekend in upstate New York.

_______________

Notes:

1. At one point Cornfeld imagined a critical cash shortage at IOS when there really was none. This set the stage for one of the largest frauds in the history of money. In 1971 an estimated $224,000,000 was siphoned from IOS into the coffers of Robert Vesco, a heroin trafficker and financial contributor to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign. William Spector, a former OSS operative, claimed that Vesco's tangled web of corporations served as fronts for various CIA activities and provided cover for CIA agents.

2. Eddie Cellini, the brother of a longtime associate of Meyer Lansky, served as the casino manager for Resorts International. Louis Chesler, another Lansky crony, and Wallace Groves, who allegedly had CIA connections, were both partners in a gambling venture with Mary Carter/Resorts. In 1970 Resorts International formed a private intelligence corporation called Intertel, which was staffed largely by ex-CIA, NSA, BNDD, Interpol, and Justice Department officials. Intertel rented its services to a wide range of corporate clients, including ITT, McDonald's, and Howard Hughes's Summa Corporation.

3. Castle Bank was founded and controlled by Paul Helliwell, a Miami lawyer with longstanding ties to American intelligence. Helliwell's career as a spook dates back to World War II, when he served as chief of special intelligence in China with the OSS. He stayed in the Far East when the CIA was formed and bossed a bevy of spies, including E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame. In the early 1950s Helliwell organized Sea Supply, a CIA proprietary company that furnished weapons and other material to anti-Communist guerrillas in the hills of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. Based in the Golden Triangle, this mercenary army cultivated fields of opium poppies, and the CIA was drawn immediately into the drug connection. Helliwell also served as paymaster for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. A few years later he set up Castle Bank, serving in a dual capacity as CIA banker and legal counsel for the Cuban Mafia, which prospered by selling Southeast Asian heroin in the US. Helliwell's law firm also represented Louis Chesler and Wallace Groves, both partners in Resorts International.

[Joe Hillshoist]

JB posted a pretty interesting introduction to Ron Stark here a few years ago:

http://www.skilluminati.com/research/en ... d_curtain/

[hiddenite]

Acid : A new secret history of LSD by David Black

has a lot on Stark .