I received a phone call from a man named George Koopman [46]
during one of our Esalen seminars in 1976. He asked if he could
come to Big Sur. I said yes. Koopman soon became a financial
patron of my _Ghost Busters_ [47] at Esalen. Koopman was a close
friend of Dan Akroyd [48], and my group was the inspiration for
the film Ghost Busters. He provided money through military
contracts with the Air Force and the U.S. Army Tank Command
funnelled through his company Insgroup in Irvine, California.
Koopman was addicted to cocaine and would talk freely when high.
He told us that he was related to Arthur Krock, the publisher of
the New York Times. He said that he had blown the whistle on U.
S. Army Intelligence domestic spying to the New York Times.
Koopman said that he had worked on the "kook desk" for the
Defense Intelligence Agency and that they were very interested in
the kind of new physics we were working on. They were especially
interested in machines that could tell the future [49] and in new
kinds of aircraft propulsion systems. Koopman liked to show how
he could open locked doors with his burglar tools that he always
carried in his brief case. He showed me a letter from the
military giving him permission to have the tools.
Koopman was very interested in Werner Erhard's tax structure. I
took Koopman to meet Werner. Werner was in a room with a large
blackboard. On the board were several references to "UFOs" and
"extra-terrestrial contacts." Werner did not seem to trust
Koopman.
I found out through one of my girlfriends [50] that Koopman
succeeded in spying on the Arica organization. Koopman, Sirag and
I had heard weird stories from Jan Brewer at Esalen that Arica
was started in Chile by high ranking fugitives from the Third
Reich who were masters of the occult. Many of the regulars at
Esalen, including some of our group like Dr. John Lilly [51] and
Claudio Naranjo [52] had been in the first Arica training in
Chile.
SARFATTI'S ILLUMINATI: IN THE THICK OF IT! By Jack Sarfatti
http://www.whale.to/b/sarfatti.html
I happened on Interviews with Oscar Ichazo, a 1982 Arica Institute publication. I was certainly intrigued when I read the following from an interview of Ichazo in 1973 by Sam Keen (who had interviewed Castaneda in '72):
"Oscar: When I was nineteen [since Ichazo was born in Bolivia in July 1931, that would mean 1950 or '51], a remarkable man found me in La Paz. He was sixty years old and when he began to teach me, I knew from the beginning that he was speaking the truth. This man, whose name I have pledged not to reveal [sound familiar?], belonged to a small group in Buenos Aires that met to share their knowledge of various esoteric consciousness-altering techniques. I became the coffee boy for this group. I would get up at four A.M. to make their coffee and breakfast and would stay around as inconspicuously as possible. Gradually they got used to my presence and they started using me as a guinea pig to demonstrate techniques to each other. To settle arguments about whether some particular kind of meditation or mantra worked, they would have me try it and report what I experienced.
Keen: What kinds of disciplines were being shared in the group?
Oscar: About two-thirds of the group were Orientals, so they were strong on Zen, Sufism, and Kaballah. They also used some techniques I later found in the Gurdjieff work.
Keen: Where does the story go from here?
Oscar: One day when I was serving coffee, an argument arose between two members of the group. I turned to one and said, 'You are not right. He is right.' Just like that. Then I explained the point until both of them understood. This incident changed everything. They asked me to leave, and I thought I was being kicked out for being pretentious. But after about a week, they called me back and told me they had all decided to teach me. They worked with me for two more years and then opened doors for me in the Orient. After a time of remaining at home in Chile, I began to travel and study in the East [starting in '56], in Hong Kong, India, and Tibet. I did more work in the martial arts, learned all of the higher yogas, studied Buddhism, and Confucianism, alchemy, and the wisdom of the I Ching. Then I went back to La Paz to live with my father and digest my learnings. After working alone for a year, I went into a divine coma for seven days. When I came out of it I knew that I should teach; it was impossible that all my good luck should be only for myself [also familiar?]."
In a 1976 interview, Ichazo further describes the Buenos Aires connection: "Now, the part in Buenos Aires is very simple. There was a group of people and not one of them was Latin American. For some reason they chose Buenos Aires. They chose it because it was comfortable. At least one of them in the group was really a millionaire, and all the rest were more or less well-provided for. It wasn't formal. Somehow the millionaire in the group was trying to implement his idea that it was possible to synthesize all mysticism, that it was the time to do it and to present it. He was a very high mystic and all his friends there were of the very first class. Now, although the idea was to make the group in Buenos Aires, it never happened because, number one, they were never all together, because they were too busy, or surrounded by disciples at the same time, and also it was difficult for them to leave their places to come to Buenos Aires. So in reality most of the time was spent in communicating--this one is going and the other is coming.
Q: So there was a lot of circulation.
Oscar: A lot of circulation with very little result as effort in the work itself. They didn't do much about the work, but they talked about things until eventually they started really working with me. It was somehow quite sloppy in the sense that one would teach me one thing and the other another thing. It was very eclectic because they were trying to see different things. There was never a complete line. Even though there was a point at which it almost came, it never really happened. That's what I can say about it."
According to yet another interview, "This was around 1950, and this man invited me to Buenos Aires, where I was involved with a group of mystics, many of whom were seventy or eighty years old when I met them. . . . None of them was South American. They were Europeans or from the Middle East."
Other material in the book explains that Ichazo started teaching the philosophy he had created from this mix of influences to a group of ten in a remote town in Chile--Arica--in 1968 (and that he had been doing some kind of teaching as early as the mid-sixties in Santiago). In 1970, about fifty Americans, including fifteen from Esalen (where Castaneda was also a bit of a fixture for awhile, by the way), stayed with him for nine months. After that he decided to move "the work" to the U.S., opening centers in New York, L.A. and San Francisco.
A little more background on Ichazo: According to an official-sounding biographical squib in the book, Ichazo "trained in the martial arts while still a boy [growing up in Bolivia and Peru], and experienced psychotropic drugs and shamanism through contact with the Indians of the Andes [supposedly being given ayahuasca after getting involved with some curanderos when he was 13]. He was instructed in Zen, Sufism, the Kaballah, and Gurdjieffian cosmology by masters in Latin America. He then traveled widely in the East to do advanced work in martial arts, learn the higher yogas, and study Buddhism, Confucianism, alchemy, and the I Ching. This list leaves out his extensive study of science and physiology--he was, for example, assisting in the dissection of cadavers at a La Paz medical school at the age of twelve--and the wide range of his readings in philosophy and literature."
When asked how he could have absorbed so many complex disciplines in a relatively short time, Ichazo "explains": "I got trained to a very fast and scientific way of seeing things and just taking the bones out of them. That was how I have studied all my life. It is like learning languages. The first is very difficult to learn. The second one is easier. If you know four, any language is easy. Once you have eight, it's like you jump. In Arica study we say that you jump the MMP (the material manifestation point). It's so easy. Another thing was that from the very beginning in the Orient, I was recognized as a man who as achieved what's called the satori condition. So from the beginning, I was respected differently. I was not treated as a disciple--never--not even by those who were very high in the realization."
http://www.sustainedaction.org/Explorat ... taneda.htm
‘Before beginning The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky and his wife, Valerie, went a week without sleep under the direction of a Japanese Zen master. Then they took the Arica training developed by Oscar Ichazo. The main actors for The Holy Mountain (among whom Jodorowsky had hoped to include John Lennon) were required to take three months of Arica training, after which they spent a month living communally in Jodorowsky’s home. Only then, in the spring of 1972, was the film ready to start shooting.
Budgeted at $750,000, The Holy Mountain was filmed entirely in Mexico. As with El Topo, the scenes were shot in consecutive order. Jodorowsky, his hair dyed platinum blond and bound back in a long braid, starred as well as directed. The cast and crew seemed inspired by a mystical sense of purpose. “You know, I think this is the most important thing going on in the world today,” one bearded production assistant told the Rolling Stone reporter who visited the set. “At least, it’s the most far out.” Ichazo frequently dropped in on the shooting and two Arica group leaders were assigned to the project, standing by to provide any necessary “Mongolian massages” with a wooden spoon. Later, Jodorowsky soured on Arica. “You want me to tell you about Oscar?” he asked a Vilage Voice journalist after The Holy Mountain’s lone Los Angeles showing, “I will tell you.” He comes to me in Mexico. “We will make a great movie together,” says Oscar. He will train me, he will train my actors. You want to know of what his training consists? Oscar’s idea of training is two days in a motel room with me taking L.S.D. I want you to know I don’t need Oscar to take L.S.D. in a motel room, I do that plenty enough on my own….Oscar Is the continuation of Gurdjieff, but so what? What is the problem with these damn gurus is they want to be immortal, to have the life of God. I am an anarchist mystic. Good for Buddha to be Buddha, not for me...
http://www.hotweird.com/jodorowsky/hoberman.html
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