There is no other 1960s intellectual figure whom Timothy Leary came to admire more than Marshall McLuhan. He considered McLuhan’s famous statement – “The medium is the message” — the most important cultural insight of the ‘60s, a decade saturated with insightful and lasting one-liners, some of the most famous coming from Leary’s own brain. Leary has even credited the world’s foremost media theorist with giving him the pep talk that resulted in his own famous mantra: “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.”
In 1964, when LSD was fast becoming a national issue on a trajectory that eventually made it the most vilified drug of the decade, McLuhan’s treatise Understanding Media became (alongside The Tibetan Book of the Dead) the latest roadmap for Leary’s positioning on the subject that had increasingly preoccupied him since he and Richard Alpert had been forced out of Harvard, where they had been doing groundbreaking research on psilocybin, LSD and DMT during the early 1960s.–http://boingboing.net/2014/06/03/timothy-leary-and-marshall-mcl.html
Category: Timothy Leary
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Starseed Transmissions intersection point: July 23
Starseed Transmission intersection point
The following are some notes i made while revisiting the RAW high weirdness around the date July 23, 1973, and some of the influences and experiments he mixed together during those weeks.
EXHIBITS
EXHIBIT: Crowley book 4.
“It is impossible to lay down precise rules by which a man may attain to the knowledge and conversation of His Holy Guardian Angel; for that is the particular secret of each one of us; a secret not to be told or even divined by any other, whatever his grade. It is the Holy of Holies, whereof each man is his own High Priest, and none knoweth the Name of his brother’s God, or the Rite that invokes Him.–One star in sight, Book 4.
EXHIBIT: Starseed
“Kohoutek will have a pale blue and yellow tail stretching out for somewhere between 75,000,000 and 100,000,000 miles — the yellow portions of it in the shape of a scimitar. It will first be seen by the naked eye in mid-November and will look dull. But since it will be approaching the Sun at 250,000,000 miles an hour, it will brighten and from mid-December to Dec. 28 the peoples of the world will have the finest Christmas star ever.”
How about that, Chump? Do you still believe everything out there “just happened by accident.”
—From a “memo to a friend who is an atheist” in Bob Considine’s September 16 column in the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle. The quoted paragraph is from a release by the American Museum, Hayden Planetarium.–http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/starseed/starseed.shtmlEXHIBIT: SUN RA
Composer, keyboardist and bandleader Sun Ra’s intimate connection with the cosmos is well documented, but it was rare that Ra was given cause for real celestial celebration. That opportunity did come in 1973 however, when Ra and his orchestra played a show in celebration of Kohoutek, a comet whose sighting was billed as the “Comet of the Century.” Though the comet was ultimately a visual disappointment, the concert was an aural success; the Arkestra is in a loose and comfortable realm on Concert for the Comet Kohoutek, whose release only came in the early ’90s before being reissued.–http://www.allaboutjazz.com/concert-for-the-comet-kohoutek-sun-ra-esp-disk-review-by-henry-smith.php#.U4ZioCgUpwFEXHIBIT: Enochian
Enochian magic forms the backbone of both the Crowley and Golden Dawn systems of magic. Latest theories include that John Dee knew of the Slavonic Book of the Secrets of Enoch, as well as the Ethiopic Book of Enoch. Many individual magicians or very small groups prefer Enochian magic to other forms as the ceremonial scale required is smaller than needed for Masonic style ritual work. On the other hand, elaborate equipment is required to perform Enochian magic properly, including correct copies of the various Tablets and diagrams, and other apparatus (see “Enochian Temple Furniture” above).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magicEXHIBIT: LILLY
Note that when Lilly writes, “To transcend one’s limiting set, one establishes an open-ended set of beliefs about the unknown,” he doesn’t give any indication of what those open-ended beliefs should be. That’s all up to you. I also find it significant that he suggests a “set of beliefs” rather than “a belief” about the unknown.
I remember Lee Perry, of the Samadhi Tank Company, telling me that John told them when giving orientations to first time users of the floatation tank to take extreme care to NOT give them any kind of programming or suggestions about HOW to use the tank, what to do or expect in there.– http://oz-mix.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/beliefs-unlimited.htmlEXHIBIT: Beliefs Unlimited
“This exercise is useful when one attempts to move beyond one’s current belief structures. Record the the following in a soothing and authoritative manner five times into a tape recorder.
(start of belief unlimited tape)
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true within certain limits, to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are beliefs to be transcended.
Hidden from one’s self is a covert set of beliefs that control one’s thinking, one’s actions, and one’s feeling.
The covert set of hidden beliefs is the limiting set of beliefs to be transcended.
To transcend one’s limiting set, one establishes an open ended set of beliefs about the unknown.
The unknown exists in one’s goals for changing one’s self, in the means for changing, in the use of others for the change, in one’s capacity to change, in one’s orientation towards change, in one’s elimination of hindrances to change, in one’s assimilation of the aids to change, in one’s use of the impulse to change, in one’s need for changing, in the possibilities of change, in the form of change itself, and in the substance of change and of changing.
There are unknowns in my goals towards changing.There are unknowns in my means of changing. There are unknowns in my relations with others in changing. There are unknowns in my capacity for changing. There are unknowns in my orientation towards changing. There are unknowns in my assimilation of changes. There are unknowns in my needs for changing. There are unknowns in my possibilities of me changing. There are unknowns in the forms into which changing will put me. There are unknowns in the substance of the changes that I will undergo, in my substance after changes.
My disbelief in all these unknowns is a limiting belief, preventing my transcending my limits. My disbelief in all these unknowns is a belief, a limiting belief, preventing my transcending my limits.
By allowing, there are no limits; no limits to thinking, no limits to feeling, no limits to movement. By allowing, there are no limits. There are no limits to thinking, no limits to feeling, no limits to movement.
That which is not allowed is forbidden. That which is allowed exists. In allowing no limits, there are no limits. That which is forbidden is not allowed. That which is not allowed forbidden. That which exists is allowed. That which is allowed, exists. In allowing no limits, there are no limits. That which is not allowed is forbidden. That which is forbidden is not allowed. That which is allowed, exists. That which exists is allowed. To allow no limits, there are no limits. No limits allowed, no limits exist.
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. In the province of the mind there are no limits. In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. There are no limits.
(end of Belief Unlimited tape)
(from The centre of the cyclone an autobiography of inner space by John C. Lilly,M.D.)
When listening to the tape, lie in a comfortable position on the floor with the lights very dim and just allow the words and meaning enter you without any resistance. DO IT SOON, DO IT REGULARLY.
http://metaprogrammers.tribe.net/thread/62170597-3051-4625-b925-8068b67a5671EXHIBIT: RAW GUARDIAN LSD LILLY ANGEL ZEN
Robert Anton Wilson shares his thoughts about the experience of what seems like contact of a profound nature with some kind of external intelligence. His experience began after taking LSD and listening to a tape recording of John Lilly’s Beliefs Unlimited, followed by Aleister Crowley’s Liber Samekh, which is a version of the Bornless Ritual used to invoke the Holy Guardian Angel. Wilson followed this initial experiment with the performance of additional rituals and sex magick, also including the previously mentioned tape recordings, but without the LSD.“On June 6, 1973, the Neurologician took a programmed trip on something an underground Alchemist told him was LSD. The program was in two parts, basically: I remained in a dark room, eyes closed, lying on a bed, during most of it. Part one was the playing back, on a tape recorder, of Dr. John Lilly’s “Beliefs Unlimited” hypnosis-tape; this was repeated several times during the first three hours of the experiment. During hours 4 to 5, a tape of Aleister Crowley’s Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel was played.
…
The next day, and in the following weeks, my yoga meditations were vastly enriched, and I occasionally went for days on end conscious of the two minds thinking, my mind and the “hornless” Mind, or, as Suzuki Roshi used to say, Little Mind and Big Mind.
On July 22, 1973-six weeks after the trip-the Wizard was ready to try again, without the supposed LSD.
This time, I used the Lilly tape and the Crowley invocation again, without drugs, but with prolonged and holy rituals or Tantric sex-trance involving the cooperation of the Most Beautiful Woman in the Galaxy.
(pg.83-86 Cosmic Trigger)
http://www.blastedtower.com/robert-anton-wilson-on-conversation-with-the-holy-guardian-angel/
Relevant link:
A biography of Suzuki, titled Crooked Cucumber, was written by David Chadwick in 1999. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunryu_Suzuki
Relevant link:
http://www.erowid.org/entheogens/writings/entheogens_writing1.shtmlEXHIBIT: Timothy Leary on Starseed
“Einstein’s equations. Nuclear energy. The revelation of DNA code as literally a code to be deciphered. Neurological imprinting. Anti-matter. Mankind clings to the old myths, avoiding the new truths. It happened before.
“Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Giordano Bruno aroused the groggy world, asking it to fling its mind far beyond the planets. He speculated that the cosmos extended to infinity.
“This in itself was not so shocking; but Bruno went considerably further—he postulated a multiplicity of world: suns and planets with life, unseen companions for the race of man. He toyed with man’s conception of himself; for this, and for magical claims and political entanglements, he was burned in 1600.” The Discovery of Our Galaxy, Charles Whitney.
http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/starseed/starseed.shtmlEXHIBIT: Liber Samekh
“The Word that goeth from
(A) Free Breath
(U) through Willed Breath
(M) and stopped Breath
(GN) to Continuous Breath,
thus symbolizing the whole course of spiritual life. A is the formless Zero; U is the six-fold solar sound of physical life, the triangle of Soul being entwined with that of Body; M is the silence of “death”; GN is the nasal sound of generation and knowledge.
—http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/crowley/liber/libers/liber800a.pdfbeing the Ritual employed by the Beast 666 for the Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel during the Semester of His performance of the Operation of the Sacred Magick of ABRAMELIN THE MAGE.
http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib800.htmlEXHIBIT: Guardian Angel
The Bornless Rite takes about half an hour to perform start to finish, and it involves a certain amount of visualisation, statements of intent, and a whole lot of resonating ‘barbarous names’ (i.e. words which don’t mean anything but which help you focus or meditate on the energy you are trying to evoke). If you want to read Crowley’s text about how to go about the rite you can read it here. However, as with most text by Crowley it isn’t always as clear as it might be.
Performing it the first time I wasn’t terribly competent – there’s a lot going on, a lot to remember, and frankly barbarous names are a pain in the backside. Just exactly how are you supposed to pronounce AR-O-GO-GO-RU-ABRAO without feeling slightly self conscious? But it rapidly became apparent there was something to this – if the goal of a magickal ritual is to shift the consciousness of the magickian, then this worked a treat. By the end of it I felt like I was buzzing with energy, and I did, indeed, feel a certain ‘divine authority’ had come upon me. Cool, I thought, this is something to do again.
The history of the Bornless rite is pretty interesting. First of all, the title seems to be a mistranslation – it should be the Headless Rite. But that sounds a lot less cool. There’s an argument to suggest it means head as in the beginning or start, therefore headless means without beginning, and Bornless might be a reasonable parallel for that concept.
http://www.weirdshitnotbullshit.com/getting-to-know-your-holy-guardian-angel-the-bornless-riteliber-samekh/Exhibit: from wikipedia: July 23, 1973 (Monday)
A member of the Japanese Red Army and four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijack Japan Air Lines Flight 404, a Boeing 747-246B with 140 other people on board, shortly after it takes off from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the Netherlands for a flight to Anchorage, Alaska, en route a final destination of Tokyo International Airport, Tokyo, Japan. One of the PFLP members is killed when her hand grenade explodes during the hijacking, also injuring the airliner’s chief purser. The surviving hijackers force the plane to fly to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates; after a long stay there, they force it to fly to Damascus, Syria, and Benghazi, Libya, where they release the passengers and crew 89 hours after the hijacking began and blow up the airliner.
Ozark Air Lines Flight 809, a Fairchild Hiller FH-227, encounters windshear in a thunderstorm and crashes at Normandy, Missouri, while on approach to land at St. Louis International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, killing 38 of the 44 people on board.
The Avianca Building in Bogotá, Colombia, suffers a serious fire.
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1973#July_23.2C_1973_.28Monday.29Exhibit 2: From wikipedia:
1829 – In the United States, William Austin Burt patents the typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_23EXHIBIT: Book 4, One star in sight.
Liber 185 need not be quoted at length. It is needful only to say that the Aspirant is trained systematically and comprehensively in the various technical practices which form the basis of Our Work. One may become expert in any or all of these without necessarily making any real progress, just as a man might be first-rate at grammar, syntax, and prosody without being able to write a single line of good poetry, although the greatest poet in soul is unable to express himself without the aid of those three elements of literary composition. —http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/app2.htmlEXHIBIT: Secret Chiefs
Several 19th and 20th century occultists claimed to belong to or to have contacted these Secret Chiefs and made these communications known to others, including H.P. Blavatsky (who called them the “Tibetan Masters” or Mahatmas), C.W. Leadbeater and Alice A. Bailey (who called them Masters of the Ancient Wisdom), Guy Ballard and Elizabeth Clare Prophet (who called them Ascended Masters), Aleister Crowley (who used the term to refer to members of the upper three grades of his order, A∴A∴ ), Dion Fortune (who called them the “esoteric order”), and Max Heindel (who called them the “Elder Brothers”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ChiefsThe Enochian Calls or Keys (the angels refer to them by both titles) are 48 spirit evocations delivered to Dee and Kelley in the Enochian language and then translated into English word for word by the angels. The overt purpose of the Keys, the angels declared, was to enable Dee to establish ritual communication with the spirits of the 30 Aethers or Airs who rule over the tutelary spirits of the nations of the earth. There are actually 49 Keys, but the first, the angels said, is too sacred and mysterious to be voiced. The first eighteen explicit Keys are completely different in their wording; the last 30 are similar save for the name of the Aether inserted in the first line. The angel Raphael declares the expressed purpose the Keys to Dee: —http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bb/bluebook418.htm
Pull my ring:
Back in the mid to late 1990’s while reading the first ‘Cosmic Trigger’ by RAW, i was struck by a perceived synchronicity when reading the section about Dr Timothy Leary and the starseed transmissions, due to my recent encounter with Sun Ra and the concert for comet Kahoutek, which is the same comet that Dr Timothy Leary mentions in his starseed transmissions, as the cosmic trigger, in some sense a literal cosmic trigger from the skies, perhaps you could say. I would say, and i picked up on this synchronicity and made an early association between, RAW synchronicity cluster fucks from his book Cosmic Trigger,and my own feelings about special kinds of free jazz, out there experimental jazz, the later works of Coltrane, the strange worlds of Sun Ra, and of course my own experiments with altered states of awareness, a little Yoga, some Magick and strange drugs, mostly of the organic and local variety.
Almost 20 years ago i turned on to what was happening and within only a few short years i was lucky to be immersed in channeling interests based around RAW and his tribes that unfold from his books. A memorable moment that tipped me into a slightly more receptive state to mystical happenings, or strange synchronicity, was when the tripper was reading the book ‘Design for Dying’ by Dr Timothy Leary and R.U Sirius (Ken Goffman), and listening to to ‘the bottle’ by Gil Scot Heron, when the music and text synced up together upon the word ‘John Coltrane’, Leary was using his music as a metaphor to describe the sub-atomic world of quantum mechanics, clouds of probabilities.
I like the idea of a constellation’ of harmonic vibrations, cohering to the individual mind-body conduit making it all happen, with luck on behalf of all the tribe, the global epic, in this case the music of John Coltrane and/or Sun Ra. ‘Cosmic’ in the best sense of that word. And, it was comet Kahoutek that first struck me with a strong enough synchronicity to break me out from my conditioned rigid reality constructs into a new world, with my own spirit, off and out billions of light years away, entering chapel penniless.
New ideas flew out from my head and a few others around me, and a rising tide of terrible popular assimilation’s and degradations of everything and anything that could be purchased, thanks, in the most part to the Thatcher/Reagan invasion, and move toward an unrestricted global finance capitalism, a true monster that swallowed up anything original, churning out cheap imitations and co-opting the signals, signs, music and culture of rebellion to simply extend the universal brands. Enough moaning.
Getting back to today, i just returned from a Sun Ra centennial celebration concert with the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen, held at the Barbican theater. I was fortunate to be the guest of poet John Sinclair, who performed with the Ra esque, out jazz cats Flounder Effect, reading a freshly composed ode to Sun Ra, and introducing the Arkestra itself. I met Marshall after the show briefly, shook his hand, said ‘beautiful, thankyou’ and saw his friendly spirited greetings and loving vibes for John.
The plot thickens a little more when you consider that John Sinclair introduced me to the great Michael Ray (Galactic tone scientist) and driving force of the Sun Ra Arkestra and formations since 1978. Michael kindly managed to slip into the studio in Amsterdam while visiting with Kool and the Gang, and incredibly improvise a special language for trumpet, to fit snug with Johns 23 poems all taken from his great work in verse dedicated to Thelonious Monk: I mean you.
I had previously seen Michael Ray in the context of his Kosmic Krewe when living in new Orleans 2004, and his band often criss-crossed with the touring band ‘Garaj Mahal’ who i was fortunate to ‘jam’ with between 2000-2005 across the U.S. I have a fond memory of seeing his band at the Blue Nile in 2004 at the rather strange time of 2.00 P.M on a mid-week afternoon. The new language of responsive improvisation struck me at that gig, the outness of some parts, and then leading into loverly swinging epic masterpieces.
That was a decade ago, today, i sit at the kitchen table with John Sinclair, Tuesday 3rd June, 2014. Only a few hours ago John recorded his new poem dedicated to Sun Ra here in Blackheath studios, London, thanks to Caleb Selah. Who knows what will conjure itself up from this collaboration, but it will be certain to lift a few Whigs and air out a few earlugs, not least illuminate with the condensed special language of poetry deployed by John Sinclair.
The other piece to this puzzle, and perhaps the main driving force that led me to write this blog-post, whathaveyou, is my recent role as musical director for the ‘Cosmic Trigger’ stage play.Compiled by Steve Fly
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The New Science of Psychedelics by David Jay Brown.
The New Science of Psychedelics by David Jay Brown.
Review by Steve ‘fly agaric 23’ Pratt.“Cosmic Trigger is where I first encountered controversial psychologist Timothy Leary’s eight-circuit model of the brain and psychiatric researcher John Lilly’s radical ideas about programming the brain as though it were a computer. These models became two of the primary maps that I have used to navigate my psychedelic experiences, and Leary introduced me to many other important ideas, which we’ll be discussing in more detail later in the book. What’s most amazing for me is that later in my life, years after I read Wilson and Leary’s work, I was fortunate enough to become good friends with these two incredible gentlemen, and they both played an integral role in my work.–David Jay Brown.
In his latest book, David Jay Brown ignites the neural synapses and builds a web of psychedelic intel. Leaking some of the most scrumptous mind spray and zesty juices from the psychedelic ‘happy’ mutants, the book oozes with goo and liquids beyond description. I found buckets of crystallized optimism concerning the future of psychedelic research and shared livingry. DJB on the cuts and on beat. To paraphrase Bob. Hurray for the optimists!
Brown presents the reader slices from an array psychedelic scientist/gangsters/mavericks, who stick up the reader with surprise noises, snatching them hostage with strangely delicious ideas, tying them up with super-guts and silly-string while demanding their ransom be paid in full, the price of your mindscrape. A cooler-roaster of a ride, the greatest hits of Psychedelic Science future bound. An refreshingly honest series of life adventures, way out there and back here with the sentences to make his experience true enough.
I would like to simply reproduce a small section of the book, and let Brown entice you: “In the book I quote from my interviews with luminaries such as Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Garcia, Ram Dass, Noam Chomsky, George Carlin, Deepak Chopra, Ray Kurzweil, Andrew Weil, Jack Kevorkian, Edgar Mitchell, Albert Hofmann, Stanislav Grof, Joan Halifax, Alex, Grey, H. R. Giger, Simon Posford, and Rupert Sheldrake. Some of the varied topics explored in the book include the interface between science and spirituality, lucid dreaming, time travel, morphic field theory, alternative science, optimal health, what happens to consciousness after death, encounters with nonhuman beings, the future evolution of our species, and how psychedelics affect creativity.”
A delight to read for anyone who follows Dr Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary, Brown performs by example his reiteration of the founding principles of psychedelic science and consciousness studies, roughly ‘Think for yourself, and question everything, especially authority”.
Here are gathered great magicians of consciousness metaphor and living language, an embodiment of the scholarly compassionate ones IMHO, contextualized by somebody who knew them and their works well, and can hump the torch of a new synthesis in 2013. Cheers David.
The New Science of Psychedelics and Giambattista Vico.
‘The human mind is naturally inclined by the senses to see itself externally in the body, and only with great difficulty does it come to understand itself by means of reflection. This axiom gives us the universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to signify the institutions of the mind and spirit.—Giambattista Vico, Science Nuova, The Elements.
David Jay Brown, produced a kind of ‘tale of the tribe’ in blending his own experiences with insights gained from those great thinkers around him, and placing them in recent historical context with a particular focus on the psychedelic sciences. David J. Brown, I am very pleased to tell you, seems a happy mutant of the Robert Anton Wilson tribe, and pays particular homage to RAW who permeates the entire text IMHO. So, I dedicate this review to some expanded RAW tentacles.
The Italian Hermetic philosopher Giambattista Vico, outlined a New Science for the changing landscape of humanity, thought, history and language taking place in Europe during the Renaissance. I get the impression that Brown is rubbing up on Vico by using the term ‘New Science’ in his book ‘The New Science of Psychedelics’ and indeed, the sudden explosion of psychedelics and the decentralized philosophy of ‘Psychedelic Science’ across the planet, heralds the possibility of a new beginning (bigending?) which brings and slings many challenges and hurdles and roundabouts, to leap over and swing with, together, with the promise of a cohesive tolerant and pluralistic humanity (tribe) utilizing the planets pharmacopeia for fun and for profit.Why not?While reading the book, I started trying to reduce some of the recurring themes into general terms and simplified ideas, as stoners often do…searching for short slogans that encapsulate what I view as the most important messages.Take for example, the subheading of the book: At the NEXUS of Culture, Consciousness and Spirituality. This NEXUS: Origin: 1655–65; (Latin nexus, a binding, joining, fastening, equivalent to nect ( ere ) to bind, fasten…) yes, precisely.
This vortex of connectivity and links reflect my own study of a particular NEXUS of culture, consciousness and spirituality, as defined by Dr Robert Anton Wilson: The Tale of The Tribe. Interestingly to me, RAW and his ideas permeate this book in almost every paragraph, to my RAW biased perceptions but of course, Brown and RAW were good friends for over 17 years and fellow researchers in the field so in some sense this book ‘TNSOP’ tells us much about the tribe (all around the world humanity), and includes wisdom from Dr Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsburg, both of whom were specifically familiar with the tricky concept as it pertains to Ezra Pound, Marshall McLuhan, James Joyce: a modern verse epic including history and more. Plus, Brown met and studied the works of Buckminster Fuller closely, who is another node within RAWs wheel of historical hermetically charged genii.
Joyce is widely noted as being the most famous interpreter of Vico, and for me RAW is in direct line after Joyce as expanding some of Vico’s ideas into formulations and sentences that cut right into the 20/21st century, and, in this instance, illustrate how ahead of his time Vico and The New Science were in their formulations, not forgetting how liberty, humanity, tolerance and equality tend to ooze out, helping us to solve many problems today.
“What Vico is here drawing attention to is the sheer unhistorical character of many accouts of the past. They are lacking what Sir Isaiah Berlin has called ‘historical perspective’, i.e. any recognition that at different times in the past men’s mental and intellectual abilities have varied widely and that the sorts of knowledge that could be formulated and used I one age could not be formulated and used in another.” Leon Pompa, Vico: A study of the new science.
Vico is just one character among a dozen that RAW pinpoints as a major node in his Tale of the tribe Nexus. I hope that the psychedelic science researchers and those engaged in the new emergent approaches to the big questions will reconsider RAW and ‘The Tale of The Tribe’ for guidance and some rare hermetically charged historical perspective, lovingly balanced and deployed like a gang of sexy loving Ninjas.
One example of TTOTT condensed wisdom is taken from Allen Ginsberg and also quoted in a recent review of Davis Jay Brown’s book. This quote presents insight into the decentralized philosophy of Giordano Bruno (and Vico), with overtones of Nietzsche, Joyce, Pound and McLuhan, with whom which Robert Anton Wilson also liked to equate global decentralized internet, by bend and swerve of TTOTT. We may also reconsider the lofty aims of Bruno and Vico in unifying and making peace between religions, OMG, by way of better communication and translation of ideas and with balanced humanitarian value systems.
“No, no, no, absolutely not. None of that bullshit! No Gaia hypothesis. No theism need sneak in here. No monotheistic hallucinations needed in this. Not another fascist central authority . . . You’ve got this one big thing. Who says it’s got to be one? Why does everything have to be one? I think there’s no such thing as one—only many eyes looking out in all directions. The center is everywhere, not in any one spot. Does it have to be one organism, in the sense of one brain, or one consciousness? The tendency is to sentimentalize this idea into another godhead and to reinaugurate the whole Judeo-Christian-Islamic mind trap.–Allen Ginsburg, in conversation with David Jay Brown.
The decentralized philosophy that runs, with an emerald hue through the current of ‘Hermetic philosophy’ from Ficino to Bruno and Vico (maybe the last great Hermetic Philosopher) up to the present cypher-punks incarnations, seem to me, to have related principles in physics, cosmology, psychology and social philosophy. Sure. And, I might add that i think that the psychedelic sciences which may include, neuro-physics, psycho-pharmacology, botany, Anthropology, linguistics, magick, painting, MUSIC…which are also in resonance with the Hermetic principles make sense, cohere with a snuggy fit, when viewed with a decentralized pluralistic set of models, flushing the centrist reductionist atomic singular conclusion, or the empirical tyrannical certainty of authority, down the tube. What is the relationship between the individual and the state?
“The decisive sort of proof in our science is therefore this: that, once these institutions have been established by divine providence, the course of the institutions of the nations had to be, must now be, and will have to be, such as our Science demonstrates, even if infinite worlds were born from time to time through eternity, which is certainly not the case.
Our science therefore comes to demonstrate at the time an ideal eternal history traversed in time by the history of every nation in its rise, development, maturity, decline and fall. Indeed we make bold to affirm that he who meditates this Science makes it for himself by that proof it had, has and will have to be. For the first indubitable principle posited above is that this world of nations has certainly been made by man and its guise must therefore be found within the modifications of our own human mind.”—Giambattista Vico, Scienza Nuova. P 344.James Joyce dazzles with his customized ‘Hermetic principles’ at work in his great work of cypher-punk science fiction: Finnegans Wake, and it is here. with some help from Dr Wilson that we can see the holographic principle emerging as a connecting principle between Hermetically inclined innovators, and I would add psychedelic scientists of the 21st century. Nurosiphpuqz. Mutants, the others.
Today, with the advanced state of alchemical tools both organic and software based, anything and everything our psychedelic forefathers and mothers imagined is at our fingertips, at least temporarily, in alternate virtual spaces. However, the goal of preserving the biosphere and providing all humans with an equal footing in life seems in dire need of help, and some new ideas and new directions and maps. Maybe The New Science of Psychedelics, as a broader movement can ignite the sort of brave imagination required to build our psychedelic peace-planet, here, right Facebooking now. I hold out the same species of hope with regards to the ideas and works of Robert Anton Wilson, and specifically his ‘the tale of the tribe’, and by osmosis of David Jay Brown, who reconnected some of these ideas into a new 2013 Nexus. Nice one.
Words simply cannot describe what a thrilling experience this was for me! In 1989, I moved to Los Angeles, where Bob and his wife, Arlen, were living at the time, and I became good friends with them. I dedicated my book Virus: The Alien Strain to Arlen. I began going to regular weekly gatherings at Bob and Arlen’s home, where a small group would read and discuss mind-expanding ideas. We read virtually everything that James Joyce had written, Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, each other’s writings, and Bob’s books. We watched Orson Welles’ films and talked about quantum physics and primate politics.–David Jay Brown.
Steven ‘fly agaric 23’ Pratt.
Amsterdam.
http://ettt.wikispaces.com/ (My ‘tale of the tribe’ wikispace) -
Mavericks of the Mind Live! Review by Fly
Mavericks of the Mind Live! by David Jay Brown & Rebecca McClen Novick.
By Steven ‘fly agaric 23’ Pratt.
Amsterdam. March 2, 2013.David Jay Brown quickly rewarded me for my response to a post he made on Facebook, proposing friends of his–read and review–advance copies of his new book ‘Mavericks of the Mind Live!’ I have spent the last week dipping in and out of the dialogues, sampling their taste, considering how to weigh them, and by what metric?
“Seems to me like everyone should have an isolation tank and get free of all this! This is my addition to technology, the isolation tank.—Dr John Lilly
Each of the panel members do not always agree, which to me shows the tolerance and good will of the participants and the tricky terrain they are exploring together. David and Rebecca launch the panel into free flowing feedback based on their provocative questions that include psychedelics, theology, law, anarchy and death. For me, the contributions by Dr Wilson in particular, illustrate how well human consciousness can formulate meaningful answers, on the fly, including both personal experience and published sources, with the noticeable effect of speaking like he writes: artfully. A great accomplishment for a social scientific philosopher and master satirist, me’ thinks. I should add that the book is worth purchasing and reading for the RAW and Timothy Leary contributions alone.
“Psychedelics just accentuated what I was beginning to develop out of mathematics and physics–a sense of the order.– Dr Robert Anton Wilson.
The wisdom from the speakers, together with the good timing of the conferences that were right on the tip of the internet information explosion (1993-94), set an historical intersection point, well worth of reconsideration. Without the present day reference points of Google, Facebook, and Twitter each of the speakers navigate somewhat familiar pathways into discussion relevant to our current hyper-connected social networks, search engines and intelligent predictive technology. Also how interpersonal relations, and everyday social life changes during consciousness shifts. These Mavericks are invoking the future (1993-2013) and beyond with good cheer and a no-bullshit attitude.
“We can literally flash millions and billions of ideas to each other, and change and change, and change and add. William Gibson talked about the global atmosphere. You can tap into it and still be as personal and intimate as you want with those that you want to communicate with that way.–Dr Timothy Leary.
Due to exulted status of these Maverick futurists, in particular Dr Robert Anton Wilson, Dr Timothy Lear, Dr John Lilly, Dr Nick Herbert and Dr Ralph Abraham, the trajectories they set as a tribe together in these dialogues, stand testimony to the great consciousness revolutions that flared during the 1960’s, and the technological innovations & methodologies they spawned, plus, lots of sex, drugs, rock and roll and yoga in the streets. Amen!
“When nobody is complaining that they’re being hurt, that’s what I consider being a victimless crime. And the difference is not only that I can’t see any reason that a victimless crime should be against the law, but the only way you can enforce laws against victimless crimes is setting up a totalitarian state–because, to return to my example, if I’m getting hit over the head I’m going to go complain. But if three people are smoking pot in the next room and listening to New Age music, nobody is going to complain about that, because we don’t even know about it–so there’s no victim. The only way you can find out how many people in Santa Cruz are smoking pot and listening to New Age music tonight is by spying on the citizenry. – Dr Robert Anton Wilson.
http://www.amazon.ca/Mavericks-Roundtable-Discussions-Kleefeld-ebook/dp/B00BE86ZRO
Steven James Pratt a.k.a Fly Agaric 23.
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Outline for a short film/animation/story?
Raising Mycelium
Terence Mckenna awakens from a long sleep, an extraterrestrial mycelim strain enters his corpse and reanimates him.
T starts a journey across california to sprinkle the magical mycelium onto the ashes and corpses of Timothy Leary, Ken Kessey, Robert Anton Wilson and Bill Hicks.
Together, the group travel across the USA to Washington in a yellow bus, taking on the presidential race, the war on some drugs, immortalists, scientologists and fundamentalists of all denominations under the sun.
Upon reaching Washington the group of countercultural zombies stage a psychedelic rock concert. Soon drawing the attention of government officials, the zombies have a stand off with the police, arguing their case on human rights, zombie banks, the war on some drugs, and the death of satire.
The group retires to a new Millbrook in 2013, so developing Artificial General Intelligence and a new open source school for hopen learning, O’pen research. A radiodio show, open-circuit TV, broadercasting services, alive performance space, study area squared, Kitchen Itza, Mu-music rooms.
–Steven ‘fly agaric 23’ Pratt.
Maybelogic
Dr Marshmallow Cubicle
Radio Free Amsterdam
Temple Dragon Band
Garaj Mahal
Synthesis2012 -
RATIONAL SCALE FOR HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS?
So called “Rational scale to access the harm of (some) drugs”
Dr. John Lilly worked on creating a rational-scale to help good scientific research into drug induced states of consciousness, and other means of attaining altered-states of consciousness. Dr. Timothy Leary also worked his entire life to try to establish a RATIONAL-SCALE to help research into the last frontier of inner-space, consciousness. His results include the 8 Dimensional Model of consciousness, co-created and refined with Dr. Robert Anton Wilson.
Although the following graph-scale (tool) for scientific study into the harm of drugs and the potential for misuse, its my feeling that maybe even David Nutt – the UK’s disgraced independent drug researcher – seems stale, when compared with the likes of Lilly, Wilson and Leary who, I think, are the big three tenors of scientific research and experimental feedback upon altered states, and the impact on individuals and society of neurological relativism.Three texts I would present as examples of superior research and communication concerning “consciousness research” and writing and thinking about “drugs”, are:
Programming and Metaprogramming the Human-Bio Computer by John Lilly M.D
Sex, Drugs And Magik by Dr. Robert Anton Wilson
The Politics of Ecstasy by Dr. Timothy Leary.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ag56qhrn-_0C&lpg=PP1&dq=politics%20of%20ecstasy&pg=PP1&output=embed“
Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuseProf. David Nutt FMedSci a Corresponding Author Email Address, Leslie A King PhD b, William Saulsbury MA c, Prof Colin Blakemore FRS d e
Summary
Drug misuse and abuse are major health problems. Harmful drugs are regulated according to classification systems that purport to relate to the harms and risks of each drug. However, the methodology and processes underlying classification systems are generally neither specified nor transparent, which reduces confidence in their accuracy and undermines health education messages. We developed and explored the feasibility of the use of a nine-category matrix of harm, with an expert delphic procedure, to assess the harms of a range of illicit drugs in an evidence-based fashion. We also included five legal drugs of misuse (alcohol, khat, solvents, alkyl nitrites, and tobacco) and one that has since been classified (ketamine) for reference. The process proved practicable, and yielded roughly similar scores and rankings of drug harm when used by two separate groups of experts. The ranking of drugs produced by our assessment of harm differed from those used by current regulatory systems. Our methodology offers a systematic framework and process that could be used by national and international regulatory bodies to assess the harm of current and future drugs of abuse. —http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607604644/abstract -
AP is for Apoptosis:
Dr. Robert Anton Wilson produced consistantly optimistic scientific philosophy & Magick! for his whole lifecycle. His optimism and foresight were uncanny in their predictive powers, looking back over the last nine years of the so called – New Millenium i think once more that RAW has the comprehensive approach that makes most sense of our human, technological, spiritual and illuminated and part brain dead condition.
Cosmic Trigger first grabbed me like a pincer clawed beast, and jet packed me off onto some path or other to discovering something else that was new, ideas, puzzles, and the framing of new questions, metaphysical breakdowns and synergetic put-back-togethers. Today, after nearly 15 years reading and re-reading RAW i often feel like i am just scratching the surface. This blog entry is just scratching the surface of one of RAW’s interests and something described within most of his books explicitly, and somewhat – implicitly – within his ideas: human life extension. And Tim Leary’s SMI2LE formula
There are many ways of looking at life extension, many, and it involves a deep seating of oneself in timespace, philosophy and subpeona of disbelief – to even begin to think clearly on the subject. Especially difficult for religiously and scientifically — dogmatic — but i wish to look at just one small part here.
The idea in society of the cure, intelligent cure’s, that work specially for each individual are like the ideas of life extension, put a different way – if preventatives are sufficiently capable of keeping illness at bay then they are in some sense delaying death as cures. Cures for disease and illness seem – for me – a new way of looking at the question, (death & life?).
Usually i think of a pill to just extend your life, but of course, there is nothing to do if you are alive other than prevent death for as long as you wish. New smart pills to prevent illness and disease or kill it before it kills us are now the equivalent of Immortality pills in some sense, depending how you see it.
With so many new breakthroughs in genetics, nano scale technology and intelligent medicine each week now, it seems to me, we have arrived at the time when anything is possible, super bomb to turn us all into salt rocks, or a giant space fun park globe with an ARK of earths life systems set off into space from giant catapults! It is my opinion that within 8 years what we now know to be Cancer and AIDS will be essentially – cured, no longer a cause of death unless you want it to be, along with almost any other disease or illness you can pronounce. Such is the promise of molecular and genetic research underway today around the world. Not to overlook, though, the possibility of new smart – diseases and illnesses developing – maybe even daemons – which would add new challenges and obstacles to all human beings living their happy and more healthy, longer life TOGETHER?
I have my own hunch, (from sitting in front of the computer) a very wild guess about some new research that could lead to some breakthroughs in life extension, something i often feel grossly underqualified to wax lyrical about, but in this case, in fly’s case, the threads weave nicely throughout much of my earlier work so i can show with some PROOF that this is not just some wacky scientific experiment i dreamed up, but something approaching a master thesisnt. The beginnings of a new field of Fly Agaric studies proper, with a focus on HEALING, CURES and helping in the community. Practical shit. Things that up until now my works have overlooked, and reconsidering the life and death of Dr. Wilson i now feel it is high time i started my own scientific enquiry.
–fly agaric 23.
http://stores.lulu.com/flyagaric23
http://fatteningblogsforsnakes.blogspot.com/
http://flyolympic.blogspot.com/
http://wordspore.blogspot.com/
http://tsogblogsphere.blogspot.com/
http://flyagaric2019.blogspot.com/
http://acrillic.blogspot.com/
http://maybelogic.blogspot.com/
http://electronicdrugs.blogspot.com/
http://ataleofatribe.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/flyagaric23
http://www.myspace.com/flyagaric24
http://www.myspace.com/rawmemorial
http://soundcloud.com/flyagaric23
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14660896@N05/
http://djflyagaric23.blogspot.com/ -
D is for Digital Arts: A Tim Leary quote translated.
http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fflyagaric23%2Ffat-boy& FAT BOY by flyagaric23
“Surrealism produced a slick, smooth-plastic fake reality that was later perfected by Sony. In Tokyo i have listened to electronic anthropologists argue that Dali’s graphic “The Persistance of Memory” – featuring melting watches – created modern Japanese culture, which no one can deny is eminently surreal. — Dr. Timothy Leary. CYBERPUNKS CYBERFREEDOM. RONIN PRESS 2008. PG. 115.
DEEP SCRATCH 