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Soul Hunger: the reason of faith, according to Karen Armstrong

2009-11-05T17:42:27Z

www.odemagazine.com

MICHAEL BRUNTON
Ode
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 ISSUE

The reason of faith

Religion isn’t easy, Karen Armstrong says: “You have to practice quite hard, like you do with any art form.”

Modern science knows how to fix a hole in the heart. It can diagnose a hole in the ozone layer and prove the existence of black holes at the edge of the universe.

But when it comes to explaining what's often described as the "God-shaped hole" in our lives, neither quantum physicists nor geneticists nor neuropsychologists appear to quite have the measure of it.

If anything, the rate of scientific advance in recent decades has only served to polarize religious debate. At one extreme is a resurgent atheism—epitomized by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who've both written best-selling books denouncing religious belief—which trusts that this hole, like every hole, will be filled in time by knowledge. At the other extreme is religious fundamentalism—epitomized by political spats over headscarves and creationism—which believes this hole is brimful of scriptural truth. For most of us in between, the hole in the soul gnaws away at our subconscious, like a hunger. And all of us, believers and non-believers alike, rush to fill the void with words.

One way or another, according to Karen Armstrong, "We talk far too much about God these days." Which might sound a bit rich coming from the English author of almost 20 books on religion as well as two memoirs about her becoming—and then unbecoming—a Catholic nun, who has been decked with religious prizes and who regularly lectures the high and mighty of church and state around the world. What's more, according to her new book The Case for God, the things we say when we do talk about religious faith are often "facile," "stupid" or "primitive." Ammunition, perhaps, for Armstrong's critics, of whom she has had her share, ever since her breakthrough book, A History of God, in 1993.

In that and the books that followed, Armstrong has traced the tangled roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, liberally reinterpreted the lives of Muhammad, Buddha and Jesus, and dived headlong into the maelstrom of theological debate around fundamentalism, both before and after 9/11. Some have criticized her idealistic interpretation of the Koran; religious academics berate her for shortcomings of scholarly rigor; atheists dismiss her for refusing to engage in debate on their terms.

Yet Armstrong's consistently eloquent arguments for compassion and commonality as an antidote to Islamophobia and the "clash of civilizations" have struck a chord, particularly in the U.S., where she has addressed both houses of Congress. She's also increasingly in demand on the lecture circuit in countries like Pakistan and Egypt, and is to be found on book stalls in 40 languages around the world. Drawing together the main threads of her previous research, The Case for God is Armstrong's most concise and practical-minded book yet: a historical survey of how rather than what we believe, where we lost the "knack" of religion and what we need to do to get it back.

"A lot of the arguments about religion going on at the moment spring from a rather inept understanding of religious truth," says Armstrong, settling into her theme and a winged easy chair in her early-Georgian home in north London. The furnishings and decoration suggest Jane Austen may have just stepped out of the room. Like Austen, and in a polished English accent, Armstrong is sharp-witted, quick to ridicule nonsense, and a good storyteller. "Our notion changed during the early modern period when we became convinced that the only path to any kind of truth was reason. That works beautifully for science but doesn't work so well for the humanities. Religion is really an art form and a struggle to find value and meaning amid the ghastly tragedy of human life."

Armstrong's The Case for God begins with the cave paintings of Lascaux in the French Dordogne, made some 17,000 years ago—seemingly religious art works in which the hunter assuages his unease at killing his prey through shamanic rituals in honor of the Animal Master. Such myths were born because, Armstrong writes, "As meaning-seeking creatures, men and women fall very easily into despair. They have created religions and works of art to help them find value in their lives, despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary."

From that point on, the religious impulse took the form of creation myths like Tao and Brahman from the East, on through the gods of ancient Greece and eventually the emergence of the world's three main monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—and their founding scriptures. But none of them, says Armstrong, were meant to be taken literally. "The cosmology of the ancient world was telling you about the nature of life here and now. Genesis is not about the origins of life. There were many other creation stories current in Israel at that time and no one was required to believe in that one."

Reason, science and logic—what the Greeks called "logos"—were also evolving as ways of understanding the world, but always in concert, not competition, with the stories—the mythos—they relied on to deal with the mysteries of the human psyche. Pythagoras, for example, a founding father of mathematics and astronomy, sought the geometric truth of the universe from within a religious community dedicated to Apollo and the Muses. He also called himself a philosopher and expected his students to lead an ascetic and monastic kind of life, undergoing rites of purification and silence "in a search," Armstrong writes, "for transcendence and a dedicated, practical lifestyle."

In conversation, Armstrong spins the threads of her research with agile, unhesitating precision, leaping across centuries of scripture, philosophy and theology. She dissects the writings of Denys the Areopagite, the pseudonymous 5th-to-6th-century Christian theologian; explains the roots of Greek words like pistis (faith); pauses to unpick the purpose of Socratic dialogue or the classical atheism of Ludwig Feuerbach, the 19th-century German philosopher and proto-Marxist.

But through all the twists and turns, the notion of transcendence is the one she returns to time and again as the beating heart of all pre-modern theology. "The idea was that when we spoke about God we were speaking of something that lies beyond words," says Armstrong. "People like Thomas Aquinas would say we can't talk about God as a creator because we can only have in our heads the idea of a human creator and that can't apply to God. We can't even say that God exists because our notion of existence is too limited to apply to God. People were instructed to think about this in those terms."

In Armstrong's scheme of things, it was with the dawning of the Age of Reason that the problems started. As philosophers and mathematicians both, Descartes and then Newton well understood that science and religion—logos and mythos—were discrete realms in the search for universal truth. But when the foundation for modern science was laid, the conceptual nature of truth itself began to blur.

"Newton and Descartes started to try and prove that God existed in the same way as they would try and prove something in the laboratory or with their mathematics," says Armstrong. "And when you try and mix science and religion you get bad science and bad religion. The two are doing two different things. ... Science can give you a diagnosis of cancer. It can even cure your disease, but it cannot touch your grief and disappointment, nor can it help you to die well."

Newton seeded not only the idea that God was reducible, says Armstrong, but also that understanding religion would be easy. So easy that by 1900, the German mathematician David Hilbert could confidently assert that precisely 23 problems remained to be solved in order to complete the Newtonian view of the universe. More than a century later, few of us can even comprehend those problems, let alone calculate the answers or grasp the significance of all the things we've learned since. Worse, as our theories about the universe grow ever more abstract, a sense of bewilderment is replacing the sense of transcendence. "It's not easy to talk about transcendence, just as it's not easy to play or listen to a late Beethoven quartet," says Armstrong. "You have to practice quite hard, like you do with any art form. Religion is hard work."

And as with great art, the realization that God defies understanding can be a source of the profoundest joy. For Einstein that sense of the existence of something impenetrable was, as he wrote in a 1930 essay, "the sower of all true art and science" and "the centre of all true religiousness." Armstrong herself calls this experience "the stunned appreciation of an otherness"—a state she says she can occasionally glimpse in the long, silent and solitary hours of study that fuel her writing.

In her studies, Armstrong, at 64, now finds what countless hours of obligatory prayer as an unhappy Catholic nun in her teenage years had flatly failed to bring into focus. Suffering a lost vocation and physically frail, she considered her eventual departure from the convent in 1969 as a relief of sorts. But coming to terms with the world outside and the God she'd left behind triggered a profound spiritual trauma. After a diagnosis of epilepsy and disastrous spells teaching at a university, Armstrong's convalescence proper began in 1981—it's still underway, she says—when she poured her pain into a memoir of her convent days, Through the Narrow Gate. A second volume Beginning the World related her adjustment to the outside world, but Armstrong later recanted it because of the false heartiness she'd adopted to satisfy both her publisher and her own delusion of contentment.

In fact, Armstrong's adjustment wasn't going well, and a brief spell as an erudite but pungently skeptical presenter of religious TV programs in the U.K.—egged on by the producers, she claims, to say ever more outrageous things—did little to help matters. But in the course of that work, Armstrong found herself drawn back to the theological texts underpinning the monotheistic religions and to what they really mean. To do that, says Armstrong, "I had to put my clever, post-Enlightenment, Oxford-educated, aggressively logos self on the back burner, and enter into the mind of someone like Muhammad, who believed he'd been touched by God. Because if I didn't sympathetically and compassionately feel with him, I would miss the essence of it and just write another clever riposte."

A report by the Pew Forum, a U.S. research body on religion and public life, recently painted a startling picture of religious faith in America. About half the population appears to have changed religious affiliation at least once, while the number of believers unaffiliated with any particular faith is rising faster than those of any of religion. Yet more than half of those who grow up unaffiliated later choose to join one. Of the reasons people give for this restlessness, far more cite disenchantment with their religious institutions than a loss of faith per se.

Across Europe, in contrast, while many still identify with a religious denomination, Pew's Global Attitudes Project report last year showed that only a fraction value religion as "very important" in their lives, compared to America, where 55 percent consider it so. In secular-minded France, only 10 percent take that view. Even in traditionally Catholic Spain, the figure is only 19 percent. Among young Europeans, religion's importance appears to be still on the wane. That's somewhat true in America, although 49 percent of adults under 40 value it like their parents and grandparents do, while in places like Egypt (69 percent), Turkey (88 percent) and Pakistan (95 percent), many more young people are keeping the faith.

That longing for spiritual uplift and communion, along with the sense of being let down, have no doubt driven the popularity of New Age beliefs in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent decades. It may also have contributed to the rise in eco-consciousness and the emergence of a "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability" (LOHAS) demographic, said to include some 40 million people in the U.S., socially responsible green consumers interested in spiritually tinged practices like alternative medicine and personal development.

Armstrong for one isn't surprised at these shifts. "We—the British and the northern Europeans—are beginning to look endearingly old-fashioned in our secularism. The rest of the world is becoming more religious." But while God-centered religion may not own the copyright on transcendence, she warns, "None of it is of any value unless you translate it into practical compassionate action for others. In Buddhism, yoga is properly about the dismantling of egotism; if you just do these things to lose weight or to get a warm glow, that's not religion."

For Armstrong, it's compassion that's the defining virtue of religion, the Golden Rule articulated by Confucius two and a half millennia ago as "Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you." Practicing compassion is, she says, a form of "ethical artistry" that requires the dethroning of ego—a virtue, Armstrong believes, that's alive and well for the majority of the faithful in all religions, but one often singularly lacking in the higher echelons of the various faiths she addresses.

Last year, that message earned Armstrong a prize from the TED Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering big ideas, allowing Armstrong to promote a Charter for Compassion that aims to get religious leaders to commit to a program of compassionate principles (see sidebar). For some religious commentators, like the U.S. rabbi Brad Hirschfield, the Charter amounts to little more than "a ‘Kumbaya' moment" for "a world filled with hate-driven faith." Armstrong disagrees, believing the abundant supply of compassion among religious communities the world over will win out. She does have a poor opinion of religious committees though, and admits she was nervous before the first meeting of the high-profile, multifaith, multinational body convened to draw up the Charter. Until, that is, the first speaker got up and said, "We must include a sentence saying that we, that religious people, have failed." Everyone agreed, nodding, says Armstrong with a grin. "As soon as I heard that, I thought, ‘We're going to be all right.'"

Michael Brunton is a writer living in London who agrees with Voltaire on the necessity of god and gardening.

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Island Group on Facebook

2009-06-16T16:06:40Z

For those of you interested in the ideas of Aldous Huxley and Island, I've started an Island Group on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=111043636527

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Isladn Group on Facebook

2009-06-16T16:05:43Z

For those of you interested in the ideas of Aldous Huxley and Island, I've started an Island Group on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=111043636527

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Island @ Esalen

2008-06-03T22:23:29Z

An interesting article about Huxley's incorporation of the Esalen culture into his Island novel -- and how the techniques written in the novel had been tried somewhere.

According to Laura Huxley, per the link provided below, the novel laid down a "real and practical path to follow, not just a dream or another impossible religious claim... [a] blueprint for a good society."

http://www.bruceeisner.com/new_culture/2007/05/esalen_america_.html

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Have you visited an Island-like community?

2007-11-06T23:00:55Z

I thought I'd post an ask if people here have visited or maybe lived in an Island-like community... or possibly visited more than one.

If so, how would you describe the place? Has it, as far as you know, attained a stability?

Tanemon

posted in Island Group - 1 reply

Huxley Interview.

2007-10-21T15:57:40Z

Give a listen. Good stuff

http://www.greylodge.org/occultreview/glor_014/huxley.htm

I had a chuckle with his description of dining with Joyce, and his obsession with etymology.

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New to Tribes, looking for friends

2007-10-20T18:47:10Z

Hi. Well, I'm a grown-up (middle-aged) nature kid, living on the land and gardening, building, etc. Fan of Huxley. Studied psychology & social anthropology, then moved into general ecology before graduation (degree in psych & social science). Psychedelics for a brief time. Yoga and Zen meditation. Later, Native-American contact. Have done community economic development work. Reiki-attuned for last seven years. Visited the Findhorn community in Scotland a year ago. Enjoy laughing.

Looking for kindred spirits to be part of my network.

"Attend!" Be here now...

Tanemon

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geothermal power

2007-05-20T22:51:20Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power
http://geothermal.marin.org/pwrheat.html
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/powerplants.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15749933/

http://www.cogeneration.net/geothermal_powerplants.htm
http://www.geo-energy.org/aboutGE/powerPlantCost.asp
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2003/geothermal_discussion20031205.htm

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/geopower_landuse.html
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/pdfs/conversion.pdf

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LSD and Aldous Huxley Island Video

2006-12-19T06:45:00Z

I put the Google video which I created of my talk at the International Conference on LSD in Basel, Switzerland this January

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Eleusinian & Neo-Eleusinian Mysteries: The History & Future of LSD - Bruce Eisner Video

2006-11-21T22:54:11Z

I added this video on my profile http://people.tribe.net/bruceeisner

Bruce

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Ride Las Vegas to BM & Shared Sleeping Space Small 3 Person Supervan RV Offered

2006-08-23T20:54:50Z

I booked a Supevan Sized (Class D) RV from August 28th to September 5th to be picked up and returned from Las Vegas. The original person who was going to travel with me canceled and so I am looking for one or two people to share driving and space on the van during a trip to Burning Man. If you are interested, please email me at bruce@mindmedia.com.

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Conference for Transpersonal Psychology

2006-08-03T23:25:36Z

The Association for Transpersonal Psychology
is teaming up with
The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology
to put on an annual Transpersonal Psychology Conference on

"100 Years of Transpersonal Psychology"

to be held in Palo Alto, CA on September 7th through September 9th, 2006.

http://www.atpweb.org/special_event.asp

100 years ago, William James used the word "transpersonal" for the first time, in reference to that which is shared amongst people. A century later, the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology invite you to our annual professional conference, to teach, learn, and share the innovations and discoveries that have shaped the field since that auspicious day, and to chart the future for the next 100 years.

http://www.atpweb.org/special_event.asp

Call for Proposals and Submissions, due May 1, 2006, found at:
<www.atpweb.org/> & <www.atpweb.org/Conference...lsForm.asp>

http://www.atpweb.org/special_event.asp

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Croatan Conference: Dennis McKenna - Michael Crowley

2006-04-09T18:52:20Z

April 21-23rd, 2006

Lectures by:

Dennis McKenna
(author; Ayahuasca: Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature,
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching)

Dr. Dennis McKenna will be hosting a lecture
about his research into Ayahuasca. Dennis
McKenna is the brother of Terence McKenna - the
two traveled together to the Amazon to learn about
the healing properties of Ayahuasca. Dr. Dennis
McKenna is heavily involved in the research that
has helped to support both Terence’s work and his own.

Michael Crowley
(author; Secret Drugs of Buddhism, When the Gods
Drank Urine: the Riddle of Soma)

Michael Crowley will be speaking on the ancient
Hindu scripture called the Rig Veda and its frequent
mention of the drug plant "soma" though the precise
identity of this plant has remained a mystery for
millennia. Michael Crowley also uncovers sacramental
use of several other drug plants in Vajrayana Buddhism.
These drugs include Psilocybe cubensis, Argyreia
nervosa, Cannabis indica, Datura stramonium, and an
ayahuasca-like concoction based on Acacia catechu, a
rich source of DMT.

Music by

CX-1 Bluegrass Boys
(Members of Acoustic Syndicate and Snake Oil Medicine Show)

Caroline Pond
(Vassar Clemens, Snake Oil Medicine Show, Mad Tea P

Androcell
(Live* Celestial Dragon Recordings, Arizona)

Lectures:
Dennis McKenna
Michael Crowley
Sun Frog
Esiris Kayab Lyons
Adam Sanderson
Shad Marquitz
Emmit Carney
*NORML Attorney at Law for Asheville, NC.

Music:
Shapestatic - *live* www.geomagnetic.tv
Dylalien – The Fractal Cowboys, SF
Alien Blue - Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, NYC
Quetzatl - *live* Radical Turf Records
Glossolalia - *live* Intuitive Arts Multimedia
Logos - *live* Intuitive Arts Multimedia
Nod & BrainLizzard - TOUCH samadhi/AUM
Blue Spectral Monkey - Interchill
Kri - TOUCH samadhi
Medisin - TOUCH samadhi
Shad - TOUCH samadhi
Iduna - TOUCH samadhi
KT - Independent
Joshu - Evoke Community
Jeremie - Evoke Community

Art:
Eli Morgan, NYC www.psythos.com
Marisa Scirocco, NYC www.alienblue.com
Intuitive Arts Multimedia www.ICreateIam.com visionary art tent
Devotee Touch Samadhi
and more Asheville and East TN artists

Opening Ceremony: by Sakkred Circle
No Alcohol or Pets
(no exceptions - period)
Leave No Trace event – Be Aware of the Earth
Please carpool, recycle and bring tins for your cig butts
Rides available from airport
Directions will be mailed with tickets
Video taping
*with mailed permission only
Food on site - provided by
Bearly Edible

Tickets are $50 ($3.00 S/H)
Due to the size of the land and impact, only 250 tickets will be sold.
info & tickets @ www.harmonywerx.org

links:
www.touchsamadhi.com
www.geomagnetic.tv
www.cosm.org
www.interchill.com
www.androcell.com
www.icreateiam.com
www.psythos.com
www.alienblue.com
www.erowid.org
www.radicalturf.com
www.quetzatl.com
www.fifthestate.org

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LSD and Aldous Huxley’s Island: Setting Sail for a Better Country

2006-02-04T08:40:00Z

LSD and Aldous Huxley’s Island: Setting Sail for a Better Country

LSD and Aldous Huxley's Island: Setting Sail for a Better Country

by Bruce Eisner (Note: Scheduled for publication in Gaia News No.14)

Albert Hofmann, the man who discovered the effects of LSD, has said that he hopes that what he has called his "problem child" will someday become a "wonder" child. I believe Hofmann will have his wish. In the history books of the next century, the discovery of LSD will find its rightful place as one of our most significant achievements, in the same league as the discovery of fire, the wheel, written language, and relativity. In this essay I will reflect on the history of LSD's impact on society and culture as problem child and look forward to how the conversion to wonder child might occur.

This essay is scheduled for publication on the Winter Solstice 2005. As I write this, the days are growing shorter. Less than a month after they begin growing long again, I will be on my way to Basel, Switzerland, a city I first visited in my youth.

Basel has been home to a lineage of great minds in the search for human self-realization. Amid the dark ages, Auroleus Phillipus Theostratus Bombastus von Hohenheim, immortalized as "Paracelsus" spent a year in Basel as a Professor of Medicine. As a man of science, Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. As an alchemist, Paracelsus searched for the Philosopher's Stone. Because they were persecuted by the all-powerful Church, the alchemists needed to shroud their work with hidden meanings. While they told the outside world the Philosopher's Stone's purpose was to transmute lead into gold, its esoteric meaning was as a bridge between matter and spirit, a key to illumination.

Another great Basel scientist, Carl Gustav Jung who introduced the concept of self-actualization to psychology was keenly interested in alchemy for its rich symbolism and capacity to describe the inner journey. He said "My studies of alchemy may seem obscure and baffle many people, but taken symbolically - the symbolic gold of great worth, or the transforming philosopher's stone 'lapis philosophorum' hunted for centuries by the alchemists - is to be found in man."

In the summer of 1976, I arrived by train in Basel, at age 28 a bearded long-haired hippie vagabond. I had dropped out of the university in my fourth year at age 20, hitchhiked halfway around the world and on returning to the U.S. became a journalist for the underground press. I had flown to Europe from Los Angeles to meet the third in the progression of Basel scientists on the leading edge of consciousness, Albert Hofmann, the man who had discovered the effects of LSD.

The friend who I traveled with had corresponded with Dr. Hofmann and so after we had pitched our tent in one of the Basel campgrounds, he called him. Dr. Hofmann told us to meet him in a café on Basel's middle bridge. The next day we made our way out there and waited in front of the café for him. Neither of us knew exactly what he looked like; we had only seen that one picture they used in all the old books of him taken at Sandoz in the forties. We knew he was seventy years old and so looked around for what we expected to be an old man.

A tanned, energetic man who appeared in his mid-fifties walked up to us and introduced himself. Albert Hofmann had already found his ways of slowing the hands of time. We sat with him eating a leisurely lunch that lasted several hours. We told him about our experiences becoming hippies and dropping out in the Sixties. He showed us from the bridge the route that he took on his famous bicycle ride home from the old Sandoz building on the day he discovered the effects of LSD.

Hofmann's discovery which is in a way is duplicated by every person who takes LSD was uniquely significant to both myself personally and my generation. I came of age in the 1960s and am part of the boomer generation who "turned on, tuned in and dropped out." The 1960s were an extraordinary period - a time in which millions of people acted as if they had swallowed some pill which made them different - and of course they had. As the decades changed digits, the cultural icon of the man in the
gray flannel suit with a martini gave way to a hipper way of partying. The Old Ike attitudes of the fifties were replaced by a new vision of the Western world, as articulated by Kennedy, who was both a symbol of the strong stirrings of change as well as a martyr to the reaction that it would bring forth.

In this period of American culture in which I reached adulthood, roles and ways of doing things that had persisted for centuries were quickly dissolving. In the old South, young Freedom Riders rode into town and threatened to overturn "Jim Crow" discriminatory laws. Women in great numbers decided not to be housewives and play the traditional role of the submissive sex. Many concerned that economic progress might eventually ruin the earth began using the word "ecology" (heretofore reserved for those seriously academic) to talk about a movement often symbolized by the "Whole Earth" as seen by the first humans to orbit the earth. And of course, with the arrival of birth control pills, there was the sexual revolution - before the tragedy of AIDS.

The 1960s caused so much cultural change that the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee observed of this period in American history: "I have been visiting the United States since 1925. Before my last visit (1967), I had been absent for two years, and I came away with the impression that in those two years there has been more change in American life than in all the previous forty."

Of course it was LSD in the pills that gave people so much insight. LSD, a potent mind-changing drug with few physical side effects discovered in Basel, Switzerland, during the dark days prior to World War II, around the same time as a much larger group in New Mexico was cooking up the atomic bomb.

For many, LSD was a roller coaster ride through their unconscious, a virtual Disneyland. But for a much smaller number the experiences took on significance that they called "mystical" or "religious." This smaller group, sometimes called the "Psychedelic Movement", grew from a small intellectual elite composed mainly of writers and artists in Los Angeles, New York, and London into a mass movement which involved the "best minds of [their] generation," including college students and open-minded people of all ages.

Leary For a few of those who took LSD, it had such a powerful immediate impact that they believed that it might provide insights of a similar magnitude in anyone who took it. There is the story told in High Priest by Timothy Leary of poet Alan Ginsberg's taking psilocybin (an extract of the "magic mushroom" synthesized by Albert Hofmann and used in early experiments with psychedelic compounds at Harvard). Ginsberg became convinced that if he could get John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev to take LSD, it would end the Cold War; after not being able to get the telephone operators to connect him to either man, he slowly returned to the realities of 1962.

This kind of thinking colored the thoughts of many participants in the Psychedelic Movement. If we remember the world's political atmosphere at that time, in which the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which publishes a clock in each issue with its hands suggesting their estimate of how close we are to nuclear midnight saw those hands close and moving closer to within minutes of utter annihilation. This feeling of urgency was the force behind what many in retrospect consider Dr. Timothy Leary's messianic crusade to spread the use of LSD. Leary simply believed that it was necessary to turn on a critical mass of people or the world might blow itself up.

The consideration of LSD's potential as a tool to transform society was not restricted to the radical members of the Movement. Although known to believe that LSD should be kept for the intellectual elite, even Aldous Huxley in an essay "Culture and the Individual" written in 1963 shortly before his death, speculated on a "mass experiment" of social LSD- taking as a remedy to the disturbing directions our society was taking.

How should the psychedelics be administered? Under what circumstances, with what kind of preparation and follow-up? These are questions that must be answered empirically, by large-scale experiment. Man's collective mind has a high degree of viscosity and flows from one position to another with the reluctant deliberation of an ebbing tide of sludge. But in a world of explosive population increase, of headlong technological advance and of militant nationalism, the time at our disposal is strictly limited. We must discover, and discover very soon, new energy sources for overcoming our society's psychological inertia, better solvents for liquefying the sludgy stickiness of an anachronistic state of mind. On the verbal level an education in the nature and limitations, the uses and abuses of language; on the wordless level an education in mental silence and pure receptivity; and finally, through the use of harmless psychedelics, a course of chemically triggered conversion experiences or ecstasies-these, I believe, will provide all the sources of mental energy, all the solvents of conceptual sludge, that an individual requires. With their aid, he should be able to adapt himself selectively to his culture, rejecting its evils, stupidities and irrelevances, gratefully accepting all its treasures of accumulated knowledge, of rationality, human-heartedness and practical wisdom. If the number of such individuals is sufficiently great, if their quality is sufficiently high, they may be able to pass from discriminating acceptance of their culture to discriminating change and reform. Is this a hopefully utopian dream? Experiment can give us the answer, for the dream is pragmatic; the utopian hypotheses can be tested empirically. And in these oppressive times a little hope is surely no unwelcome visitant

In fact, after Huxley's passing, the next few years saw the kind of mass LSD experiment that he had envisioned. Just as Gutenberg's printing press invented at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the fifteenth century allowed for anyone to own his or her own bible, a privilege that until then had only been enjoyed by the monks, so now at the beginning of the Information Age, the same mass production machines that had turned out bibles (and later Ford motor cars) were producing insight pills. As a result, this new Holy Grail gone high tech was given to somewhere between one and two million people between 1959 and 1970. The numbers who passed through Aldous Huxley's well-described "doors of perception," stepping out of Plato's cave to glimpse the white light of the sun, far exceeded any generation before it. The mystical experience, from being something reserved for saints, became available on sugar cubes.

There were some hard lessons learned during this 1960's experiment. One lesson was that taking large dosages of LSD unprepared and in public settings could lead to negative reactions with accompanying bizarre behavior. Another lesson was that not everyone could benefit by taking LSD, that there were some people with personality disorders or pre-existing psychoses who should not take it except under the most controlled of circumstances - and some not at all under any circumstances.

As the number of people who took LSD increased and the demographics of those people moved from a small group of intelligentsia to a wider spectrum of individuals, the incidence of negative reactions (which were called "freakouts") became a subject of media attention. LSD gained a public image as a "crazy-making" drug. Some unfortunate people predisposed to mental disorders became what have been called LSD casualties.

Casualties is a fitting term, as some looked upon psychedelics as a nonlethal weapon in a war against the powerful economic, political and other social forces - the Establishment. From that battle came a third lesson, that cultures like the living creatures they are comprised of keep a homeostasis. The rapid changes in society as well as the challenges to the established order produced a conservative counteraction. In a rather successful effort to stuff the magic genie back in the bottle, they made possession and use of LSD and several other related psychedelic substances serious crimes. In the U.S., possession of LSD was made a felony in 1966, and LSD's precursor, d-lysergic acid monohydrate, was similarly banned in 1968. Slowly, most of the existing supplies of LSD used by the members of the movement dried up, replaced by what has been called "street acid," a crude imitation of the pharmaceutical substance manufactured from ergotamine tartrate.

The counteraction came to be called the War on Drugs. This war never diminished the supplies of cocaine or heroin. But LSD was more dependent on special ingredients and high tech laboratories. So the Psychedelic Movement lost its ability to pass on to new people the opportunity to have the powerful experiences that LSD had given them access to. Those curious about these experiences turned to new synthetic and botanical drugs as potential replacements. But none of these substitutes provided as powerful and reliable an experience as that which had been taken away.

This story of LSD's banishment was what I told Albert Hofmann on my first visit to Basel. He listened, and despite our differences in age and positions in society, we understood each other at a profound level and became long-time friends. Getting to know Albert Hofmann, a man both accomplished in the world and connected with deep spirituality shattered my stereotypes about what hip people should be like. Freed in this way, I was inspired to shed my hippie persona and drop back into society.

Hofmannposter In January of the next year, I moved to Santa Cruz California, and became a 29-year-old undergraduate at the University of California campus there. In the early summer of that year, I heard that Albert Hofmann would be visiting the west coast and invited him to speak at my university. With the help of author Peter Stafford and his partner Lynn Francis, I arranged a conference around his visit which I called "LSD a Generation Later." Because the turbulence and hysteria of the Sixties had made it almost impossible for scientific meetings to be held on the subject, this event marked the first scientific meeting on LSD in a decade. The event brought together many of the scientific researchers and counterculture figures for the first time. These included Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner, John Lilly, Oscar Janiger, Allen Ginsberg, Myron Stoloroff, John Beresford, William McGlothlin, Ronald K. Seigal, and many others.

A couple of months after this conference, a meeting was held at my home in Santa Cruz by Dr. John Beresford which led to the creation of the Psychedelic Education Center. This group which eventually became the Island Foundation worked for more than three decades to keep the the Psychedelic Movement alive during a time of cultural repression.

Earlier in this essay I talked about some of the lessons we learned from the 1960's. I have one last lesson that comes from my own experiences both as a participant and as an activist for the Psychedelic Movement. I am a humanistic psychologist and approach the use of LSD from that perspective and not from the medical model. When physicians look at LSD, they think how can I cure the sick. When humanistic psychologists look at LSD, they think how can I make exceptional people even more creative and productive and enlightened

In fact, the most significant uses of LSD in terms of its impact on society have been by informal use by highly creative, intelligent people who have personality characteristics which allow them to make good use of the psychedelic experience. In humanistic psychology, we call these people self-actualizers. It is the ability of self-actualizers to utilize the new states of consciousness for the creation of new ideas or memes that led to the breakthroughs of the 1960s.
It is with this idea in mind that I began writing about the Island Sanctuary Project named for Huxley's utopian Island. The Project which could be undertaken simultaneously with efforts to push for legitimate research and clinical use for psychedelics in the first world, but would take a different tack. There would be a search for some place in the world in which a group of people could use LSD within the context of a community in a way similar to the way that Moksha, the fictional psychedelic in Huxley's novel, was used.

I asked Laura Huxley in 1994 about how such a community might evolve and this is what she told me:

"An Island Group could adopt the methods described in Island. It can be done in a village. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child, and it is true. In a small village, a child can go out alone and visit small and adult friends. A child alone in the streets of Los Angeles is in danger both from adults and other children. You know about children being killed in the streets by other children.

They have handguns and machine guns. When they are little they are given for Christmas these war toys - a lovely way to celebrate the birth of a savior. So very soon they want to have a real gun, and when they have it they use it. People make money by selling guns to children and very young people.

Then we are surprised that they use them. But in a village where a few families have read and agreed with the method of education described in Island, a child could go out and even leave his family for a few days. Do you remember the mutual adoption club? Each family has two or three adoptive families where the child can go and take a vacation from his own family, who might also need a vacation from him.

There is so much which can be done with a small group who wants to grow its children in a safe place. This group must really have something basic in common to start a village of this kind. And now with the technological advances, it might be possible to make a living without going into the city. In Island the children have not only a loving family but also a sane environment in which to grow."

Such a group might come up with fresh visions and new memes to inspire the world toward the hopeful outcome I began this essay with. As Oscar Wilde said, "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias."

posted in Island Group - 1 reply

New Tribe: "Botanical Conservation and Research"

2005-12-04T21:36:35Z

Hi, check out this new tribe if you are interested in protecting plant biodiversity, participate in rare plant propagation or restoration, scientific research, or grassroots conservation efforts.

Thanks,

Cynorkis

-----------------------------------------------------------
Botanical Conservation and Research

This is a forum for individuals interested in understanding and protecting the Earth's botanical diversity. Discuss scientific research, conservation efforts or organizations, rare plant or ecosystem restoration, systematics, funding resources, conferences, and academic institutions.

Keywords: Botany, plants, mycology, bryology, ecology, conservation biology, evolution, horticulture, flowers, pollination, seeds, soil, forests, wetlands, deserts, montane, tropical, temperate, earth.

posted in Island Group - 1 reply

A newly discovered entheogen

2005-10-17T17:35:52Z

Tribe members who will be attending the Sacred Elixirs conference in San Jose next weekend ( http://www.sacredelixirs.com ) may be interested to know that Dr. Shulgin has changed the subject of his talk.

His topic is now "A New Elixir" and will be about Pachycereus pringlei, a newly discovered entheogenic cactus. The talk will be accompanied by slides of cave paintings showing the sacramental use of this species.

-m

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

Running My Feed from Vision Thing on My Tribe Profile

2005-10-14T22:54:05Z

If people want to check the latest news from me, I'm running my feed from Vision Thing on my profile here. It has a lot of Island related postings.

posted in Island Group - 2 replies

New Huxley Group

2005-06-26T07:03:14Z

http://tribes.tribe.net/aldous-huxley

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

whoa! member #111

2005-05-15T04:01:43Z

which is of course 3x37=1976+28+4

So uh Where's the BEAR?
yea the blue one..
by chance any body know how he's do-in ?

lovevolve's j'ha,
dJenLP

posted in Island Group - 1 reply

gong, daevid allen, etc.

2005-03-24T14:01:38Z

new tribe: radiognomeinvisible.tribe.net

join!

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

Island Everywhere

2005-01-15T02:54:53Z

It is hard to get to everywhere Island Foundation has communities on the web. Someone asked me today why I never visit the Island community at http://groups.myspace.com/islandgroup/

I write a lot about topics of interest to Island Foundation members at http://www.bruceeisner.com/ We have the Aldous Huxley Meetup at http://ahuxley.meetup.com/ There are Island Groups on Tribe at http://islandgroup.tribe.net/ And at Orcut (you can get an invite through me if you email me at http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=9320. Island Volunteering is at http://www.volunteermatch.org/results/org_detail.jsp?orgid=14300. We are on Guidestar at http://www.guidestar.org/search/report/description.jsp and at Idealist.Org at http://tinyurl.com/3qmbb. Island on myspace.com at http://groups.myspace.com/islandgroup.

We have a Island Community Forum at http://www.island.org/community. And there are more but I don't want to overdo this.

Let me know if we should be somewhere else. However you can see that while Island is hoping to be everywhere, I can’t be everywhere. It is however a great pleasure to see people pick up the ball and help create the Island Sanctuary wherever they find it.

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

The Ultimate Revolution

2004-09-22T15:58:06Z

Hi there. I have not yet read this particular book.

I do however have something to share with y'all:

Aldous Huxley: The Ultimate Revolution

(March 20, 1962) -

A recorded lecture in which the author discusses using terrorism to create willing slaves out of the population.

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/VideoTest/hux1.ram

Q&A: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/VideoTest/hux2.ram

Enjoy.
Cheers
- Wade

posted in Island Group - 2 replies

Spent the last week updating Island. Web

2004-09-19T08:31:03Z

I've spent the last week updating the <http://www.island.org/news>IslandWeb. The site has been changed to reflect the new mission statement here. Also updated is the poster section as there is only three posters left for sale and going fast! We also added a new feature in which you can donate to Island through JustGive.org. The Publications section was changed to reflect the fact that Psychedelic Island Views ceased publication and that our art gallery and library have merged with our Voyages Elsewhere section. The good news is that in the next few weeks we completely revise and add new sites to the links section as well as over twenty articles from Psychedelic Island Views to the Psychedelic Island Views archive. So please support island's work for the community!September 19, 2004 - 01:27 AM new Island Web Updated I've spent the last week updating the <IslandWeb</a>." target="_blank">www.island.org/news">IslandWeb. The site has been changed to reflect the new mission statement here. Also updated is the poster section as there is only three posters left for sale and going fast! We also added a new feature in which you can donate to Island through JustGive.org. The Publications section was changed to reflect the fact that Psychedelic Island Views ceased publication and that our art gallery and library have merged with our Voyages Elsewhere section. The good news is that in the next few weeks we completely revise and add new sites to the links section as well as over twenty articles from Psychedelic Island Views to the Psychedelic Island Views archive. So please support island's work for the community! reply to this post

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

Island Sanctuary Project for Culture Design and Mime Creation

2004-08-13T21:36:57Z

For those of you who want to find out more about the Island Sanctuary Project which aims at designing a better culture and spreading the ideas through the conscious use of mime and media technologies:
Island Views as a PDF http://www.island.org/news/islaview6.pdf

The Sanctuary Project on Island Web http://www.island.org/poster/sanctuary.asp

Discuss the Sanctuary Project on the Island Community Forum http://www.island.org/community/

I welcome comments about this project!

posted in Island Group - 5 replies

Curious ...

2004-07-18T22:40:17Z

Last weekend a male friend used the term "self-actualized" to describe me.

Naturally I was pleased as punch.

Has anyone else in this tribe had that moniker attached to him/her as well?

posted in Island Group - 2 replies

Links....

2004-07-10T04:29:49Z

does anyone have links to more information on Huxley, his work, and people that have continued his studies?

i've recently been gathering information and trying to take it all in. very interesting indeed!

:)
~namaste
alienkissed

posted in Island Group - 2 replies

San Fransisco 13th Digital Be-In May 29

2004-05-07T23:13:40Z

My friend Michael Gosney just sent me information on the Digital Be-In. I put it on my weblog at http://bruceeisner.typepad.com/new_culture/2004/05/13th_annual_dig.html. Additionally there is a Digital Be-In Tribe on Tribe.net at http://www.tribe.net/tribe/servlet/template/pub,TribeCard.vm/tribeName/digitalbein. I've been to all the previous events and they are always great.

Bruce Eisner

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

LSD Turns 61

2004-04-17T20:01:37Z

LSD celebrates its 61st anniversary this weekend. Friday was day of Hofmann's accidental discovery and on Monday, we have Bicycle Day. Of Hofmann, on that day we say, "He has ridden."
bruceeisner.typepad.com/new_cu...e/2004/04/i_prepare_to_ce.html

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

Greetings from Aldous...

2004-04-11T02:30:33Z

Though, in my case, it's Aldous Tyler, not Aldous Huxley, but really now, as the man's been dead awhile, can you afford to be too picky? I think not! :-)

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

Aldous Huxley Fans on Meetup.Com Want You

2004-04-07T07:21:08Z

The Aldous Huxley Fans on Meetup.Com
at ahuxley.meetup.com/"
is now at 64 members including
five in Las Vegas (where I live)
Here are some other cites as of the latest tabulation
Nashville, TN (4)
New York City (3)
San Francisco, CA (3)
Dallas-Plano, TX (3)
Hollywood-East LA, CA (3)
Santa Cruz, CA (2)
and a lot more with 2. The more people who join in a city and vote for a venue and confirm a meeting, the more chance there will be that people will actually get together face-to-face. So I hope you might consider getting active.
Bruce Eisner

posted in Island Group - 0 replies

clinics every 4 weeks!!!

2004-02-25T19:20:40Z

Clinics every 4 weeks!!

we do renewals! GOT MEDICAL? we do referrals!

1-800-851-3761 Ask for April*:)
Medicalmarijuanaguide.com

heres to higher ways and kinder days,
April**

posted in Island Group - 2 replies

Aldous Huxley Meetup for Discussion of Island Related Topics

2004-01-04T08:20:58Z

I started a place where people can meet locally and discuss Island Foundation related ideas at http://ahuxley.meetup.com. Please join.

posted in Island Group - 0 replies