Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[undead]

I'm sorry, it's too late. You can't go back. It's not an option.

[American Dream]

Great Alex Grey artwork in the video- one of my favorite artists!

WE are not going away. We are not slack-jawed, dazed, glazed, unemployable psychotic creeps. We are pillars of society. You can't run your computers, your fashion houses, your publishing houses, your damn magazines, you can't do anything in culture without psychedelic people in key positions.

Made me think of this:

An excerpt from

From Counterculture to Cyberculture

Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

Fred Turner


Chapter 4
Taking the Whole Earth Digital


In a 1995 special issue of Time magazine entitled "Welcome to Cyberspace," Stewart Brand wrote an article arguing that that the personal computer revolution and the Internet had grown directly out of the counterculture. "We Owe It All to the Hippies," claimed the headline. "Forget antiwar protests, Woodstock, even long hair. The real legacy of the sixties generation is the computer revolution." According to Brand, and to popular legend then and since, Bay area computer programmers had imbibed the countercultural ideals of decentralization and personalization, along with a keen sense of information's transformative potential, and had built those into a new kind of machine. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Brand and others noted, computers had largely been mainframes, locked in the basements of universities and corporations, guarded by technicians. By the early 1980s, computers had become desktop tools for individuals, ubiquitous and seemingly empowering. One had only to look at the machines themselves to see that the devices through which the leaders of government and industry had sought to manage the world had been wrested from their hands. The great machines of empire had been miniaturized and turned over to individuals, and so transformed into tools with which individuals could improve their own lives.

Like many myths, this one contains several grains of truth. The 1970s did in fact witness the rise of a new form of computing, and Bay area programmers, many with countercultural leanings, played an important part in that process. And as they were distributed, some of the new computers—particularly the 1984 Apple Macintosh—were explicitly marketed as devices one could use to tear down bureaucracies and achieve individual intellectual freedom. Yet, the notion that the counterculture gave rise to personal computing and computer networking obscures the breadth and complexity of the actual encounter between the two worlds. As Stewart Brand's migrations across the 1960s suggest, New Communalist visions of consciousness and community had become entangled with the cybernetic theories and interdisciplinary practices of high-technology research long before computers were miniaturized or widely interlinked.

In the 1970s, the same rejection of agonistic politics that had fueled the rise of New Communalism undermined the day-to-day governance of all but the most rule-bound communes, and the movement itself melted away. Yet, Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog continued to link information technology and cybernetics to a New Communalist social vision. This linking proceeded in three stages. In the first phase, between 1968 and 1972, two communities began to mingle within blocks of the Whole Earth Catalog offices in Menlo Park. One, centered around the Stanford Research Institute and composed primarily of engineers, was devoted to the ongoing pursuit of increased human-computer integration. The other, clustered around the Catalog and the countercultural communities it served, focused on the pursuit of individual and collective transformation in a New Communalist vein. Stewart Brand positioned himself between these worlds and, in a variety of ways, brokered their encounter.

Continues at: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chic ... chap4.html

.

[American Dream]

..

The legion of Gods swooped upon him like a whirlwind. He was torn in pieces. He was divided against himself. His madness returned tenfold. He saw demonic creatures emerging from him.... He remained motionless, watching these manifestations issue from him.... He felt madness approaching.... Two years went by in this orgy of mental intoxication and despair.

A House divided against Itself can NOT Stand.

Integration is the key.

Well, one of them, anyway.



..

This is relevant:

While, like the other archetypes, the shadow can be integrated into your conscious, doing so poses some difficult challenges, yet there are consequences for not doing so. One such consequence is that the subconscious mind (more specifically, the collective unconscious) ‘projects’ the archetype on to people in the outside world. Such shadow projections lead the projector (person projecting) to dehumanize the screen (person being projected on to), often with tragic consequences. Such projection can pose further problems for the integration needed to overcome this projection, as “The more projections are thrust between a subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions.”

Carl Jung, Alon p. 147


Then there's this, from the Gnostic Gospels:

"When you make the two one, and when you
make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside,
and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the
female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the
female female... then will you enter the
Kingdom of Heaven."

Gospel of St. Thomas




An important caveat:

"It must be Jekyll, the conscious personality, who integrates the shadow ... and not vice versa. Otherwise the conscious becomes the slave of the autonomous shadow".

Anthony Stevens, On Jung, p 50.



.

[Simulist]

While, like the other archetypes, the shadow can be integrated into your conscious, doing so poses some difficult challenges, yet there are consequences for not doing so. One such consequence is that the subconscious mind (more specifically, the collective unconscious) ‘projects’ the archetype on to people in the outside world. Such shadow projections lead the projector (person projecting) to dehumanize the screen (person being projected on to), often with tragic consequences. Such projection can pose further problems for the integration needed to overcome this projection, as “The more projections are thrust between a subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions.”

That's brilliant stuff, American Dream. I agree with it completely because I've perceived these movements not only in others but also within my self: my own unfortunately proclivity for projection. And I try now to remain aware of this tendency in hopes that, someday, I might see clearly-enough through my own personal illusions and outright delusions in order to perceive… What? I'll let you know when I see clearly. Or perhaps you can tell me.

Because I'm certainly not there yet.

[American Dream]

Don't try this at home, kids:





Discretion may help keep delusions, illusions, confusions at bay...

[tazmic]

WE are not going away. [...] you can't do anything in culture without psychedelic people in key positions.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture

Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

"One, centered around the Stanford Research Institute and composed primarily of engineers, was devoted to the ongoing pursuit of increased human-computer integration. The other, clustered around the Catalog and the countercultural communities it served, focused on the pursuit of individual and collective transformation in a New Communalist vein. Stewart Brand positioned himself between these worlds and, in a variety of ways, brokered their encounter."

[American Dream]

Yeah- it's deep:

In his hippie youth as a Merry Prankster, Stewart Brand bounced around San Francisco in Ken Kesey's day-glo bus, dousing people with LSD-laced Kool-Aid at the legendary Acid Tests. Those were strange days, but his latest trip is also bizarre. Brand and his Long Now Foundation are bringing to San Francisco John Rendon, the elusive head of the Rendon Group, one of the CIA's favorite PR firms.

John Rendon is the self-described "information warrior” who, under contract with the CIA, named and nurtured the infamous Iraqi National Congress. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi was a Rendon protégé embraced by the Project for a New American Century and other advocates of war with Iraq. Rendon and Chalabi probably did as much as anyone to deceive the US into war.

John Rendon usually stays in the shadows, but he’ll be riding high with Stewart Brand this Friday, July 14, 7:00 PM at San Francisco's Herbst Theater.

Sheldon Rampton and I described some of the Rendon Group's activities in our 2003 book, Weapons of Mass Deception, and we go into further detail in our new book, The Best War Ever, which will be published in September. The Iraqi National Congress was the source for much of the false and deceptive propaganda on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, which they planted in the press with help from Judith Miller of the New York Times and other obliging journalists. Ahmed Chalabi has subsequently fallen out of official favor with the US, but he is currently serving in the Iraqi government and is very friendly with Iran, a real bummer for his patrons in the Bush Administration.

Stewart Brand is a serious guy these days, and his endorsement of John Rendon as a guru in the "global war on terror" is for real. Brand finds Rendon "exceptionally informed, astute, and engaged. ... It should be a hell of a talk." Brand says Rendon wants the US "to deepen its thinking and activities against terror“ and Rendon's talk is titled "Long-term Policy to Make the War on Terror Short."

From: John Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars



Here's a comment from that post:

Phillips Exeter and Stanford grad, airborne-certified Army officer and troop trainer, Pentagon dweller, high profile drug impressario who somehow managed to never ran afoul of the law, SRI employee, friend and colleague to countless spooks and on and on... It`s hard to imagine naivete on Brand`s part.

So what was the point of the Rendon exercise?

To sell the story that what is going on in Iraq (and the US) is the result of a poorly thought-out series of knee-jerk reactions, not the part of a deliberate strategy.

In other words, an exercise in misdirection.

Brand`s track record in this regard:

* When there was a strong and growing wide scale peace movement, Brand showed up in the Bay Area with barrels full of LSD and `drop out` advice.

* When the online world emerged explosively from the realm of hobbyists and academics into a medium used daily by masses of people, Brand & friends put themselves in place to shape the media`s discussion of what was a potentially explosive social phenomenon.

In its early days, Wired Magazine was THE source of `reporting` on Internet culture and in this niche functioned in much the same way Fox News does today... the steady propagation of free-market-uber-alles politics and no real reporting (They didn`t even feature Marc Andreessen and Netscape until 1995!)

* Now the US is engaged in massive, systemic civil rights violations at home and a no-win war abroad that is draining our treasury, blackening our reputation, and snuffing out the lives of thousands of our young people - and what does Brand do?

He takes active steps to help sell the fairy tale that it`s all the result of clueless bumbling made possible by divisive politics in Washington.

Preposterous, especially coming from a military man.

FACT: The concept of Homeland Security and the regulations found in the Patriot Act were already in print and ready to go long before 911 occured.

FACT: During the 1990s, the US military invested considerable time and resources in extensive training exercises involving street-to-street urban warfare on a scale never before seen in US history.

FACT: The US military spent the entire 1990s methodically destroying Iraq`s infrastructure, indirectly killing tens of thousands of civilians and reducing the country to poverty and institutional defenselessness.

FACT: In violation of basic military doctrine, not to mention common sense, when the US invaded Iraq, Iraqi weapons depots were left unsecured for weeks and in some cases months permitting insurgents to help themselves to one of the biggest stockpiles of conventional weapons on earth.

FACT: Rather than employ former Iraqi military after the invasion, a process we are thoroughly familiar with (to the extreme of moving thousands of ex-Nazis to the US and hiring the entire biowarefare staff of the Japanese military after WWII), Iraqi military personnel were rendered unemployed and even actively persecuted.

Before the invasion, I predicted that an attempt to occupy Iraq would result in `1,000 Belfasts.` This outcome had to be at least one of the possible scenarios considered by the Pentagon.

Yet, for whatever reason, the US military acted in such a way that virtually insured that a large, well trained, well armed and strongly motivated insurgency came into being during the occupation.

Why?

Blundering? Political devisiveness in Washington?

I doubt it.

The current state of affairs in Iraq is a huge money maker for the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about, the same group that 'blundered' us into the Vietnam War.

Comparing Brand's early career - former gung ho Cold War military man showing up in the Bay Area with containers loads of free LSD for the masses - with his his most recent project, indicates to me that there is tremendous consistency in his career path.

Give him credit. He`s good at what he does.

A few random points:

* The idea that the Army would have moved an airborne-certified officer and troop trainer to the Pentagon to work as a photojournalist is remarkable.

* The US Army and CIA had been testing LSD and other substances for over a decade before the Trips Festival. They could have reasonably predicted the effect of unleashing container loads of acid on the Bay Area.

LSD had a massively disrupting effect on the Bay Area's anti-war movement. It also helped discredit the young as drug freaks.

The Trips Festival was the 'product launch' for LSD to the American consumer. The 'coincidence' that this festival was planned and promoted by a former US military officer is remarkable.

* And finally, this odd bit of trivia: Brand and John Negroponte were classmates at Phillips Exeter.

[Hammer of Los]

..

Frankly, I have been blown away by the incredible wisdom of American Dream and undead.

Dear old tazmic also deserves a mention.

This IS the MOST AMAZING thread EVER.

That's brilliant stuff, American Dream. I agree with it completely because I've perceived these movements not only in others but also within my self: my own unfortunately proclivity for projection. And I try now to remain aware of this tendency in hopes that, someday, I might see clearly-enough through my own personal illusions and outright delusions in order to perceive… What? I'll let you know when I see clearly. Or perhaps you can tell me.

Because I'm certainly not there yet.

Keep at it dear old Simulist, keep at it. I'm sure you're doing great!

There are no evil people, you know. Only people who act either from ignorance or selfishness, or some combination of both.

HATE the SIN, NOT the SINNER.

More good advice: before you act, make sure there is no doubt in your mind. Where a doubt arises, seek a means to resolve that doubt. When that doubt is completely resolved, you have RIGHT KNOWLEDGE. Then, if you act for the GOOD of ALL (including yourself, have pity and love and compassion for yourself first and foremost), you have RIGHT INTENTION.

Take care friends.

LOVE and KISSES to ALL!

xxx



..

[American Dream]

Turning the US Army into a benevolent New Age force?

Some kind of delusional syndrome is at work!




Origins

http://firstearthbattalion.com/frequent ... ginate.php

“Post Vietnam 1978 was a time when military morale and enrollment were at an all time low. Army leaders called upon officers to develop needed creative approaches to dealing with this challenge. They were encouraged to fully explore the Army’s Be All That You Can Be philosophy. In response, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon created the First Earth Battalion, that collected new technologies to support a conceptual prototype of the soldier of the future. Channon was inspired by the human potential and advanced human performance movements and drew many of his ideas from these fields and from the time he spent at Esalen Institute. Channon delivered his ideas through his illustrated field manual, Evolutionary Tactics, which was published by the Army in 1978. The manual was modeled after the popular Whole Earth Catalog with illustrations of advanced human performance skills. It is credited with kick-starting a very creative surge of activity in the U.S. Army. Army commanders adopted the elements that served them. There was no one cookie-cutter solution. Original copies have become something of collector’s item.”



New Earth Army

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/05/1

The armies of the world should unite to save Earth

BY Jim Channon / 5 November 2009

“It is often overlooked, but the Marshall Plan executed after the second world war may have been the largest humanitarian exercise in the history of the planet. The allied armies decided to put Europe back together. Military forces had, and have, the tools and proper organisation to help reconstruct the very things they have destroyed. The army would properly reforest and clean the fresh water sources. The navy would control over-fishing and recycle the ocean waste. The marines would tend the shorelines and restore the coral reefs and wetland areas. Then the air forces would sense the environment from above and detect polluters while also having the instant mass transport of rescue villages for all the displaced refugees likely to surface during climate change. The many national guard units would reconstruct the countryside with the assistance of the youth to bring nature back to her fullness for a more decentralised and sustainable world. The internet will become our worldwide exchange system, and former power centres will just be support services. The world is already one culture. Countries are obsolete and have been for 30 years.”



Jedi Training

http://wisdomatwork.com/WisdomAtWork/JEDIWARRIOR.html

Special Forces of the Mind

“In 1982 we were approached by the US. Army to design and direct the “Ultimate Warrior Training Program”, AKA “Jedi Warrior,” for two A Teams of Special Forces, Green Berets. This six month-long, full-time program came about through the efforts of a number of concerned and high-ranking officers who were inspired by the vision of the First Earth Battalion. Our advisors and collaborators ranged from Vietnam veterans and respected military leaders, to leading martial artists, noted researchers like Elmer Green from the Menninger Foundation, Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, and Nobel Peace Laureate, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. By the time the program began, we had woven the best of our own experience with the insights of many others to deliver what Michael Murphy, founder of the Esalen Institute, and Esquire editor George Leonard, once called, “the most intensive leadership and human development program to be offered in modern times.” Our advanced Biocybernaut training combined technologies of biofeedback, neurofeedback, cyberphysiology, and contemplative inner methods of mastery drawn from the vast array of contemplative science traditions. In our lab the soldiers developed the skill and confidence necessary to sense and control many previously unconscious physiological functions: they learned to recognize and control muscle tension, to control blood circulation in order to keep their hands warm in cold environments, manage the intensity and physiology of their responses to stress. For many visiting dignitaries to the base, the Jedi Biocybernaut Lab became a first stop on the tour of the base, where they learned that it was actually possible to recognize and control the level of their blood pressure. The lab included the world’s first multiple-synchrony brainwave feedback system, which we helped to design, in order to teach up to sixteen people at a time to “synchronize” their brain waves in order to move toward a team resonance and flow state of deep attunement to each other’s inner state of being.”

[Hammer of Los]

..

Some kind of delusional syndrome is at work!

Jedi Training

http://wisdomatwork.com/WisdomAtWork/JEDIWARRIOR.html

Special Forces of the Mind

“In 1982 we were approached by the US. Army to design and direct the “Ultimate Warrior Training Program”, AKA “Jedi Warrior,” for two A Teams of Special Forces, Green Berets.

I think a TRUE Jedi would refuse to join the Stormtroopers of the Evil Empire.

I mean, the US Army don't exactly work to increase the level of harmony, love and trust on Planet Earth, do they?

I don't mean to offend my American brothers and sisters.

I wonder what other folk think.



..

[American Dream]

.

Here's another quote I remembered from Acid Dreams:

Reflecting upon the sixties, a surprising number of counterculture veterans endorsed the notion that the CIA disseminated street acid en masse so as to deflate the political potency of the youth rebellion. "LSD makes people less competent," contends William Burroughs. "You can see their motivation for turning people on. Very often it's not necessary to give it more than just a little push. Make it available and the news media takes it up, and there it is. They don't have to stick their necks out very much."

Burroughs was one of the first to suspect that the acid craze of the 1960s might have been a manipulated phenomenon -- an opinion shared by John Sinclair, the former White Panther leader who once sang the praises of LSD as a revolutionary drug. "It makes perfect sense to me," Sinclair stated. "We thought at the time that as a result of our LSD-inspired activities great things would happen. And, of course, it didn't.... They were up there moving that shit around. Down on the street, nobody knew what was going on."

[American Dream]

I respect the fact that a lot of people feel that 12 Step groups helped save their lives, and of course I'm glad that they're recovering.

That said, I think it's also important to tell the underreported aspects of founder Bill Wilson's journey from active alcoholism to sobriety.


Excerpted from:

The Religious Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps
by A. Orange

Chapter 26:

Bill Wilson Gets Religion (And Drugs) And Sees God

Ebby and his friend Shep Cornell described the Oxford Group program to Bill Wilson, and Wilson immediately disliked the sound of it, because Ebby and his friends were pushing an irrational cult religion that demanded that people stop thinking and just "have faith":

Ebby and Shep C. were now asking him to give up the one attribute of which he was the most proud, the one quality that set a man above the animals — his inquiring, rational mind. And they wanted him to give this up for an illusion.

... what they were asking him to do represented weakness to him. How could a man so demean himself as to surrender the one thing in which he should have faith, his innate, inquiring mind? ...

It might be the last arrogant gasp of alcoholic pride but, miserable and terrified as he was, he would not humble himself here. On this point he would go out swinging.

Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, Ernest Kurtz, page 18, and
Bill W., Robert Thomsen, pages 213-214.

Bill supposedly vowed to resist such an anti-intellectual program to the bitter end, but within two weeks, under the influence of alcohol withdrawal, delirium tremens, and the hallucinogen belladonna and other drugs, Bill Wilson gave up his "innate, inquiring, rational mind", and "surrendered", and was "changed" into an irrational true-believer Oxford Group cult member who then went on to insist that all other alcoholics must also give up their reason, logic, and rational thinking.

What happened was: After many months of suicidally-intense binging, knowing that death was near, Bill reconsidered Ebby's answer to alcoholism. And he told Ebby that he was reconsidering things. So Ebby set him up and then knocked him down.

Ebby set him up by first getting him to go to an Oxford Group meeting at Sam Shoemaker's Calvary House in New York, where, even though drunk, he was talked into coming forward and "giving himself to God". Then the Oxford Groupers sent Bill back to Charles Towns' Hospital in New York for detoxing (again, for the fourth time in a little over a year), where Ebby and other Oxford Groupers ambushed Wilson while he was at his weakest — sick and detoxing and tripping his brains out on alcohol withdrawal, delirium tremens, and a drug cocktail containing morphine, barbiturates, megavitamins, henbane, and even the very toxic hallucinogenic drugs strychnine and belladonna.

Ebby Thacher, Rowland Hazard, and other Oxford Groupers "tag-teamed" Bill Wilson, working on him in shifts, until they succeeded in "changing" him.

After 2 or 3 days of alcohol withdrawal and round-the-clock hallucinogenic drugs and Oxford Group coaching, Bill Wilson broke down and "had a spiritual experience" and "saw God", and became a true believer in the Oxford Group cult.
[emphasis added]

And the conversion worked extremely well. As the expression goes, Bill not only took the bait, he swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker. Bill Wilson was so completely taken in that he was a raving true believer for the rest of his life, even after the Oxford Group asked him to leave, because he was spending all of his time with alcoholics, and not enough time doing "the will of God", as the Oxford Group saw the will of God (which really meant 'obeying the orders of the Oxford Group elders').

And, sadly, Ebby, the "cosmic messenger" who converted Bill Wilson to Buchmanism, would relapse after two years of sobriety, and go back to being a chronic drunkard, and would die of complications from alcoholism and cigarette smoking. Later, Bill Wilson wrote that Rowland Hazard didn't stay sober, either.24

So neither of the two people who enthusiastically recruited Bill Wilson for the Oxford Group and taught Bill "the spiritual program for achieving sobriety" actually found lasting sobriety in that program. As is typical of cults, the recruiters gleefully declared that they had the panacea, even while the program wasn't actually working for them.

Ken Ragge, in his book More Revealed, describes Bill Wilson's conversion this way:

At Towns [Hospital], he was given the standard treatment, barbiturates and several hallucinogens, including belladonna and henbane, until "the face becomes flushed, the throat dry, and the pupils of the eyes dilated."

After several days, Ebby came to see him. While there is no record of what was said, it is recorded that after Ebby left, "Bill [Wilson] slid into very deep melancholy. He was filled with guilt and remorse over the way he had treated Lois [his wife]..." Evidently, Ebby had done something to provoke it and, knowing the five C's, it is easy to put together what happened.

Ebby was sent to Wilson in a Guidance session. He won Wilson's "Confidence" through "humble confession," eliciting a confession from Wilson. Apparently, Wilson confessed to something he had tremendous guilt over; the way he had treated Lois. Ebby was able to use this to give Wilson a "vision of the hideousness of his own personal guilt."

Now the time of "Conversion" was upon Wilson. In what appears to have been a drug- and stress-induced hallucinatory breakdown, Wilson found "the programme of His Kingdom." From that day forward, Bill Wilson never drank again.

Even before the Ice Age, belladonnas were used world-wide in religious ceremonies. The drug promoted babbling trances in shamans and other human oracles...

Belladonna had two salient advantages for the cure specialists. Because it annulled morphine's mental clarity and euphoria by replacing it with a drowsy, babbling disconnected stupor, it became established in science as a morphine anti-toxin (artificial Autotoxin), providing a conceptually elegant framework for ridding the body, once and forever, of every addiction-promoting substance. And belladonna had the important advantage of keeping patients comatose: they wouldn't even think of sneaking out of the ward, being entirely occupied in talking to their ancestors, and flying through the sky with weird animals.

Flowers in the Blood: the story of opium, Dean Latimer and Jeff Goldberg, page 247.

The way Bill described it, Bill went to Towns Hospital and the Oxford Groupers indoctrinated him while he was detoxing and tripping on hallucinogenic drugs:

At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment seemed wise, for I showed signs of delirium tremens.

There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since.

My schoolmate [Ebby] visited me, and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. We made a list of people whom I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. [i.e., Bill Wilson confessed his sins to Ebby]....

I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. ...
[Then Ebby told Bill Wilson about the Oxford Group cult religion practices.]

My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. ...

Simple, but not easy; a price has to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Lights who presides over us all.

These were revolutionary and drastic proposals, but the moment I fully accepted them, the effect was electric. There was a sense of victory, followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known. There was utter confidence. I felt lifted up, as though the great clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through. God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound.

The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William Wilson, Chapter 1, Bill's Story, pages 13-14.

In the A.A. book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age (1957) Bill Wilson described his experience this way:

All at once I found myself crying out, "If there is a God, let Him show himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!"

Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up in an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me in my mind's eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay there on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness... and I thought to myself, "So this is the God of the preachers!" A great peace stole over me...

Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age (1957), William G. Wilson, page 63.

One of the saddest aspects of this whole event is how desperately A.A. true believers try to make Bill's vision out to be "a genuine spiritual experience" in spite of the heavy-handed use of extremely toxic hallucinogenic drugs. The book The Soul of Sponsorship says,

Dr. William Duncan Silkworth on the next day confirmed the experience as spiritual.
The Soul of Sponsorship: The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J. and Bill Wilson in Letters, edited by Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., page 11.
Hazelden Pittman Archives Press, Center City, MN, 1995.

That is an absurd statement. Dr. Silkworth did no such thing. He was a medical doctor, not a priest, so he was not in the habit of certifying people's detoxification hallucinations as "genuine spiritual experiences". Besides, Dr. Silkworth knew full well that he had been dosing Bill Wilson out of his gourd with hallucinogenic drugs. That was one of the goals of the belladonna cure — to induce hallucinatory experiences that might provide an incentive to patients to NOT "Keep Coming Back" to the hospital.

[American Dream]

This one is interesting in light of the last post, though I'm not meaning to imply more than is apparent...

Don Lattin Author of 'Jesus Freaks' and 'The Harvard Psychedelic Club'

Harvard Psychedelic Club: 1956 Footage Of Housewife's Acid Trip

Posted: 01/16/11


Here's some rare footage of an experimental LSD session that I came across doing research for my next book, a group biography of British writer Aldous Huxley, philosopher Gerald Heard, and Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's from a television program, circa 1956, about mental health issues.

The researcher, Dr. Sidney Cohen, was dosing volunteers at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Los Angeles. Aldous Huxley, who first tried mescaline in 1953 and wrote about it in his seminal book, The Doors of Perception, got Gerald Heard interested in the spiritual potential of psychedelic drugs.

Heard then turned on Bill Wilson, guiding him on an LSD trip supervised by Dr. Cohen in the summer of 1956 -- perhaps in the same room we see in this video. Wilson, who started AA in the 1930s, thought LSD could help alcoholics have the "spiritual awakening" that is such an important part of the twelve-step recovery program he popularized.

Heard and Huxley set the stage for better-known psychedelic research of Timothy Leary, Richard "Ram Dass" Alpert, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil, who are profiled in my 2010 book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club.


WATCH:

[American Dream]

More on Bill Wilson and LSD:

From 'Pass It On': The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World:

As he [Bill Wilson] observed the work closely, he arrived at this conclusion: It was not "the material itself [that] actually produces these experiences. It seems to have the result of sharply reducing the forces of the ego — temporarily, of course. It is a generally acknowledged fact in spiritual development that ego reduction makes the influx of God's grace possible. If, therefore, under LSD we can have a temporary reduction, so that we can better see what we are and where we are going — well, that might be of some help. The goal might become clearer. So I consider LSD to be of some value to some people, and practically no damage to anyone. It will never take the place of any of the existing means by which we can reduce the ego, and keep it reduced." (page 370)

Nell continues her story: "Anyway, Bill wanted to see what it was like. He was intrigued with the work that Osmond and Hoffer were doing in Saskatoon with alcoholics. And he thought: 'Anything that helps the alcoholics is good and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Techniques should be explored that would help some guy or gal recover who could not do it through A.A. or any other way.' He gave his full enthusiasm [to] what other people were doing along that line. That's why he took it himself. He had an experience [that] was totally spiritual, [like] his initial spiritual experience."

Bill first took LSD in California, under the guidance of Gerald Heard. Also present was Sidney Cohen, psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration Hospital. The date was August 29, 1956. Tom P. was there, and he and Gerald Heard took notes about the events of the afternoon.

Bill was enthusiastic about his experience; he felt it helped him eliminate many barriers erected by the self, or ego, that stand in the way of one's direct experience of the cosmos and of God. (pages 370-371).

CAVEAT LECTOR

From: The Dry Piper, Modern Drunkard Magazine:

One of his therapeutic journeys lead him to Trabuco College in California, and the friendship of the college’s founder, Aldous Huxley. The author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception introduced Wilson to LSD-25. The drug rocked Wilson’s world. He thought of it as something of a miracle substance and continued taking it well into the ‘60s. As he approached his 70th birthday, he developed a plan to have LSD distributed at all AA meetings nationwide. The plan was eventually quashed by more rational voices, and a few years later the Federal government made the point moot by making the drug illegal. (That Wilson’s plan was shot down is probably fortunate. LSD is a beautiful thing, but nothing sounds more horrifying to me than a roomful of chain-smoking, frightened, needy drunks tripping their heads off in the basement of the local Y.)

[undead]

AA and NA are state-supported and mandated religion.