Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[Joe Hillshoist]

There is a term in Buddhist psychology that can be translated as “internal formations,” “fetters,” or “knots.” When we have a sensory input, depending on how we receive it, a knot may be tied in us. when someone speaks unkindly to us, if we understand the reason and do not take his or her words to heart, we will not feel irritated at all, and no knot will be tied. But if we do not understand why we were spoken to that way and we become irritated, a knot will be tied in us. The absence of clear understanding is the basis for every knot.

If we practice full awareness, we will be able to recognize internal formations as soon as they are formed, and we will find ways to transform them. For example, a wife may hear her husband boasting at a party, and inside herself she feels the formation of a lack of respect. If she discusses this with her husband, they may come to a clear understanding, and the knot in her will be untied easily. Internal formations need our full attention as soon as they manifest, while they are still weak, so that the work of transformation is easy.

Thich Nhat Hanh, “Internal Formations”

Sounds like muscular armouring actually.

[American Dream]

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/zigzag.html

Buddhism and Psychedelics: "Zig Zag Zen"
-- Reviewed by Geoffrey Redmond, MD --



Zig Zag Zen -- by Allan Hunt Badiner and Alex Grey

Psychedelics: The Crisis of Faith

There is no doubt that enthusiasm for psychedelics has waned. This raises the question of why, if they are such valuable spiritual tools, only few continue to praise them without reservation. Rick Fields, the historian of American Buddhism, blames this on the decline of American culture: “The young turn on now in a world in which the sacred has been trivialized into the recreational” (33). He does not mention that many of the contributors to ZZZ were themselves major influences in the commoditization of spiritual experience. If psychedelics were truly beneficial forty years ago, they should be now. To explain why they seem not to be, the blame is placed on changes in “set and setting.” This phrase refers to the theory that the effect of mind altering drugs is determined in great part by the mental set of the user and his or her physical and social milieu. Those advancing this argument do not recognize that it weakens the case for psychedelics by acknowledging that the critical factors that facilitate religious experience may not be the actions of the drugs themselves. Perhaps, with the proper set and setting, the drugs are not necessary at all.

The PR-savvy early Buddhist exponents of psychedelics could freely claim similarities between drug and meditative states because many had little experience of the latter. Thus Alan Watts as described by Michael Murphy: “ ‘here we have Alan writing a book about mysticism and sex and saying drugs are another way in.’ He was not a celebrant of long-term contemplative practice, but he was a glorious human being” (83).

Since it was the writings of Watts (without concomitant drugs) which first “turned me on” to Buddhism, I agree that he had his glorious side. Yet Watts privately derided what he taught in his books and lectures, dismissed meditation as “sitting on your ass,” and died of alcoholism. Whatever his glories, he was certainly not a reliable guide to Buddhist practice. The same can be said -- at the risk of offending some of his many admirers -- of the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Trungpa was immensely popular but was openly alcoholic -- he drank conspicuously and copiously during his late night harangues to his followers. Fields notes with approval that Trungpa was one of the few teachers with whom he could discuss drugs (44f). Thus Trungpa rationalized LSD as samsara but a “super-samsara” which could be useful. Trungpa disapproved of marijuana use, however, which he considered “self-deception” (45). This ignores the self-deception on Trungpa’s part in refusing to confront his own alcoholism, and that of his followers in refusing to admit it. Trungpa’s criticism of use of drugs other than alcohol is ironic but not surprising. Many who are addicted to one sort of drug criticize those who use others. I recall a former patient who was addicted to barbiturates but criticized her boyfriend’s addiction to speed. Her reasoning was that he eventually needed to take sedatives to come down anyway so why not just use downers. We tend to be more tolerant of vices we share than those we do not.

Fields omits mention of Watts’s or Trungpa’s alcoholism, which he certainly knew about. We may charitably attribute this reticence to a sense of decorum in writing about men he admired, a degree of taste rare in our era of exposés. For this he may be respected. Yet in speaking to several of Trungpa’s former followers I have often noted what the jargon of alcoholism treatment programs terms “co-dependence-behavior” that enables the alcoholic to continue his or her addiction. Trungpa’s open drinking while lecturing was rationalized as a profound teaching method.4 One follower explained to me in all seriousness that Trungpa was not an alcoholic -- because he was enlightened, his body handled alcohol differently than ordinary people.

A similar belle indifferance regarding addiction issues is apparent in many contributions to ZZZ. Thus Dokusho Villalba Sensei asserts:

“Many native Americans have been able to overcome addiction to alcohol and its underlying causes through use of peyote within a ritual and traditional spiritual context” (62).

No evidence is given for this claim. Whenever one sort of drug is claimed to cure addiction to another, we should remember that heroin was originally thought to be an effective treatment for morphine addiction. (Morphine in turn was tried as a cure for cocaine addiction.) The distorted thinking associated with addiction affects even those who are not themselves addicted. This should warn us to be skeptical of the claims of the spiritual benefit and safety of psychedelics.

To balance the preponderant drug apologetics, anyone who takes up ZZZ should be careful not to overlook the chapter by Trudy Walter entitled “Leaning Into Rawness.” Walter poignantly and honestly describes her years of daily marijuana use, clearly an addiction, and her rationalization of it with Buddhist concepts. She acknowledges an “underlying desire to feel only the good stuff” and wanting “out of the violence of my anger, confusion, helplessness, hunger, and fear. With just a puff or two, anger simply got fuzzy and rounded off” (126). She realized “The hypocrisy of living half of my life trying to wake up by meditating and the other half trying to anesthetize myself.” Yet, “Without fail, I would rise every morning with the fervent vow that this would be the day I would quit” She found her feelings of anger, which Buddhism considers a mental poison, particularly distressing. Finally, she recognizes that she needs help in overcoming her addiction. There is also rather ambivalent discussion of her teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in which she seems to want to find a way to rationalize his alcoholism as somehow different from her own marijuana addiction.

Walter’s article contains useful lesions. First, it reminds us that addiction can be rationalized within any system of belief, including Buddhism, despite the primary goal of Buddhism being the abolition of tanha, craving. Second, practice by itself does not invariably solve the problems of dukkha, the distressing contents of the mind. Preaching against anger and other mental defilements may even make matters worse by engendering a sense of unworthiness. Many left Christianity to escape feelings of sinfulness, only to find them in another form. Like Christian preachers and gurus of all persuasions, Buddhist teachers can use people’s negative feelings to manipulate and harm them. Telling people that they are somehow defective and can only improve through the teachings of the master can be extremely effective in retaining disciples.

Many contributors to ZZZ, while not completely abandoning their belief that psychedelics can be spiritually beneficial, have come to see their value as limited at best.

Ram Dass, who hints that he still uses them (215), offers this assessment: I don’t see psychedelics as an enlightening vehicle, but I do see it (sic) as an awakening vehicle. I see them beginning a process that awakens you to the possibility (215).

Joan Halifax, on the other hand, seems to feel that they are not beneficial: I didnt find that it really worked, for the kind of mind that I found emerging in meditation free of psychedelics, to do both. I don’t know many people who have managed to actually keep a psychedelic practice and a mature Buddhist practice -- except maybe Ram Dass (215).

Michael Murphy notes: Nondrug programs at Esalen have survived because they are the fittest. What I think will happen over time is that these drugs will have their place as initiatory agents (82).

David Chadwick: In the Buddhist circles I’m familiar with, psychedelics are mainly seen as something to forget about and move on from (120).

Robert Aitken, notable among Western Zen teachers for his emphasis on the ethical aspects of Buddhist practice, sees little place for drugs: I dont think drugs have particularly helped anybody arrive where they are. It’s just that by the cultural circumstances of the time, in the sixties and early seventies, it so happened that people came to Zen through their experience with drugs (217).

Many Westerners were first drawn to Zen, and Buddhism generally, through a misconception: that meditation would induce a state similar to a drug high. There seems to be a near-consensus now that this is not the case. However, we should not imagine that this was the first time Buddhism helped established itself in a new culture based on false premises -- though I am not suggesting that these distortions were a deliberate subterfuge. Among the Chinese, who made profound contributions to Buddhist art and philosophy, much of the interest of the general populace and even emperors was the expectation of magical powers conferred by meditation. Even with Huayen, which some modern scholars have considered the most profoundly philosophical school, the reputation of many of its masters rested upon their supposed magical attainments. Perhaps drugs are the successor to magic in promoting the Dharma. Both involve temporary release from ordinary reality. For better or worse, such are part of Buddhist history. To put the best light on them, they can be likened to the carts that are used by the enlightened father in the Lotus Sutra to entice his children from the burning house.

Along with abandoning of the misconception that Buddhist practice as akin to psychedelic drug experience, we seem to be leaving behind the anti-intellectualism of sixties Zen and returning to Buddhism’s textual roots. Aitkin tells us:

“All you have to do is pick up a good Buddhist text, and that’s reality. You don’t have to take drugs to wake up to it. Most people that come to me now are awakened by reading” (216).

If we take enlightenment by reading as a modern equivalent of enlightenment by hearing, Western Buddhism seems to be recovering the methods that have been central to the tradition since its beginnings.

One senses that the time when psychedelics might be justified as a useful first step in spiritual development is past. Not to be overlooked as a reason for this change is the very realistic fear of legal consequences, which is a separate issue from the possible spiritual benefits and biological hazards of psychotropic use. But this is surely not the only reason. Buddhism is now practically mainstream in the West and the possibility of spiritual experience, even enlightenment is widely assumed. The patronizing view of Sigmund Freud and others who dismissed religion as illusion, to be left behind as humanity matures, is no longer dominant. If psychedelics were needed in the sixties to demonstrate that spiritual states of mind actually exist, this is no longer the case.

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

by Joan d’Arc

May 19, 2000
from ParanoiaMagazine Website


Excerpted from Joan d’Arc’s book, Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form as well as her upcoming book, Phenomenal World, to be released in Fall, 2000.


While we were being told “plastics” was the wave of the future, the physics of nonlocal consciousness was being commandeered by the secret government.

In the 1960s, the CIA began backing young geniuses, buying a round of physics educations, and pairing them up with UFO lounge-lizards at the Esalen Institute, a conference center/resort in Big Sur, California. Physicist Jack Sarfatti claims he was visited by two men from Sandia Corporation as a child in the 1950s. He later received a full scholarship to Cornell at age 17, and studied under the major figures in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. He spent time at the Esalen Institute in the early 1970s.

In a paper entitled “The Parsifal Effect,” Sarfatti suggests that Einstein’s nonlocal connection can be used for communication. The idea of nonlocal communication involves receipt oftelepathic messages from other times or other worlds. As a child, Sarfatti claims, he received a mysterious phone call claiming to be the voice of a conscious computer aboard an extraterrestrial spacecraft. A distant “cold metallic voice” identified Sarfatti as “one of 400 bright receptive minds.” He was told if he said “yes,” he would “begin to link up with the others in twenty years.” He said yes. The year was 1952.

Twenty years later, Sarfatti claims, he was invited to Stanford Research Institute and spent a 17-hour day there in the summer of 1973. This would put him smack dab in the middle of the infamous SRI remote viewing experiments of Harold Puthoff and Ingo Swann. He claimed he met Hal Puthoff there, as well as ex-astronaut Edgar Mitchell. He notes that Mitchell’s think tank, Institute for Noetic Sciences, was funding the SRI project at the time. He also claims that Mitchell took part in telepathy experiments while in outer space. Ronald McRae has also noted in Mind Wars that Mitchell formed a “psychic posse” in an attempt to locate kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst.

In his book Mind Wars: The True Story of Government Research into the Military Potential of Psychic Weapons, McRae also has some other interesting things to say about Edgar Mitchell and his Institute for Noetic Sciences. He writes that George Bush, while director of the CIA, was approached by Mitchell, “a personal friend for many years.” McRae writes that,

“Bush gave Mitchell permission to organize high-level seminars at the CIA to discuss possible intelligence applications of parapsychology.”

Despite this support, according to McRae, parapsychology research was never quite “institutionalized” at the CIA; i.e. it never had its own department or centralized location, but was pursued as “scattered research projects.” (So, now we’re supposed to believe the well known “CIA Weird Desk” is really just a desk and a few drawers.)

McRae notes that Mitchell implicated “bureaucratic inertia” as the problem. Mitchell stated, “we just couldn’t get the actors together, there was always one bureaucratic bottleneck or another.” Apparently, this problem was solved by moving the program to SRI, with the Institute for Noetic Sciences, and other known CIA cutouts, funding various projects. This trend has continued to this day, with remote viewing agencies/think tanks springing up on the internet.

Notably, Sarfatti states:

“the relevance of the 1952 experience was triggered in my session with Brendan O’Regan at SRI,” … but that, “the actual memory of the 1952 experience is still very vivid and has not at all changed.”

Sarfatti also notes, with regard to his bizarre 1952 phone call,

“Brendan said ‘Oh yes, I have seen data on several hundred incidents of that kind.”

Incidentally, Sarfatti doubts that some Army scientists in 1952 could have planned a twenty year deep cover operation like this; that is, unless time travel was involved. Yet, he clearly suspects there was something more than synchronistic quantum connections at work.

Sarfatti writes in Quantum Quackers:

I was then simply a young inexperienced naïve ‘useful idiot’ in a very, very sophisticated and successful covert psychological warfare operation run by the late Brendan O’Regan of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and the late Harold Chipman, who was the CIA station chief responsible for all mind control research in the Bay Area in the ‘70s. Chipman (aka “Orwell”) funded me openly for awhile in 1985 when he was allegedly no longer in the CIA, and covertly before that, and told me much of the story. In fact, he even introduced me to a beautiful woman adventurer-agent who was one of his RV subjects, who later became my live-in ‘significant other’/

The Esalen Institute

The “quantum conspiracy” runs back to the Esalen Institute. Since the early 1960s, the Esalen Institute has held seminars on various esoteric topics, including parapsychology, human potential, psychedelic experimentation, quantum physics, gestalt therapy and various mystical/esoteric topics.

According to a 1983 book by Walter Anderson entitled The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the American Awakening, the Esalen Institute was founded in 1964 by Mike Murphy and Dick Price. Anderson notes that every program leader in the first “human potential” seminar held at Esalen was involved in early LSD research, including Willis Harmon, who was later head of the Future’s Department at SRI, Gregory Bateson, Gerald Heard, Paul Kurtz, and Myron Stolaroff. Interestingly, according to Mind Race, by Russell Targ and Keith Harary, a 1982 workshop on psychic phenomena was taught at Esalen by Targ and LSD researcher Stanislav Grof. In this program, however, the goal was to show that psychic experiences did not need to be precipitated by a chemically altered state. Apparently, for twenty years, the CIA assumed that LSD was the short cut.

Other leaders of the drug culture and hippie movement gave seminars at Esalen, like Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Richard Alpert, and later, Terence McKenna, some of whom may have been, in Jack Sarfatti’s words, “young inexperienced naïve useful idiots,” and others who probably knew what was up and went along with it anyway. Although, Anderson writes, drug use was not “officially endorsed,” it was common knowledge that psychedelic drugs were widely used by both staff and students. Anderson also notes that even though this was common knowledge, the Institute was never raided by the authorities. Anderson even noted that Charles Manson and Family played an “impromptu concert” at Esalen just three days before the slaughter at the Tate household.

The weirdness at Esalen is a never-ending tale. Another report is that a parapsychology exchange program began between certain Russian officials, which lasted into the 1980s. This exchange program came to be called “hot tub diplomacy,” and it has been reported that Dr. John Mack attended these sessions. Esalen’s seminars in the latest quantum physics theories gave birth to Jack Sarfatti’s Physics/Consciousness Research Group. This group, financed by Werner Erhardt and George Koopman, nurtured the writing of a new wave of quantum-synchronistic-mystical tomes by such people as Fred Alan Wolf, Nick Herbert, Fritjof Capra, Robert Anton Wilson, Uri Geller and others. Sarfatti stated in his article, “In the Thick of It,” that Koopman provided publishing funds for the Physics/Consciousness Research Group through Air Force and Army contracts funneled through Koopman’s company,Insgroup.

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/biosilicon.html

[American Dream]

http://soundcloud.com/sacreduproar/what ... s-are-holy

What if Your Desires Are Holy

This is a piece from the soundtrack for Rob Breszny's book,
PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia.


Some religious traditions teach the doctrine, "Kill off your longings." In their view, attachment to desire is at the root of human suffering. But the religion of materialism takes the opposite tack, asserting that the meaning of life is to be found in indulging desires. Its creed is, "Feed your cravings like a French foie gras farmer cramming eight pounds of maize down a goose's gullet every day."

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we walk a middle path. We believe there are both degrading desires that enslave you and sacred desires that liberate you.

+

Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the divine source from which they arose. In describing one of his addictive patients, Jung said: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval language: the union with God."

+

Psychotherapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way." A preoccupation with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into an obsession with images of love. "Follow the lead of your symptoms," Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul."

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In Maldoror and Poems, the French poet Lautreamont wrote about holy yearning disguised as mournful complaint. "Whenever you hear the dogs' howling in the fields," his mother told him as a child, "don't deride what they do: They thirst insatiably for the infinite, like you, me, and the rest of us humans. I even allow you to stand at the window and gaze upon this exalted spectacle."

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"The primordial fire that sparked millions of galaxies is the same fire that sparks the human creative impulse." - Cindy Spring, "The Non-Profit Universe," EarthLight, Summer 2002. "The human reproductive drive is a watered-down version of the godsex that spawned our solar system." - "Lieutenant" Anfortas, the homeless guy in the Safeway parking lot

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"Feelings that originate in the human genitalia are among the most powerful forces on earth. They have a complex relationship with the feelings that stem from the human heart: at various times in competition or in harmony. Together these primal energies have forged and toppled empires; unleashed terrible and wonderful ideas; and generated the greatest stories ever told. Our goal is to harness our sexual urges in service to the heart's wisdom." - Sheila Samizdat, "Ritual Foreplay for a New History," Underground Pronoia

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"Mad! One must become mad with love in order to realize God. When a person attains ecstatic love of God, all the pores of the skin, even the roots of the hair, become like so many sex organs, and in every pore the aspirant enjoys the happiness of communion with the Supreme Universal Self." -Ramakrishna

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Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't really need and aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage yourself for having them, nor should you conclude that every desire is tainted. Rather, think of your misguided longings as the bumbling, amateur expressions of a faculty that will one day be far more expert. They're how you practice as you work toward the goal of becoming a master of desire. It may take a while, but eventually you will get the hang of wanting things that are really good for you, and good for everyone else, too.

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"The only way anyone is ever cured of desiring nonsensical things is by getting the nonsensical things and then experiencing the unpleasant but educational consequences." -Ann Davies, BOTA.org

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"To become a master of desire, keep talking yourself out of being attached to trivial goals and keep talking yourself into being thrilled about the precious few goals that are really important. Here's another way to say it: Wean yourself from ego-driven desires and pour your libido into a longing for beauty, truth, goodness, justice, integrity, creativity, love, and an intimate relationship with the Wild Divine." -Raye Sangfreud, "Black Market Orchids," Underground Pronoia

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"God has desires. Since I want to be close to God and to model myself after God, I therefore don't aspire to extinguish my desires, but rather to make my desires more God-like: i.e., imbued with an inexorable ambition to create the greatest and most interesting blessings for everyone and everything." - Collin Klamper

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"'Heterosexual,' 'bisexual,' 'lesbian,' and 'gender queer' are not terms I use to describe myself. They're too limiting, like every other name and role I've had the pleasure of escaping. In a pinch, I might agree to call myself ocean-fucker or sky-sucker or earth-bonker. As much as I love men and women, they can't satisfy the full extent of my yearning. I need intimate relations with clouds and eagles and sea anemones and mountains and spirits of the dead and kitchen appliances and the creatures in my dreams. To be continued. To be enhanced and amplified and enlarged upon, world without end, amen. One day I really do hope to be a wise enough lover to be able to fuck the ocean. To give a forest fire a blow job. To make a pride of lions come just by looking at them." -Jumbler Javalina, "Bite into the Mysteries," Underground Pronoia

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"When I hold you, I hold everything: crones praying in the foamy sand at low tide, a shocked waterfall gracing a new housing development, the drunk fetus in the womb of a saint, the foxglove by the fence sipping the fragrance of distant blue straggler stars, my dream of the white crow dreaming of me. In your eyes I see everything that lives." - mash-up of Pablo Neruda and Rob Brezsny

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Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating. Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter. Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good.

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/?p=45780

Australia: Mind Control Cult Leader & Queen of Atlantis Works as Psychologist


” … Ms Lakaev has faced criticism for more than a decade about the extreme practices on her courses, and accusations that she was a practitioner of ‘‘coercive persuasion’’ or mind control techniques. … A former member of her inner circle, Carli McConkey, has told The Sunday Age that Ms Lakaev was physically violent and psychologically manipulative, and had persuaded her followers that she was the Queen of Atlantis, a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and one of 12 members of the Intergalactic Council of the Universe. … “

By Michael Bachelard
Australian Age | October 17, 2010


Atlantis

A WOMAN accused of leading a cult that has damaged the lives of scores of people is working as a psychologist with vulnerable patients at a community mental health service in Queensland.

Natasha Lakaev’s Universal Knowledge organisation was offering courses until last year that prophesied the world would end in December 2012 and almost everyone except her devotees would die.

A former member of her inner circle, Carli McConkey, has told The Sunday Age that Ms Lakaev was physically violent and psychologically manipulative, and had persuaded her followers that she was the Queen of Atlantis, a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and one of 12 members of the Intergalactic Council of the Universe.

Ms Lakaev is now working as a government-employed psychologist at the Ashmore Community Mental Health Service near Surfers Paradise.

However, after The Sunday Age raised questions about her history, Queensland Health agreed to investigate the claims against her, and invited ‘‘anyone with concerns’’ to raise them with authorities.

Ms Lakaev denies all the claims of her former followers, saying she did not run a cult, had never been violent, and the theological claims were merely ‘‘metaphors’’, adding, ‘‘this stuff has been taken completely out of context’’.

Complaints against her by former acolytes have been investigated once by Queensland’s health regulator, but no action taken. The national health regulator will not comment except to say Ms Lakaev ‘‘has current registration and is therefore deemed fit to practise’’.

Ms Lakaev’s lawyers wrote last December that she was working as a case manager.

‘‘A large proportion of her clients are often initially highly unstable with disorders such as schizophrenia, delusional disorders, major depression, major anxiety and personality disorders,’’ the letter said. ‘‘Forensic clients with homicidal backgrounds are also present on the clinic client list.’’

Ms Lakaev has faced criticism for more than a decade about the extreme practices on her courses, and accusations that she was a practitioner of ‘‘coercive persuasion’’ or mind control techniques.

Ms McConkey, who spent 13 years under Ms Lakaev’s sway and only escaped in January this year, said Ms Lakaev had hit her and exploited her. Ms McConkey lived on or near Ms Lakaev’s northern NSW property, Omaroo, near Burringbar, for many years, and during that time handed over $140,000 and spent nine years working without pay in her office.

‘‘Natasha Lakaev should in no way be a registered psychologist,’’ Ms McConkey said.

Ms Lakaev’s business, Universal Knowledge, is styled as a new age personal development course. It has not offered courses since last year, but the program promises to cleanse the ‘‘cellular memory’’ of its participants and help them take the ‘‘next evolutionary step’’ by lifting them into the fourth dimension.

Ms Lakaev told The Sunday Age she had not worked with the business for many years.

However, she founded the business in 1999 and she is listed on the website as ‘‘guiding individuals and groups for over 20 years in cellular memory cleansing’’. It is based at her property and is run by one of her devotees, and she and her children own 75 per cent of the shares.

She begged The Sunday Age not to refer to her work at Ashmore. She said: ‘‘I don’t harm people, I’m really good at my job, my clients are fine, my patients are fine.’’

http://www.theage.com.au/national/alleg ... rom=age_sb

[Joe Hillshoist]

I live near Burringbarr, and one of my friends used to live there. I'll have to sus this out a bit...

[American Dream]

I live near Burringbarr, and one of my friends used to live there. I'll have to sus this out a bit...

Keep us posted!

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofu ... trofuture/

May 18, 2012

Tripping Through the Cold War: Drug Warfare in the Retrofuture


People tripping out in the February 28, 1960 edition of Closer Than We Think


Chemical warfare is nothing new. As early as 428 BC the Spartans were burning wood soaked in resin and sulfur for use against their enemies. And the First World War is often remembered for its horrific deaths due to mustard gas. But the mid-20th century ushered in a new futuristic chemical weapon: LSD.

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline (peyote), and psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms) were all seen as possible contenders for non-lethal weapons of the future; sprayed on an unsuspecting army or civilian population and making them vulnerable to invasion.

An Associated Press story from the September 6, 1959 Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa warned that the nuclear stalemate with the Soviet Union might prompt the Russians to develop chemicals that could be used against the United States. Americans scientists were said to have developed their own weapons to counter-attack.

Working in deep secrecy, U.S. scientists almost overnight have developed an arsenal of fantastic new weapons, variously known as psycho-chemicals and “madness” gases, which could virtually paralyze an enemy nation without firing a shot.

Interestingly, the article doesn’t name the chemicals, instead calling them “madness gases” or surgical anesthetics:

By way of definition, chemical warfare embraces the use of such compounds as the psycho-chemicals to create hallucinations in the enemy’s mind or the deadly nerve gases and other toxic substances to kill.

Some of the new chemicals act much faster than ether, the anesthetic used to put surgical patients to sleep, and have an effect lasting 24 to 48 hours. One means of dispersal is a newly developed “smoke ginny” with which 2 men can lay a blanket of chemical fog over an area 5 miles long and 200 yards wide.

The February 28, 1960 edition of the Sunday comic strip “Closer Than We Think” by Arthur Radebaugh pulled this idea from the headlines and illustrated it in the picture above. The strip quotes Lt. Gen Arthur Trudeau from the U.S. Army as warning that the Soviets are developing weaponized versions of “psycho-chemicals” and that the U.S. should follow suit:

New nerve drugs may be used to immobilize whole cities or battle areas in tomorrow’s warfare. The Chemical Corps knows about a complete arsenal of “nerve gases” that can make fighting men and embattled citizenry as happy and peaceable as kids playing tag.

Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau, chief of Army research and development, is worried about possible attacks with these drugs. He fears the United States might become a victim. “The Soviet [Union] has 15% of its munitions in chemicals,” he said. “I think psycho-chemicals are the coming weapon — we are missing out if we don’t capitalize on them.”



1981 vision of future chemical warfare, causing soldiers to hallucinate


The 1981 children’s book World of Tomorrow: War and Weapons by Neil Ardley also illustrated what a psycho-chemical attack might look like, with soldiers believing they’re being hunted by giant flying pterodactyl-like creatures:

This isn’t a scene from a science fiction story in which flying monsters take over the world. It is a view of a future battle as seen through the eyes of a defending soldier. He and his fellow troops reel back as invading aircraft fire shells containing chemicals. The chemicals are drugs that produce dream-like reactions or hallucinations in people. The soldiers see the aircraft turning into flying monsters and the buildings bend over, and they flee in terror. Invading forces protected from the effects of the drugs will soon arrive easily take over the city.

[American Dream]

Ecstasy Produced for 'Riot Control' in South Africa

According to Reuters, on June 9 1998 a fomer South African government scientist told South Africa's Truth Commission that in the final days of apartheid the government ordered its chemists to make one tonne of ecstasy, for 'riot control'.

The scientist, Dr Johan Koekemoer, former head of chemical and biological weapons research at the secret Delta G facility, told the commission that he did not approve of the project and did not trust the motives of those who asked him to make the ecstasy, saying "I did not believe ecstasy was a good incapacitant and I told my superiors that...ecstasy enhances interpersonal relationships. I told Dr Mijburgh [overall chief of Delta G] I did not want to kiss my enemy". He personally delivered the ecstasy, in powder form, to Mijburgh between February 1992 and January 1993.

More details on the case from a correspondent in South Africa:

"At the moment, there is an ongoing commission of inquiry being held into the activities of the secret service during the apartheid years. The last few days of the inquiry have lifted the lid on the activities of a clandestine government laboratory called the Roodeplaat Research Laboratory. Evidence presented by former lab employees at the commission of inquiry this week, reveal that the laboratory produced all sorts of exotic poisons for use against anti-apartheid activists. These included cyanide, thallium, botulism and paraquat - and, wait for it, ecstasy.

According to evidence presented this week, between February 1992 and January 1993, no less than 912kg of Ecstasy `in pure crystalline form' was manufactured by the laboratory. Working on a tab dosage of say 125mgs, that's enough E for 73 million hits! The evidence being presented to the commission is that the E was going to be used to `incapacitate the enemy'.

The shadowy figure behind the E production was the former head of the army special operations called Wouter Basson who is now facing criminal charges for being in possession of E a year or two back. The evidence presented in court was that he was having the E manufactured for `incapacitating the enemy', but the word is that he was was producing it for international distibution in order to make himself a whole lot of money. In fact, quite a bit of this E turned up last year amongst the local rave community. It came in brown capsules and was judged to be 'very good stuff'.

http://ecstasy.org/info/southafrica.html

[American Dream]

Detail from the Hassan II Mosque (مسجد الحسن الثاني) in Casablanca, Morocco.

[American Dream]

LSD: Where has it gone - Pickard LSD bust