Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[American Dream]

Of course madness does have its' fans. For the last hundred years, and increasingly since the pseudo post-modern deification of madness, many philosophers have argued that permanent insanity is ultimate liberation (as exemplified by the insanity of people such as Neitzche or Artaud). Certainly experimentation with drugs for transformative process must require a certain sort of character, but madness is not the aim of the experiment. An individual, to participate fully in the drug experience must, in simple terms, be unlikely to flip out and permanently loose the plot. Humans are social beings. Even a personal drive towards permanent insanity can be easily described as emerging out of the culture that lunacy supposedly seeks to undermine and escape from. My feeling is that any transformative process must include what I refer to as 'the shamanic return'. That is, after gaining some new insight, some new view of the world through the transgressive experience, it must be possible to return to society and utilise that experience within a social context - to have learned something. What use is it if the mad utter profound truths if we, the supposedly sane, cannot understand them? If madness does have a message it must be understood and conceptualised in such a way that it can feed back into culture. This is one of the most important points concerning the special usefulness of drugs as transformative agents. The key element, but by no means the whole of the transformative story is the drug material itself. I can show you the material key to my own transformation, I can explain about the general action of the drug, I can relate my personal experiences, I can listen to you and allow for your interpretations. However if the acid I take is of such dosage, or taken in frightening conditions and I 'lose it' permanently it is unlikely that I would even understand your words, let alone desire to move toward sharing your experience. After the transgression we must be able to deconstruct the experience, to subject it to rational analysis. We must be able to see the consequences of the drug experience, to relate what it has taught us to the 'normal' reality of every-day life.

--Strange Fruit - Magick and Drugs By Julian Vayne

http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/fruit.htm

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

May 1970: Officials Discuss Civil Disturbance Plans Following Exercise Cable Splicer III

Participants in a California civil disturbance exercise, codenamed Cable Splicer III, hold an “After Action Conference” to discuss the results. The exercise was designed to practice Operation Cable Splicer, a regional subplan of the Pentagon’s Operation Garden Plot (see Winter 1967-1968). The participants, which include Army officials, local police officers, and private executives, spend much of the conference pronouncing their disgust for leftists and other activists. According to New Times magazine, speakers at the conference condemn “university administrators who demur at giving the police free rein on the campuses; parents of ‘would-be revolutionaries’ who support their children; and legislators who investigate police actions.” Political demonstrators are referred to as “guerrillas,” “modern day barbarians,” “Brown Shirts,” “kooks,” and “VC.” Los Angeles Police Department Inspector John A. McAllister gives a lecture listing activities that “require police action,” including “loud, boisterous, or obscene” behavior on beaches, “love-in type gatherings in parks where in large numbers they freak out,” disruptions by “noisy and sometimes violent dissidents,” peace marches and rock festivals where “violence is commonplace and sex is unrestrained,” and “campus disruptions—which in fact are nothing more than mini-revolutions.”

[NEW TIMES, 11/28/1975]

http://www.historycommons.org/context.j ... lesplicer3

[American Dream]

The Heaven's Gate Cult

BY Katherine Ramsland

Celestial Gurus

Marshall Herff Applewhite was the overachieving son of a Presbyterian minister. He was always a classic leader who could easily persuade people to accept his ideas and follow. He had attended seminary, been a choir director, and had numerous roles in the Houston Grand Opera, but was dismissed from his teaching position at the University of Alabama School of Music over an affair he had with a male student. His wife left him, taking their two young sons, so he got another job and once again got entangled with a student, this time a young woman. In 1972, he admitted himself into a psychiatric hospital, according to some accounts, to cure his obsessions with sexuality. In his early forties, he viewed himself as being seriously ill.

There he met a nurse, Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles, a member of the Theosophical Society who was four years older than him. At the time, her own marriage was falling apart and she persuaded Applewhite that he could have a major role in her work and her life. He listened and was soon involved in her activities.


Bonnie Lu Trousdale

These two discovered a mutual fascination with UFOs, astrology, and science fiction. Nettles urged Applewhite to read The Secret Doctrine by Madame Blavatsky, and they opened a center in Houston for the study of metaphysics. They came to believe that they were the earthly incarnations of aliens millions of years old: they were the two witnesses mentioned in Chapter 11 of the book of Revelation, placed on this earth to "harvest souls," i.e., to help save as many people as they could. Nettles persuaded Applewhite that as "The Two" they should embark on an evangelical mission to bring the truth to others. Nine months after they met, they severed ties with family and friends (she left her four children) and drove out of Houston together to spread their message.

What they told people was similar to what many other end-times cult leaders preached: that they would be persecuted and put to death by their enemies, their bodies would lie in the open for three and a half days, and they would prove their deity by rising from the dead and disappearing into a cloud. From there they would ascend to a higher level to be with God. Their interpretation of the biblical "cloud" was that it was actually a spaceship, and they expected to be welcomed aboard. Indeed, this was their only means of salvation from the "Luciferians," who were evil aliens that enslaved humans through worldly concerns like jobs, sex, and families. Those who believed in the message could join The Two and be saved as well.

Before they could get much of a start, their invitation to the media for a press conference got them into real trouble. In Brownsville, Texas, Applewhite told a reporter that if he came to the press conference, they would give him the most significant story of his career. Believing it was about drugs, he brought the authorities. When The Two spotted the police, they left, which aroused suspicions. Officers looked up the license plate number of their rental car, discovered that it had been reported stolen, and arrested them.

They were charged with credit card fraud (charges were dropped) and car theft. Applewhite served six months in jail awaiting trial, and was convicted and sentenced to four more months. The judge ordered a psychiatric exam, which Applewhite passed but which he later admitted made him doubt his sanity.

Humiliated and even more paranoid when he left jail in 1975, he and Nettles went to southern California to start spreading the word. They called their group HIM, for Human Individual Metamorphosis, and picked up 25 disciples. Then they started their formal campaign in earnest.

The first official public meeting was scheduled in the seaside town of Waldport, Oregon in 1975. For months beforehand, they had posted fliers on telephone poles urging people to attend the meeting to discover the truth about reality. Two hundred people arrived at the Bayshore Inn to find out what the fliers were about.

The Two insisted that to be saved, spiritual-minded individuals must recognize that the appearance that most humans have souls is merely an illusion. Only those who truly had souls and were ready to be harvested by God would recognize the truth of the message. Once they did, they would give up their worldly clutter at once and follow a strict regimen. Using biblical notions about sexless angels and the praise Christ gave to those who sacrificed family life to follow him, they insisted that spiritual perfection came only at a price. One had to first see the truth about the evils around them and want desperately to free oneself.

Applewhite and Nettles didn't convince as many people as they had hoped, yet their strong belief in what they said, along with their intensity in delivering the message, proved compelling.

"They were a team act," said one former member about these gurus. "They played off each other."

"They were everyone's mom and dad," said another. "They made people feel protected and reassured."

The Two gave several televised interviews about their beliefs and the miracles they would perform, which brought them nationwide attention.

"We're going to stage, so that it can be witnessed," said Applewhite on a news broadcast, "that when a human has overcome his human-level activities, a chemical change takes place and he goes through a metamorphosis just exactly as a caterpillar does when he quits being a caterpillar and he goes off into a crysalis and becomes a butterfly."

That did not mean they would leave their bodies behind in graves, he insisted.

"We're going to be murdered and when we are, after three and a half days, we're going to walk up, just get right up, and you're going to watch us."

Twenty people from Oregon joined them. Some came home from the meetings believing they would soon acquire the kingdom of heaven and they made dramatic changes right away. One man and his wife actually left their 10-year-old daughter, certain she would get whatever she needed.

Once the believers were gathered together, they were told to get ready. Heaven awaited. The time was approaching. The world would soon see that it was foolish to ignore the message of The Two.


Next Chapter »

[American Dream]

[Hammer of Los]

...

Extract from 'Concentration' by Mouni Sadhu 1959 pg 178-180;

Now we shall examine the qualities of a true master of wisdom who has a real message for suffering mankind:

(a) The master invariably comes into this world ripe, and endowed with all spiritual perfection, which manifests as soon as his childhood is over and early manhood begins. The true master does not spend the first part of his earthly life leading an average human existence, ie committing the common sins, and then, only in the second part becoming 'converted' and living as a saint or yogi. Any person who does so might well become a successful disciple, who, after recognition of the true teacher, forsakes the wrong path. He will still have plenty of work ahead. His karma is far from finished and he will still have to pay an enormous number of 'debts,' while on the other hand, a true guru or Jivanmukta is for ever free. We may honour such advanced students of the great school of life, but we should never dare to compare them to a perfect being, a Sad-Guru, who is without any blemish, with no past, present or future, and who is without the slightest trace of 'ego.'

(b) The guru has no attachments. He is not affected by, or interested in the number of his adherents (devotees), for he knows that, whoever is mature enough will eventually find his way to the master even from the farthermost corner of the earth. Therefore, there is no need for a Sad-Guru to travel in order to propagate his teachings. Such behaviour would be inconsistent and incompatible with the greatness and wisdom of a perfect man.

(c) The true master is far beyond and above all existing religions, although he does not condemn any of them, knowing that they are the first necessary steps for less advanced human beings. Consequently he does not favour any particular creed and is not concerned with the so-called 'conversions' or changes of religion.

(d) The guru leads an exemplary and perfectly unattached life, showing us how we can transcend all our limitations which so often seem insurmountable. Like a beacon, he sheds, in all directions, the light of his example, of his attainment, and his unity with the cosmic Self-God.

(e) He refuses to possess anything in this material world. Therefore, he gives the lie to the old saying, which allegedly states that, no one can live without attachment to earthly things.

(f) He has no personal relationships in our sense of the word. He is beyond all ties of family or society. At the same time, those who find such a master, acquire a true and great friend, to whom everyone can turn for help and inspiration.

(g) No true master talks or writes very much. Sometimes, like Christ or Buddha he does not write at all, or like the Maharshi, very little. Why? Because he knows that some of his directly inspired disciples will invariably perform all the needed technical work in order to transmit his message to humanity. This leaves him more time and freedom for higher, purely spiritual, constructive and invisible work in this world. The master never argues with anyone.

(h) He does not accept any gifts and condescends to take only a litle of the things his body needs. All other attitudes adopted by those who like to pose as 'masters' are at best only self-deception or they may simply be deceiving others. For, in our time, we have legions of such false and therefore highly dangerous 'masters', who are ready to 'help or inititiate' us, poviding we can afford to pay them. Only utterly blind or decadent people could accept such 'guidance' for which they have to pay in money or some other form of material goods.

(i) The true masters do not usually (italics mine) exhibit siddhis (occult powers) for they transcended them long ago when they were still on the threshold of masterhood. A true master possesses all siddhis and infinitely more for he is one with the unmanifested Supreme, which is the source of all power.

(j) No Jivanmukta accepts any pet-names, superfluous titles or other signs of human emotions. It would be too far below his dignity and wisdom. The great Rishi of our own epoch told us that, 'in truth, he does not possess any name at all'. For a name, given by men means - personality, ego or a label. While a genuine teacher has left his former 'ego' in the far off past, numerous self-styled 'masters' of to-day still like pompous and empty titles as well as cheap adoration from indiscriminative people. Their egos are still strong and far from extinct.

(k) The master is utterly indifferent to his physical existence: his body being only a shell, although perhaps of importance to us, his devotees, who are still accustomed to look first on material forms. But this body is without any meaning to the illimitable spiritual consciousness of a true master. He is not eager to dispose of the body before the proper time, nor would he make any effort to retain it when it is dying. Only ordinary men run to doctors for medicines. Shortly before leaving the physical form, the great Rishi Ramana said: 'This body itself is a disease!' That is an initiation and the ultimate truth about this physical existence which is so cherished by ignorant people. The sage knows that everything happens in due course, so how could he oppose what is inevitable.

(l) Only the perfect man can teach in Silence, because he has reached It, and therefore he alone can stimulate It in others. He speaks through the Silence infinitely more potently than through any human language. But those who are not yet Jivanmuktas naturally prefer to use speech and pen.

(m) Another sign for recognition of a true master who has a spiritual message for humanity, is the fact, that he never has any earthly master himself. He comes ripe and ready to open for us new spiritual paths and needs no human help. Such was the case with Christ, Buddha and Ramana Maharshi: but lesser leaders only have helpers similar to themselves. Therefore, let us associate ourselves with the foremost.

These are only a few points, but nevertheless they may help many sincere seekers and students to escape from the otherwise unavoidable and bitter disappointments which ensue if they do not follow a genuine master. If their power of descrimination is not strong enough, they may accept only a shadow-substitute instead of a true guru. You can imagine the immense harm which might result from such a mistake.

...

[American Dream]

...

Extract from 'Concentration' by Mouni Sadhu 1959 pg 178-180;

Now we shall examine the qualities of a true master of wisdom who has a real message for suffering mankind:

(a) The master invariably comes into this world ripe, and endowed with all spiritual perfection, which manifests as soon as his childhood is over and early manhood begins. The true master does not spend the first part of his earthly life leading an average human existence, ie committing the common sins, and then, only in the second part becoming 'converted' and living as a saint or yogi. Any person who does so might well become a successful disciple, who, after recognition of the true teacher, forsakes the wrong path. He will still have plenty of work ahead. His karma is far from finished and he will still have to pay an enormous number of 'debts,' while on the other hand, a true guru or Jivanmukta is for ever free. We may honour such advanced students of the great school of life, but we should never dare to compare them to a perfect being, a Sad-Guru, who is without any blemish, with no past, present or future, and who is without the slightest trace of 'ego.'

(b) The guru has no attachments. He is not affected by, or interested in the number of his adherents (devotees), for he knows that, whoever is mature enough will eventually find his way to the master even from the farthermost corner of the earth. Therefore, there is no need for a Sad-Guru to travel in order to propagate his teachings. Such behaviour would be inconsistent and incompatible with the greatness and wisdom of a perfect man.

(c) The true master is far beyond and above all existing religions, although he does not condemn any of them, knowing that they are the first necessary steps for less advanced human beings. Consequently he does not favour any particular creed and is not concerned with the so-called 'conversions' or changes of religion.

(d) The guru leads an exemplary and perfectly unattached life, showing us how we can transcend all our limitations which so often seem insurmountable. Like a beacon, he sheds, in all directions, the light of his example, of his attainment, and his unity with the cosmic Self-God.

(e) He refuses to possess anything in this material world. Therefore, he gives the lie to the old saying, which allegedly states that, no one can live without attachment to earthly things.

(f) He has no personal relationships in our sense of the word. He is beyond all ties of family or society. At the same time, those who find such a master, acquire a true and great friend, to whom everyone can turn for help and inspiration.

(g) No true master talks or writes very much. Sometimes, like Christ or Buddha he does not write at all, or like the Maharshi, very little. Why? Because he knows that some of his directly inspired disciples will invariably perform all the needed technical work in order to transmit his message to humanity. This leaves him more time and freedom for higher, purely spiritual, constructive and invisible work in this world. The master never argues with anyone.

(h) He does not accept any gifts and condescends to take only a litle of the things his body needs. All other attitudes adopted by those who like to pose as 'masters' are at best only self-deception or they may simply be deceiving others. For, in our time, we have legions of such false and therefore highly dangerous 'masters', who are ready to 'help or inititiate' us, poviding we can afford to pay them. Only utterly blind or decadent people could accept such 'guidance' for which they have to pay in money or some other form of material goods.

(i) The true masters do not usually (italics mine) exhibit siddhis (occult powers) for they transcended them long ago when they were still on the threshold of masterhood. A true master possesses all siddhis and infinitely more for he is one with the unmanifested Supreme, which is the source of all power.

(j) No Jivanmukta accepts any pet-names, superfluous titles or other signs of human emotions. It would be too far below his dignity and wisdom. The great Rishi of our own epoch told us that, 'in truth, he does not possess any name at all'. For a name, given by men means - personality, ego or a label. While a genuine teacher has left his former 'ego' in the far off past, numerous self-styled 'masters' of to-day still like pompous and empty titles as well as cheap adoration from indiscriminative people. Their egos are still strong and far from extinct.

(k) The master is utterly indifferent to his physical existence: his body being only a shell, although perhaps of importance to us, his devotees, who are still accustomed to look first on material forms. But this body is without any meaning to the illimitable spiritual consciousness of a true master. He is not eager to dispose of the body before the proper time, nor would he make any effort to retain it when it is dying. Only ordinary men run to doctors for medicines. Shortly before leaving the physical form, the great Rishi Ramana said: 'This body itself is a disease!' That is an initiation and the ultimate truth about this physical existence which is so cherished by ignorant people. The sage knows that everything happens in due course, so how could he oppose what is inevitable.

(l) Only the perfect man can teach in Silence, because he has reached It, and therefore he alone can stimulate It in others. He speaks through the Silence infinitely more potently than through any human language. But those who are not yet Jivanmuktas naturally prefer to use speech and pen.

(m) Another sign for recognition of a true master who has a spiritual message for humanity, is the fact, that he never has any earthly master himself. He comes ripe and ready to open for us new spiritual paths and needs no human help. Such was the case with Christ, Buddha and Ramana Maharshi: but lesser leaders only have helpers similar to themselves. Therefore, let us associate ourselves with the foremost.

These are only a few points, but nevertheless they may help many sincere seekers and students to escape from the otherwise unavoidable and bitter disappointments which ensue if they do not follow a genuine master. If their power of descrimination is not strong enough, they may accept only a shadow-substitute instead of a true guru. You can imagine the immense harm which might result from such a mistake.

...

I do agree- even though devotion is a different question...

[American Dream]

“I THINK PSYCHEDELICS PLAY A MAJOR PART IN WHAT WE DO, BUT HAVING SAID THAT, I FEEL THAT IF SOMEBODY’S GOING TO EXPERIMENT WITH THOSE THINGS THEY REALLY NEED TO EDUCATE THEMSELVES ABOUT THEM. PEOPLE JUST TAKING THE CHEMICALS AND DIVING IN WITHOUT HAVING ANY KIND OF PREPARATION ABOUT WHAT THEY’RE ABOUT TO EXPERIENCE TEND TO HAVE NO FRAME OF REFERENCE, SO THEY’RE MISSING EVERYTHING FLYING BY AND ALL THESE NEW PERSPECTIVES. IT’S JUST A WASTE. THEY REACH A LITTLE BIT OF SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT, BUT THEY END UP GOING, ‘WELL, NOW I NEED THAT DRUG TO GET BACK THERE AGAIN.’ THE TRICK IS TO USE THE DRUGS ONCE TO GET THERE, AND MAYBE SPEND THE NEXT TEN YEARS TRYING TO GET BACK THERE WITHOUT THE DRUG.”

~ MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN


http://m0vebywillal0ne.tumblr.com/post/ ... in-what-we

[American Dream]

“This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.”

Bill Hicks

[American Dream]

“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity.”

--Albert Einstein

[justdrew]

[American Dream]

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”


— Carl Sagan

[American Dream]

“What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.”

— Carl Sagan

[American Dream]

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”

— Carl Sagan

[American Dream]

http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?se ... 1553-0.txt

Delusions of Normality
Sanity, Drugs, Sex, Money and Belief in America

March 27, 2009
By Erik Davis
http://tinyurl.com/dzr9vc




J.P. Harpignies is one of my favorite people. I met him in New York in the early 90s when he invited me to come give a talk on Philip K. Dick at the New York Open Center, where he worked on making the New Age seminar programming there as interesting and edgy as possible. This talk helped launch my ship, the HMS Underground Esoterica, and I will never forgive him for that.

J.P. also helped a young, heady and anxious me get his psycho-spiritual feet on the ground, encouraging my deepening encounter with Tai Chi, and turning me onto the healthy hippie peasant food I still mostly eat at home. More than that, this fiercely intelligent and insightful dude, a behind-the-scenes connector who can nimbly straddle the worlds of shamanic spirituality and grim meat-hook reality, gave me a model for independent critical thinking in a world that often seems to value—or at least reward—neither.

Harpignies has written and edited a number of independently published books, covering everything from biotech to psychedelics to “political ecology.” His latest, Delusions of Normality: Sanity, Drugs, Sex, Money and Beliefs in America, is his best. In the face of the myth of a dominant normality that underlies the New York Times mainstream, Harpignies proves that we are all freaks, and that deviancy is, in fact, the norm.

As Harpignies notes, the implicit assumption in the Times is that most of its readers are “eminently sane, impeccably ethical, drug-free, law-abiding folks with post-Enlightenment rational attitudes towards science and religious tolerance”—folks who are, in addition, “largely free of sexual kinks and flaky cultural or spiritual worldviews.” This image, which structures the fictional space of public discourse, does not stand a chance against this short, dense, nuanced and eye-opening book.

Delusions of Normality is one of those gifts that does a lot of heavy lifting for you—now you don’t have to read all the newspapers, books, and sociological sources Harpignies uses to gather facts, or at least patterns, that deconstruct mainstream assumptions about the depth and breadth of kinkiness or graft or drug gobbling in American life. Even better is his ability to use the ruins of normality as a platform for spiky, trenchent and occasionally funny social critique. The metastasizing of wedding culture, for example, has led to “insanely expensive, obsessively organized events that seem more like potlaches for control freaks that marriage ceremonies.” Its the kind of humor that comes from stating the obvious, and realizing that you or the folks you know are as obvious as everybody else.

One of the things you realize is how little we do know about how people actually think and behave. Sexual activity in particular has received far less attention than you might assume, partly because we have as many crucial fictions to lose as we have facts to gain. The lack of such studies leads to a lot of fuzziness around the statistics we use to buttress our opinions about, say, the rate of adultery, or the amount of porno online. There are a number of microstudies that Harpignies digs up, with their inevitable jewels (street prostitutes are far more likely to fuck a cop than get arrested by one). But while accurate big statements are harder to make than it appears, Harpignies still has enough chutzpah to stick his neck out and make some common sense conclusions that range across the political spectrum.

The sex chapter is, of course, fascinating. After a frank discussion of sexual obsessions, including a jaw-dropping list of various “philias” (how about Dendrophilia, the fetishizing of large plants and trees?), Harpignies concludes: “We’re not just the hairless or culturally complicated ape, we’re the kinky ape.”

But the long chapter on money—about which we talk so little in an honest way—is the most eye-opening and refreshing. Here Harpignies’ hard left sensibilities become more apparent, even as he sticks close to sociological detail and a very pragmatic sense of life under capitalism. He attacks the fiction of lawfulness that sustains mainstream consensus reality, which always constructs corruption, graft, and rip-offs as deviations from an essenially just norm. Harpignies not only argues the opposite, but argues why: money as it exists today is an essentially corrupting force, one that pervades our reality. “A remarkably dynamic strain of corruption, bottom-feeding con artistry and predatory financial behavior at all levels, some technically legal, some borderline, some blatantly criminal, is an integral aspect of American life, central to the evolution of our economic system. It’s not a disease. It’s long been a core attribute of the organism itself.”

We all may know on some level that this is true, just the way we may suspect that kinks are pervasive and that almost everyone we know and meet harbors opinions (about God or UFOs or flouride) that most of us would find extremely eccentric, if not mad. But we rarely allow this knowledge to erode the fiction of normality that structures our sense of society, even—or perhaps especially—for those who consider themselves rebels from that reality. For all of us, then, Delusions of Normality is an acid bath. Bracing for sure, but a confrontation that leaves you with the fresh bite of clarity.





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