Friday, April 12, 2013

Moments of Ecstasy

One of the first things I noticed when I started looking into the Beatles was the fascinating reactions they were able to elicit from hordes of girls, across the world. I was both fascinated by this because of the group psychology, but also from an individual experience perspective.



I hope to get to a group psychology analysis soon, but not today. Today, I just want to show a couple pictures that I think of when I'm examining the mythology.
This experience of "Beatlemania" reportedly had girls in such an ecstatic state that they would sometimes faint, and the bleachers were said to be "soaked with urine" after the shows. The Beatles caused these girls to loose complete control of bodily functions. Impressive.



I can't help but think this Ecstasy might have been similar to the spiritual experience of St. Teresa.


"The two central sculptural figures of the swooning nun and the angel with the spear derive from an episode described by Teresa of Avila, a mystical cloistered Discalced Carmelite reformer and nun, in her autobiography, ‘The Life of Teresa of Jesus’ (1515–1582). Her experience of religious ecstasy in her encounter with the angel is described as follows:


“ I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying." <source>


"[B]ut then you also have moments of ecstasy. The difference between everyday living and living in those moments of ecstasy is the difference between being outside and inside the Garden. You go past fear and desire, past the pair of opposites ... into transcendence.

"This is an essential experience of any mystical realization. You die to your flesh and are born into your spirit.You identify yourself with the consciousness and light of which your body is but the vehicle. You die to the vehicle and become identified in your consciousness with that of which the vehicle is the carrier. That is the God.

"...Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things."

Joseph Campbell & the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, (p.134, small paperback edition)

Here's a great blog with more about the symbolism in Bernini's statue of the Ecstasy of St. Teresa for Extra Credit http://sexualityinart.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/berninis-portrayal-of-the-ecstasy-of-saint-theresa/

Monday, April 1, 2013

Lucy's Sky Diamonds: The Disinformation Clean-up Party

**KIDS! Don't Do Drugs! Also- Don't read my Blog! Go on! Get outta here!!!****

Disclaimer: I'm not promoting the use of drugs in this post; that is NOT the intention of this post. I firmly believe that there are some people who are not mentally stable, and should probably not even take aspirin. I don't know- I'm not the doctor- but then again, neither is the government. This should be clear- I am NOT advocating drug use. I'm only sharing information. Don't try this at home.

Ok, so I'm going to plunge ahead a bit an tackle the LSD and drugs misinformation oddly running rampant through the Beatles Mystery researchers. I get the feeling most people who are talking about this stuff actually have zero experience with it outside of what they have read....and mostly they seem to have read a couple conspiracy posts about the Mk Ultra files, and stopped there. I must note that I think it's a bit odd that so many people who are so *very* interested in the Beatles seem to be so isolated from the culture the Beatles and others of that era created. So, I hope you will except this as the public service message I believe is needed- an infusion of actual reality, based on knowledge through experience and study- not just frightened rumors propagated by the system that sought to control people with these drugs to begin with, right?

Mk Ultra was the secret CIA testing of LSD- and they did a lot of evil things in their pursuit of this study. They kept people locked in room for days on megadoses of acid to film their reactions. They secretly megadosed one of their own scientists who freaked out and jumped out a window- because he wasn't expecting to be dosed- this can be very dangerous, period. They were partially after a drug they could use to control the masses, and partly after trying to find a therapeutic use for LSD (various trials had various goals and various levels of research ethics), and partly trying to figure out a way to make a "super-warrior" and give us the edge in war. It was shortly after all this that any human subjects research began having to go through Internal Review Board approval in order to test with Humans. Since that happened, these studies have stopped- even the beneficial ones. You can find the declassified Mk Ultra files on the internet now.

I, personally, have a friend who was a Mk Ultra research subject. His studies also involved Electric Shock Therapy and anti-gay programming. They definitely got him zapped out for good. He's not the person he once was, and the studies did major lasting damage to him. So, I personally know that the evils of Mk Ultra are very real, and did great damage to individuals. That being said- the governments disgusting abuses should not be the background for all discussions of this drug, and drugs like it.

Of the studies that were done, they found that LSD makes an exceptionally poor population control drug. It not only has too unpredictable of effects, but it doesn't generate a mental passivity- quite the opposite! It creates a greater level of thinking which leads to "anti-social" and anti-government sentiments. Sometimes, though, depending on the situation and the persons mental state, it can lock them into being "fried" for the rest of their lives; but this is always, according to all of my rather vast experience, a result of already being mentally unstable, taking a massive amount in a short period of time and/or having something really traumatic happen while being HEAVILY dosed, also in combinations of things like PCP and amphetamines.

 Luckily they figured out a better population control drug in antidepressants, though, so mission accomplished. A great deal of success was found in research with LSD, mescaline and MDMA into therapy, though. This kind of treatment was banned, however, with the rest of research on any of these class of drugs. This has only recently been reopened, but only in a very limited number of highly scrutinized studies.

Now then. I've been really struggling with how to express this information to people who seem to be outside of the drug culture reality, and who might only know what they have been told in commercials. Mmm. There's a lot of really deep places we could go here, so I'm mostly going to rely on a few videos that illustrate the most important points for me. PLEASE watch them all the way through- especially the ones with Terance McKenna- an Ethnobotanist who spent his professional career travelling the world in a quest to try all of the plant-based ethneogens known to humans throughout the world. He wanted to experience for himself the various plants that humans have been using around the world for all of human history to achieve a higher level of consciousness. <Wiki Terence McKenna>

First- There is growing evidence that humans are not the only species that seek out psychedelic substances, and it is a very reasonable hypothesis to suppose that early humans ate psychedelic substances. The use of psychedelic substances is so common in human civilizations, that it has been noted throughout all recorded history, from all areas of the world. Even today,  of the 478 known societies, 469 have a ritualized use for plant-based ethneogens. As well, in every society you find some form of altering substances including alcohol and kava kava and stimulates like the coca leaves and betel nut. This is very nearly what anthropologists call a "Universal" human trait.

This video shows Terence McKenna discussing the "Stoned Ape Theory" 9:46 minutes

The following series of videos (1-5) is a History Channel presentation on Ancient Drug use. Altogether about 50 minutes.

So, back to Terence McKenna. If you only watch 1 video on this whole blog, please watch this one. Here he's discussing drugs, and what this really means. (9 minutes)
Now, I've got a couple more Terence video's I'll put at the end for those of you looking for extra credit. But, in this next section, I'd like to break down some myths about who uses psychedelics, and what that is like for many of those people. I think you'll be surprised.

We'll begin with George Carlin:

Ralph Abraham, Mathematician <Who is this?>:

Steve Jobs:

Larry Hagman (I Dream of Jeanie, JR in Dallas) (3 minutes):

Here's an interesting list, which also include Cary Grant <20 Most Notable LSD Users>

Not all research was the draconian and horrific kind describes earlier in this blog. Here's a video of a study that was interested in exploring the effects- sans extreme pressures. (8:48)

Here's a CIA-made documentary that records an observational study on an Artist



It is not at all true that being on psychedelics render people completely useless and unskilled, as might be the case for some drugs, like heroin or alcohol.

And sometimes, it just results in a little hilarity...(warning for foul and unsavory language...but funny.)



So, ok, back to business. I'm not trying to say LSD or psychedelics are great, or that there isn't some merit in concern. Our use of drug substances for most of human time has been in some sort of ritualized use, and our current culture lacks a format for selecting the more receptive people for initiation, and safe-guarding the more fragile from the deeper explorations. We lack that in our culture, and for that reason, when it suddenly arose in the 1960's, I can only imagine it was a frightening and unsettling experience for the population- the ones who tried it and weren't properly prepared or meant for it, as well as the ones who had no idea what was going on with people who were looking and behaving strangely. 

But, really, if you think about it- not a lot of harm done in the long run. I mean, of this generation that got all dosed out for a good 5 years or more, the vast majority of them went on to be the money-making capitalist yuppies and uptight adults that they so feared they'd someday become. Not all, though, and some who kept the journey they experienced on these drugs alive became many things, including incredible artists like Alex Grey, authors like Douglas Adams and Tom Robbins, and inventors like Steve Jobs and Timothy Leary or great scientists like the DNA researcher, Crick.  (Great site about Timothy and resources, including transcription of convo with John)

And if people believe that the use of the psychedelics ended in the 1960's, they are very, very wrong. The only difference is the lack of hyper-sensitive media working day and night to scare the begeezus out of the god-fearing locals and the centralized indiscriminate over-use which was possible for a short period of time in that few years, in places like San Francisco and Woodstock. 

Ok, and one last thing, because I'm really sick of hearing how Jim Morrison is part of some government plot in Laurel Canyon because his father started the Vietnam war, and the rest of them are all military brats. Firstly- military homes have high likelihood rates of being strict and/or abusive; and as a result, military brats, (like the children of Catholics, Mormons, Psychologists, Police, Preachers and Judges) tend to be the rowdiest of all rebelling youth. I've seen it time and time again. Jim Morrison, as everyone who has bothered to actually learn anything about him knows, was terribly traumatized and disconnected from his father. In fact, he very famously played "The End" in his parents' faces the one time they came to see him perform live, screaming the last few lines at them for emphasis. There was no great cabal of cooperation in that family.  



Extra Credit:
Ancient European and Middle Eastern Psychedelic Drug Use

This is the link, though Blogger->Youtube portal doesn't recognize it. so, I'm checking it. 

LSD and the Collective Conscious



More Terence McKenna. <Playlist> 
Worthwhile to find anything you can find by him. The Ultimate psychedelia Guru and research scientist. This link will take you to a playlist on YouTube that includes several Terence Videos, but begins with a very good interview about Amanita Mushrooms and the origins of Christmas.