Media Maven Robert Logan's new $45 book out The Extended Mind!

Logan's jammed web site for all the free stuff

LSD wrap-up after Hofmann de-animates by John Walsh and bad brains and bad trops

by John Walsh

"Bicycle Day", 19 April, was later commemorated by acid enthusiasts because it was the first conscious "trip" and it had had – just about – a happy ending. But the doors to perception are, for some truth-seekers, booby-trapped and dangerous. When LSD was co-opted by medical staff for recreational use, two decades after Hoffman's bike ride, users learnt the hard way how impossible it was to control the wild ride once it had started.

At Oxford in the early 1970s, we were frankly intimidated by the drug's reputation. We all wanted to try it, but were too chicken. The word in the quad was: if you had any secret hang-ups, mental instabilities, phobias, sexual inadequacies or social insecurities (the kind that surface in dreams,) you were wise of steer clear of acid. We knew when one of us was going to try it. "Tonight," I'd hear during dinner in hall, "Roger's tripping for the first time. But he'll have Will and Ollie with him, so he'll be OK."

I've always remembered Roger's first trip (so, I'll bet, has he). We all knew he'd be fine because he was so perfect: cool, handsome, easy-going, a hit with the girls, a dead ringer, with his corkscrewy curls, for Marc Bolan of T. Rex. And he was rich; he owned a Morgan, which he casually parked in the back quad. We knew Roger would survive the experience and bang on about it, like he banged on about his Bang and Olufsen state-of-the-art hi-fi.http://tinyurl.com/4kc8fl    

JLL writes on Tantra over at metahistory

JLL

Full-body Kundalini

I will begin by saying that I consider the Tantra of my predilection to be integral with Gaian shamanism. This is the telestic shamanism of the Mysteries, aimed at direct communication with Gaia, whose body is the planet earth. Gaia-Sophia, to give her full name, is the matrix of supersensory emotive intelligence that animates the natural world and all its creatures, including human beings.  http://www.metahistory.org/TantraTenderness1.php      plenty more images herehttp://www.shunya.net/Pictures/NorthIndia/Khajuraho/Khajuraho.htm  

Albert Hofmann Transmitter/Receiver UCSB 1983

Saint Albert

Portrait by Alex Grey
High Quality (64MB) mp3 46 minutes.
Download "Transmitter/Receiver" Albert Hofmann at the UCSB Psychedelics Conference ll, 1983.

old Media on Hofmann's de-animation 1906-2008

this AM 30 Azid_Tao, 00,070 a.L. ( after LSDNATOM) . Saint Hofmann created LSD in Nov., 1938, so why not have this be the cusp of the change over of Epoch's? The most recent 10,000 year era ends and the New Epoch we are in starts with 00,001 for 1939? FERMI does the first nuclear pile in Dec. 1942. Hofmann discovers the effects of Azid_Tao in April , 1943….

and from the NYTimes this AM

April 30, 2008

Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102

PARIS – Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.

The cause was a heart attack, said Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a California-based group that in 2005 republished Dr. Hofmann's 1979 book "LSD: My Problem Child."

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug's value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity's oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.

Dr. Hofmann was born in Baden, a spa town in northern Switzerland, on Jan. 11, 1906, the eldest of four children. His father, who had no higher education, was a toolmaker in a local factory, and the family lived in a rented apartment. But Dr. Hofmann spent much of his childhood outdoors.

He would wander the hills above the town and play around the ruins of a Hapsburg castle, the Stein. "It was a real paradise up there," he said in an interview in 2006. "We had no money, but I had a wonderful childhood."

It was during one of his ambles that he had his epiphany.

"It happened on a May morning – I have forgotten the year – but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden," he wrote in "LSD: My Problem Child." "As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light.

"It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness and blissful security."

Though Dr. Hofmann's father was a Roman Catholic and his mother a Protestant, Dr. Hofmann, from an early age, felt that organized religion missed the point. When he was 7 or 8, he recalled, he spoke to a friend about whether Jesus was divine. "I said that I didn't believe, but that there must be a God because there is the world and someone made the world," he said. "I had this very deep connection with nature."

Dr. Hofmann went on to study chemistry at Zurich University because, he said, he wanted to explore the natural world at the level where energy and elements combine to create life. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1929, when he was just 23. He then took a job with Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, attracted by a program there that sought to synthesize pharmacological compounds from medicinally important plants.

It was during his work on the ergot fungus, which grows in rye kernels, that he stumbled on LSD, accidentally ingesting a trace of the compound one Friday afternoon in April 1943. Soon he experienced an altered state of consciousness similar to the one he had experienced as a child.

On the following Monday, he deliberately swallowed a dose of LSD and rode his bicycle home as the effects of the drug overwhelmed him. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as "bicycle day."

Dr. Hofmann's work produced other important drugs, including methergine, used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of death from childbirth. But it was LSD that shaped both his career and his spiritual quest.

"Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom," Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. "I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us."

Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate for the environment and argued that LSD, besides being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind's place in nature and help curb society's ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.

But he was also disturbed by the cavalier use of LSD as a drug for entertainment, arguing that it should be treated in the way that primitive societies treat psychoactive sacred plants, which are ingested with care and spiritual intent.

After his discovery of LSD's properties, Dr. Hofmann spent years researching sacred plants. With his friend R. Gordon Wasson, he participated in psychedelic rituals with Mazatec shamans in southern Mexico. He succeeded in synthesizing the active compounds in the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom, which he named psilocybin and psilocin. He also isolated the active compound in morning glory seeds, which the Mazatec also used as an intoxicant, and found that its chemical structure was close to that of LSD.

During the psychedelic era, Dr. Hofmann struck up friendships with such outsize personalities as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley, who, nearing death in 1963, asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of throat cancer.

Yet despite his involvement with psychoactive compounds, Dr. Hofmann remained moored in his Swiss chemist identity. He stayed with Sandoz as head of the research department for natural medicines until his retirement in 1971. He wrote more than 100 scientific articles and was the author or co-author of a number of books

He and his wife, Anita, who died recently, reared four children in Basel. A son died of alcoholism at 53. Survivors include several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Though Dr. Hofmann called LSD "medicine for the soul," by 2006 his hallucinogenic days were long behind him, he said in the interview that year.

"I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," he said, adding. "Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley."

But he said LSD had not affected his understanding of death. In death, he said, "I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/europe/30hofmann.html?ref=world

Keep the InterNETS Free! Stanford FCC event for Net Neutrality

online liveJoin the conversation at the Free Press Action Network where we'll be live blogging during the hearing. We'll be discussing the hearing, current Internet policies, and what we can do to protect Internet freedom for the future.Live Chat During the FCC HearingDATE: Thursday, April 17TIME: 3- 10 p.m. ET / 12-7 p.m. PTLOCATION:  www.freepress.net/actionIn recent months, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have been caught blocking, filtering and spying on your Internet activities. This event is one of our best chances to tell Washington policymakers that the Internet must remain open.  http://www.smartmobs.com/2008/04/16/tune-in-online-to-fcc-hearing-on-future-of-the-internet/

 

       okAn  FCC hearing  schedule for Thursday at Stanford University will focus on whether ISPs can shape, filter and even block content that travels over their networks. (The public –more than 1.5 million  of whom have spoken out against such violations – has a rare opportunity to testify before the commission during the hearing.)http://savetheinternet.com/=stanford  

Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis

Time and Mind JournalA lot of noise on the internet today around a recently published article in a new journal called Time and Mind by cognitive psychology professor Benny Shanon on the subject of Moses and Entheogens.

Abstract:
A speculative hypothesis is presented according to which the ancient Israelite religion was associated with the use of entheogens (mind-altering plants used in sacramental contexts). The hypothesis is based on a new look at texts of the Old Testament pertaining to the life of Moses. The ideas entertained here were primarily based on the fact that in the arid areas of the Sinai peninsula and Southern Israel there grow two plants containing the same psychoactive molecules found in the plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew Ayahuasca is prepared. The two plants are species of Acacia tree and the bush Peganum harmala. The hypothesis is corroborated by comparative experiential-phenomenological observations, linguistic considerations, exegesis of old Jewish texts and other ancient Mideastern traditions, anthropological lore, and ethnobotanical data.

The entire 25 page article can be downloaded for free from here (scroll down to bottom of page, if the pdf link stops working let me know in the comments, I have a copy.)

ayahuasca peyote magic mushrooms

google trends 030508 peyote ayahuasca magic mushrooms

Utah High Court OKs Non-Indian Peyote Use
New York Newsday – Jun 23 2004
American Indian church leader sues Utah officials over 2000 peyote raid
KATC – Apr 28 2005
'Medicine man' arrested on peyote charges
Centre Daily Times – Jun 24 2005
Study: Religious peyote use not harmful to American Indians
KESQ – Nov 4 2005
Charges dropped vs. couple in peyote case
Macon Telegraph – Feb 23 2006
Netherlands bans magic mushrooms
TREND Information – Oct 12 2007

See Also:
This is an article in two parts. The first part discusses current research in psychoactive preparations of ergot in various religious systems with a particular emphasis on Persian, Greek, Jewish and Islamic sources.
Incense is psychoactive: Scientists identify the biology behind the ceremony.

Horizon: Psychedelic science by Bill Eagles

mind-hacks.png

Mind Hacks is a collection of probes into the moment-by-moment workings of our brain with a view to understanding ourselves a little better and learning a little more, in a very real sense, about what makes us tick. It's by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb, and published by O'Reilly.

psychedelic-splash

And from the Mind Hacks Blog: In 1997, BBC science programme Horizon broadcast a legendary edition on the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine. Luckily, it's been uploaded to Google Video and you can now watch the whole thing online. Read more…

Burning Men, Part 2: the Order of Things by Erik Davis of techgnosis

How does Erik think this stuff UP^! too much and very nice. R eally gettin' a Clue!

The Perp! above ^

eDavis:

So when Burners invoked specifically legalistic categories like "arson" and "reckless endangerment"–and I did it too at times–they were not just rationally debating Addis' fate. They were actively deflating the productive legal ambiguity of Black Rock City as a self-governing political and territorial space by capitulating, too quickly and without consciousness, to the reality tunnel of the State and, particularly, to its conception of property.

and

Look, for example, at the constricted lives of so many kids today, with their helmets and knee pads and car-seats, their time managed, their piss checked, their movements tracked by cell phones and prohibitions against aimless wandering. What has been killed in the process of making them less likely to be killed? Perhaps, in our fearful genuflection before safety, we are deadening our taste for the raw and nervy exultation of cognitive and physical liberty–a liberty which most certainly should include the freedom to attend dangerous and wayward festivals where, if your aren't careful or even lucky, large burning things might fall on your head.

Burning Men
Part One: Chaosmos

Pangea animations "mind"-blowin'! Astronomy Picture of the Day

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2007 September 22
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download  the highest resolution version available.

Breakup of Pangea (200 mya – Present)Seafloor Spreading in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans

(to run animation, drag mouse across image)

(Read the explanation below, while you wait for the animation to load.)

http://www.scotese.com/sfsanim.htm

Return Home

The Following animations can be downloaded and viewed at your computer.

Plate Tectonic Animations

NEW Breakup of Pangea: Pangea Breakup VR

http://www.scotese.com/newpage13.htm

Constitution Day Program — Interrogation and Intelligence Gathering What happened to the 5th. Amendment?

Seton Hall Law CONSTITUTION DAY
September 17, 2007

Constitution Day will be held in the Law School Auditorium


Press Release (September 7, 2007)
Seton Hall School of Law on Second Life: Constitution Day Program on Interrogation and Intelligence Gathering to be Featured at Virtual Guantánamo Bay Detention Center [Read Press Release here]


Seton Hall Law School is pleased to offer you an outstanding simulcast program in celebration of Constitution Day on September 17, 2007. As you may recall, the 2006 Guantánamo Teach-In was an amazing success, with three hundred colleges, universities, medical schools, divinity schools and law schools participating. A DVD of the Guantánamo Teach-In program sponsored last year by Seton Hall Law School is available.

http://law.shu.edu/constitutionday/

Constitution Day Program — Interrogation and Intelligence Gathering

(To view this webcast, you must register a user name and password which you will be prompted for when
entering the event. If you haven't already registered, click here to REGISTER )
 
 
  Monday, September 17, 2007 01:30 PM EDT
Click Here For Your Local Time
Connect via Streaming
Audio/Video
 
 
  1:30 – 1:45pm EDT Welcome & Introductions
   
 
Professor Mark Denbeaux
  Seton Hall Law School
 
 
 
  1:45 – 2:00pm EDT FBI Interrogation Seeking
   
 
Mr. Jack Cloonan
  Clayton Consultants and Retired FBI Counter Terrorism Expert
 

http://event.netbriefings.com/event/seton/Live/constitutionday/

time lapse film compresses 35 years of skyscraper construction in Shinjuku district of Tokyo

 http://blog.longnow.org/2007/09/10/35-year-time-lapse-of-tokyo-skyline/

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/laPU0bS8JOc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]