Among the listees in this book, the naive, pleasant New Agers and "nice" UFO contactees, for instance, are Larrys (as are normals at large) --- ineffectual, well-meaning do-gooders destined always to be victims, often without once guessing their status. Like sheep, they don't want to hear the unpleasant legends about "the slaughterhouse"; they TRUST the strange two-legged beings who feed them. The artists, unsung scientific geniuses, political writers, and earnest disciples of the stranger cults are Curlys --- engaging, original, accident-prone but full of life, and intuitively aware of the Moe forces against them and trying to fight back. They can never defeat the Moes, however without BECOMING Moes, which is impossible for a true Curly. The Moes, then, are the fanatics, the ranters, the cult gurus, the Uri Gellers AND the debunkers; they are the Resistance leaders and the Ruling Class Bankers, both. They hate each other, but only because they want to control ALL the Larrys and Curlys themselves. They don't actually enjoy their dominance; it is simply part of their nature. Nor are they any less foolish for the fact that THEY make decisions. They suffer a chronic paranoia that is unknown to their less demanding underlings. Larrys and Curlys die in wars started by rival Moes --- The Larrys willingly, the Curlys with great regret. Concepts like "Hell" and "Sin" were invented by Moes to keep Larrys in line; the Larrys, in turn, being far more numerous, exert social pressure on the Curly minority to also obey .. mainly so the Larrys won't feel like suckers.
The Moes also invent myths, like that of the "Grouchos, Chicos, and Zeppos," to throw more rebellious Curlys off their trail and keep them unsure of the real situations. When the Curlys finally die of overwork, the Moes find that they cannot live in an all-Larry world; they select special Larrys and vainly try to mold them into False Curlys ... but it isn't the same.
I am a Moe, though not a particularly powerful one; that is why I know these things, and it is also why I dare to tell you --- for most of you will think it is a funny joke. A few will know the truth, but will fight far harder against my Moe enemies than you will against me, a relatively harmless Moe. My fellow Moes --- enemies and uneasy Sub-Genius allies alike --- will know what I'm REALLY saying, and chuckle in appreciation while plotting my downfall. In vain. ALL in VAIN, boy.
Not one political "movement" makes a bit of sense to me. Political approaches to world problems always seem to require some degree of stereotyping, of forcing people into a mold; even "anarchy" is guilty of this. I don't pretend to know what the answer is, but I've been convinced by Fate itself that it's cultural, not political. The last thing I want to see is a world of one unified culture, but a lot of cultures are going to have to compromise their attitude towards each other if they don't all want to end up slaves to the ONE culture with the biggest guns --- the culture of the political CONTROLLERS of the various "little" folk cultures. Judging from history as a whole, I'd say we can look for this to happen in, oh, roughly ten thousand years. Cynical? Hey, if you'd seen what I've seen, you'd call me an optimist. At least I haven't given UP! Maybe the human race will surprise me. I wouldn't put ANYTHING past this species --- not even success. (I even vote, always for whoever is least popular --- not because I'm behind them, but just to throw a slight scare into the ruling party.)
As the sage Dr. Drummond said, "I am the greatest man in the world; indeed I am SO great that I can afford great generosity: I encourage all others to adopt the DELUSION that they are as great as I. If they truly thought that they were themselves the greatest, they too would be as generous; and then we would all be able to HUMOUR each other, in peace, for none would feel threatened by the now-harmless delusions of everyone else."
Rev. Ivan Stang (in High Weirdness by mail)
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
I The Terrestrial Circuits
II The Extraterrestrial Circuits
Rent is the daughter of taxation, the taxation of land by private groups, based on the monopoly of land.
Interest is the son of rent, the rent of money, based on monopoly of coinage. In the "free market," competition would drive price down to the level of cost (approximately).
In monopoly capitalism, price always equals at least cost plus taxation plus rent plus interest.
Monopoly capitalism is not a free market.
Once I belonged to a group that really had the word. I fought like hell for them. But another group came along and exposed the word of my group as shallow and degenerate. They had a better word. So I quit the first group and lost all the friends that I had made and I joined up with this new group. I fought like hell for them but another group came along and exposed the word of my group as false and materialistic. Their word was much better. So I quit the second group and lost all the friends that I had made and I joined up with this new group. I fought like hell for them. Till this one guy came along and proved that there wasn't any word at all. That I should go off as an individual and grow. So I quit the last group and lost all the friends that I had made. And now I sit at home ... alone, and all I do is grow. It sure would be nice to join up with some others who feel the way I do.
from Feiffer's People by Jules Feiffer
| Don't take any notice of what people say, just watch what they do |
The Master teaches the Seeker. There are twelve lessons, as far as I have been able to determine. Each of them is an accepted truth in Taoist, Buddhist or Hindu teaching. Or Norse, or Native American, for that matter.
by Percy Bysshe Shelly
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them:'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Royals - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all people count with you, but non too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Universe and everything that's in it,
And - What is more - you'll be an Adult, my child!
(modified version of a poem by) Rudyard Kipling
Nothing in the world
can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not;
nothing is more common than
unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination
alone are omnipotent.
The slogan 'Press On' has solved
and always will solve
the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge
from The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
To dismiss brainwashing as ineffectual in the long term is to ignore the fact, as so far shown, that the social and psychological factors and unconscious conditioning which combine to create it may each be powerful influencing forces on their own. In all the foregoing accounts of the Korean brainwashing experience, all the ingredients are seen as roughly the same, only explanations differ.
UNQUESTIONED BELIEFS (ch. 3)
Unfortunately, every individual's upbringing helps to invest him with a set of beliefs which, adopted when too young to be questioned, often come to masquerade as knowledge. According to Hans Toch, the eloquent and insightful author of The Social Psychology Of Social Movements, the combined effect of childhood indoctrination and the socialization process, at its most successful and effective level, serves to blinker an individual to reality and create a dependence on a belief system - any belief system. He can take blacks or whites but not the shifting shades in between.
Indoctrination is an emotive word. Perhaps for most people it is most commonly associated with the rather blatant process of persuasion that goes on in totalitarian regimes or the systematized thinking encouraged in minority political groups or religious cults (that other people belong to) where slogans or catchwords, such as "state control" or "enlightenment" encapsulate central concepts. It has a bad flavour, a bad feel, implying that the indoctrinated person has taken on board the conclusion of others instead of coming to his or her own. It flies in the face of free thinking, the rational weighing up of arguments and such ideals that we think we hold dear. But indoctrination, defined at it's simplest, means to imbue with a doctrine. To "imbue" means to permeate or to saturate, implying a process that can be much more subtle than the repetitious reciting of approved slogans. As authors who have been concerned by the concepts of coercion and behaviour manipulation show, most of us are indoctrinated throughout our lives, often without even knowing it. Beliefs almost "grow" into us. They are then sustained and protected, usually unconsciously, by the physiological and psychological processes of perception.
Hans Toch demonstrates with particular lucidity how indoctrination takes place in childhood, whether it is intended or not. He sees a child's vulnerability as fourfold.
First and foremost, a young child has limited perceptions. The world is his world and his world is largely composed of his mother and father. As Toch says, in a world looked at through this particular lens, "the most casual remarks of parents ... can easily acquire the weight of infallibility".
Secondly, a child is vulnerable because of his dependence. Very early on he will learn or sense that his needs are more likely to be met if he conforms to what is expected of him. If a child says something that fits with his parents particular perspective, perhaps regarding race or religion of the neighbours, he is likely to receive praise or approval that reinforces the "rightness" of the view.
Humanistic psychologists believe that such conformity to the wishes of parents, in return for love, affection and approval, is the cause of much identity confusion later on.
Some fifteen or so years ago when the Denver zoo was going through a major renovation, there was a polar bear there, which had arrived at the zoo before a naturalistic environment was ready for it. Polar bears, by the way, are one of my favourite animals. They are very playful; they are big and graceful and do a lot of nice things. The cage that it was put in temporarily was just big enough that the polar bear could take three nice, swinging steps in one direction, whirl up and around and come down and take three steps in the other direction, back and forth, The polar bear spent many, many months in that particular cage with those bars that restricted its behavior in that way. Eventually a naturalistic environment in which they could release the polar bear was built around this cage, on-site. When it was finally completed, the cage was removed from the polar bear and to this very day the bear is still taking those three steps back and forth, in the same spot, even though the bars have been gone for years.
from Get the results you want by Kim Kostere and Linda Malatesta
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
Einstein's genius was synergetic. All genius is synergetic.
All Children are born geniuses, but most are swiftly degeniused
by the power structure's educational system.
In the guise of education, the system deliberately breaks up inherently
holistic considerations into "elementary" topics.
from Cosmography by R. Buckminister Fuller.
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.
T.H.Huxley
Once upon a time there was a factory operated by dolls. The factory was was called REALITY and it was built in the land of POSSIBLE where improbable things often occurred. The factory manufactured guns and dolls, and it was supposedly operated on a self limiting principle. When there were too many dolls, the factory turned out guns more guns which were intended to reduce the doll population.
An improbable thing happened, however. At the end of each supposedly self-limiting cycle, POSSIBLE found itself with more dolls AND more guns than had existed before the start of the cycle.
This unexpected relationship between dolls and guns did not make itself immediately apparent to the factory's doll managers, who were a select group within the regular output of REALITY. Even when some dolls began to suggest such a relationship, there speculation were made the object of laughter. Everyone knew REALITY had been designed on a self limiting loop of the Universal Continuum and that the factory controls had been left in the hands of the dolls by the Original builder.
It came to pass then that the dolls of POSSIBLE found REALITY straining to it's limits. The cycles turned faster and faster. The entire process developed odd wobbles and eccentricities. Parts of REALITY often were attacked and sometimes damaged. The factory's managers took to shoring up their structure which, through long addition and revision, appeared rambling and haphazard. The repair were sometimes makeshift and improbable. Everyone from the highest managerial circles to the lowliest laboring dolls felt beleaguered, the target of threats too large to be understood.
POSSIBLE's dolls began more and more to question self-limiting as a principle. Some sneered at doll control. Great blocs of dolls even openly denied that there had been an Original Builder. They substituted the Theory of the Grand Accident, sometimes called The Enormous Dichotomy.
All the time, REALITY seethed with questions about how to produce more guns and/or more dolls, or better dolls or better guns. Many splinter groups formed. Some argued for limiting guns, others for limiting dolls. An organizational schism developed within the factory. A large body of dolls revised an ancient concept called Deterrent Defence and named it now Sacred Security. Each splinter group developed its own factions. Many argued for such programs as speeding up the cycles or aiming for improbable goals of doll efficiency and gun efficiency. Gun to doll and doll to gun ratios were examined with fine attention to detail. Doll support and gun support became issues of the moment while the effects of such eccentric alternation reverberated throughout POSSIBLE.
A curious transformation began to occur in the dolls flowing from the factory. Some called it a manufacturing flaw and argued for new and better controls on doll production. Discontinuance of entire lines of dolls was proposed and some tried to carry out such programs, but the curious transformation continued. It assumed a major form called VARIANTS. They were divided into primarily into two categories: dolls intended for functions concerned mainly with doll quality and welfare began doing things which increased the production of guns; gun-oriented dolls began to deny the principles beneath their function. It frequently was difficult to tell a doll-doll from a gun-doll.
In all of POSSIBLE there now remained only a few small doll voices saying: "let us re-examine the whole function of REALITY. Perhaps we have been blinded to important parts of the system by our belief in improbable principles."
So few dolls paid attention to these warnings, however, that the mad cycles continued unabated - faster and faster, more and more eccentric. Finally, the whole system came crashing down in one last paroxysm of dolls and guns. REALITY was left in ruins and POSSIBLE, stripped of all its dolls, reverted to a barren wilderness where chaotic improbabilities reigned supreme.
MORAL: If you were built to prefer either dolls or guns, perhaps you were intended only for a limited function.
By Frank Herbert
Man has the right to live by his own Law.
Man has the right to live in the way that he wills to do.
Man has the right to dress as he wills to do.
Man has the right to dwell where he wills to dwell.
Man has the right to move as he will on the face of the earth.
Man has the right to eat what he will.
Man has the right to drink what he will.
Man has the right to think as he will.
Man has the right to speak as he will.
Man has the right to write as he will.
Man has the right to mold as he will.
Man has the right to paint as he will.
Man has the right to carve as he will.
Man has the right to work as he will.
Man has the right to rest as he will.
Man has the right to love as he will, when, where and whom he will.
Man has the right to die when and how he will.
Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
The Law is for all BY Aleister Crowley pp321
Belief is very cheap. Everybody is a believer - somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Christian. Belief comes in all sizes, all shapes, all colours - you can choose. And you don't have to pay anything for it. Generally you get it with your mother's milk, free of charge.
Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone.
The word "sin" in its roots means forgetfulness. It has nothing to do with sin as we have come to understand it. To forget yourself is the only sin, And to remember yourself is the only virtue.
You were born as nobody and you will die as nobody. And between these two points of nobodiness you remain nobody, just deceiving yourself that you are this and you are that.
At the age of fourteen, one is sexually mature - mind starts functioning in a totally different way; the body starts functioning in a totally different way. Fourteen is the biological age for man: he is now able to produce children. As far as biology is concerned, man has come of age.
That is why the psychological age of humanity remains at fourteen: because now biology takes no interest in your psychological development unless you yourself are interested. Nature has brought you up to that point for it's own purposes, for reproduction; its work is done. It is now only up to you if you want to be a seeker, to grow psychologically, to grow in your awareness. If you want a spiritual experience then everything is left to you; now it is up to you, nature has ended its work.
And because nature has stopped, 99.9 percent of people stop with nature. They were not evolving, it was the push of nature that brought them up to the age of fourteen.
For the enlightened person, everything that is going on is a circus. There is no need for him to purchase a ticket - his problem is how to get out of the circus! He does not want to go to the movie, he wants to get out!
More Gold Nuggets by Osho Rajneesh
Terrorist, noun.
from Reality is what you can get away with by Robert A. Wilson.
The only function of a political party is to line its own pocket and keep itself in office at the expense of the common good
from The Politics of Ecstasy by Timothy Leary PhD.
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
OWNERSHIP TABLE
WHO OWNS WHOM?
=============================================================================== Model ONE Model TWO Model THREE =============================================================================== GOD SOCIETY & ITS THE CYBER-SHAMAN CARETAKERS =============================================================================== God OWNS Man Society OWNS Man Man OWNS Hirself =============================================================================== God is the centre Society is the centre Life is the centre and perfect and perfect =============================================================================== Man is Sinful Man is Sick Man is ? =============================================================================== Religion Law Philosophy =============================================================================== Priest Politician/Doctor Cyber-Philosopher/Adventurer =============================================================================== Sin/ Pathology & Functionality & Pathology Rebelliousness Good Will =============================================================================== God is Studied Man is Studied Life is Studied =============================================================================== One Up/ One Up/ Shifting Systems of One Down One Down Probabilistic Truth =============================================================================== Oppression Oppression Essential Cooperation =============================================================================== Adaptation to Adaptation to Grow to Possibilities God's Will Society Will of Self ===============================================================================
One purpose of this OWNERSHIP TABLE is to help the individual gain insight into the fundamentalist attitude of OWNERSHIP. Only when man OWNS HIRSELF is the dehumanizing process of slavery non existent. The notion of OWNERSHIP, be it explicit or tacit, is the KEY CONCEPT which determines what is thought of as a problem and what solutions can be offered. If we accept the Model of the Cyber-Shaman (that Man OWNS Hirself), 95 percent of the so-called problems -- which we read about in newspapers, hear on the radio, watch on television and discuss with friends -- DO NOT EXIST. Thus, all proposed SOLUTIONS for these PSEUDO-PROBLEMS are MEANINGLESS. The concept of OWNERSHIP starts in the cradle and does not end, even in the grave.
from Undoing Yourself with energized meditation by Christopher S. Hyatt
We will see that unlike popular belief, people do not act upon the world, but instead, upon representations of the world. These representations are made or constructed based on what is perceived through the senses. We are never in direct contact with the world at large, but instead, we are always one step removed via the information being filtered through our senses. We therefore build maps of the world and act as though these maps are the world itself. Most people consider the map as actually being reality, instead of taking into account that these maps are only representations. Therefore, it is important to realize that the map is not the territory.
Important characteristics of maps should be noted. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for it's usefulness.
No two people create identical maps for the same territory. These maps are somewhat indivdiualized and necessarily so. Most of us, however, having similarities in these maps, are able to agree upon the structure of the territory enough to have a consensus or shared reality. In considering these maps we need to make note of what bandler and Grinder call contraints of the model or map. "The Physical world remains constant, and our experience of it shifts dramatically as a function of our nervous system."
Anything that we as individuals perceive, believe, and/or have as items in our personal history, offer us both a vast storehouse of resources and a number of restrictions. This is the logical outcome of the fact that we build maps and, in so doing so, consciously or unconsciously, by the very existence of the process of "modelling", select from an infinite variety of sensory experience, the items that will be represented in those maps.
from Get the results you want by Kim Kostere and Linda Malatesta
.... all babies are born geniuses and only become degeniused by the erosive effects of unthinkingly maintained false assumptions of grown-ups, with their conventional ways of "bringing up" and "educating" their young. We now know that schools are the least favourable enviroment for learning.
from Critical path By R. Buckminster Fuller
"Well," I started, staying where I was behind her and careful not to disturb the small stranger in her deep thought, "they come from eggs, laid by the mother duck, the big one in front of all those little ducks." I stopped there, hoping the general answer would suffice and she would want to carry on with the dialogue.
The girl swung around. Her eyes ablaze with disgust and impatience. She put her stubby baby-fat-covered hands on her waist and in her most 'teacher-mother' manner shouted, "Boy! are you d-u-m-b! You don't know nothin'."
I was shocked by her attack.
"They come from there" she said, pointing to a clump of bushes at pool-side,
"And they're goin' to there". She pointed at another clump on the other side.
It's clear each of us was in a different reality. Each of us chose what
'coming from' referred to and how the ducks related to that interpretation.
I could have responded, "The ducks started out there, behind that clump of
bushes and it appears they are headed for that one over there". And my
protagonist would have been just as upset with me.
"Hey, you don't know nothin'. They come from an egg laid by their mother -
the big thing in front of the line."
That I am able to recognize options, to change context of - "where ducks
come from" - is the power of intelligence. One of us, in this case (it was me)
knows the power of choice. I may choose one (as I did in this case) that doesn't
match the reality of the enviroment (the questioning girl). But that's o.k. I
can choose to stay with my own reality, or because I want to support both of us
(the girl and me) becoming more sophisticated in our relationship, seek a
common reality, One we both choose. And so I respond ...
"hey, you really know a lot about ducks. Do you also know where they come
from before they left that clump of bushes over there?"
"Naw - who cares", was her retort.
"I care and I think I know". Now I was piquing her curiousity.
"Where?"
Then I went through some fantasies centered on the geography of the pond
and got back to a time and place where the ducklings hatched and before that a
time and place where the eggs were laid and so forth. Now the concept of "where
did they come from" included both of ours. We were both enriched for the
exploration. We knew so much more together than we did separately. She
participated in the fantasy and came up with even better ideas about where
ducks "live and move and have their being" at the pond's edge and across it.
...
When we accept our knowing, we accept our power as human beings. When we accept our completeness, our wholeness at birth, we accept our power of interdependency. Our acceptance, and therefore our choosing to accept, is learning. Learning is determining what reality is for me. Determining reality is a manifestation of intelligence ... and accepting my power to change, to grow, to evolve into a higher, more complex version of myself and the collective (powerful other selves) is the
from The Alchemy of Intelligence
by Waren Dohemann and melvin Suhd
What impressed me about don Juna was that he did not make a point of
being weak and helpless, and just being around him insured an unfavourable
comparison between his way of behaving and mine ....
from A separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda
In the 16th century an American Indian, according to an old story (by Voltaire), wandered into a building of the Inquisition in Spain. He saw people trying to convince others to change their statements about God, and the others refusing in the face of torture and death. The Indian was puzzled by both groups of people. Why should one group want to change the statements of another on this subject, and why should the second group refuse?
It is clear that the Indian and the Spaniard described, perceived, and reacted to reality quite differently. The members of the Inquisition and their victims saw an eternity of afterlife as an important part of reality and their present behaviour as determining how they would spend it. The viewpoint was clear: A short period of pain was nothing compared to an eternity of bliss or torment. The Indian did not see this as part of reality and so was completely confused by their behaviour. Both the Indian and the Spaniards stood on the same portions of the earth, under the same sky, breathed the same air, and lived in quite different realities. Each culture had been taught to perceive reality in a different way and felt that its way was the truth. If you come to the conclusion that one was right and the other wrong, you are saying that the reality one perceived is closer to the reality you have been taught to believe than is that of the other.
The problem is not just one of an encounter of realities in Spain in the 16th century. A father and a son today discussing what the son should do now that he has finished high school might well face a similar situation. In the father's reality, the son should go to college, work hard, learn a skill or profession, find a useful place in the culture he lives in, get married. amass enough worldly goods so he can live comfortably and safely, and make a contribution to society in a way that will be both useful to others and help maintain the society that supports him. In the son's reality, he should take time to find out who he really is -- what likes, dislikes, aptitude, and styles most reflect his own personality -- and seek a life that most gardens and grows his own unique being. In this view safety, happiness, and the best life come from internal harmony and from harmony between his natural style and his behaviour, rather than from outside factors such as safe and approved work, insurance policies, and the like. If you come to the conclusion that one of these two views is more correct than the other, you are stating that one is closer to your reality than the other.
excerpt from Alternate Realities by Lawrence LeShan
Now one important fact about these questions is that they are being continually being answered and reanswered, not only by all the religions of the world but also by the data of the natural sciences. Read the questions again from the standpoint of the goals of (1) astronomy-physics, (2) biochemistry, genetics, paleontolgy, and evolutionary theory (3) anatomy and physiology, (4) neurology, (5) sociology, psychology, (6) psychiatry, (7) echatological theology and anesthesiology.
At this point I should like to advance the hypothesis that THOSE ASPECTS OF THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE WHICH SUBJECTS REPORT TO BE INEFFABLE AND ESTATICALLY RELIGIOUS INVOLVE A DIRECT AWARENESS OF THE ENERGY PROCESSES WHICH PHYSICIST AND BIOCHEMISTS AND PHYSIOLOGISTS AND NEUROLOGISTS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS AND PSYCHIATRISTS MEASURE.
7) The Anesthetic State
6) The state of Emotional Stupor
5) The state of Ego Consciousness
4) The state of Sensory Awareness
3) The state of Somatic Awareness
2) The Cellular Level of Consciousness
1) The Atomic-Electronic Level of Consciousness
The psychedelic experience, far from being new, is man's oldest and most classic adventure into meaning. Every religion in world history was founded on the basis of some flipped-out visionary trip. Religion is the systematic attempt at focusing man's consciousness. Comparative religion should concern itself less with the esoteric and academic differences and more with studing the different levels of consciousness turned on by each religion. We see that there are seven approaches employed by the great world religions.
2) Hinduism is a vegetative jungle of reincarnation imagery. Clearly cellular. Evolutionary. Genetic.
3) Tantra (Tibetan, Bengali) focuses on somatic energy (Kundalini) and cakra consciousness.
4) Zen, Hasidic Judaism, Sufism and Early Christianity used methods for centering sensual energy.
5) Protestantism and Talmudic Judaism are the classic ego religions. Logic and hard work and Main Street practicality will get you to heaven.
6) Middle-class Catholicism and devil-oriented fundamentalist sects are based on the arousal of emotion - fear.
7) Suicide and death cults
How can you decide? How can you judge? Well, it's really quite simple. Whenever you hear anyone sounding off on internal freedom and consciousness- expanding foods and drugs - whether pro or con - check out these questions:
1) Is your expert talking from direct experience, or simply repeating cliches? Theologians and intellectuals often deprecate "experience" in favour of fact and concept. The classic debate is falsely labeled. Most often it becomes a case of "experience" versus "inexperience".
2) Do his words spring from a spiritual or from a mundane point of view? Is he motivated by a dedicated quest for answers to basic questions, or is he protecting his own social-psychological position, his own game investment? Is he struggling towards sainthood, or is he maintaining his status as a hard- boiled scientists or hard-boiled cop?
3) How would his argument sound if it were heard in a different culture (for example, in an African jungle hut, a ghat on the Ganges, or on another planet inhabited by a form of life superior to ours) or in a different time (for example, in Periclean Athens, or in a Tibetan monastery, or in a bull session led by any one of the great religious leaders - founders - messiahs)? Or how would it sound to another species of life on our planet today - to dolphins, to the consciousness of a redwood tree? In other words, try to break out of your usual tribal game set and listen with the ears of another one of God's creatures.
4) How would the debate sound to you if you if you were fatally diseased with a week to live, and thus less committed to mundane issues? Our research group receives many requests a week for consciousness-expanding experiences, and some of these come from terminal patients.
5) Is the point of view one which opens up or closes down? Are you being urged to explore, experience, gamble out of spiritual faith, join someone who shares your cosmic ignorance on a collaborative voyage of discovery? Or are you being pressured to close off, protect your gains, play it safe, accept the authoritative voice of someone who knows best?
6) When we speak, we say little about the subject matter and disclose mainly the state of our own mind. Does your psychedelic expert use terms which are positive, pro-life, spiritual, inspiring, opening, based on faith in the future, faith in your potential, or does he betray a mind obsessed by danger, material concern, by imaginary terrors, administrative caution or essential distrust in your potential? Dear friends, there is nothing in life to fear; no spiritual game can be lost.
7) If he is against what he calls "artificial methods of illumination," ask him what constitutes the natural. Words? Rituals? Tribal customs? Alkaloids? Psychedelic vegetables? 8) If he is against biochemical assistance, where does he draw the line? Does he use nicotine? alcohol? penicillin? vitamins? conventional sacremental substances?
9) If your advisor is against LSD, what is he for? If he forbids you the psychedelic key to revelation, what does he offer you instead?
from The Politics of Ecstasy by Timothy Leary
| Practise random kindness and senseless acts of beauty |
To assist those who are either considering joining a "spiritual group" or "religious cult"... or ... considering leaving one, the following guidelines are offered:
| Question Authority, Think for Yourself! |
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Nothing is true. Everything is permissible
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Love is the law, love under will. |