Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing

Wisdom 2.0 Summit Mt. View, CA April 30 - May1st -- Where the Wise Guys (and Gals) of Silcon Valley Gather

Link for this Post: Wisdom 2.0 Summit, Mt. View, CA

We knew that search engine advertising and Social Software sales could make you rich. But until now, we did not know that those revenues could equal wisdom.

After all the name Google is pretty close to God in the English Lexicon and you can play the Zen Enlightenment game on Facebook  . . . but I thought that was a scam. Until I got an email from Mallika Chopra telling me about Wisdom 2.0 to be held in Mountain View California at the Computer History Museum April 30 to May 1st.

Who is Maillika Chopra? Deepak Chopra’s daughter it turns out. We know what an enlightened guy he is, after all he is on the Larry King Show at least once a month. She is also a friend of the late Michael Jackson, someone who was practically synonymous with wisdom.

Psychedelic Transhumanists in RU Sirius's Online H+ Magazine

Links for this Post

H+ Magazine as PDF (opens in new browser and needs PDF viewer installed)

H+ Magazine Website

RU Sirius, editor of famed cyberculture magazine of the late Th Century has released issue 3 of his new oon-line magazine +H (stands for humanity plus).

The H+ website developed by Infoswell Media makes available free two versions of magazine including a flash and an optimized PDF  which I prefer and link to above so you can look at the article which is the subject of this post.

This issue has a lot of short but nevertheless interesting articles and essays on on a spectrum of topics related to psychedelic futurism.

. One that caught my attention is "The Psychedelic Transhumanists" by Michael Garfield. The four featured members of Garfield's newly coined world view are two recently diseased counterculture luminaries Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna and two current idea makers Eric Davis (who I posted about recently) and Mark Pease.

Techgnosis Essays on Cyberculture and Mysticism by Erik Davis

Link for this Post Technosis by Erik Davis

Erik Davis published his first book Techgnoisis Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information over 20 years ago and has been part of the psychedelic cyberculture scene ever since.

If you've been looking for a chance to find out more about his ideas, his recently updated Techgnosis website will give give you a chance.

The amount of content here is more than substantial and includes an anthology of over 20 eassys.

Cyberculture, Technoculture, Future Culture

Link for this post: Cyberculture, Technoculture, Future Culture

This site has been around awhile but its worth taking a look at if you have not seen it before. Here is an excerpt:

This definition is from the Future Culture Manifesto: Cyberculture is a here-and-now reality that grew out of the science fiction movement of "cyberpunk". Look at the word "cyberpunk" -- broken down you have "cyber" and "punk" which roughly translates to people using technology and information in ways that deviate from the expected norms and mores and laws of society.

Neuromancer (the novel) at 25 - PC World Author Looks at What It Got Right and Not

Neuromancer at 25: What It Got Right, What It Got Wrong by Mark Sullivan on PC World

I remeber spending time with Timothy Leary back in 1985 shortly after Neuromancer had been published in paperback. Tim pulled it off his shelf and handed it to me.

"Bruce, this is what the future is all about,"Tim smugly proclaimed..

I took the book home and read as much of it as I could. It was hard for me to get into it, because the future while full of new technology, still depicted human behavior as pretty much the same. My cherished notion at the time was that we would become better (less violent and more ethical).

I suupose that is because while change in technology has accelerated an almost exponential rate, we are pretty much the same human animal as we were 10,000 years ago, before history began. 

Still the novel is prophetic of a world in which I participate in more than most, the world of plugging into the web on a daily basis for long hours.

Now that 25 years have gone by, its probably time for me to go back and take another try at Neuromancer.

Timothy Leary Narrates Jim Morisons Trip in in the 1991 Oliver Stone Movie

Link for this Post: The Doors Movie on  [Blu-ray]

Oliver Stone's movie about my generation made a a full  generation ago (1991)  is on HBO in HD. As I turn it on,  Morison played by Val Kilmer is in front of my old Hollywood Hangout, the Whiskey A Go Go or a reasonable facsimile.

He leaps on top of one of the cars that cruised up and down Sunset Blvd as Hippies played guitars and shook tambourines. 

Morison has eaten some acid and as he looks down at the hippies on the street, he asks them "Is there anyone here who really knows how to feel."

He is transported to the desert where words straight from the words of Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzer from their classic LSD albums, invoking the Tibetan Gods and Bardos.

Since many of you are tweeing what you are up to tonight, I thought I'd share my encounter with the fictional verion of the raw soul of who young Irish Jim Morrison was.

He Has Ridden -- Celebrating Bicycle Day 66

Links for this Post: Editorial: He Has Ridden by Bruce Eisner first published in published Island Views in the Winter of 1993.

Today is the 66th Bicycle Day, April 19, 2009 so I thought it would be appropriate to excerpt from article I wrote 16 years ago about this annual event celebrated by "psychelicists."

Sadly, the Island Group which I write about in the article is no more but otherwise the piece is contemporary:

We’re excited at Island Group because Bicycle Day is almost here. “Bicycle Day....what’s that?” you might be asking. Well on April 16, 1943, it will be fifty years ago that LSD was discovered. And three days after his amazing, chance discovery, on a spring day in 1943, Albert Hofmann took the first planned LSD session and soon found himself frozen in time on a bicycle ride from the Sandoz building in Basel, Switzerland to his home in the suburb called Rittimatte.

Song Jack Kerouac Mexico City Blues CHORUS 16 on YouTube

Links for this Post include the embedded video below and in my comments.

 I'm the first to admit that I don't have a clue about who is who in contemporary music. I suppose that goes with the territory of being 61 years old. However, I do know what I like and this song is by a group or publisher called MIDNIGHT SONGS (if anyone knows, post your info in a comment).

I tried to find the words to the 16th Chorus to publish here as I've never read it. I was introduced to the poetry series called Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses  given tribute by this YouTube song by a book I read back in 1968.

I'm "XRanked" on Live.Com Search -- Link broken

Broken Link: X-Rank is based on a search algorithm of change in the volume of searches for various persons, ideas, places and things of interest to the public. I'm listed among 567 most-searched for bloggers on Live Search (and we all know how good Live Search is).

Actually I'm happy to have made the cut. Its probably only natural that I would be "XRanked" since I wrote the first book on "X" which is what we used to call Ecstasy when it was legal (way back when).

Digitizing Timothy Leary YouTube Video

Link for this Post: YouTube Video on the Project to Digitize Timothy Leary

I posted several weeks ago The New Timothy Leary Archives Website -- Plus YouTube Video Interview with Webmaster of Leary.Com about an event which occured on February 8th. I was unable to attend the event due to an ongoing back problem. After watching the video, I realized that I should have tried to this event, which was a coming together of the Leary tribe that vanished frojm my life 12 years ago, when Leary died. It left a void which has not been filled.

  Supporters of the work of Timothy Leary attended a reception February 8.2009 in San Francisco. The goal was to find patrons and a place to build a Timothy Leary museum to house about 400 boxes of archives and to digitize the material.

Gaia - The future of politics -- YouTube Video

Gaia - The future of politics (embedded below)

I've been digging through my email bin trying to reach the bottom. It is getting closer or so I believe.

I found a video sent to me late last year via this email:

Dear Bruce, we just published a new video on the Future of Politics: how communication, knowledge and organization are changing through the Internet and what this means for the politics we know today.  (subtitles in English and Spanish) I'd love to have a comment from you on it.

 Best, Davide Casaleggio (video follows:)

Heal The Planet, Live Forever, and Travel The Stars by Paul Hughes --- Updated Link

Link for this Post Heal The Planet, Live Forever, and Travel The Stars

My friend and fellow psychedelic blogger Paul Hughes, founder of the pioneering FutureHi weblog has written another of his extensive essays. This one is about us humans living up to our potential and creating a better future.

The link at the top is to the first part of the essay about "healing the planet." Its a logical place to start because if we do not create better cultural memes, the "living forever and traveling the stars" part would not be possible.

Paul has a wide ranging knowledge of new technologies with the potential to create a sustainable and ecological civilization his essay is worth your attention.

The New Timothy Leary Archives Website -- Plus YouTube Video Interview with Webmaster of Leary.Com

Link for this Post: The New Timothy Leary Archives Website

My long-time friend Dennis Berry along with an assemblage of Timothy Leary's friends including Joi Ito,  Ken Gofmann (RU Sirius), Joey Cavella and Chris Graves  (the later two featured in the video below)  has launched a new Timothy Leary site which promises to replace the void left when Leary.Com went off-line a in the late Nineties.

Denis Berry is a woman who Timothy Leary entrusted to be the excectuor of his estate. She set up the Futuiqe Foundation to overlook Leary's heritage. The new website is their first public gesture but they have been networking privately for a while now.

The new site has the outlines of a living Timothy Leary site with sections on media, video archives, people and events with a blog as the front end. The latest feature on the blog is an interview with Joe Cavella and Chris Graves, Leary's creative team. I posted the Youtube video of the first portion of the interview below.

OBAMA Anatomy of a World Leader by Visionary Artist Alex Grey

 

Link for this Post:Obama Anatomy of a World Leader -- the making of a portrait by psychedelic artist extraordinaire Alex Grey

My long-time friend Will Penna sent me a link to a portion of artist Alex Grey's site which is both about Grey's personal feelings and insights about our new "World Leader" and an illustrated and fascinating description of the process that the paining depicted above was formed.

I have the pleasure of having met and corresponded with Alex Grey during those times back in the Nineties when I spent so much time developing Island Foundation. I am proud to say that he is a member of Island Foundation and among a small group of consciousness luminaries which also included Alan Ginsbeg, Timothy Leary, Tom Robbins, Albert Hofmann, Ram Dass and Albert Hofmann.

Here is an excerpt from Grey's comments (quoted):

 "After hearing Barack Obama's speech in Berlin, and noting the degree of excitement and hope that he generated throughout many countries besides the US, I started to see him as one of the first true "world leaders." This may be partly because of his extraordinary childhood and political life that has bridged many cultures. Obama's restraint and intelligence, exhibited as foes were bating him throughout the campaign, his heartful clarity coming through in his talks are all qualities of a highly evolved person."

"We need to consider our planetary citizenship, because solving the world's ecological and economic problems, and creating a culture of peace and reconciliation will require the co-operation of all nations."

"Perhaps you can use this symbol of Barack Obama to send him a prayer of support, to send all the loving hopeful healing and creative energy that we can focus on him so that he can perform the task of leadership in the most effective and powerful way for the greatest good, for the greatest number." (end of quote)

I've been on the planet a bit more than six decades and I cannot remember so much hope since Kennedy was elected back in 1960. (As a kid, I loved politics and remember staying home from school at age 13 so I could see his famous Berlin speech on TV.).

If the five generational cycle theory described in the book Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics which I posted about in Millennials: Tipping the Scales Toward Change on Future Blogger turns out to be accurate, Obama may be more in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt than John Kennedy. Like Roosevelt, he faces the twin dragons of economic crisis and a world filled with war. If he turns out to the the great communicator (Roosevelt not Reagan was the real Great Communicator) that we believe he will be, then the next decade may be the most exciting of our lives.

Spaced Out Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties--- Book and Blog

Links for this Post:

Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties by by Alastair Gordon.

The Spaced Out Blog

Spaced Out Media: A Short Film about the Spaced Out book

While talking with a friend about Ramon Sender, who I was privilaged to have a chance to get to know as the result of this blog, I discovered a new book -- Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties by by Alastair Gordon. Ramon is featured in the blog that is part of the book's website. 

Here is an short film as YouTube video by Michael Inglesh about the Spaced Out book release party - June 16, 2008:

Wired Magazine, in their June 23, 2008 issue describes the book:

Through hundreds of groovy photos, Alastair Gordon's book explores the tripped-out buildings of the age of Aquarius. Spaced Out shows how ambitiously experimental, hallucinogenically colorful, and at times laughably impractical the designs were - from a waterbed prototype to a house that changed colors in response to human touch. Gordon, a New York Times contributor, highlights the technologies in use today that were pioneered during the era's kaleidoscopic revolution. Turn on, drop out, move in.

Here is an excerpt from the author commenting on his work:

There was an untethered sense of space: psychedelic, sexual, hallucinatory, and drifting, a feeling that you were everywhere yet nowhere at the same time. You could feel it at the rock concerts, love-ins, group gropes, and sensitivity-training sessions, chanting and dancing, drumming together as one mindless organism, when the flash of insight, acid premonition, group mind, and astral telegram were the operative modes of communication in place of today's electronic IM's or text messaging. The sudden flashes and revelations of personal experience were in many ways more subversive than the big-time revolution that everyone was waiting for. In fact, there were thousands of overlapping revolutions and mini uprisings happening at once, thousands of different storms rising and joining forces with other storms, massing themselves along separate fronts. Yes, drugs were a major part of it, but they were just a means to another place, another reality, not an end in themselves. When Huxley's "doors of perception" crashed open, they lead to the most extraordinary garden of possibilities.

The music and drugs have been well documented, but the fractured sense of space, the softened corners, the communal élan are less easily reclaimed. Where are the landmarks and monuments of the psychedelic revolution, and how do we go back if we don't even know where to begin? I started to write Spaced Out in response to the culture of control that arose after September 11, 2001. It seemed like a good time to invoke a period of unbridled experimentation. As one Haight-Ashbury hippie put it: "Hold on by letting go." The sixties legacy lingers on, influencing everything from the Internet and sustainable design to Freak Folk, anti-globalism, organic cuisine, alternative healing and rave clubs. Behind the liberated parks, communes, crash pads and painted busses, was the struggle for a certain mental space, a place without boundaries or divisions that would foster wildness, nurture new kinds of experience, and even change human consciousness. That dream never died but the story needs retelling.

The books's website has a lot of additional features to explore. Among them:

• Links to sites the author considers noteworthy
• A Bibliography for further inquiry and exploration
• More multimedia in YouTube format
• Events surrounding the release of the book including authors appearances
• Excerpts from the book
• The evolving Spaced Out blog which appears to have just begun to grow

Find out more that the links at the top of this post.

Read the Online Version of the New Tranhumanist Magazine h+ edited by Mondo 2000 founder Ken Gofmann AKA RU Sirius

Link for this Post: Read the Free Online PDF Version of the New Tranhumanist Magazine h+ edited by Mondo 2000 founder Ken Gofmann AKA RU Sirius

Many of you remember Mondo 2000, the Berkeley based magazine published by Alison Kennedy and edited by RU Sirius. I got a note today from Ken about a new "print" magazine that he is editing. He says:

Are you ready to be fitted for your Ironman suit? Is it time to stop aging, upload your memories onto silicon and engineer your progeny to be happy geniuses? Can we get you a real hamburger that wasn't made from a slaughtered cow? (And do you want fries with that)? Well, roll over Anderson Cooper and tell Perez Hilton the news.

h+ magazine has arrived and the future already looks different.

Humanity Plus (formerly the World Transhumanist Association) – in collaboration with former Mondo 2000 editor RU Sirius -- is pleased to present h+. A web-based quarterly magazine, h+ covers the scientific, technological, and cultural developments that are challenging and overcoming human limitations. Recently, there has been a growing and evolving public discourse about new technological trends and possibilities. Scientists and edge thinkers are talking about– and working on  -- slowing or ending aging; body and brain enhancement; biological control of the genome and the evolutionary process; and the possibility of a technological singularity brought on by AI… to name just a few of the interests and obsessions of this new edge tech culture. h+ magazine is all over it.

Beautifully designed by virtual worlds artistic legend D.C. Spensley (AKA DanCoyote in Second Life), h+ is accessible, stylish, contemporary, and sometimes playful. h+ aims to provides an entry point for intelligent people to develop an awareness of this new technological paradigm, while also providing an outlet and a voice for those who are already hooked in to the "transhumanist" vision.

You can read the new issue online at the link at the top of this post.

Some Images from Burning Man 2008

I got an email tonight with this:

Hi Bruce,
Here's a link (to some photos) of the art installation I did at Burning Man last week:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/actualcontact/

Includes photos of Sasha & Ann, and Erik Davis speaking in the dome.

Enjoy!

The columns were skinned with mahogany veneer and lit from the inside w/ daylight fluorescent - a pure white light!

I'm still tired from the whole experience of putting it together.  We had a crew of about 5-6 people going at all times for about 3 weeks.

I love your blog and figured I'd share! :-)

Best,
Jason

A Lazy Man's Guide to Thaddeus Golas at the Cyberspace "Café " Named for Him

Link for this PostL THADDEUS GOLAS -- The Official Thaddeus Golas Café In Cyberspace:

I've posted about Thaddeus Golas previously in two posts. One post was called The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment is a link to a book which most of you reading this post will not remember but which was read by a lot of us older members of the psychedelic movement cognoscenti.. The other was Perspectives on LSD by Thaddeus Golas, a contribution to a publication called Blotter which I was honored to be the editor of some twenty years ago.

Thaddeus Golas passed away 11 years ago but I am glad that someone decided to take the time to tell his story and tell it well. This site has more than enough to get you up to speed on Golas and the enlightenment shortcuts he was famous for.

More than just a tribute, the folks who put together the site are keeping Golas's ideas alive with a publication called the Cosmic Aerodrome, a newsletter.

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow -- Bill Clinton on Why America Needs President Barack Obama

Link for this post: The embedded YouTube of former President Bill Clinton addressing the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorodo.

The last two or three weeks of the summer have been nasty experience. Living in the swing state of Nevada, our TV is bombarded (almost literally) by the nasty negative campaign ads of John McCain.

Tonight, all that changed. It was a like a big happy rainbow after a long nasty thunderstorm that did not seem like it would stop.

For those of you who think its time for 4 more years of Republicans, listen closely to the wise words of the last President who presided under peace and prosperity.

Future Internet: Duncan Campbell examines the technology that will one day bring about the “thinking Web”.

Link for this Post: Future Internet - Internet - NetGuide

I liked the picture that is featured at the top of this article by Duncan Cambell on the future of the Internet so I republished it at the top of this post. It shows an artists conception of what our computer interface will look like in the year 2018.

Freud said a century ago that humans have an unconscious instinctual desire to return to  womb. As a psychologist trained a long time ago in old school psychology, I would have to say that the woman in the picture looks like she has done exactly that.  Her fetal position is also similar to that imagined for the "enslaved" humans in the movie, the Matrix immersed in their virtual reality pods. Except that the woman looks alert and working rather than vegetative.

She looks extremely comfortable. The only thing that looks like it might not be needed is her fingers at the keyboard. Hopefully by 2018 that speech recognition or even brainwave recognition  will have advanced far enough to the need for repeated pressing of fingers.

Here is a snip from the post that I thought was particularly interesting:

Up in the clouds: “Web 3.0 will not just be using the data in innovative ways, it will be abstracting away things formally done on individual computers,” suggested a forum posting at Resourceful Idiot. “Cloud computing will become more common and you will see the Internet become a much more mature medium.”

Cloud computing is fundamentally about the location of storage, services, operating systems and information. All this data has to go somewhere and if the future Internet is going to be intuitively interactive, it’ll have to be readily accessible. Plus, individual users may not wish to have large (and expensive) storage systems in their home.

Online storage systems are already widely available; a Web-based email system is a simple example. The system provider allocates you storage space with your email address so you can save material for future reference (some email services no longer put limits on storage space). As more and more data is created, computing facilities whose physical location is irrelevant will be the points of access.

“You don’t necessarily know where services are coming from; you don’t even care as long as you get a certain quality of service,” says Nick Jones.

Virtualisation comes into play here; cloud systems will contain virtual networks of computers that don’t require hardware because they’re actually data stored on larger computers (known as servers). For a fee, you can store all your information in these networks with password-controlled access. It frees you from the expense of upgrading your computer hardware periodically to add storage space, and also means you can access your information from any computer with a Net connection.

You can read the entire article at the link at the top of this post.

Ideas, notes, findings and musings of EROCx1 from the other side of the Eschaton.

Link for this Post:Ideas, notes, findings and musings of EROCx1. From the other side of the Eschaton.

Its been over six years since I moved to Las Vegas. I spent most of my adult life my Natural Bridges home near the ocean in Santa Cruz, California. I had been visiting Vegas since I was four years old in 1952. Vegas was a small town back then, just a strip of hotels and a gaudily lit downtown filled with gambling casinos. My mother has been living in Vegas since the late 1980s and while she has been here, Vegas was the fast growing place in the US for a record number of years in a row. I moved here to be close to my mother who is now 81.

Santa Cruz was a kind of counterculture ghetto. Moving from a town filed with friends to a place I had none has been a difficult transition.

Not having the many places to hang-out that the Bay Area offered, I've become a recluse. Its great for getting a lot of work done (amidst by multitasking information overload indulgences). But its mostly been lonely.

Recently I made new Vegas pal who shares some of the many interests I have expressed on Vision Thing.  I am happy to introduce you to my new friend Eric . He spent his youth as a underground DJ, promoter and visual artist in Los Angeles during the early Nineties rave scene where he branded himself with the handle EROCx1. Some of his artwork can be found illustrating this post.  He currently lives in Las Vegas with his wife and three children and runs an online site GaianBotanicals.com 

Eric has been blogging recently and so if you want to find out more about his ideas and inspirations, check out his weblog here.

Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep? Susan Blackmore

Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep? Susan Blackmore Published in Skeptical Inquirer

I've posted about Susan Blackmore previously. I had the pleasure being introduced to her the  Basel, Switzerland LSD Conference in January 2006 by Stanley Krippner.

I found this essay about Lucid Dreaming  which she republished to her website to be well balanced and a deep exploration of the subject of "waking" dreams. Here is a one-paragraph snip from the piece:

The oddest thing about lucid dreams— and, to many people who have them, the most compelling—is how it feels when you wake up. Upon waking up from a normal dream, you usually think, "Oh, that was only a dream." Waking up from a lucid dream is more continuous. It feels more real, it feels as though you were conscious in the dream. Why is this? I think the reason can be found by looking at the mental models the brain constructs in waking, in ordinary dreaming, and in lucid dreams.

That's just one bite from the apple. There is a lot more in the essay linked at the top of this post.

Note: Image at top: Image ©iStockphoto.com/Renphoto by way of Here Be Dreams

Links By George: A Biweekly Blog Of Links To Articles And Websites Alternative Lifestyles, Culture, Shamanism, Spirituality, Politics And The Environment

Link for this Post: Links by George: An Eclectic Biweekly Collection of Links

From time to time, you have seen posts on my blog with the source of the link attributed to my friend George Douvris.

I first connected with George several years ago when he contacted me about his interest in my Island Project. We met briefly in Switzerland at the LSD Conference in 2006.

George has been sending me a "Links by George" newsletter every week or two by email for years. Now he is publishing his links list on a new blog he has started which is linked at the top of this post.

How to Operate Your Brain by Timothy Leary Updated Now on YouTube

Link for this Post:

See You Tube Video Below

Timothy Leary made this video, How to Operate your Brain more than a decade ago. The 28 minute 58 second video was produced by Chris Graves and the other folks at Retinalogic.

It is the best in a series of multimedia documentaries Leary made in his desire to get his message out in a form where it could be understood non-verbally as well as verbally. We used to sell the movie through Island Foundation but I was pleased to see on YouTube.

You can find part two of the How to Operate Your Brain Video here and part three of How to Operate Your Brain here.

Obama Becomes Democratic Presidential Nominee -- ABC News

Link for this Post: Obama Becomes First Black Democratic Presidential Nominee -- ABC News

While Hillary Clinton has not conceded to Barack Obama, at least one major news firm (likely the first of many tonight) have recognized that Obama has won.

As I write this, John McCain is speaking, claiming that his term will not be a third Bush term. Maybe he is right, maybe he would be even worse.

Clinton apparently will not concede so that she can maintain the strongest possible posture for becoming the Vice Presidential pick.

What she has to explain is what she is going to do with her husband. His behavior has become rather strange lately, using foul language in reference to both Obama and the journalist Todd S. Purdum, the husband of his former Press Secretary. Pundum, a staff reporter for the New York Times just published a scathing portrait of ex-President in Vanity Fair, "The Comeback Id."

Trip of a lifetime: How LSD rocked the world - Features, Music - The Independent

Link for this Post: Trip of a lifetime: How LSD rocked the world - - The Independent.

According to this article in The Independent from the UK:

It's the psychedelic drug that inspired Hendrix and The Beatles - and shaped the music, art and literature of a generation. As the world bids farewell to the bicycling Swiss chemist who created LSD, John Walsh explores his mind-altering legacy

The article gives a UK perspective on LSD's influence on the arts, film and music in the 1960's.

The article comes to me via my friend George Douvris who is on the road.

Note: Image from article

FutureHi Founder Paul Hughes New Site on the Web

Link: Paul Hughes' Site on the Web.

Paul Huges who started the lively FutureHi blog back in 2003, which was a MUST READ for those of us interested in psychedelics, altered states of consciousness and the future of humans, our planet and the universe has started and new and more personal blog which can be visited via the link at the top of this post.

Paul stopped posting to the FuturHi blog at the end of 2006 and most of the activity on that website has moved to their lively forum.

Here is a bit about what Paul does personally from his bio:

I'm a body psychotherapist, writer, yogi, teacher, philosopher, composer, artist and juggler. I'm currently working on my PhD in Clinical Somatic Psychology. I spend part of my year traveling and conducting intensives and workshops on personal transformation for individuals and groups. The tools of my trade include vivation, yoga, tantra, bodywork, reiki, aromatherapy, shamanic journeying, and dynamic meditation.

Here is how Paul describes his interests which are reflected in his blog and the collection of essays available on his new site:.

I'm fascinated with the history and evolution of human culture, consciousness, and our understanding of our place in the cosmos.  Comparative anthropology, psychology, philosophy, religion, alchemy, history, science, astronomy, biology, cosmology, physics, technology, culture, politics, language, economics, spirituality... I think that pretty much covers everything... How did we get here?  Where are we going?  What is the nature of self, of god, of consciousness?  Are we alone in the universe? Are there other universes?  Does it go on forever?  Is there life after death?   How can we fix the current mess we got ourselves into?   How can we survive our own adolescence?  How can we achieve immortality?   When my thinking cap is on, these questions are usually behind my inquiries.

I'm sure that readers of my blog who also followed FutureHi will be interested in Paul's new weblog.

Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising FREE eBook Download

Link for this Post:  Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising.

Robert Anton Wilson passed on last year but his ideas live on in large number of books, essays and interviews. Prometheus Risingwas one of his most influential books during his life and now has been made available to the public in an online version.

Prometheus Rising introduced Timothy Leary's  8 Circuit Model of Consciousness to a much wider audience than Leary himself in any of his books on the subject.

Much as Russian Philosopher P. D. Ouspensky explained in more simple words and thus popularized the work of his teacher mystic George Gurdjieff, Robert Anton Wilson does in this book with the ideas of Leary.

Here is how Wikipedia describes Prometheus Rising:

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson is a guide book of "how to get from here to there", an amalgam of Timothy Leary's 8-circuit model of consciousness, Gurdjieff's self-observation exercises, Alfred Korzybski's general semantics, Aleister Crowley's magical theorems, Sociobiology, Yoga, Christian Science, relativity, and quantum mechanics amongst other approaches to understanding the world around us. It claims to be a short book (nearly 300 pages) about how the human mind works and how to get the most use from one. Wilson describes it as an "owner's manual for the human brain".

I first found the book in the public domain on Scribed which allows you to read the book on line or download it as a PDF with free registration at the link at the top of this post. It is also available with no registration via the Fans of Robert Anton Wilson webite as a PDF download (click here).

You Can't Make This Up - Mark Halperin on the Presidential Race in Time Magazine

Link for This Post: You Can't Make This Up -- Time Magazine Saturday May 3, 2008 by Mark Halperin

The last couple of months of the long grueling polical race has gotten me a bit down. This short little piece in Time Magazine managed to raise a smile however.  After the running of the Kentucky Derby, Halperin posted:

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown.

Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

No matter with your for Hillary or Barack, you have to smile at that one.

LSD Inventor Albert Hofmann Leaves Lasting Albeit Controversial Legacy - CBC Sunday News Online Video

Links for this Post:

Psychedelic Pioneer Albert Hofmann Video on Canadian Broadcasting Company Sunday News

Watch Video with Windows Media (click here)

I taped a short statement  here in Vegas whch  was included as part of a collage of people including Rick Doblin and Stansislav Grof remembering Albert Hofmann.broadcast today on the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Sunday News program.

Here is a snip from the CBC website:

The Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, Albert Hofmann, died this week at 102. We examine the legacy of the man who became a hero to a rebellious generation, and look back at the history of this controversial drug - now in the midst of a research revival.

You can watch the video by visting this link.

Rest in Peace Old Friend -- Albert Hofmann the Father of LSD Dies at 102

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Albert Hofmann Dies at 102 New York Tmes

I had some dental work done today and my dentist does not believe much in giving pain killers. Usually I concur but tonight I wish he had give me some. In the late evening I began receiving emails from many people telling me that Albert has passed awasy.

I met him in 1976 in Basel. When he visited Southern California in the Eighties, he gave me a copy of his book, LSD My Problem Child.  He signed the book for me. It said simply,

"Cordially,
Albert Hofmann."

We had a long correspondence and saw each other several times since our first meeting. In 2002, he sent me another copy of the original Hardcover edition of his book. This time it was inscribed,,

Cordially, In Old Friendship,
Albert Hofmann."

Hofmann has been the wise old man in many of my dreams His invention LSD was the catalyst for my mystical view of life. My mystical view of life is not that LSD taught me all of the truths and now I have all the answers

Rather it showed me how little I know and the rest of us humans know about the deepest questions we can ask about life. Much is unknown including the nature of  human consciousness itself.

We have much to learn. Albert Hoffman's discovery. He has opened us all  up and put us on quicker  journey toward wisdom. Rest in Peace old friend, you will be missed.

The Dream Machine Online

Link for this Post: The Dream Machine Online  Note; Be sure to close your eyes when you view the dream machine.

Three years ago, I wrote Remembering Brion Gysin Among Gysin's works was the concept of the Dream Machine.

The main link at the top of this post is to a website the attempts to render the Dream Machine concept as an online web application.

A Dream Machine according to Wikipedia:

The dreamachine (or dream machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and scientist Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain.

In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency, situated between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing.

A dreamachine is "viewed" with the eyes closed: the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve and alters the brain's electrical oscillations. The "viewer" experiences increasingly bright, complex patterns of color behind their closed eyelids. The patterns become shapes and symbols, swirling around, until the "viewer" feels surrounded by colors. It is claimed that viewing a dreamachine allows one to enter a hypnagogic state. This experience may sometimes be quite intense, but to escape from it, one needs only to open one's eyes.

A dreamachine may be dangerous for people with photosensitive epilepsy or other nervous disorders. It is thought that one out of 10,000 adults will experience a seizure while viewing the device; about twice as many children will have a similar ill effect.

Who is Brion Gyson?

Brion Gysin (1916-1986) was a multimedia artist and mystic most famous in his lifetime for inventing a system called The Cut Ups, often credited to his best friend and soul mate the Beat writer William S. Burroughs. Traversing many nationalities, Gysin was a Sufi initiate, Secret knowledge. Dream Machine 1960 at the Beat Hotel after experiencing flicker near Marseilles tried everything to market and sell his ticket.

This description of him comes the makers of a  2008 feature documentary 'FLicKeR' by Nik Sheehan. about Brion Gysin and the dream machine  . This is the Flicker website and here is some more info about the film (and an image I used).

Below and completely unrelated is The Dream Machine film on YouTube which says that it is, "based on Dave Arnold's design copy of artist and alchemist Brion Gysin's DREAMACHINE developed in the 1950s from an original design of the 'Flicker Machine' invented by the mathematician Ian Sommerville, a close friend of William Burroughs."

Note: Image at top from painting by Paul O'Donovan on the Interzone Site, Western Lands. Title: "The rebirth of Ra-Atum-Khepri, occurring during an Interzone Coffee-break T.V. commercial, causing a partial eclipse over the Westernlands"

The Hivemind Aesthetic, Instopix and Other Art

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The Hivemind Aesthetic.

Luke Stanley on Stumble Upon

Luke Stanley's Blog

Instapix

I stumbled upon a young fellow from England a couple of years ago, who is working on a semantically sensitive software program that adds into Microsoft Live Messenger called Instopix.

The program creates a stream of pictures and idea associations based on the words it detects in your chats  that float on your screen as you chat. Luke calls the technology behind Instopix the Thoughtrail Semantic File System.

Luke also likes to play with words and images in his art and poetry. The poem at the top is an example of a poem with image and there are some more examples there as

Rush Limbaugh urges listeners to vote for Clinton

Rush Limbaugh urges listeners to vote for Clinton  CNN Poltical Ticker

"I want Hillary to stay in this…this is too good a soap opera," Limbaugh told fellow conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham on Fox News Friday. He reiterated the comments on his Monday show and replayed the exchange with Ingram.

He also said Clinton is more willing than the Republican National Committee and John McCain's campaign to criticize Barack Obama.

We Want an End to this War: Barak Obama SuperBowl Ad Video

Barak Obama SuperBowl Ad embeded below
As I watch the early returns roll in, I found this ad spot that Obama's camapign ran in local markets duriing last Sunday's Superbowl.

Yes We Can Barack Obama Music Video on YouTube

Link for the Post: YouTube Video embedded below

My friend Will Penna sent me this Youtube Video by email.. I was surprised to get it from him since he was for Hillary last week.  He says with the email:

I have heard a lot of people say that Barack Obama is "Inspriation" vs Hillary's "Information." Well, guess what, Barack's "Inspiration" is also the "Information" a great many Americans cannot face, do not want to face, or are unwilling to face. It is time for real and serious "Change!"

Yes We Can - a vote for Barack Obama is truly taking back the country from a corporate monarchy to a true democracy. Yes We Can!

Sixties Philosopher Alan Watts Talks About Aldous Huxley's Island -- Pacifica Radio Audio

Links for this Post: These links are playlist files which when either opened with a streaming audio player like the free Winamp or clicked on if a playlist file player is already configured in windows. Each of them are KPFK Pacifica programs which open with sections of the Alan Watts talk.

Alan Watts, "Huxley's 'Island'" Part 1

Alan Watts, "Huxley's 'Island'" Part 2

Alan Watts, "Huxley's 'Island'" Part 3

Alan Watts, "Huxley's 'Island'" Part 4

As readers of Vision Thing and those aware of the work of Island Foundation know, I am quite interested in the ideas of Aldous Huxley. Island Foundation focuses on Aldous Huxley's novel Island and its ideas for developing a new culture.

Psychedelic Healing in by David Jay Brown in Scientific American

Link for this Post: Click and download this PDF file Psychedelic healing?- Scientific American Mind

This Scientific American Mind Edition article on new scientific research on psychedelic compounds by my old

Mystic Garden Party 2008 Jan 25-26 Maui, HI Includes 3 Days of Workshop and Music

Featured Links for his Post

Mystic Garden Party 2008

Buy Mystic Garden Passes for various lengths and level of participation

The Current Global Crisis and the Future of Humanity Stan Grof on Reality Sandwitch

Link for this Post: The Current Global Crisis and the Future of Humanity by Stan Grof on Reality Sandwich

The essay I am posting about is  by Dr. Stanislav Grof, who needs no introduction to most readers.

The subject of the essay is something close to my own passion, the idea that advanced techniques and technologies of consciousnesses change could play an inportant part in dealing with the multiple crisis currently threatening the planet and the life that depends on it.

Here is how he describes the context in which the presentation of the ideas in the essay were

Space Squid: Earth's Worst Sci-Fi And Humor 'Zine

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Space Squid: Earth's Worst Sci-Fi And Humor 'Zine

Space Squid's Squidcast

Squids have become a popular archetype of the web recently, with Squidoo and now with Space Squid. I suppose I'm a sucker for a fun cover but there is more than just the cover in this case.

This zine has had three issues and also regular podcasts. ---  Space Squid's Squidcast

Check out both via the links at the top of this post.

I found the site when someone from the zine commented on one of my posts. Enjoy!

Got Wis.dm? New Online Community Has All the Answers

Link for this Post: Visit Wis.dm through this link!

Wis.dm  is the latest online community  -- an interesting mashup of  Yahoo! Answers, MySpace and Digg.

Community members become resident experts to answer the steady onslaught of questions from new members/seekers. The community thus resembles ancient Greece with wise philosophers roaming the marketplace surrounded by their students.

 

RealityStudio » RealityStudio, a William S. Burroughs Community

Link for this post : RealityStudio » RealityStudio, a William S. Burroughs Community.

Its about time we had a William S. Burroughs Community on the web. Here is what they say about themselves.

RealityStudio.org is dedicated to William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), the vanguard author, artist, and performer of the Beat generation. If you’re here, you probably know who he is. But what’s RealityStudio?

Perceiving the need for a dynamic and comprehensive site dedicated to Burroughs, RealityStudio was launched by Supervert in October 2004. The premier online community of Burroughs enthusiasts, RealityStudio provides news, analysis, scholarship, research, reviews, interviews, texts, and a thriving member forum. RealityStudio is proud to say that its community includes ardent fans, academic scholars, friends and acquaintances of Burroughs himself, and a variety of others who simply care about Burroughs and / or avant-garde culture. Think of it as Hassan’s Rumpus Room online.

There's lots on the site to see including a discussion forum, text excerpts from books, interviews, a biography, criticism, scholarship, multimedia, bibliography and bookmarks. Enough to make a career studying the man.

Are Psychedelics Google’s Biggest Trade Secret?

Link for this Post: Reality Sandwich  Google and the Myceliation of Consciousness.

I'm not sure if this article is irrefutable proof of the idea that psychedelics are Google’s biggest trade secret but the author RoseRose has a gift for blarney second only to her hero Terrence McKenna. Here is a lengthy but only partial snip from this Reality Sandwich serving.

Actress Mariel Hemingway Hosting Fund-Raising Dinner November 9th for Alex Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York -- Consciousness Cafe

Link for ths Post: Consciousness Cafe.

Here is an excerpt from this post:

Academy Award- and Golden Globe-nominated American actress Mariel Hemingway will host a fund-raising dinner November 9th for Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) in N

Alex's art is multi dimensional and my interest in opening to different dimensions especially the fourth/ the heart is my passion.

The Chapel and Alex have created space and work where the world as we see it, is open to a world that we can feel and experience differently, perhaps a world we are not familiar with. We are on an integrated path and the combination of the music art dance and fine art is the window into dimensions that are Bigger than us. Alex has opened this door.
- Mariel Hemingway

Tichets are $250 for the evening. Please visit the post through the link at the top to find out more.

Google's Orkut: A World of Ambition -- Business Week

Link for this Post: Google's Orkut: A World of Ambition Seizing on Orkut's momentum in Asia and Latin America, Google moves to revamp its social networking site and take aim at Facebook and MySpace by Olga Kharif

When Google first offered Orcut back i in 2005, I developed an online persona there as did many people I know from the cybculture days of the Nineties.

Those were the days after Friendster had inspired a series of clones including Tribe.net,and then MySpace, the 800 Pound Gorilla of social networks until recently.

Connect Your Brain to the Game Using an Emotiv Systems EEG Neurofeedback Cap -- YouTube Video

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YouTube Video "Stonehenge Demo' embedded below

Connecting Your Brain to the Game Using an EEG cap, a startup hopes to change the way people interact with video games by Kate Greene in the MIT Technology Review

Emotiv Systems

Using an EEG cap, a startup hopes to change the way people interact with video games.

Joi Ito's Web: "My Timothy Leary"

Link: Joi Ito's Web: My Timothy Leary.

The picture to the left is from Joi Ito's website. For thos who don't know who Joi Ito is, his Wikipedia entry is instructive.

I met Joi in the early Nineties at Timothy Leary's home in Beverly Hills. Timothy had just returned from one of several trips to Japan and raved about his new friend Joi Ito.

In this post, Joi discusses Timothy in a variety of contexts. One thing that is certain is that these are far more "conservative" times than those optimistic days of the late last century after the Berlin Wall had fell.

Getting Dug and Stumbled Upon

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Stumbled Upon Why We Get High

Why We Get High by Bruce Eisner on Bruce Eisner's Writings blog

We We Get High on Digg

Most of you know Digg and Stumbled Upon -- two social network communities that  share content with other members. Posts on Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing have been stumbled upon or dugg a number of time.  But a bit more than month ago, August 12th to be exact, I had an usual experience with Stumbled Upon and Digg. Usually if a post of mine is stumbled upon, the traffic goes up a few hundred visitors a day.

But on August 22, a reprint of an article originally published in the Island Views newsletter (circulation 2000) way back in 1994 got both Stumbled Upon and Durgg. The article has been there since 2004 and was written ten years ago.  Bruce Eisner's Writings is an occasionally updated archive for post writings and usually only gets about 100 page views a day. On August 22,  it the stats showed that there had been 5947 unique visitors.

URTH.TV Consciousness Movement Social Network

Link for this post: URTH.TV Consciousness Movement Social Network.

I discovered Urth.TV  last week and joined immediately. I used to speak at the Whole Life Expo in the 1980s, both myself and with Timothy Leary. I'm already a member of at least a dozen social networks and usually pass on new memberships but URT.TV is interesting and worth a look. Here is an excerpt from URT.TV's history and mission:

In early 2006, a group of conscious entrepreneurs led by Ayman Sawaf , Rowan Gabrielle and Joey Shepp bought the assets of the Wholelife expos and conferences with plans to take the Wholelife experience online-24/7 to the global market -thus the birth of Urth.tv