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This two-hour edition of Disinformation: The Podcast is the final episode of the series. Join Raymond Wiley, Joe McFall, Austin Gandy, and Joe Nolan for one last journey into the bizarre undercurrents of the human psyche. Raymond talks about the recent release of his first book, The Georgia Guidestones: America’s Most Mysterious Monument. Austin Gandy’s Invisible College returns with a new take on the infamous Knights Templar, and the Oslo shootings they are said to have inspired. Joe Nolan’s Insomnia delves into the undying myths of Carlos Castaneda, and the New Age subculture they have inspired. Finally, Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall present a retrospective discussion of their podcast careers, along with impressions of the occult mysteries, conspiracy theories, and obscure realms of belief featured in their seminal broadcasts. After 7 years, 80 podcasts, and more than a million downloads, these two friends say thank you and goodbye to the audience … For now.

Quebec police officers have completed their report into the bizarre death of Chantale Lavigne — who was “cooked to death” at a personal development seminar.

Lavigne died in hospital after she and eight others in a personal-development seminar called Dying in Consciousness were covered with mud, wrapped in plastic, put under blankets and immobilized with their heads in cardboard boxes for about nine hours, under instructions to hyperventilate.

Gabrielle Frechette, a self-styled therapist, was the seminar’s operator. According to Radio-Canada, Frechette has been running self-improvement courses for about two decades, and claims to be channelling Melchisedech, a Biblical figure.

The confusion about the nature of God starts with the idea God is separate from Existence. Also, there seems to be a tendency to treat the Father as God itself and the Son & Holy Spirit as a part of, but not equal to the Father. From these simple misunderstandings comes the logical paradoxes we’re all familiar with.

So here’s where we begin to clear things up. God is the single thing, but there are three aspects that make up the totality of God. Here’s the analogy: we take a piece of cheese. The cheese is one thing; however, there are aspects to the cheese that make up the whole thing: we have the shape, color & taste of the cheese. So where does the cheese end and its aspects begin? Well obviously that’s an impossible question.

So now the issue is defining the Father, Son & Holy Spirit aspects and how they together define God.

• The Father aspect is Existence as a whole. All of Existence — the Alpha & Omega. The Totality of everything that ever was and ever will be; from a clump of dirt to the spaces in between the spaces. From Heaven to Earth.

• The Son aspect, Christ is the agency of Intelligence, or Consciousness.

• The Holy Spirit aspect is Energy itself.

Now we put these concepts together and learn that energy is intelligent and comprises Existence itself. Through science we have actually learned all of existence is energy vibrating at various densities. Everything you see, touch and think is energy in one form or another. And we can say energy is intelligent through simple observation; What makes a chair stay a chair? What makes a carpet continue on as a carpet? Why don’t all the molecules just separate into one big mush? Because of Consciousness. Energy is Consciousness. Also, energy cannot be created nor destroyed — in other words, the Alpha & Omega. But we possess our own personal Consciousness — we were ‘made in God’s image.’ It doesn’t mean God looks like a man, it means we possess Consciousness.

But does this apply to all people or some and how do we tell the difference?

The difference is like night and day. Mankind was created like any other animal — however our destiny was different than other animals — the plan was to become one with Christ and receive Consciousness, thus bringing Heaven to Earth. The old narrative tells us Christ saves us from a life of sin when we accept Him as our personal savior. But in this new context Christ redeems us from our life as an animal and we are born again with the knowledge we are one with God. These are very subtle but key distinctions being made here.

How do we bring about this change in ourselves? First, we have to take the question seriously. Specifically we have to realize it is a personal thing we are doing — we make the choice.

Second, we have to change the way we think. Because of this new revelation of the exact nature of Christ; that is, Christ as Consciousness, we can say the key to developing Consciousness is following your Highest Light (God within You). To change how we think, in order to develop Consciousness, we have to stop accepting beliefs and start creating ideas — ideas that make you feel good about your little corner of the universe.

But before I explain what that means I want to talk more about the differences between ripened souls and unripened souls; the difference between Man & animal. The animal has instincts, like the instinct to follow and the instinct to lead, we call this the instinct for social hierarchy. Big dog on top bites the little dog on the bottom, and this dynamic maintains order in the community — and this is essentially how human society works — which would be fine for all eternity if we weren’t created with the greater purpose of bringing Heaven to Earth. And when we think of this new world do we see cops and politicians ordering us around with their guns and tanks and bombs? No. Of course we don’t. What we see are people living in harmony because they know how to act in a civilized fashion without coercion. Domesticated Primates, collectively known as people, only follow certain rules because they’re afraid of the consequences of not following [the rules], however real peace is only possible if we understand the purpose of moral-based laws. And that means understanding the value of empathy. So where do we begin?

Simple — with the definition of morality: to treat others the way we want to be treated. On a collective level, this means a total reevaluation of all our values & laws is needed as it pertains to this perfect concept of morality. This means rethinking our attitude towards taboo subjects such as recreational drug use & even sex.

The beginning of the End: The Entity aka “God” reveals itself in Three stages [naturally] the first stage was that of the Father aspect, then Christ and now The Holy Spirit. The transitional phase between the Son aspect and the Holy Spirit is known as the Apocalypse, a Greek word literally meaning “Lifting the Veil.” The information the Holy Spirit will reveal will unite us in Union with God, creating peace on Earth or Heaven on Earth.

The symbolism inherent to this new age is the eye in the triangle, a coded reference to the 3rd EYE. Holy Spirit reveals the means to open the 3rd EYE as a gateway to the Collective Unconscious / Mind of God uniting us on a higher mental level, causing by reflex action, peace on Earth. We do this by creating energy with our bodies in the intention of opening the 3rd EYE -or- by focusing your attention to your forehead while engaged in strenuous physical activity. Such as dancing, et. al.

Other helpful hints the Holy Spirit reveals includes the mandate that you ‘follow your highest light.’ How does one follow your highest light? As you might suspect, it is a fairly autonomous process. The issue is one of inspiration rather than instruction. There are no leaders; only artists who inspire us through their art. We recognize our Consciousness, or “soul,” as the part of God that is a part of us. Our theology and our imagination are synonymous. So in practice, following your highest light means creating ART-MYTH as personal spirituality. Wanna see some examples …?

What happens when developing Consciousness and how it happens are potentially two different things. What happens is that developing Consciousness means you are one with “Christ” and are saved — but how it happens specifically varies wildly from individual to individual, although several people can have similar experiences. But in the past the assumption was that what was happening and how it was happening were the same thing — and so by that logic there was only one way to be saved; become “Christian.” However, this does not suffice because by virtue of the fact God speaks directly to us — following your highest Light is The Way, The Truth & The Life.

So now the burning question is: Who was Jesus?

Jesus was a Man who attained Consciousness in all its full-tilt bewildering mystery. The thing about Existence being a form of Consciousness is that by possessing a personal Consciousness —*— we have the potential to manipulate reality with our mind. This is confirmed in the Bible, book of Matthew Chapter 21, verse 21. Where Jesus says after the apostles witnessed Him wilting the fig tree: “Truly I say to YOU, If only YOU have faith and do not doubt, not only will YOU do what I did to the fig tree, but also if YOU say to this mountain,’Be lifted up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen.”

It is our goal to promote Consciousness not only within ourselves but to the world at large. Only when all of mankind receives Consciousness will the final battle between Good & Evil begin. Because Consciousness itself does not guarantee someone is Good; it does not guarantee they will act with empathy —all it means is they have the potential power of God. Don’t panic.

With a click and a whirr, I am pulled into the scanner. My head is strapped down and I have been draped with a blanket so that I may touch my nether regions — my clitoris in particular — with a certain degree of modesty. I am here neither for a medical procedure nor an adult movie. Rather, I am about to stimulate myself to orgasm while an fMRI scanner tracks the blood flow in my brain.

My actions are helping Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and colleagues to tease apart the mechanisms underlying sexual arousal. In doing so, not only have they discovered that there is more than one route to orgasm, but they may also have revealed a novel type of consciousness — an understanding of which could lead to new treatments for pain.

Despite orgasm being a near-universal human phenomenon…

Read More: New Scientist

Echoes of a lost life hung thickly over Judge Warren Darrow’s courtroom Tuesday after a jury heard the recorded voice of Kirby Brown, one of three people who died after a sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona in 2009.

The deaths led to charges of manslaughter against noted motivational speaker and author James Arthur Ray, who has pleaded not guilty.

“When we started the (Samurai) game, I was like you,” Brown said on the recording, which was made just before she and the other attendees entered the sweat lodge. It is a segment from recordings made during four days of Ray’s October 2009 Spiritual Warrior Retreat. “I was gonna be the hero, and I died right there before it even began.”

Brown, 38, went on to recount the efforts she made to try to save her teammates in the game from sharing her fate, saying that she swallowed her own vomit in an attempt to lie perfectly still. Had she moved, Ray, playing the role of God, would have sentenced another of her team to death.

“As I laid there dying and everyone was working, I kept sending my energy to them,” she said.

“I realized that the dead are with us, that the loved ones of the past are with us.”

Brown also told of an encounter she had with her late great uncle during her vision quest the day before.

“A powerful figure came to me,” she said. “He was the person I would always go to to ask for advice. I’ve missed him.

“He came to me and I just said thanks for coming here and do you have any advice. He said, ‘I have three words for you – keep things simple.’

“That’s the same thing he said to me before he died.”

Brown’s recorded musings were the object of fierce debate among the attorneys. Prosecutor Bill Hughes argued that Brown’s statements should have alerted Ray to her state of mind, echoing the state’s contention that Ray’s persuasive prodding left Brown and other attendees willing to exceed sensible personal limits of endurance in order to please their spiritual leader…

[continues in the Daily Courier]

Kenneth Grant by Austin Spare (c. 1951).

Finally unpacking the books bequeathed to me by my late ex-Freemason father-in-law’s estate has put me in a wistful mood. I just keep being reminded of how many 20th century disinformationists we’ve recently lost: John Keel, John Mitchell, Zecharia Sitchin — and a loss equivalent to the space filled by their contributions to occulture.

Stacking my now prized Golden Dawn collection turned my thoughts to Israel Regardie and so Crowley — and to his other spiritual son and former secretary, Kenneth Grant.

Both did a great deal to popularise modern post-Thelemic magic. I’ve got some fond ’80s teenage memories of coming across them all in the Psychology section (?) of my local library and reading furtively with one eye over my shoulder. It was the start of an endless study of esotericism.

So I was not surprised when I read that Kenneth Grant had passed away in a friend’s Facebook status. He deserves a Disinfo memorial and I couldn’t do better than this obit by John Coulthart on his blog { feuilleton }, so thankfully I have his blessing to quote his post at length:

Kenneth Grant, writer and occultist, died last month but the event was only announced this week. He’ll be remembered for the nine fascinating occult treatises he wrote from 1972 to 2002, and for continuing the work of Aleister Crowley as head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a position which became fraught in later years as various occult factions disputed his authority. Having collected occult books for much of the 1980s I find his name calls out from the shelves more than many other writers; as well as authoring his own works he edited all the major Crowley texts with Crowley’s executor John Symonds, presenting them in authoritative editions for a new readership.

Grant proved a very loyal champion of people he admired, significantly so in the case of Austin Osman Spare whose work he collected, exhibited and republished from the 1950s on. It was Grant’s position as one of the many advisors for Man, Myth & Magic in 1970 which resulted in the part-work encyclopedia using one of Spare’s stunning drawings as the cover picture for its first issue. That effort alone gave Spare an audience far beyond anything he received during his lifetime, and Grant ensured the magazine featured Spare’s work in subsequent issues. Grant’s occult works made liberal use of unique illustrations by his wife, Steffi Grant, Austin Spare and others. The books were singular enough even without their pages of curious artwork, a beguiling and sometimes incoherent blend of western occult tradition, tantric sex magick and hints of cosmic horror which were nevertheless always well-written, annotated and crammed with technical detail. Alan Moore in 2002 examined the experience of an immersion in Grant’s mythos with a wonderful review he called “Beyond our Ken“. He notes there the influence of HP Lovecraft, another of the visionary figures who Grant championed throughout his life.

I know I’m not the only one influenced by Man, Myth & Magic – look familiar?

I recommend heading over to { feuilleton } and reading John’s obituary in its entirety when you’re done here; its generating a bit of Thelemic controversy in the comments …

There are only two points I’d add to John’s post, what I consider to be the innovations Grant brought to occulture. First, there’s the debt owed to him by all Chaos magicians. No less a magus than Alan Moore writes in the aforementioned ‘Beyond Our Ken’ that:

Without Grant’s insistence that the works of H P Lovecraft represented valid channels of magical information, much of the furniture and landscape of our modern magic systems, Chaos magic for example, would be utterly unrecognisable.

Second, Grant was the source for an increasingly important meme in contemporary ufological lore, ET = LAM.

In 1973’s Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God Grant wrote that:

Crowley was aware of the possibility of opening the spatial gateways and of admitting an extraterrestrial current in the human life-wave… It is an occult tradition — and Lovecraft gave it persistent utterance in his writings — that some transfinite and superhuman power is marshaling its forces with intent to invade and take possession of this planet… This is reminiscent of Charles Fort’s dark hints about a secret society on earth already in contact with cosmic beings and, perhaps, preparing the way for their advent. Crowley dispels the aura of evil with which these authors (Lovecraft and Fort) invest the fact; he prefers to interpret it thelemically, not as an attack upon human consciousness from within, to embrace other stars and to absorb their energies into a system that is thereby enriched and rendered truly cosmic by the process…

For Grant this was all tied back to the famous Amalantrah Working, which consisted of a series of visions Crowley received from January through March of 1918 via his then “Scarlet Women,” Roddie Minor. It was through this ritual procedure that Crowley came into contact with an interdimensional entity named Lam. By all accounts, Crowley’s portrait of Lam (pictured next to the now notorious front-piece of Streiber’s Communion) passed into the hands of Grant circa 1945 following an astral working in which he and Crowley were jointly involved, helping to give him an initiatic edge over his rivals in the OTO.

In 1980 Outside the Circles of Time, Grant gets even more explicit about his ufological musings:

Some believe that the UFO phenomena are part of the “miracle”, and a mounting mass of evidence seems to suggest that mysterious entities have been located within the earth’s ambience for countless centuries and that more and more people are being born with innate ability to see, or in some way sense their presence…

In the late 1980s, Grant issued The LAM Statement to his Order, where he described the ritual use of the picture in order to establish contact with those entities. From here it escaped into the public domain and the rest is history: the inference that The Great Beast intentionally opened a portal through the practice of ritual magick, which allowed the “alien greys” a passageway onto our Earthly plane. Without Grant and the internecine struggles over the succession for the leadership of the OTO, The Collins Elite would be just another bunch of Christian fundamentalists in the American intelligence community and Nick Redfern would never have written the breakthrough Final Events.

As the classic nuts’n'bolts ETH becomes increasingly untenable, I suspect that this will be Grant’s lasting legacy to occulture.

FURTHER READING

Ian Blake ‘Aleister Crowley and the Lam Statement‘ The Excluded Middle (1996)

Henrik Bogdan ‘Kenneth Grant: A Bibliography‘, Fulgur (2003)

The Emperor ‘Flying Saucerers. Re-examining the dawn of the modern era of UFOs [pdf]‘ Darklore Vol 4 (2009)

Adam Gorightly ‘Ritual Magic, Mind Control & the UFO Phenomenon (Part 1)‘ (undated)

— ‘Were the UFO Contactees Ritual Magicians?’ Darklore Vol 1 (2007)

Kenneth Grant ‘A Statement of the Typhonian O.T.O. Concerning the Cult of Lam. The Dikpala of the Way of Silence [The Lam Statement]‘ Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis (1987)

Photo: Sarvodaya Shramadana, Colombo, Sri Lanka (CC)

Christie Nicholson writes in Scientific American:

The benefits of meditation have received newfound evidence from neuroscience in the last five years, as researchers are finding real physiological changes due to a sort of formally practiced introspection.

Recently scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital had 16 participants take an eight-week mindfulness meditation program. This sort of meditation focuses on nonjudgmental awareness of sensations and feelings. Subjects practiced for about 30 minutes a day.

Brain images were taken of each subject before and after the training. Scientists found increases in gray-matter density in the hippocampus — an area responsible for learning and memory. And they saw decreased density in the amygdala— which is responsible for our anxiety and stress responses …

All this reminds us of two things: 1) The brain is much more plastic than scientists thought even just a decade ago and 2) the way we feel—calm or anxious—can be correlated with real structural indicators in our brains.

Read More in Scientific American

December, 2007. The distant Alps are covered in snow. Small flakes swirl in the wind, dancing around red clay statues of muscular giants and voluptuous goddesses, reminiscent of Egypt. Most prominent is the falcon-headed god, Horus, facing the Fire Altar where the looming statues converge.

I start to walk into the grove of the Earth Altar, but my guide Shama tells me I should go no further.

“It is dangerous for anyone who is not spiritually prepared,” she warns me. “Very dangerous.”

I would be willing to chance it, but I suppose rules are rules.

In the distance is Monti Pelati, the sacred mountain of the Damanhurians. It is said that more Synchronic Lines converge there than any place in the world. These lines are like the Earth’s magnetic field — only magic. They were discovered psychically by the founder and leader of the Damanhurians, Falco.

This is a place of power. A place of mystery. The perfect place for a secret Temple. A nice spot to start a cult.

So what am I doing here?

I have a sweet tooth for communal cults. Cult is just short for culture, right? A brief visit to a welcoming sect is like Disneyland and a voodoo possession wrapped into the same vacation package. It’s invigorating, it’s mind-warping, and at times, absolutely terrifying.

The Damanhurian Federation

Damanhur is home to The Temples of Humankind, a massive work-in-progress overseen by the Italian visionary, Oberto Airaudi (aka. Falco). Started in 1978, the Temples were constructed within man-made caves beneath Monti Pelati. The work went on in secret for thirteen years — until the Italian authorities were alerted in 1991. This subterranean masterpiece is a startling testament to the possibilities of communal art, to the evolution of occultism in the modern age, and to the bizarre beliefs that isolated communities generally cling to.

Located in the Alpine foothills, about 30 mi. north of Turin, Italy, this spiritual commune is dubbed “The Largest Intentional Eco-Community in the World”, a vast complex of homes, shops, art studios, small manufacturing centers, and farms in the Valchiusella Valley.

Damanhur grew out of the occult fervor that swept through Turin and its surrounding rural areas during the 1960s and 70s. This period is comparable to the volatile atmosphere of New York’s Burned Over District in the 1800s, which spawned the Mormons, the Shakers, the Oneidas, and the Fox Sister séances.

After thirty years, Damanhur is a relatively successful attempt at communal self-sufficiency. The community sustains its own marketplace, the Crea. It has its own fire and police departments, schools, medical facilities, construction, insurance, and real estate companies, private banking system, and its own currency: the Damanhurian Credito (with a constant exchange rate equal to one Euro).

Although contracts with non-Damanhurians are negotiated in common currency, all wages within the community are paid in Creditos. All products sold at the Crea or services provided by Damanhurian companies are purchased with Creditos. And of course, all Damanhurians are expected to donate a sizeable portion of their Creditos for the good of the commune.

This sprawling network, covering nearly 500 acres, is home to over four hundred Damanhurians, from children to old-timers. Hundreds of other people in the area are affiliated with the group, and hundreds more participate in the many Damanhurian satellite centers around the world.

At the time of my visit, the Damanhurians were making serious moves. New centers were springing up in Italy, Austria, Germany, Croatia, Japan, and Miami, Fl., where one could be healed, have cosmic visions, or hear the songs of houseplants through bio-machines. Sounds like Paradise, right?

A Day in the Life

I take the train from Naples to Turin — train #1666. I interpret this as an important omen. From there I get another train to Ivrea, where I catch the bus to Damanhur.

I check my Italian phrasebook and stammer, “Scusi, c’è un autobus per Damanhur?”

“Si.”

“Grazie.”

This seems to be a common question for the driver. He points to a scruffy guy with a ponytail sitting in back and tells me to get off with him.

Patrick is a doe-eyed Austrian in his thirties. He is a world traveler, a patron of various spiritual centers, and an aspiring artist. When he learns that I’m an American, he expresses disdain. He says he has a girlfriend in the US, but will never go back.

“America is too much military for me. If I go there, I end up fingerprinting and retina-scanning. I get interrogations and strip searches.”

“What about your girl?”

“She is having too many mans, anyway.”

Patrick is visiting Damanhur to receive “Selfic” energy treatments to repair his soul, which is accomplished by laying under a spiraling coil of copper wire known as a “Self.”

The first Selfs were designed and developed by Falco, and are said to be animated by conscious entities. These devices harness the energy of the Synchronic Lines to harmonize personality, balance sensitivity, and clear negativity. Anyone can receive these services for a modest fee.

Patrick tells me he would never live at Damanhur because there is no privacy. The activities of citizens are constantly monitored by the others.

“People talk in small towns,” I remark.

“It is like intentional communities that I stay in Hawaii. There are too many eyes,” he says ominously. “Too many eyes.” He looks around as if they might be peering over the next seat.

We get off the bus into the snow flurry and I prepare my approach. I don’t want to come off like a tourist, a smug skeptic, or a nosy journalist. Cults don’t like that shifty business. So I try to play the curious truth-seeker. The American mendicant.

I am greeted by Gazza Solidago (Italian for Magpie Goldenrod) at the Welcome Center. Gazza is one of the public faces of Damanhur, very pretty, with curly dark hair. She expresses sympathy for my travel fatigue and sets up my visit with gracious hospitality.

I pay for a bed in their hostel (€20/night, for four nights) and arrange for tomorrow’s tour of Damanhur and the Temples of Humankind (for €55). They hand me a release form that waives Damanhur’s responsibility if their underground Temple happens to collapse on my head.

Gazza informs me of the “Contact with the Cosmos” workshop (€160) and the option of a 3-day or a 7-day visit (€350 and €650, respectively).

“Perhaps another time,” I say.

Gazza gives me a warm hug, hands me some introductory literature, and then I’m turned over to Shama Viola (as in the Hawaiian White-Rumped Shama and a Violet flower), who takes me on an informal walk around the grounds.

Shama is a longtime Damanhurian resident, about sixty or so, with silver-gray hair and a youthful face. She came here decades ago, after spending the Psychedelic Sixties in San Francisco and Hawaii.

She guides me through the Altars of the Elements, past a concrete Stonehenge that would fit well in a putt putt course, finally arriving at a wide field covered in painted stones which “follow the Earth’s energy fields.”

Shama indicates a special spiral path and encourages me to walk it. One wanders these complex mazes to harness cosmic energies and focus the will. Kind of like hopscotch — only magic.

“But you must wear this.” She takes a crude amulet off of a wooden post at the entrance and hands it to me. “To protect you from the powerful energies.”

I hold my poker face and politely decline.

Back at the hostel—probably the cleanest in all of Europe — I search my room thoroughly for spy cameras before going to bed. From bathroom to bedroom, I feel their eyes on me.

The next morning I meet Shama and a Dutch woman named Zoe for the big tour. Zoe is a first time Temple visitor, but quick to show her hard-earned New Age credentials. She just arrived from Hawaii, where she was communicating with dolphins.

“All the dolphins here speak Italian,” I tell her.

Like most enthusiastic newcomers to a cult, Zoe is reasonably intelligent and very competitive. This is passive-aggressive in nature. She never comes out and says, “I’m more enlightened than this guy. Pick me, pick me!” But she’s quick to talk up her psychic abilities, extensive ritual experience, and acute sensitivity to subtle energies. I’ve seen it a hundred times. With every highfalutin comment, she’s gunning for acceptance and a top spot in the hierarchy, reeking of an unconditional positivity that only profoundly disturbed individuals can maintain.

This makes Zoe more fun than a cup of Kool-Aid in Jonestown. I get out my cynic stick to poke at her for the rest of the day.

Shama has bad news for us. The “Reawakening the Senses” workshop has been cancelled due to a lack of participants. Zoe is devastated. She asks:

“Will I still be able to do ‘Contact with the Cosmos’ if I don’t do ‘Reawakening the Senses?’”

Zoe speaks of these psychic tutorials like they are baking classes. Why do New Agers always talk about meeting strangers or eating food with the solemn reverence of divine revelation, but then discuss sacred visions and magical powers as if they were as commonplace as a fart?

Shama assures Zoe that “Contact with the Cosmos” is still on, and I ask how much she will save.

“€200″

Our first stop is the Crea, a large, pink building situated on the slope of the valley. It houses the Damanhurian construction and real estate offices, an organic food market and cafeteria, art studios, a day care center, and the medical facilities. Imagine a health food store reincarnated as a shopping mall.

One of the shops specializes in Selfic technology. They have portable Selfs for sale, which resemble the copper wire jewelry peddled by hippies at music festivals and Rainbow Gatherings, except these little guys have souls and can heal anything from moodiness to colon cancer. You can get an Insomnia Self for €35, a cell-regenerating Beauty Disc for €145, or a Multi-Functional Self for €60.

They also offer Falco’s Selfic paintings. These feature crude, child-like patterns infused with animate spirits (like amateur abstracts—only magic), which go for €1,600 or so.

Walking by the medical facility, I notice a sickly old Damanhurian in the waiting room with a portable Self clasped in his hands. Perhaps it’s a Terminal Self. He rubs it anxiously, desperately, hopefully, and for a moment this absurd display isn’t so funny.

As we wait outside for our ride to the Temples, I ask Shama what’s up with their names.

“Damanhurians are given an animal name first,” she explains, “and then a plant name, as they are gradually initiated into the mysteries.”

That’s how you end up with names like Furetto Oliva, Iguana Magrovia, and one that translates as Shrimp Wild Fennel.

“I’ll bet all the badass names like Jaguar Thornbush and Viper Petunia got snatched up pretty quick, huh?” I ask.

“Yes, yes,” Shama says, “the big cats are all taken.”

I say, “If I were a Damanhurian, I’d be Paramecium Chloroplast. You know, to show my spiritual humility.”

Shama laughs at this, but Zoe scowls in disapproval. I would dub her Weasel Chili Pepper.

Our van arrives, and we head up the mountain on a slushy one-lane road. George Michael’s I Want Your Sex plays on the tapedeck and our fur-clad driver honks her horn around every tight corner to alert oncoming drivers. I hope that the little Self coiled on the dashboard is to ward off head-on collisions.

The Eighth Wonder is Underground

 There are detailed photos of the Temples available on the Internet or in their official book, Damanhur: The Temples of Humankind, published by Alex Grey’s CoSM Press.  But I refused to look at them before my visit. There is nothing worse than seeing some lame picture in a hiking guide before reaching a mountain’s summit, or reading a detailed review before watching a movie. It ruins the element of surprise, and I like to go in cold.

I imagine how mysterious the Temples must have been before the Italian police raided the compound in 1991 and 1992 on allegations of tax evasion, weapons hording, and satanic child abuse. Before their subsequent acquittal made the press. Before ads hit the papers and the tickets went on sale. Before any schmuck with €55 could take the carnival ride under the mountain.

I imagine Damanhur at the height of its secrecy, as if I were some wandering mendicant following the winds, suddenly blown into the arms of these charming Italians.

I would be shown warmth and hospitality. I would be hypnotized in moonlight rituals, by harmonic chants echoing through the forest and beautiful women in flowing robes. I would be baffled by strange coincidences and Falco’s lofty talk of a new consciousness. I would envy the knowing smiles between these eccentric initiates.

Two fellow Americans, Mark and Lisa, come out from their morning Temple visit. It’s just another stop on their New Age world tour.  They’ve done the Israeli kibbutzim and the Indian ashrams, Gypsy Tarot readings and Peruvian shamanism. Like tourists—only magic.

Mark’s business card identifies him as: Massage Therapist – Intuitive Counselor – Spiritual Healer – Venture Capitalist. Lisa is an “etheric surgeon,” with an HTML website, a podcast, and a PayPal account. She identifies spiritual ailments in her clients through mystical visions provided by extraterrestrials. Then she heals them by waving her hands around to provide 12th dimensional shields. She explains this with a straight face.

These guys know the game. How else could they afford such exotic jaunts?

Not me.

I imagine the clandestine Damanhur of old. I enter the Temples before Damanhur had PayPal, when spiritual ideas traded at bargain prices in the back alleys of Turin. When Aleister Crowley and Madam Blavatsky were underground sex symbols. When hippies flocked to the hills to do magic and find God. When the ubiquitous Machine of the modern world could still be escaped—and perhaps defeated. When the End was still nigh.

We would share meals at blessed tables and make love in communal beds, consume quantities of wine and strange drugs, dance with the gods and become gods ourselves—our own Will be done—and follow the falcon-god Horus into the dawning Age of the Child.

We would call each other Platypus and Ostrich. We would hug trees until they spoke to us. We would take our fill of love.

Then one night they would take me into the Temple and tell me the Secret. And it would change my life forever.

I ignore the rumbling dehumidifiers and the awkward elevator ride. I look at my shoes as we go down. Somebody smells. Is it me? Nah, I think it’s Zoe.

Imagine, you have been taken deep into the cold belly of the Earth. They take off your blindfold and you are led through winding corridors by pale lantern light. You are about to take the journey of a thousand lifetimes.

You pass murals of cells forming into fish, into lush vegetation, into great dinosaurs and flying lizards, as you enter a vast circular chamber. The verdant jungles of Eden are painted in exquisite detail across the walls.

This is the Hall of Earth.

Zoe wouldn’t be standing next to you, clasping her hands to her chest as she gasps:

“Wow… There is such a profound energy here…” She closes her eyes. “Yessss. I can feel it vibrating all around me…” She opens her eyes and asks me, “Can you feel the energy here?”

I roll my eyes, trying to ignore her. There is a man painting a child onto the mural from a photograph.

Every piece of the Temple tells a story. Every face is a Damanhurian. They frolick through this tropical garden with all of the endangered species of the world. In the center of the dim chamber is a single pillar carved with a man and woman, twisting around each other, reaching up to the twinkling LED stars dotting the ceiling.

On the floor are detailed mosaics of boys playing with blocks, a young woman traveling in a spaceship with a cellphone to her ear, two middle-aged men jamming out on drums and a saxophone, and an old woman playing chess against a younger version of herself.

“She masters herself over time,” our guide Platypus explains, “and it is through playing that we connect with others.”

You see your life reflected in these images.

There are stairs leading up to a wide portal. You pass through. You walk slowly toward the golden Androgyne who towers on the far wall. An ephemeral gray Demiurge separates from this hairless Godhead and blows out the spiraling galaxies of our Universe from a pile of dust in his hand. This Universe evolves into the Earth, into prehistoric humans, into the Golden Age of Atlantis with their laser guns and wizardry, devolving into the great antediluvian religions: the Egyptian god-kings, the Semitic law-givers, and the Asian mystics.

You follow these traditions up to the crucial development in modern history: the Damanhurians, who are gathered together and led by Falco into a great battle with oncoming hordes of faceless grey automatons. As these soulless monsters approach the battlelines, they are given faces—reflections of the Damanhurians that fight them.

You want to be a part of this battle. There are still some faces yet to be painted, and you want to get your picture on the wall.

The stained-glass on the ceiling is a kaleidoscopic dome that fills your field of vision. The geometry is impeccable, creating dazzling illusions as your eyes pass across it. But even more striking are the two backlit stained-glass panes fitted into niches on opposite sides of this room.

You see a face of solar fire with a drooping phallus for a nose. Across from him is an aqua-hued female with a gaping vagina between her eyes. You feel the overt symbolism between your legs.

“Okay, okay,” Platypus snaps, “Let’s move it along.”

Our next stop is the Labyrinth. We wander through a series of interconnected halls with arched ceilings. On the walls are evolving murals depicting humanity’s progress from caves to cathedrals to chaos. We breeze past World Wars, industrial pollution, and vat-grown GMO babies, all the way to rocketships headed for the stars.

Along the halls are a series of sixteen stained-glass panels that depict dieties from each world religion. There is the Semitic Jehovah, the Indian Brahma, the Celtic Brigit, the African Sky Father, and so on.

In this subterranean pantheon, you are initiated into a new teaching: the rites of the Triad.

The Triad brought harmony to the “divine ecosystem.” Powerful Damanhurian sorcerers gathered the Divinities of the world together, asking for their cooperation in the salvation of humankind. This forged a “theurgic magical alliance.” Though a few belligerent gods declined, most accepted the invitation. These Triad rituals were performed around the clock, until every god was purified of negative aspects and fused into a divine conglomerate.

All of this is revealed to you with a straight face. You are now ready to move on to the Hall of Metals.

First, you follow the stained-glass progression from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to old age. Then you contemplate the cartoons of vices personified on the floor: Pride, Egotism, Pessimism, Falsity, Lack of Awareness, and Self-Destruction. Above are the warriors who will conquer them, armed with books, battle-axes, bows and arrows.

You are taken to an antechamber with more portraits and stained-glass. You are told that there is a secret passage. You are given a riddle.

“We are of the Way of Action…”

I nearly destroy one of the stained-glass panels in my search for this damn secret passage. Platypus runs across the room to stop me. In my defense, Zoe can’t find it either. Platypus taps his foot impatiently, playing “warmer/colder” for ten minutes until he finally gives up and pushes on the painted face of a little girl to reveal…

The Hall of Spheres. The gateway to deeper mysteries. There are a dozen plastic globes full of food coloring along the hall stretching before you, glowing by unseen bulbs. You see all sorts of magic stuff in them before being whisked away to the Selfic treatment laboratory.

The lab writhes in a schizophrenic frenzy of copper wires. Perplexing gadgets clutter the room. A gigantic, coiled super-Self is suspended from the ceiling, tapering to a point aimed at an examination table. It looks like a homemade linear accelerator, ready to harness the Synchronic energies and zap the living shit out of you.

You lay down on the table, and God only knows what happens when they fire this thing up.

In time, the Damanhurians invite you to live with them. Their esoteric doctrines are gradually revealed to you. Your personality is harmonized, your sensitivity is balanced, your negativity is cleared. You farm the valley and help build the eco-friendly house you now share with your brothers and sisters. You struggle daily through the enigmas of the Temples. Eventually, the cosmos is illuminated before you.

It is time to enter the Hall of Water. The walls are covered with the lunatic patterns of Falco’s brainstorms. You are told that these diagrams are a mystical language. Circles, spirals, triangles, polygons, and random lines are interwoven in gold paint, like you are standing inside a massive circuit board.

Long glass tubes of glowing, bubbling fluid hang down to the floor in the center of the dim blue room, like a circle of fluorescent bulbs—only magic. You are still naked from your session with the super-Self. You are purified and primed for the cause. Perhaps you are on psychedelic drugs.

You step inside the circle of bulbs. There is a sense of apprehension, because this apparatus isn’t just some nightmare of New Age interior design—

I stare into Platypus’ eyes. He doesn’t budge. I say:

“It’s a what?”

“It’s a time machine.”

“A time machine,” I repeat flatly.

“Yes. A time machine.”

“As in, you step in and get beamed back to the dinosaurs, time machine?”

“Yes. This has already happened!” His eyes get wide and his hands go Italian. “The Synchronic Lines converge here.” He points into the circle. “Here! Falco harnessed this energy to travel back to Atlantis. For three days he was initiated into the Ancient Mysteries which have been lost for millennia.”

Zoe says, “Of course, of course. These mysteries could not have been revealed in 3rd dimensional reality. This is the work of ancient masters…”

She starts to walk toward the circle, hesitates at the edge, then steps back cautiously to admire the spiraling designs and bubbling tubes from a safe distance.

I look from her to Platypus. That’s when the floodgates finally break, and I laugh until tears stream down my cheeks.

Life on the Outside

I spend the next few days nosing around the compound, asking a lot of questions, getting the story straight. Zoe is ready to move in here. Mark is ready to invest. I chat with people at the café, and glean information from live-in laborers hanging out in the common room. These people are so kind, so happy, I am baffled that such a thriving community would be built upon utter nonsense.

Damanhurians speak of Falco with a hushed reverence. They claim that his work will change the world, sometimes with a tear in their eye.

When Falco’s public Q&A day finally comes, seekers from all over the land crowd into the Crea’s auditorium, paying €10 a head to ask their question, but I opt out. Zoe can’t understand it.

“But you have so many questions!” she implores me.

I only have one question to ask Falco at this point, and I already know what his answer would be. Of course, I would have liked to see the look on Zoe’s face as I stood in the auditorium with the little microphone in my hand, everyone holding their breath as I ask:

“Are you fucking serious, dude?”

But these folks have been too hospitable for a stab like that.

Time machines, theurgic alliances, magic Selfs, eye of newt and wing of bat. Whatever. If millions of people believe that chanting the Vedas makes the sun rise, or that Jesus is coming to put the world to rights, or that life evolved from protein boiling on lava, then a few hundred people buying into Falco’s pitch should not surprise me.

With all these wolves on the fringe, every lamb needs a good shepherd.

Imagine for a moment that you bought the whole bit, and were convinced that all of history culminates in this budding New Age utopia. You decide to stay forever.

The decades pass and you end up worn out like all the droopy-eyed Damanhurians that I see everywhere. You bust your hump to keep this thing moving, to save the world from ignorance and suffering. You gain experience points and advance in levels to become a wizard supreme. You pass from spouse to spouse, according to their custom of annual marriage. You watch your children grow up in a magic fairyland, and wonder if they will be fulfilled here, or if they could even adapt to the outside world. You hope the best for them, and you live your life the best you can.

Then you die. You are buried peacefully in the Valchiusella Valley, and a painting of your face smiles forever in the Hall of Earth. People even pay to come look at it.

Folks who would call this crazy, they work 9 to 5 jobs and go home to TV sets. When I visit alternative communities, I am reminded that society at large can be just as fake and shabby. Food and drink, family and friends, shelter and security, allies and lies. Culture-makers wrap it all up in pretty pictures, sell you on salvation, and pump you for all that you’re worth.

You laugh and you cry. You eat, shit, and die.

Cult is just short for culture.

So I hitchhike out with a smile on my face. Luckily, a young Italian woman named Taraka picks me up. But she’s not going directly to Ivrea.

“You can come up the mountain with me if you like. To meet my friend. Then we take you to the train station. Yes?”

“Sure. I’m just happy to be out of that loony bin.”

“Damanhur has a dark reputation in this Valley.”

“Oh yeah?”

She nods and fumbles for a new cd as we swerve all over the tight mountain road.

“They are believing in crazy things and controlling too much,” she says.

“Well, it sure is nice to be with a ‘normal’ person for a change. All that mumbo jumbo was beginning to wear on my nerves. Here, let me get that cd for you.”

That’s when I notice the beaded feathers hanging from her rearview mirror, the amulet wrapped around her wrist, the books emblazoned with arcane symbols in the floorboard.

“So where are you going, anyway?” I ask nervously.

“I am going to a Lakota Sweat Lodge in the Alps. We do chants and call to the Grandfather spirits of the American tribes. You can come, if you like. Only €200. You have heard of this?”

I nod my head wearily, and say, “Of course. It’s like a sauna — only magic.”

© 2010 Joseph Allen

Daniel Pinchbeck. Photo: Herwig Maurer (CC)

I wonder if this essay by Daniel Pinchbeck will, years hence, be looked upon as a seminal point in the transition of the “consciousness” movement, for lack of a better term, from an idealistic remove from the mainstream a la Burning Man (which of course is completely unsustainable despite it’s worthy goals), to a pragmatic vision of how to change the world. From his Reality Sandwich blog:

Now that the Evolver network and brand have established themselves to a certain extent, I want to look ahead to developments I hope to see in the near future, with this organization and other initiatives. For the next phase of development, I propose the term “business shamanism.” “Corporate alchemy” would be a viable alternative.

First, some context: As I write this, the ruling regime in our rotten republic of Obama-stan is seeking to ignore the pain of the sheeple and extend lavish tax breaks for the wealthy.The financial elite engineered a massive transfer of assets over the last decades, and they are now completing the procedure of creating a two-tier society resembling a serfdom. Champagne glasses are no doubt clinking in fancy hotel rooms and private clubs to celebrate the selling out of the people, as the unemployed and dispossessed roam the streets. We witness, as spectacle,the slow-motion dismantling of the American republic — though nobody can say how the story will play out this time.

We tend to forget that Roosevelt’s New Deal was not a good-hearted gift to the working classes but a compromise to stave off mass uprising. The current oligarchy has determined that it will make no such deal this time around. I suspect they assume that the pulverizing of the populace with mind-numbing media, psychotropic drugs, police state tactics, and poison food had the desired effect. And they may be right.

From the viewpoint of those seeking a deeper level of transformation, however, the political gridlock, social polarization, and extremism of the right wing are all positive signs. The increasing rigidity of the system suggests it is soon going to crack. Perhaps the spirit of insurrection and liberty will reawaken in the people as it does so. But perhaps not.

We don’t know when or if we will reach the critical threshold where a current of rebellion becomes a wave and then a mass movement…

[continues at Reality Sandwich]

Dickey Eason

We all have our ideas about how the world and universe work. Some of us see the hand of “God” in everything. Others are atheists or agnostics—still others are guided by spirituality. But no matter where we are on the “believe” spectrum, most of us see a rather benign universe. By that I mean that we do not see specific forces struggling with one another in the cosmos once we get away from earth, which is interesting to me. We see conflict and battles on earth but not in the rest of the universe.

We view it much as we do a documentary—no plots, no dynamics—just an intriguing show. We look at ourselves—human life on earth—as being the real show. But that separation has, I believe, caused us to distort our perceptions of the Big Picture. I think if we start seeing the natural conflicts that exist in the universe, then we might start the process that leads to fewer human conflicts on earth.

Why don’t we see a dynamic operating in the universe where forces are actually vying against one another? After all, it would be just as easy to see a battle as it would a “beautiful picture show”. But a powerful force is setting the agenda, and it wants us to see conflict on earth but not in the cosmos. Why is that? Because if you see a dynamic at work in the cosmos, then you will quickly see a dynamic at work among human beings. And then you would probably develop an independent, inquisitive mindset which would threaten the existence of the “agenda” creators. I call this force the SN for structural nucleus. It is the power-control center of human organizations, whether country or company. SNs run the gamut—from practical and reasonable to violent and suffocating.

I introduced the IMPACTS and the IMPACTS concept in a couple of articles on this site, June 22 and June 29, 2010. The IMPACTS are a group of people I discovered about ten years ago who make everything work in human society. They are the fuel for the human race. Take them out and the whole societal machine would come to a screeching halt—just as a car without fuel would go nowhere.

Originally, I found the IMPACTS in the business world on both sides of the transaction—as a valuable customer and as an innovative, entrepreneurial business person. But then I started seeing them in everything I read—history, science, anthropology, art and culture, contemporary society—anything and everything. The IMPACTS were quiet leaders and change artists, trying to maximize the potential of the environment. What I seemed to be seeing was a salient dynamic—it was so consistent and predictable that I started exploring the physical world to see if it existed there as well. I suspected that it did.

The hydrogen atom, one proton and one electron, appears to me to be the structural model for the universe, which only makes sense because it was possibly the first “structure” in the universe, forming 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The proton is relatively massive and therefore pulling inward; the electron is almost mass-less, and is, I believe, essentially captured by the proton. The electron is the “creative” part of the structure. How so?

There are different energy levels for electrons in the atom. The first level will hold 2 electrons, the second 8 electrons, the third 18, the fourth 32, and so on. When the outer energy level is not complete, then the electron(s) in that level is a valence electron, meaning that it is ready and willing to bond with the valence electron of another atom, forming a NEW structure—a molecule—and achieving balance.  Balance appears to be a primary goal of a force or forces of the universe but not of all forces.

Going back to the “beginnings” in the physical universe necessitated going back to the early beginnings of modern humans. There I discovered the San tribe of Africa, the oldest modern human group, having emerged well over 100,000 years ago. Their shaman-centered way of life laid the foundation for modern humanity. It became clear to me that today’s problem-solving IMPACTS possess the same basic characteristics as the San and shaman—the San tribe members being cooperative and sharing, the shaman innovative and somewhat “asymmetrical”—often different in behavior, thought, perception, vision, and more. This asymmetry seemed to motivate him to balance himself and the tribe—to “maximize” the potential around him. There were female shamans also, particularly in the San tribe.

Another element was very clear: the San tribe was the out-of-Africa group. The evidence was overwhelming. Why would this not be common knowledge across the world, especially the anthropological world? There could only be one reason—there must be a force that was benefitting from it not being accepted knowledge.

In my study the social world became entangled with the physical world. I could actually detect no difference between the two as far as energy dynamics were concerned. Both were following the EXACT same model, and again, that model was based on the hydrogen atom: an inner massive core and an opposite, “lighter and more mobile” energy on the periphery.

Our universe is governed by the second law of thermodynamics, which basically states that concentrated energy is an anomaly. The tendency of the universe is toward high entropy, or maximum disorder. But obviously there is much concentrated energy that we see—billions of galaxies with billions of stars, planets in our solar system and more being discovered around other stars, and on earth life, including us. Something is working to overcome the second law.

I read Dr. Robert Piccioni’s Everyone’s Guide to Atoms, Einstein, and the Universe and contacted him. He agreed to answer some of my physics questions. One of his quotes was:

“Life has a very unique relationship to the second law of thermodynamics. That law makes a statistical statement–it is vastly more likely than not that in any closed system particle energies will equalize and disorder will increase. Life seems uniquely able to consistently overcome the second law, not by violating that law, but by systematically taking in more ordered matter and expelling less ordered matter. Life decreases its disorder at the expense of its surrounding. This is allowed by the second law, and is essential to any living organism. Indeed, I think this leads to a very sensible definition of Life: Any entity that can consistently overcome the second law is Alive.”

The carbon atom is the perfect foundation for life because it has 4 electrons in its outer energy level and therefore needs 4 more to complete that outer level. Carbon is therefore stable and reactive—we could say asymmetrical, just as the hydrogen atom is with its one electron, which is also a valence electron. You will recall that the first energy level in the atom holds 2 electrons. But most of the atomic world is asymmetrical as it relates to the outer energy level of the electrons. Carbon is significant because it will bond with other carbon atoms along with other atoms such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous, forming long chains of organic molecules for life. These molecules have concentrated energy in the covalent bonds between the electrons, and thus are working against the ever-present second law.

The IMPACTS group I mentioned earlier, though I believe a small percentage of human society (probably 5 to 10%), appeared to me to be the “ordered matter” of human society, though asymmetry was often not far away. The IMPACTS were the “carbon atoms and molecules”—they kept everything bonded together and functioning. Plus they had “concentrated energy” and were always looking for ways to improve their particular environment, whether business, family, or even the physical environment, including the home.

There seemed to me to be two major forces in the universe—a male force and a female force. Why male and female? Because the traits generally associated with males and females on earth were the same as those I was seeing across the universe. The proton was male—it was “capturing” the electron, getting Bigger and Stronger. The black hole of a galaxy, another massive core, was doing the same—it was getting Bigger and Stronger as stars formed around it, some of which it “ate”. As the galaxy grew, it would try to capture other galaxies, again becoming Bigger and Stronger. These are traits generally associated with males and male-led organizations, including countries.

The electron was female. It was creative as it bonded with the electron of another atom to create a molecule. It shared and cooperated, traits more suggestive of female behavior.

All of my study suggested to me that there was a tug-of-war across the universe between male and female forces—male forces trying to get Bigger and Stronger, female forces trying to create and produce in order to defeat the second law of thermodynamics. Male forces seemed to be aligned or allied with the second law—they took what they wanted or what they could take, breaking up the energy field around them.

So one force was aiding the second law and one force was its antithesis. One was pulling inward—one was reaching outward and bonding. Inward pressure—outward pressure, the same model everywhere you look. Stars, the atom, a galaxy with its black-hole center—all the same model. It’s the same in the social world as well—businesses, families, countries—all with pulling-inward elements and all with creative-productive pressure that maintains equilibrium—sometimes. That is the subconscious goal anyway.

In a star, when the hydrogen fuel is exhausted, the star collapses on itself. So the outward pressure caused by the fusion of hydrogen into helium and the subsequent release of massive amounts of energy prevent the star from collapsing. The IMPACTS group that I had discovered in society seemed to me to be performing the same role—they were the fuel that kept society functioning. And they too were often found on the PERIPHERY, just like the valence electron and just like the outward pressure of a star. Some IMPACTS however were more peripheral than others.

I was still looking for something that would explain what we see, which is a universe with copious amounts of ordered matter and, at the same time, a universe that is expanding at the speed of light.

Physicists presently (as far as I know) believe there are four fundamental forces in the universe:

• The strong nuclear force
• The weak force
• Electromagnetism
• Gravity

But the weak and the electromagnetic forces are believed to actually be one force, the electroweak. The male and female forces I mentioned may be an amalgam of these (now) 3 forces, or the universe could have a thousand or a million forces. Still, presently, I think primarily there is a male force and a female force, or there could be a male force, a female force, and a hybrid of the two. Anything is possible. We are not looking for the definitive answer—we couldn’t find it anyway at this particular stage of our development. We are looking for strong probabilities and possibilities—we are looking to move the boundaries of our present knowledge. We can fill in the blanks later. Let’s get the template down first.

Dr. Robert Piccioni again, speaking of the “accidental” nature of life and human beings existing:

“The asymmetry of the weak force (technical term is CP-violation) that very slightly favors matter over antimatter is one of these knobs. There is no known reason why the weak force acts this way. By 1 second after the Big Bang, there were 1,000,000,001 particles for every 1,000,000,000 antiparticles. If that asymmetry had been slightly more, the universe would have long since collapsed to nothing, hence no life. If that asymmetry had been slightly less, the universe would have almost no matter in it and would have expanded so rapidly that a volume of space now occupied by an entire galaxy might instead contain only 1 atom, hence no life. No one knows why, but we are quite sure this is true.

The electromagnetic part of the electroweak does not violate CP; only the weak part does.

EM and weak forces were mathematically united into electroweak because they both involve the exchange of spin 1 bosons. EM forces arise when charged particles exchange a photon, which has zero mass resulting in a force with infinite range. Weak forces arise when any particles exchange an intermediate vector boson (W+, W–, or Z0), which have masses in the range of 90 times the proton mass resulting in extremely short range forces (much less than the diameter of a proton).

CP violation arises in the W/Z exchanges. The amount of CP violation is quite small—less than 1% of the weak force which itself is generally less than 1% of the EM force. (An absolute direct comparison of force strengths is not possible as they vary in different ways with various parameters such as charge.)”

I believe this carries all the way through the universe, including to the IMPACTS. What do I mean? I mean a slight asymmetry that produces “positive” results just as the early asymmetry of the weak force produced matter. We may not be able to see it “scientifically” at this time, but there are just too many “coincidences” for it not to be a real phenomenon.

I have mentioned that the IMPACTS are the group that holds humanity together—and they are its fuel. And like the San-shaman, they are often asymmetrical (off-the-beaten-path), or come from a family with “asymmetry”—such as autism or so-called psychological issues. But this is what we should expect because I believe that the San and shaman profiles are embedded in the human genome, and are now manifested through the IMPACTS. I strongly suspect that autism may have been the progenitor of modern humans—the asymmetry that was needed—and is still prevalent because it possesses value for our species. What value? Creative genius often resides near it.

The wolf pack seems to have embedded roles; e.g., alpha, beta, and omega. Why would humans be any different? I don’t think we gave up social strategies and social roles when we acquired higher consciousness though most of us would like to think we did. In the wolf pack, the beta wolf is the glue that holds the pack together, and is very often male. The beta sees needs that others do not see—and takes care of them. It is the same with the IMPACTS in the human “pack”—they see needs and they seek solutions. The entire group leans toward androgyny and has a strong female orientation. The group is predominantly heterosexual but there are large numbers of homosexual IMPACTS as well, just as there were large numbers of homosexual shamans.

What the asymmetry of the weak force appears to be doing is PREVENTING COLLAPSE. It is overcoming the second law—or trying to. Its actions help maintain outward pressure such as you find with fusion in a star. There would be no stars without the weak force. The weak force changes hydrogen into deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, and then fusion can take place. The weak force is also responsible for all the different elements that have been formed since hydrogen. So the weak force is really responsible for most of what we see in the universe. It is the creative force—and it is slightly asymmetrical—just as are many IMPACTS—and just as was the shaman. You have to have asymmetry or nothing happens. Asymmetry is the condition that initiates the process that leads to order and “ordered matter”.

The weak force is also responsible for radioactivity which helps keep the iron core of the earth molten, which in turn produces a strong magnetic field. This field protects us from the dangerous solar wind of the sun. You can see that the weak force is anything but weak.

The San-shaman’s main role was to prevent collapse of the tribe and to maintain the health of individuals—to prevent the collapse of human beings into death—to keep their outward pressure functioning. That is what the IMPACTS are doing—preventing collapse of societies, companies, countries, communities, people—maintaining outward pressure, keeping the “fires” burning. That is why you find them on the periphery—like the valence electron(s).

It appears that the weak force is the ultimate computer—it KNOWS what needs to be done at the CRITICAL moment—like the Big Bang. The shamans were asking the same question—what needs to be done at this precise moment in order to maximize the potential? The IMPACTS are asking the same question. That’s why you find them at critical positions where collapse is possible.

The weak force was there at the moment of the Big Bang and produced a tiny bit more matter than antimatter. The IMPACTS are trying to do the same wherever they are—produce the “little extras” that will lead to positive results for all—that will “save the day”. It can be a nurse in the emergency room, an entrepreneur like Steven Jobs who changes the world, the director of a non-profit who discovers a new approach to raising money, or any one of the millions of people around the world who every day use their caring, innovative energy to “find a way to make it happen”.

The IMPACTS don’t have the power that the weak force appears to have but they usually have its “exacting” nature and its desire for balance—the template appears to be the same.

Brian Greene, author of The Fabric of the Cosmos:

“Some discoveries provide answers to questions. Other discoveries are so deep that they cast questions in a whole new light, showing that previous mysteries were misperceived through lack of knowledge. You could spend a lifetime—in antiquity, some did—wondering what happens when you reach earth’s edge, or trying to figure out who or what lives on earth’s underbelly. But when you learn that the earth is round, you see that the previous mysteries are not solved; instead they are rendered irrelevant.”

That is what I am attempting to do—render many mysteries irrelevant. Why? Because “untruths” prevent human beings from optimizing the potential that exists. I have a “weak force”, IMPACTS attitude—a drive for efficiency and “the best it can be” results.

What will “science” say about this discovery? It will mostly throw cold water on it because what I am proposing cannot be measured. But then how could you measure a dynamic? You couldn’t—not presently anyway. I suspect we will find ways to measure it once we accept the possibility that it exists. We couldn’t “measure” electrons at one time either. Does that mean they didn’t exist until we learned how to measure them?

I believe that science today is captured just as the electron is captured in the atom. Who has captured it? The power-control element I mentioned earlier—the SN. The SN has no power unless it has copious numbers of innovative IMPACTS and their energy, just as a black hole is powerless without billions of stars. The SN, like the proton, does not create—it depends on the IMPACTS (the valence electrons) for creative-production. That is where it gets its power.

At one time science was on the periphery. Remember Galileo, Einstein, Newton, and countless others? They were on the periphery. But now science has been captured and brought into the SN energy field, and the SN says what is and what isn’t science. Science and the SN are joined at the hip—just like the proton and electron in the hydrogen atom. Science answers to the SN—it has become politicized, meaning that it has lost its independence and objectivity. The societal SN, predominantly male, wants to use science to get what the male force in the universe seems to crave—Bigger and Stronger.

Why has this not been seen before, as far as we know? Because human beings would quickly start connecting the dots. If all models behave essentially the same way—with a pulling-inward male force and a creative-productive female force—then human society tends toward the same model. And therefore, it can be analyzed just as a galaxy or an atom can be analyzed. The vast majority of people are not ready for that—they prefer the paradigm that they know. People are trying to adjust to the world—they are not trying to create a new one. I think a new one needs to be created, and it has to start with knowledge and awareness of the dynamics involved. You can’t fix anything if you don’t understand how it works. Human society behaves exactly like the atom—it has 2 major forces just as the atom has 2 major forces, and they are the same forces and they behave the same.

Human beings have not always separated themselves from the natural world. Before the development of agriculture, the San-like people tried to live in harmony with nature. With agriculture came the emergence of a predominantly-male, SN power-control force which captured the San-like people as its fuel—exactly as protons did with electrons 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It is the same dynamic, and it is the same dynamic throughout the universe and the natural world.

One reason the world has so many seemingly insoluble problems is that the SN is in total control and the IMPACTS have no idea who they are and where they stand in the grand scheme of things. I hope I can change that—IMPACTS need to understand that they are the real source of power around the world, and they can start using that power more judiciously once they understand how all of it works.

Everything is political. The SN force that emerged with agriculture has always wanted to keep people in the dark—to keep knowledge away so they could maintain control. It is no different today but the machinations are more cleverly disguised. The SN wants people to believe it is “us against them”—us against other countries, religions, and societies. It is not. It is the SN against other SNs, and all are using the IMPACTS as their fuel—to create and produce goods and services (the economy) and weaponry for the military. SNs are essentially pitting IMPACTS against IMPACTS, which is especially heinous because IMPACTS are usually peaceful people who just want to make the world better. The creative-productive abilities of the IMPACTS are used by SNs around the world to inflict horrible damage on other people. The SN-types would prefer that the IMPACTS not learn that they (the IMPACTS) are the powerful “weak force” of humanity. Then the SNs can continue setting the agenda.

I have repeatedly said over the past few years that I see a dynamic operating across the universe that tries to maximize the potential. After years of study, I now believe it is the weak force.

Is the weak force God? I think the weak force is predominantly Goddess.

Dickey Eason, Cary, NC.

www.theimpacts.com

Free Laugher Yoga in NYC

Next month disinformation is releasing a new film from documentarian Albert Nerenberg, Laughology. It’s the fourth film we’ve distributed for Albert and we have a lot of faith in him, even if we had never heard of Laughter Yoga before.

It turns out it’s massive and the public library next door to our office in New York has free classes, so a few of us went along. If you can get over the embarrassment factor, it actually does seem to work. The New York Times has just discovered the same thing:

I was in a vile, despicable mood when I arrived at laughter yoga. It was Wednesday, and my brain felt torn in one too many directions; the usual, only worse. Laughter seemed a remote possibility.

I waited patiently inside a nondescript office at 40th Street and Broadway among a group of wildly divergent strangers, with only my skepticism to keep me company.

“There are some simple rules,” Vishwa Prakash, the laughter therapist and coach who runs this group, told us at the start of the session, which is free. “Let’s be as joyful as we can. Let’s look at each other directly in the eye. And if you don’t know what’s happening, fake it till you make it.”

An hour later I floated out onto Broadway, ready to break into song and speed-dial a few friends to sign them up for the next class. This stuff worked.

Anyone who knows a down dog from an up dog can tell you that yoga — which traveled through several time zones and incarnations to take root and flourish in America — is a booming, multibillion-dollar business. It was only a matter of time, then, before the practice spawned an assortment of spinoffs: yogalates, yogaerobics, acroyoga, AntiGravity Yoga, yoga spinning and laughter yoga, to name a few.

Which raises the question: How much yoga do you find in these yogaish offerings?

The answer is not much, at least in the three hybrids that I explored recently: acroyoga (an acrobatic type of partner yoga), antigravity yoga and laughter yoga. This is not to say that they are unworthy. It’s just that, in general, they are to yoga what a Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino is to a shot of espresso: The caffeine is there, but with all the extras the coffee is barely recognizable.

Of the three, laughter yoga was my favorite, despite the fact there were no spinal twists or warrior poses or chaturangas. Pioneered in 1995 by Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician from India, it is related to yoga as we know it only in the mental and spiritual sense.

“HO, HO, HA, HA, HA,” Mr. Prakash said, loudly, beginning the first exercise. We all repeated: “HO, HO, HA, HA, HA. HO, HO, HA, HA, HA.”

There were about 20 of us walking around his office in a circle. I went to shake one woman’s hand, as instructed, when she showed me her cast. “I fractured my right wrist. HO, HO, HA, HA, HA.”

There was no trace of traditional humor: No jokes. No amusing stories. Just simple improvlike exercises meant to get the laughter rolling. And because it is infectious, before long, the room was full of raucous, rollicking, gut-busting laughter. We flapped our arms like chickens, threw pretend snowballs at one another, rode imaginary bicycles and peeled giant bananas, all with the goal of reclaiming the laughter we gradually lose as we grow up…

[continues in the New York Times]

For reasons unknown (to us and the rest of the general public, anyway), Rhonda won’t be promoting the sequel, The Power. Could it be that she really can’t think of a way to tell interviewers what’s different in this book from the fluff in the previous one? Her publishers have resorted to advertising on TV with the promo below — it goes on sale at midnight tonight…

Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition. Painting by Cristiano Banti (1857).

Chris Orapello writes on The Infinite and The Beyond:

Tim Wallace-Murphy, co author of Rosslyn, The Knights of the Holy Grail, and other books dealing with the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, presents humankind’s pursuit to enlightenment with his new release Hidden Wisdom, Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition.

A couple years ago when I first got into the counter culture and the occult my sort of crash course was Raymond’s podcast Out There Radio, which I was introduced to from the first Disinformation podcast that he did, and it’s been a crazy ride every since. It was awesome to be able to do a podcast with Raymond. This interview is a fantastic conversation between Jennifer and Raymond about the “occult” in a very broad way. Raymond also discusses the importance he feels there is in us recognizing the rich history of the Western Esoteric practice. If you would like to listen to more of Raymond like I mentioned he has a 50 episode series called Out There Radio and he is also doing the Disinformation podcasts. Check them out!

I hope you all enjoy listening to this podcast as much as I enjoyed making it. It was definitely an adventure getting this one made. If anyone would like to contact me you can message me on Evolver as Chris Hopkins, message me on Facebook as Evolver Sacramento, or just email me Chris@Barbelithlives.com. Below are all the links to websites relative to the show and the Guests.

Gary Lachman:

Wikipedia

Reality Sandwich

Facebook

Baza Novic:

prosiousness.weebly.com

Evolver.net

Raymond Wiley:

Disinformation: The Podcast

Out There Radio

Facebook

Andrew Harvey

At the end of his life, the great Indian mystic Aurobindo is said to have said, “If there is to be a future, it will wear the crown of feminine design.” Unless we awaken to the mystery of the sacred feminine, of the feminine as sacred, and allow it to glow into, irradiate, illumine, and penetrate every area of our activity and to create in them all harmony, justice, peace, love, ecstasy, and balance, we will die out and take nature, or a large part of it, with us. Unless we come to know what the sacred feminine really is—its subtlety and flexibility, but also its extraordinarily ruthless, radical power of dissolving all structures and dogmas, all prisons in which we have sought so passionately to imprison ourselves—we will be taken in by patriarchal projections of it. The Divine Mother, the fullness of the revolution that she is preparing, will be lost to us. We must understand that comprehending the sacred feminine is a crucial part of surviving the next terrible stage of humanity….

I have often said that I think we are in the last twenty or so years (originally written 1996) of this civilization and quite possibly of the planet itself. If we don’t make major decisions—economic, political, and environmental, we will simply create an uninhabitable world and go on feeding those powers of destruction that are already threatening to ravage nature. We are certainly at the end of so-called “civilization,” and we are possibly at the end of the world. The facts of our global crisis, a crisis at once political and economic, psychological and environmental, show us clearly that the human race has no hope of survival unless it chooses to undergo a total transformation, a total change of heart. What is required is a massive and quite unprecedented spiritual transformation. There is no precedent for what we are being asked to do. Only the leap into a new consciousness can engender the vision, the moral passion, the joy and energy necessary to effect change on the scale and with the self-sacrifice that is essential to save the planet in the time we have left.

The message we are being sent by history can be summed up in four words: Transform or die out… Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Humanity is being taken to the point where it will have to choose between suicide or adoration.” I have no doubt that we are now at that point. Human survival depends on whether we are brave enough to face the full desolation of what we have done to our psyches and the planet, and wise and humble enough to turn to the divine insight inside us to learn what we need to go forward. This is not an apocalyptic scenario—not a scenario at all, in fact. It is fact. This is where we are, this is what is happening, and it is terrifying. Anyone not in a trance of denial knows it. No amount of wishful thinking or sophisticated pseudo-historical parallels can make this agony go away.

It is hard enough for a human being to face the facts of his or her own mortality. What we have to face now is not merely our own death, but the possible death of everything and everyone we love, the holocaust of nature herself, the mother we have ignored and betrayed for so long. If we do not face up to our present danger, in all its horror, without consolation and without illusion, in the full glare of Kali’s terrifying mirror, if we don’t gaze deeply into the mirror of the goddess and see our faces, we will never find in ourselves the passion and courage necessary to change. Catastrophe can become grace, and disaster possibility, only if we transform their energy by accepting what they have to teach us and acting with complete sincerity to transform ourselves.

Andrew Harvey, Oxford scholar and visionary, believes that our survival depends on Sacred Activism, a fusion of profound mystical awareness, passion, clarity and sacred practice with wise, dedicated, radical action. This fusion, he warns, may be the sole key to preservation of man and nature.

Andrew will be a keynote speaker at the 2012 Tipping Point Vancouver Prophets Conference taking place the weekend of 23-25 July 2010 at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby Campus. He will be joined by Jose Arguelles, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Flordemayo, John Major Jenkins, John Kimmey, John Perkins, Llyn Roberts, Daniel Pinchbeck, Richard Tarnas, and Miguel Angel Vergara. They will be exploring a radically different, more optimistic interpretation of the Mayan prophecy.  Information is available online at www.greatmystery.org or by calling (1) 505 796 4023.

From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.

This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals, leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools, on philosophers, playwrights and poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake and W. B. Yeats, on artists and renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science.

Now, as more people than ever are looking to find alternatives to the dominant religions and dogmas that have told us what to think and how to behave, as faith has been questioned by religious scandals, economic meltdowns and environmental catastrophes, Wallace-Murphy reveals the secrets of the masters, including invaluable spiritual insights to everyday life that have been hidden throughout the ages. He shows us who kept this spiritual tradition alive despite appalling persecution, so that we in the 21st century might benefit from its accumulated fruits and ennoble our lives by emulating their example.

More info at www.hidden-wisdom.com.

Thursday, May 6, 2010: East West Living Bookstore and Cafe

Saturday, May 8, 2010: New York Theosophical Society

Monday, May 10, 2010: Livingston Masonic Library

Whether you can make it or not, here’s the first five chapters of Hidden Wisdom available on Scribd:

From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes in Hidden Wisdom a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.

More info at www.hidden-wisdom.com.

Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS

In podcast episode 85, we’re joined by Jeremy Vaeni. Jeremy is a writer, director, podcaster, and experiencer of high-strangeness. He hosts and produces the successful and popular Culture of Contact and Paratopia podcasts.

Jeremy’s unique perspective on UFOlogy and the paranormal have earned him fans as well as critics, but he speaks his mind with frankness and a sense of humor that’s refreshing. We begin the interview hearing about his early experiences with UFOs and alien abduction. Based on these contacts, he’s led to understand that UFOs and aliens are not necessarily what many may believe, in that they serve to try to rouse humanity from its waking dream.

From there, we delve into what Jeremy calls his “I AM” experience. I think you’ll agree that his story is quite compelling, rather extreme, absolutely fascinating, brutally honest, and undoubtedly controversial.

Don’t miss the second half of the interview with Jeremy Vaeni in the Occult of Personality Membership Section.

Culture of Contact

Paratopia

“I Know Why the Aliens Don’t Land” by Jeremy Vaeni

“No One’s Watching: An Alien Abductee’s Story” DVD

Outro music by Dan-O

Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS

In episode 150 of EERIE Radio, we forgo interviewing a guest and instead take call-ins and discuss personal memories of places and objects viewed as sacred during our childhoods. DK shares stories of his youthful pilgrimages to a mysterious spot in the woods, a spot a listener diagnoses as a “place of power.”

We also discuss the curiously controversial Ouija Board and the online campaign against Hasbro’s new pink Ouija Board, then break out urkotic’s very manly Hellboy Talking Board to attempt some divination of our own.  A listener calls in to tell her story of unwanted romantic overtures received via Ouija.  Could this tale of lovers from different worlds be the next Twilight?  All this and EERIE News.

So is this guy joking or is he just an enormous dickhead? Deepak Chopra apologized for causing the 7.2-magnitude earthquake felt in parts of Mexico and the southwestern United States on April 4th…

Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS

In the latest episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, we bring South Jersey Pagan Pride Day into the studio as we look into bloodlines, genetics, grail lore, the divine feminine, and what we can learn from it with Foundation Capstone teacher Ken Neuhauser. In many stories, seeking the grail implied a great quest across the landscape to far and distant lands; a seeming impossible goal of immense proportions. In the modern day we learn this is often not the case and is more often an aspect of mythology which has its own lessons to reveal to the seeker of the ancient mysteries.

In A Corner in the Occult we learn all about medium and psychic Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her organization the Theosophical Society. To this day the influence and legacy of Madame Blavatsky continues to affect the occult, esoteric, and new age communities. Her books, teachings, and experiences still strike at the hearts and lives of many devoted followers over a hundred years later.

Along with all this, I’m finally able to play a song that I’ve been waiting to play since the beginning of this podcast and I play more music by South Jersey singer songwriter Stacey Fitzpatrick whom we met in back in Episode #011 — Coincidence and Synchronicity. Later in the show we find out which two lucky listeners won the first two copies of Stacey’s album Forever More. All this and more in this informative and fun episode!

To message the show please go here.

Fascinating story about the man who would not be messiah, in the New York Times:

Raj Patel’s desk sits in a dusty, cement-floored nook in his garage, just beyond a parked gray Prius, near the washer and dryer. They are humble surroundings for a god.

Followers of Share International, a New Age religious sect, claim Raj Patel is the messiah Maitreya. He denies the claim, but he cannot persuade them.

“It is absurd to be put in this position, when I’m just some bloke,” Mr. Patel said.

A native of London now living on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, Mr. Patel suddenly finds himself an unlikely object of worship, proclaimed the messiah Maitreya by followers of the New Age religious sect Share International.

He was raised as a Hindu and had never heard of the group. He has no desire for deification. But he may not have a choice.

Mr. Patel’s journey from ordinary person to unwilling lord is a case of having the wrong résumé at the wrong moment in history. For this is a time when human yearning to find a magical cure for the world’s woes can be harnessed to the digital age’s instant access to a vast treasure-trove of personal information.

I have known Mr. Patel for four years — he keeps an office down the hall from mine. He is charming, and as a graduate of Oxford, Cornell University and the London School of Economics, he is considered brilliant, although he is self-effacing. He readily admits to being imperfectly human.

People began to believe otherwise on Jan. 14 in London when Benjamin Creme, the leader of Share International, who is also known as the Master, proclaimed the arrival of Maitreya. The name of the deity has Buddhist roots, but in 1972, Mr. Creme prophesied the coming Maitreya as a messiah for all faiths called the World Teacher…

[continues in the New York Times]

Yavapai County Sheriff's Office photo of James Arthur Ray, after his arrest on manslaughter charges.

Maybe we’ll finally learn what really went on inside the infamous Arizona retreat held by one of the teachers from The Secret, James Arthur Ray, now that he’s in court, although so far he’s keeping quiet. From Forbes:

CAMP VERDE, Ariz. — Self-help guru James Arthur Ray says it was all a tragic accident when his followers began collapsing one by one in a sweat lodge at his retreat, with three of them dying. As unfortunate as the ordeal was, he says the participants knew about the risks the ceremony presented.

Prosecutors say it’s a blatant case of manslaughter by a man who recklessly crammed dozens of people in a 400-square-foot sweat lodge and chided them for wanting to leave, even as people were vomiting, getting burned by hot rocks and lying lifeless on the ground.

The two sides will be on display in coming months now that prosecutors have charged Ray with manslaughter in a case that could send him to prison for more than 35 years. The 52-year-old Ray said nothing during his first court appearance Thursday, and his lawyer entered a not guilty plea.

The prospect of a conviction against Ray will depend on whether jurors view the episode as an accident or a criminal act in which he recklessly caused the deaths of the victims, the definition of manslaughter in Arizona.

Despite the shocking details that have emerged from that night in the sweat lodge, legal experts say prosecutors won’t have an easy time landing a conviction.

Ray’s strongest defense will be that the participants were made aware of the risks the ceremony presented, including extreme temperatures in a small space and the possibility of injury or death, and voluntarily went in, criminal defense attorneys said.

But that won’t necessarily put Ray in the clear…

[continues in Forbes]

What is LIVE H2O, and why is everyone, worldwide, talking about the Concert for the Living Water?

Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz can answer best, because the Creator put the event on his heart to produce. On the Summer Solstice, 2009, Dr. Horowitz shares here how humanity’s heart will “marry” the “Universal Solvent”⎯Water⎯using the “Universal Language” ⎯music⎯to produce the “Universal Healer” ⎯LOVE. Celebrities, authors, and artists will grace at least nine stages internationally at venues adjacent important bodies of Water. The unprecedented interactive Internet (www.LIVEH2O.org) broadcast will engage millions of people with at least 144,000 unified voices advancing a global prayer and chant in 528(LOVE) Hertz frequency. This Dr. Horowitz calls, the “LOVE Water Experiment” scheduled to being at 5PM on the West Coast of the U.S. and travel in a wave around the world.

Musicians and audience will broadcast simultaneously “hydro-sonically” in the LOVE frequency of 528Hz to energize the oceans, lakes, rivers and streams with humanity’s LOVE. This prayerful chant will last 90 minutes in total, and will be joined by representatives from all major religions and Native cultures. Water celebrants worldwide will be singing, chanting, toning, drumming, and praying for Water’s preservation, pollution cessation, remedial actions, peace, an end to poverty, starvation, dehydration, and the termination of curable diseases using advances in water science. The concert will cause the world’s Waters to become a virtual “LOVE potion,” so to speak—a homeopathic vibrating liquid crystal of LOVE that will be heart-felt by millions of people. This “Global Baptism” will, according to Native and religious prophets and prophecies, return our global village to some semblance of ecological sanity and spiritual integrity.

What is LIVE H2O, and why is everyone, worldwide, talking about the Concert for the Living Water? Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz can answer best, because the Creator put the event on his heart to produce. On the Summer Solstice, 2009, Dr. Horowitz shares here how humanity’s heart will “marry” the “Universal Solvent”⎯Water⎯using the “Universal Language” ⎯music⎯to produce the “Universal Healer” ⎯LOVE. Celebrities, authors, and artists will grace at least nine stages internationally at venues adjacent important bodies of Water. The unprecedented interactive Internet (www.LIVEH2O.org) broadcast will engage millions of people with at least 144,000 unified voices advancing a global prayer and chant in 528(LOVE) Hertz frequency.

This Dr. Horowitz calls, the “LOVE Water Experiment” scheduled to being at 5PM on the West Coast of the U.S. and travel in a wave around the world. Musicians and audience will broadcast simultaneously “hydro-sonically” in the LOVE frequency of 528Hz to energize the…all » What is LIVE H2O, and why is everyone, worldwide, talking about the Concert for the Living Water? Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz can answer best, because the Creator put the event on his heart to produce. On the Summer Solstice, 2009, Dr. Horowitz shares here how humanity’s heart will “marry” the “Universal Solvent”⎯Water⎯using the “Universal Language” ⎯music⎯to produce the “Universal Healer” ⎯LOVE. Celebrities, authors, and artists will grace at least nine stages internationally at venues adjacent important bodies of Water. The unprecedented interactive Internet (www.LIVEH2O.org) broadcast will engage millions of people with at least 144,000 unified voices advancing a global prayer and chant in 528(LOVE) Hertz frequency. This Dr. Horowitz calls, the “LOVE Water Experiment” scheduled to being at 5PM on the West Coast of the U.S. and travel in a wave around the world. Musicians and audience will broadcast simultaneously “hydro-sonically” in the LOVE frequency of 528Hz to energize the oceans, lakes, rivers and streams with humanity’s LOVE. This prayerful chant will last 90 minutes in total, and will be joined by representatives from all major religions and Native cultures. Water celebrants worldwide will be singing, chanting, toning, drumming, and praying for Water’s preservation, pollution cessation, remedial actions, peace, an end to poverty, starvation, dehydration, and the termination of curable diseases using advances in water science. The concert will cause the world’s Waters to become a virtual “LOVE potion,” so to speak—a homeopathic vibrating liquid crystal of LOVE that will be heart-felt by millions of people. This “Global Baptism” will, according to Native and religious prophets and prophecies, return our global village to some semblance of ecological sanity and spiritual integrity.

The regulation of hypnotherapists in the UK is so lax that even a cat can become accredited, the BBC has found.

Chris Jackson, presenter of Inside Out in the North East and Cumbria, registered pet George with three industry bodies.

Each one accepted a certificate from the non-existent Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists as proof of George’s credentials.

It follows a similar investigation by an American clinical psychologist.

Dr Steve Eichel suspected industry bodies in the US were not running checks on their members.

[Read more at BBC]

The Times does fill in some details I haven’t seen reported elsewhere though, so for those still interested in the rise and likely fall of Mr. Ray (star of ‘The Secret’ and profiled in the disinformation book Beyond The Secret), here’s an excerpt:

SEDONA, Ariz. — Midway through a two-hour sweat lodge ceremony intended to be a rebirthing experience, participants say, some people began to fall desperately ill from the heat, even as their leader, James Arthur Ray, a nationally known New Age guru, urged them to press on.

Investigators looking over a sweat lodge at a retreat center near Sedona, Ariz. Three people died after an event there this month.

“There were people throwing up everywhere,” said Dr. Beverley Bunn, 43, an orthodontist from Texas, who said she struggled to remain conscious in the sweat lodge, a makeshift structure covered with blankets and plastic and heated with fiery rocks.

Dr. Bunn said Mr. Ray told the more than 50 people jammed into the small structure — people who had just completed a 36-hour “vision quest” in which they fasted alone in the desert — that vomiting “was good for you, that you are purging what your body doesn’t want, what it doesn’t need.” But by the end of the ordeal on Oct. 8, emergency crews had taken 21 people to hospitals. Three have since died.

Mr. Ray, who calls himself a teacher of “practical mysticism” and has gained widespread exposure through writings and an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” has come under intense scrutiny in the New Age movement that is a cottage industry here. The Yavapai County sheriff, Steve Waugh, has opened a homicide investigation, but Mr. Ray has not been charged.

Dr. Bunn, who had signed up for the $9,695 “spiritual warrior” experience, offered the first eyewitness account of the sweat lodge. Details were confirmed by relatives and lawyers for other participants. …

Barbara Ehrenreich, renowned for her exposés of America’s grueling blue- and white-collar job markets (i.e., Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch), is out to cement her role as our nation’s reality checker. Her new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, was initially inspired by her resistance to the cancer-gives-my-life-meaning trope, which was inflicted on her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. She found that insistent, blind optimism is deeply ingrained in our nation’s psyche, especially in the realms of finance and national security.

And an interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show:

A woman taken to hospital with multiple organ failure after attending a spiritual retreat in Arizona has died.

Forty-nine-year-old Liz Neuman was one of 21 people taken to hospital after the sauna-like experience on 9 October.

It brings the total number of deaths from the event, run by self-help expert James Ray, to three.
The deaths at the Angel Valley Retreat Center, 115 miles north of Phoenix, are being treated as homicides, but no charges have been laid.

Emergency services were called to the sweat lodge after some of the 50 people at the event reported they were having difficulty breathing.

Those taken to hospital were said to have illnesses ranging from dehydration to kidney failure.