wakingtimes--2020-06-24--‘As Above, So Below’ – Are Cosmic Forces at Work on Earth?

‘ As Above , So Below ’ – Are Cosmic Forces at Work on Earth ?
When we think of wars , revolutions , populist uprisings , outbreaks of mass hysteria and other sudden social and political eruptions – even a popstar ’ s popularity or the latest fashion trend – we usually believe that at bottom there is some logical , rational explanation for them , even if we do not yet possess it .
We are confident that we can understand these things through economics , psychology , race relations , religion , or as a reaction to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ factor that we can reason about , analyse , come to decisions on and take steps to alter and improve .
Although the evidence sadly seems to suggest otherwise , we believe that ultimately we can learn how to control the factors that lead to these explosions .
We can , if not eliminate the more catastrophic events like wars , at least minimise the disruptions they cause .
In short , we believe we control our fate – or will be able to sometime soon .
That is the whole modern project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in order to make a better world , working to control events rather than be controlled by them , and steering history toward progress .
We are not there yet , but it is just a matter of time .
But what if there are factors at work in these massive human events that are beyond our control ?
What if they are not a product of solely rational , calculable forces but are triggered by natural causes , even cosmic ones ?
What if the power behind these upheavals doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up above , in outer space , from the moon , the stars , the planets and the sun ?
We know that for a great part of human history that is exactly what many people believed .
Until the advent of what we know as science in the early seventeenth century , the belief that the stars ordered our destiny was commonly accepted .
Astrology , the art of foreseeing the turn of events on earth by charting the movements of the stars in the heavens , had for millennia guided emperors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ancient China , India , and the Middle East , in classical Greece and Rome and throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance , the belief that “ everything in the… cosmos was inextricably connected to everything else , no matter how great or how small ” was as much common knowledge as the supposed Big Bang is today.1 And that this arrangement was hierarchical , with changes in the heavens portending those on earth , was also accepted .
It was generally agreed that the earth and everything on it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and that the wise men of antiquity understood these forces and benefited by them .
All this changed some four centuries ago when what we know as science began to disabuse Western man of such ‘ nonsense ’ – notwithstanding that millions of people around the globe still accept it.2 The irony here is that some of the most significant figures in the rise of the modern scientific view of the world were well-steeped in the very ‘ nonsense ’ they were ostensibly freeing us from .
The inauguration of the modern worldview @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nicolai Copernicus .
In On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres ( 1543 ) Copernicus argued – reluctantly it seems – that , as we all accept today , the sun did not orbit the earth , but the earth the sun.3 It , not ourselves , was at the centre of things , or at least that of our solar system .
Although Copernicus was a timid agent provocateur – and a mean-spirited one – his work nevertheless sparked a revolution among the heavenly spheres and our earthly one.4 Yet the idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of things did not arrive in Copernicus ’ mind fully formed .
As the historian Frances Yates argued some years ago – and as has been echoed more recently by others – Copernicus was an attentive reader of the Hermetic texts in which the sun plays a dominant , we might even say , central role.5 Western astrology is one of the Hermetic sciences .
It has its roots in the teachings of the great sage Hermes Trismegistus , father of magic and science and initiate of the perennial philosophy , collected in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circa 200 CE .
In Book XVI of the Corpus Hermeticum , Hermes calls the sun the “ craftsman , ” Plato ’ s name for the demi-urge , creator of the universe .
In the Asclepius – a Hermetic text not in the Corpus Hermeticum – Hermes speaks of the sun ’ s “ divinity and holiness ” and calls it a “ second god.
” In the introduction to his work , Copernicus enlists two previous sages in support of his theory , both of whom find places in the Aurea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by whom the Hermetic wisdom , or prisca theologia , has been handed down through the ages , at least according to the Renaissance Hermeticist Marsilio Ficino .
These are Pythagoras ( who , we know , heard the ‘ music of the spheres ’ ) and his follower , the teacher of Plato , Philolaus .
Copernicus even refers directly to the sun as a “ visible god , ” just as the Asclepius does .
The fact that in the Hermetic cosmology the sun ’ s position differs from its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was ‘ improving ’ , suggests that it was an important influence on those improvements .
Copernicus wasn ’ t the only one to help shape our modern universe while retaining a good amount of the ancient one .
The seventeenth-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler , who discovered the laws of planetary motion , devoted much time to astrology and forecast more than one dignitary ’ s fortune , although he was not always happy about it .
He was also for a time a guest of Rudolf II , the Hermetic Holy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of astrologers.6 “ That the sky does something to man is obvious , ” Kepler said , “ but what it does specifically remains hidden.
” 7 Kepler recognised that much astrology was moonshine – at least that was true of his competition .
But he also knew that the genuine baby should not be thrown out with the phony bathwater .
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Sir Isaac Newton , whose view of the cosmos was dominant until the advent of Einstein , wrote more about alchemy – a Hermetic science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did about gravity .
And as astrology is also known as an ‘ occult science ’ – ‘ occult ’ meaning ‘ unseen ’ – then Newton was a Hermeticist even when he did write about gravity which is also unseen .
As with Copernicus , there is much debate today over how much Newton ’ s Hermetic ideas informed the Principia ( 1687 ) , the blueprint for the modern , Newtonian view of the cosmos , which , ironically , ousted the earlier , more ‘ magical ’ one.8 Nevertheless , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suffered the same fate as the other Hermetic sciences and was relegated with other forms of ‘ rejected knowledge ’ to the great dustbin of ideas – and also , since the 1930s , to daily appearances in most major newspapers .
But it didn ’ t go down without a fight .
As late as 1768 , the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer , soon to add a word to our vocabulary , earned his doctorate with his dissertation on ‘ The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body ’ .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ or occultist .
He was a scientist who had discovered the medium through which the planets and the entire cosmos influence life on earth .
Yet he could not escape astrology altogether .
The very word ‘ influence ’ itself comes from astrology .
It is the name Marsilio Ficino gave to the stellar fluid that flows from the stars down to earth and informs what happens here .
The medium Mesmer had discovered – to his satisfaction and that of many of his patients , if not the authorities – was what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ animal ’ meaning ‘ animated ’ , not ‘ beastly ’ .
This was , like the astral influence , a fluid permeating the universe , like the nineteenth-century ‘ ether ’ , linking everything to everything else , its cosmic flow keeping all in balance .
In living things it was the source of health and vitality , and Mesmer believed he had mastered a method of guiding and encouraging its movement in his patients , many of whom agreed .
A side-effect of the ‘ magnetic passes ’ that Mesmer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made over patients was what became known as the ‘ magnetic trance ’ .
It was a student of Mesmer , the Marquis de Puységur , who in 1785 stumbled on to what was really at work.9 The ‘ trance ’ was not magnetic , animal or otherwise , but hypnotic – the term was coined by the Scot James Braid in 1842 .
When today we say someone is ‘ mesmerised ’ we mean they are ‘ hypnotised ’ , not that animal magnetism is at work .
While Mesmer might not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he may not have been as wrong about magnetism as the members of the French Academy of Sciences , who in 1784 declared his work a fraud , believed .
Astrology held on in the popular mind , along with other Hermetic ideas , but as the modern age progressed science continued to dismiss it .
Then in the mid-twentieth century science , of all things , seemed to come to its aid .
In 1955 Michel Gauquelin , a French psychologist and statistician with degrees from the Sorbonne , published a book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Influence of the Stars ’ ) based on years of research that seemed to support some of astrology ’ s fundamental ideas .
This work , as well as the English editions of his other books – The Cosmic Clocks ( 1967 ) , Astrology and Science ( 1970 ) , Cosmic Influences on Human Behaviour ( 1974 ) – made Gauquelin astrology ’ s most persuasive scientific defender , although , like Mesmer , he did not see himself as an astrologer .
Gauquelin and his collaborator , his wife Françoise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a basic question : does one ’ s birthday have any effect on one ’ s future ?
After submitting the 27,000 + birthdates they had gathered to statistical analysis , the initial results were disappointing .
There seemed to be no substantial correspondence between one ’ s ‘ sun sign ’ ( Capricorn , Aries , Pisces , etc . )
– the constellation the sun is ‘ in ’ at the time of one ’ s birth – and one ’ s destiny .
But the Gauquelins seemed to have discovered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ correlation between one ’ s future profession and the time of birth , not because of the sun , but because of the planets .
The Gauquelins discovered that more famous doctors were born just after the rise or culmination of Mars or Saturn – planets related to that vocation – than chance should have allowed .
Top-ranking military leaders were born just after the rise or culmination of Mars or Jupiter ; again the astrological correspondence held .
Professions which in traditional astrological lore were associated with the other inner planets – @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As Guy Lyon Playfair and Scott Hill say in The Cycles of Heaven , “ In some cases , there was only one chance in five million that such clusterings were due to chance alone.
” 10 And there was another odd fact : these significant results were true only of people who were highly successful at their work .
The Gauquelins saw that large numbers of scientists , doctors , athletes , artists , writers and others , who were competent but not above average , fell outside their select group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number received the planetary influence – whatever it was – direct and absorbed it all , leaving very little for the stragglers .
Gauquelin ’ s findings have come to be known as ‘ the Mars Effect ’ .
Gauquelin ’ s results were examined by the psychologist and statistician Hans Eysenck .
Eysenck , a tough-minded sceptic , had to admit that he was convinced .
And when Eysenck and his colleagues examined some other astrological givens – that people born under ‘ water ’ signs tend to be emotional , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signs tend to be extroverted while those born under ‘ even ’ ones are introverted – he and his team were surprised to find the evidence strongly in favour of them.11 The question remained of exactly how the planets and other cosmic bodies can affect earthly ones ?
Some people working in the earlier part of the last century , and in another part of the world , thought they might have a clue .
The Role of the Moon Whether astrology can account for it or not – I don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nevertheless seems that investigating the role of cosmic forces on human life is a peculiarly Russian pursuit .
At least in researching this article I came across more Russians than chance may have allowed .
For example , the Greek-Armenian esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff may not have been Russian – his exact nationality has always been uncertain – but he certainly started his career in Russia.12 In 1914 , with the First World War erupting , the Russian philosopher P.D .
Ouspensky , Gurdjieff ’ s most famous pupil , asked him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They could , Gurdjieff told Ouspensky , but what was necessary was to understand why they start .
The moon is the chief… motive force of all that takes place in organic life on earth .
All movements , actions , and manifestations of people… depend on the moon and are controlled by the moon .
– Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff “ What is war ?
, ” Gurdjieff asked Ouspensky .
“ It is the result of planetary influences .
Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lasts , perhaps , a second or two .
But here , on the earth , people begin to slaughter one another , and they go on slaughtering maybe for several years.
” The people involved feel they have perfectly good reasons for fighting – for king , country , national honour , lebensraum or to pre-empt an attack by a hostile neighbour .
But “ they fail to realise to what extent they are mere pawns in the game.
” 13 Gurdjieff also spoke to Ouspensky about the moon .
Bookshelves are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moon affects some people ; our terms ‘ lunacy ’ , ‘ lunatic ’ , ‘ looney ’ , ‘ moonshine ’ are evidence of the popular acceptance of something that is still ‘ officially ’ dismissed .
Gurdjieff took it a bit further .
“ The moon , ” he said , “ is the chief… motive force of all that takes place in organic life on earth .
All movements , actions , and manifestations of people… depend on the moon and are controlled by the moon.
” 14 Perhaps the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the moon is a living being and that it is growing , and that its nourishment comes from the souls of ‘ sleeping ’ people who are not working to attain the true ‘ waking ’ state of consciousness.15 When one recognises that in the weeks surrounding the November 2016 US presidential election the moon entered a ‘ perigee full moon ’ or ‘ supermoon ’ – when it was both full and closer to the earth than it had been for nearly seventy years – one wonders if Gurdjieff knew things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he gained his cosmic knowledge during his time with the mysterious Sarmoung Brotherhood in Central Asia.17 One wonders if he had more local sources .
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , one of the founders of the Theosophical Society , was , like Ouspensky , a full-blooded Russian .
In Isis Unveiled ( 1877 ) she writes that “ certain planetary aspects may imply disturbances in the ether of our planet , and certain others rest and harmony.
” At times this influence promotes periods of withdrawal , of “ monasticism and anchoritism ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ utopian schemes.
” And where Gurdjieff speaks of the “ harmony of reciprocal maintenance ” operating throughout the cosmos , Blavatsky speaks of the “ reciprocal relations between the planetary bodies.
” 18 Blavatsky got her knowledge from her Masters in Tibet .
Did anyone in Russia have it too ?
Oddly , around the same time that Gurdjieff was enlightening Ouspensky about our place in the cosmos , it seemed someone did .
But in his case , the sun , not the moon , pulled the strings .
The Role of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eighteen-year-old prodigy Aleksandr Chizhevsky – scientist , musician , painter , poet – noticed something .
He had become fascinated with the study of sun-spots – huge dark bodies that pass across the surface of the sun – and it struck him that at the same time as a large group of spots crossed the sun ’ s central meridian , certain events transpired on earth .
The aurora borealis that month was unusually strong , and the magnetic storms making up the spots had disrupted more radio and telephone communication than usual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The fiercest battles of the war coincided with the spots .
Was that a coincidence ?
In 1916 , when he was fighting with the Russian army on the Galician front , Chizhevsky saw that the battles intensified when solar flares and geomagnetic storms were most active .
In 1917 , when the Bolsheviks took power , there was , he saw , another unusual burst of solar activity .
Checking the records , Chizhevsky saw that there had also been one in 1905 , at the time of an aborted uprising .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ showing , he claimed , 2,400 years of “ mass movements ” : wars , major battles , revolutions , uprisings , migrations , from across the globe .
These , he argued , came in regular cycles which coincided almost exactly with the eleven-year sun-spot cycle .
( In 1843 , the German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe observed that sun-spots went through a ten-year cycle ; the idea was later refined by Rudolf Wolf and Alexander Humboldt and established at eleven years . )
Chizhevsky believed he had discovered a “ universal cycle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sun , or whatever was behind its spots , at the wheel.19 Every major outbreak in recent history , from the French Revolution to the start of World War I , was precipitated by solar excitement .
Chizhevsky was even able to predict when such things would occur .
In 1926 , guided by the sun-spot cycle , Chizhevky predicted important flare-ups from 1927 to ’ 29 .
What happened then ?
Salazar ’ s dictatorship began in Portugal .
Chiang Kai-shek captured Peking .
Mussolini was on the rise as was Hitler @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exiling Trotsky .
And Wall Street suffered a collapse triggering the Great Depression .
Chizhevsky ’ s work impressed many people , like the economist Edward Dewey , who used his ideas in his own work on economic cycles .
Others , like Stalin , were not so impressed .
In 1942 , when he realised that for Chizhevsky sun-spots and not the irresistible march of the Marxist class war were responsible for the Soviet Union , he ordered him to retract his work .
By this time Chizhevsky was a prestigious scientist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alongside Nicolai Fedorov , Konstantin Tsilokovsky , and V. I. Vernadsky , he was one of what is known as the ‘ Cosmist ’ school .
Chizhevsky refused and Stalin sent him to a gulag for eight years , with eight years ‘ rehabilitation ’ after that .
He was released during the Khrushchev ‘ thaw ’ following Stalin ’ s death and today is revered as the ‘ father of heliobiology ’ , the study of the sun ’ s influence on life on earth .
Other Russians who were influenced by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cosmic forces affecting the earth , were Vladimir Vernadsky , mentioned above , who popularised the ideas of the ‘ biosphere ’ and ‘ noosphere ’ , and the historian Lev Gumilev , whose ideas about ‘ ethnoi ’ and ‘ passionarity ’ as agents of civilisation , also depend on cosmic forces affecting human beings.20 Chizhevsky believed that what was behind the intensified agitation during high sun-spot activity was an increase in negative ions in the atmosphere .
The solar flares erupting from the sun during the intense magnetic storms making up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own magnetic field , which in turn ‘ ionised ’ the air .
Positive ions , he believed , had a ‘ negative ’ effect , making people dull , lethargic , and irritable .
Negative ions did the opposite .
They worked as stimulants ; hence the effect of a ‘ breathe of fresh air ’ after a rainstorm .
The ionisation too went through cycles and at the highest concentration of negative ions , things start jumping.21 Mesmer was not as wrong as his critics believed .
Magnetism did have something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1964 .
One odd fact that he missed but others , like Edward Dewey , noticed was that often things on earth occurred slightly ahead of the sun-spot cycle , as if effect preceded cause – or as if events on earth triggered the spots .
If this was the case , then something else must be responsible or at least precede both .
In 1949 John Nelson , an RCA engineer who had been studying the sun to ‘ predict ’ when its spots would interfere with communications , hit upon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a hand in it .
Although most astronomers would laugh at the idea of a planet ’ s weak magnetic field having any effect on the sun , this is exactly the conclusion Nelson came to , and which enabled him to predict and avoid blackouts.22 The odd thing was that the planets ’ effect on the sun coincided with traditional astrological notions of ‘ opposition ’ and ‘ conjunction ’ .
When planets were in such an arrangement with the sun and the earth , things tended to go haywire .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ contemporary thinkers see in Chizhevky ’ s work an argument against free will .
In The Bond , Lynne McTaggart states that “ if we are essentially at the mercy of the slightest move of the sun and its activity , ” then Chizhevsky ’ s work stands “ as a gigantic refutation of our misguided belief in ourselves as masters of the universe – or even of ourselves.
” 23 This is a not uncommon reflection on human hubris.But it goes against what Chizhevsky himself believed : that the sun does not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , only to do something .
It acts as a stimulant ; what we do when stimulated is up to us .
There may be increased belligerence during intense sun-spot activity , but there are always pacifists , conscientious objectors , and quiet people at home , sitting out the riots .
As astrological lore has it , ‘ the stars incline , they do not compel ’ .
This was something Gurdjieff knew when he told Ouspensky that one could choose which influences one fell under.24 Man could escape being ‘ food @ @ @ @ @ @ @ himself and , in his interior planetary system – spelled out in fascinating detail by Rodney Collin , a student of Ouspensky , in The Theory of Celestial Influence – could become an ‘ inner sun ’ , under a minimum of cosmic laws.25 As its students know , this too was an aim of Hermeticism.26 The stars in their courses may spark events here on earth , but we still have the responsibility of steering our way through them .
GARY LACHMAN is a former student of Gurdjieff ’ s Fourth Way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In 2001 he published his first book , Turn Off Your Mind : The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius , a history of the 1960s occult counterculture .
During the 1980s , Lachman avidly studied philosophy , psychology , history , science , and esotericism .
His public figure rose in the late 1970s as he toured with pop rock group Blondie .
In March 2006 , he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his outstanding work with Blondie .
Lachman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when he moved to London .
His books include A Dark Muse : A History of the Occult and A Secret History of Consciousness , In Search of P.D .
Ouspensky : The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff ( Quest Books , 2004 ) , Politics and the Occult : The Left , the Right , and the Radically Unseen , Jung The Mystic : The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung ’ s Life and Teachings and Madame Blavatsky : The Mother of Modern Spirituality .
1 .
Nicholas Campion , The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ History in the Western Tradition , Arkana , 1994 , 76

‘As Above, So Below’ – Are Cosmic Forces at Work on Earth?
Gary Lachman, New Dawn
Waking Times
When we think of wars, revolutions, populist uprisings, outbreaks of mass hysteria and other sudden social and political eruptions – even a popstar’s popularity or the latest fashion trend – we usually believe that at bottom there is some logical, rational explanation for them, even if we do not yet possess it. We are confident that we can understand these things through economics, psychology, race relations, religion, or as a reaction to ‘modernity’ or to some other factor that we can reason about, analyse, come to decisions on and take steps to alter and improve.
Although the evidence sadly seems to suggest otherwise, we believe that ultimately we can learn how to control the factors that lead to these explosions. We can, if not eliminate the more catastrophic events like wars, at least minimise the disruptions they cause. In short, we believe we control our fate – or will be able to sometime soon. That is the whole modern project: man applying his intellect and will in order to make a better world, working to control events rather than be controlled by them, and steering history toward progress. We are not there yet, but it is just a matter of time.
But what if there are factors at work in these massive human events that are beyond our control? What if they are not a product of solely rational, calculable forces but are triggered by natural causes, even cosmic ones? What if the power behind these upheavals doesn’t come from the earth below but from up above, in outer space, from the moon, the stars, the planets and the sun?
We know that for a great part of human history that is exactly what many people believed. Until the advent of what we know as science in the early seventeenth century, the belief that the stars ordered our destiny was commonly accepted. Astrology, the art of foreseeing the turn of events on earth by charting the movements of the stars in the heavens, had for millennia guided emperors and kings the world over. In ancient China, India, and the Middle East, in classical Greece and Rome and throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the belief that “everything in the… cosmos was inextricably connected to everything else, no matter how great or how small” was as much common knowledge as the supposed Big Bang is today.1 And that this arrangement was hierarchical, with changes in the heavens portending those on earth, was also accepted. It was generally agreed that the earth and everything on it was open to forces coming from beyond and that the wise men of antiquity understood these forces and benefited by them.
All this changed some four centuries ago when what we know as science began to disabuse Western man of such ‘nonsense’ – notwithstanding that millions of people around the globe still accept it.2 The irony here is that some of the most significant figures in the rise of the modern scientific view of the world were well-steeped in the very ‘nonsense’ they were ostensibly freeing us from.
The inauguration of the modern worldview is generally credited to the Polish astronomer Nicolai Copernicus. In On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543) Copernicus argued – reluctantly it seems – that, as we all accept today, the sun did not orbit the earth, but the earth the sun.3 It, not ourselves, was at the centre of things, or at least that of our solar system.
Although Copernicus was a timid agent provocateur – and a mean-spirited one – his work nevertheless sparked a revolution among the heavenly spheres and our earthly one.4 Yet the idea that the sun was at the heart of things did not arrive in Copernicus’ mind fully formed. As the historian Frances Yates argued some years ago – and as has been echoed more recently by others – Copernicus was an attentive reader of the Hermetic texts in which the sun plays a dominant, we might even say, central role.5
Western astrology is one of the Hermetic sciences. It has its roots in the teachings of the great sage Hermes Trismegistus, father of magic and science and initiate of the perennial philosophy, collected in the Corpus Hermeticum and other texts, circa 200 CE. In Book XVI of the Corpus Hermeticum, Hermes calls the sun the “craftsman,” Plato’s name for the demi-urge, creator of the universe. In the Asclepius – a Hermetic text not in the Corpus Hermeticum – Hermes speaks of the sun’s “divinity and holiness” and calls it a “second god.”
In the introduction to his work, Copernicus enlists two previous sages in support of his theory, both of whom find places in the Aurea Catena, or Golden Chain of Adepts, by whom the Hermetic wisdom, or prisca theologia, has been handed down through the ages, at least according to the Renaissance Hermeticist Marsilio Ficino. These are Pythagoras (who, we know, heard the ‘music of the spheres’) and his follower, the teacher of Plato, Philolaus. Copernicus even refers directly to the sun as a “visible god,” just as the Asclepius does. The fact that in the Hermetic cosmology the sun’s position differs from its place in the Ptolemaic system that Copernicus was ‘improving’, suggests that it was an important influence on those improvements.
Copernicus wasn’t the only one to help shape our modern universe while retaining a good amount of the ancient one. The seventeenth-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, devoted much time to astrology and forecast more than one dignitary’s fortune, although he was not always happy about it. He was also for a time a guest of Rudolf II, the Hermetic Holy Roman Emperor, a patron and student of astrologers.6 “That the sky does something to man is obvious,” Kepler said, “but what it does specifically remains hidden.”7 Kepler recognised that much astrology was moonshine – at least that was true of his competition. But he also knew that the genuine baby should not be thrown out with the phony bathwater.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Sir Isaac Newton, whose view of the cosmos was dominant until the advent of Einstein, wrote more about alchemy – a Hermetic science directly linked to astrology – than he did about gravity. And as astrology is also known as an ‘occult science’ – ‘occult’ meaning ‘unseen’ – then Newton was a Hermeticist even when he did write about gravity which is also unseen. As with Copernicus, there is much debate today over how much Newton’s Hermetic ideas informed the Principia (1687), the blueprint for the modern, Newtonian view of the cosmos, which, ironically, ousted the earlier, more ‘magical’ one.8
Nevertheless, even with this esteemed company, astrology suffered the same fate as the other Hermetic sciences and was relegated with other forms of ‘rejected knowledge’ to the great dustbin of ideas – and also, since the 1930s, to daily appearances in most major newspapers. But it didn’t go down without a fight. As late as 1768, the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, soon to add a word to our vocabulary, earned his doctorate with his dissertation on ‘The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body’. Mesmer did not consider himself an astrologer or occultist. He was a scientist who had discovered the medium through which the planets and the entire cosmos influence life on earth. Yet he could not escape astrology altogether. The very word ‘influence’ itself comes from astrology. It is the name Marsilio Ficino gave to the stellar fluid that flows from the stars down to earth and informs what happens here.
The medium Mesmer had discovered – to his satisfaction and that of many of his patients, if not the authorities – was what he called ‘animal magnetism’ – ‘animal’ meaning ‘animated’, not ‘beastly’. This was, like the astral influence, a fluid permeating the universe, like the nineteenth-century ‘ether’, linking everything to everything else, its cosmic flow keeping all in balance. In living things it was the source of health and vitality, and Mesmer believed he had mastered a method of guiding and encouraging its movement in his patients, many of whom agreed.
A side-effect of the ‘magnetic passes’ that Mesmer and the mesmerists that received his training made over patients was what became known as the ‘magnetic trance’. It was a student of Mesmer, the Marquis de Puységur, who in 1785 stumbled on to what was really at work.9 The ‘trance’ was not magnetic, animal or otherwise, but hypnotic – the term was coined by the Scot James Braid in 1842. When today we say someone is ‘mesmerised’ we mean they are ‘hypnotised’, not that animal magnetism is at work.
While Mesmer might not have grasped the phenomenon of hypnosis, he may not have been as wrong about magnetism as the members of the French Academy of Sciences, who in 1784 declared his work a fraud, believed.
Gauquelin’s Breakthrough Survey
Astrology held on in the popular mind, along with other Hermetic ideas, but as the modern age progressed science continued to dismiss it. Then in the mid-twentieth century science, of all things, seemed to come to its aid. In 1955 Michel Gauquelin, a French psychologist and statistician with degrees from the Sorbonne, published a book L’influence des astres (‘The Influence of the Stars’) based on years of research that seemed to support some of astrology’s fundamental ideas. This work, as well as the English editions of his other books – The Cosmic Clocks (1967), Astrology and Science (1970), Cosmic Influences on Human Behaviour (1974) – made Gauquelin astrology’s most persuasive scientific defender, although, like Mesmer, he did not see himself as an astrologer. Gauquelin and his collaborator, his wife Françoise, said they simply wanted to answer a basic question: does one’s birthday have any effect on one’s future?
After submitting the 27,000 + birthdates they had gathered to statistical analysis, the initial results were disappointing. There seemed to be no substantial correspondence between one’s ‘sun sign’ (Capricorn, Aries, Pisces, etc.) – the constellation the sun is ‘in’ at the time of one’s birth – and one’s destiny. But the Gauquelins seemed to have discovered something else. There was a strong correlation between one’s future profession and the time of birth, not because of the sun, but because of the planets. The Gauquelins discovered that more famous doctors were born just after the rise or culmination of Mars or Saturn – planets related to that vocation – than chance should have allowed. Top-ranking military leaders were born just after the rise or culmination of Mars or Jupiter; again the astrological correspondence held. Professions which in traditional astrological lore were associated with the other inner planets – Mercury and Venus – showed similar correlations. As Guy Lyon Playfair and Scott Hill say in The Cycles of Heaven, “In some cases, there was only one chance in five million that such clusterings were due to chance alone.”10
And there was another odd fact: these significant results were true only of people who were highly successful at their work. The Gauquelins saw that large numbers of scientists, doctors, athletes, artists, writers and others, who were competent but not above average, fell outside their select group. It was as if the smaller number received the planetary influence – whatever it was – direct and absorbed it all, leaving very little for the stragglers. Gauquelin’s findings have come to be known as ‘the Mars Effect’.
Gauquelin’s results were examined by the psychologist and statistician Hans Eysenck. Eysenck, a tough-minded sceptic, had to admit that he was convinced. And when Eysenck and his colleagues examined some other astrological givens – that people born under ‘water’ signs tend to be emotional, that those born under ‘odd’ numbered signs tend to be extroverted while those born under ‘even’ ones are introverted – he and his team were surprised to find the evidence strongly in favour of them.11
The question remained of exactly how the planets and other cosmic bodies can affect earthly ones? Some people working in the earlier part of the last century, and in another part of the world, thought they might have a clue.
The Role of the Moon
Whether astrology can account for it or not – I don’t have the statistics on hand – it nevertheless seems that investigating the role of cosmic forces on human life is a peculiarly Russian pursuit. At least in researching this article I came across more Russians than chance may have allowed. For example, the Greek-Armenian esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff may not have been Russian – his exact nationality has always been uncertain – but he certainly started his career in Russia.12 In 1914, with the First World War erupting, the Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky, Gurdjieff’s most famous pupil, asked him if such catastrophes could be avoided. They could, Gurdjieff told Ouspensky, but what was necessary was to understand why they start.
The moon is the chief… motive force of all that takes place in organic life on earth. All movements, actions, and manifestations of people… depend on the moon and are controlled by the moon. – Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff
“What is war?,” Gurdjieff asked Ouspensky. “It is the result of planetary influences. Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other; tension results… For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another, and they go on slaughtering maybe for several years.” The people involved feel they have perfectly good reasons for fighting – for king, country, national honour, lebensraum or to pre-empt an attack by a hostile neighbour. But “they fail to realise to what extent they are mere pawns in the game.”13
Gurdjieff also spoke to Ouspensky about the moon. Bookshelves are full of accounts of how the full moon affects some people; our terms ‘lunacy’, ‘lunatic’, ‘looney’, ‘moonshine’ are evidence of the popular acceptance of something that is still ‘officially’ dismissed. Gurdjieff took it a bit further. “The moon,” he said, “is the chief… motive force of all that takes place in organic life on earth. All movements, actions, and manifestations of people… depend on the moon and are controlled by the moon.”14 Perhaps the strangest thing was Gurdjieff’s insistence that the moon is a living being and that it is growing, and that its nourishment comes from the souls of ‘sleeping’ people who are not working to attain the true ‘waking’ state of consciousness.15
When one recognises that in the weeks surrounding the November 2016 US presidential election the moon entered a ‘perigee full moon’ or ‘supermoon’ – when it was both full and closer to the earth than it had been for nearly seventy years – one wonders if Gurdjieff knew things denied more conventional political analysts.16
Gurdjieff said that he gained his cosmic knowledge during his time with the mysterious Sarmoung Brotherhood in Central Asia.17 One wonders if he had more local sources. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, was, like Ouspensky, a full-blooded Russian. In Isis Unveiled (1877) she writes that “certain planetary aspects may imply disturbances in the ether of our planet, and certain others rest and harmony.” At times this influence promotes periods of withdrawal, of “monasticism and anchoritism”; at others frenzied action and “utopian schemes.” And where Gurdjieff speaks of the “harmony of reciprocal maintenance” operating throughout the cosmos, Blavatsky speaks of the “reciprocal relations between the planetary bodies.”18
Blavatsky got her knowledge from her Masters in Tibet. Did anyone in Russia have it too? Oddly, around the same time that Gurdjieff was enlightening Ouspensky about our place in the cosmos, it seemed someone did. But in his case, the sun, not the moon, pulled the strings.
The Role of the Sun
In June 1915, the eighteen-year-old prodigy Aleksandr Chizhevsky – scientist, musician, painter, poet – noticed something. He had become fascinated with the study of sun-spots – huge dark bodies that pass across the surface of the sun – and it struck him that at the same time as a large group of spots crossed the sun’s central meridian, certain events transpired on earth. The aurora borealis that month was unusually strong, and the magnetic storms making up the spots had disrupted more radio and telephone communication than usual. But there was something else. The fiercest battles of the war coincided with the spots. Was that a coincidence?
In 1916, when he was fighting with the Russian army on the Galician front, Chizhevsky saw that the battles intensified when solar flares and geomagnetic storms were most active. In 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power, there was, he saw, another unusual burst of solar activity. Checking the records, Chizhevsky saw that there had also been one in 1905, at the time of an aborted uprising.
The young Soviet scientist Aleksandr Chizhevsky correlated the sun-spot cycle with major upheavals in human history. He is photographed here pointing to one of his charts.
By 1922 Chizhevsky had made a chart showing, he claimed, 2,400 years of “mass movements”: wars, major battles, revolutions, uprisings, migrations, from across the globe. These, he argued, came in regular cycles which coincided almost exactly with the eleven-year sun-spot cycle. (In 1843, the German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe observed that sun-spots went through a ten-year cycle; the idea was later refined by Rudolf Wolf and Alexander Humboldt and established at eleven years.)
Chizhevsky believed he had discovered a “universal cycle of historical events,” with the sun, or whatever was behind its spots, at the wheel.19 Every major outbreak in recent history, from the French Revolution to the start of World War I, was precipitated by solar excitement. Chizhevsky was even able to predict when such things would occur. In 1926, guided by the sun-spot cycle, Chizhevky predicted important flare-ups from 1927 to ’29. What happened then? Salazar’s dictatorship began in Portugal. Chiang Kai-shek captured Peking. Mussolini was on the rise as was Hitler, and Stalin consolidated his power by exiling Trotsky. And Wall Street suffered a collapse triggering the Great Depression.
Chizhevsky’s work impressed many people, like the economist Edward Dewey, who used his ideas in his own work on economic cycles. Others, like Stalin, were not so impressed. In 1942, when he realised that for Chizhevsky sun-spots and not the irresistible march of the Marxist class war were responsible for the Soviet Union, he ordered him to retract his work. By this time Chizhevsky was a prestigious scientist, with many degrees and honours. Alongside Nicolai Fedorov, Konstantin Tsilokovsky, and V. I. Vernadsky, he was one of what is known as the ‘Cosmist’ school. Chizhevsky refused and Stalin sent him to a gulag for eight years, with eight years ‘rehabilitation’ after that. He was released during the Khrushchev ‘thaw’ following Stalin’s death and today is revered as the ‘father of heliobiology’, the study of the sun’s influence on life on earth. Other Russians who were influenced by his work or shared his belief in cosmic forces affecting the earth, were Vladimir Vernadsky, mentioned above, who popularised the ideas of the ‘biosphere’ and ‘noosphere’, and the historian Lev Gumilev, whose ideas about ‘ethnoi’ and ‘passionarity’ as agents of civilisation, also depend on cosmic forces affecting human beings.20
Chizhevsky believed that what was behind the intensified agitation during high sun-spot activity was an increase in negative ions in the atmosphere. The solar flares erupting from the sun during the intense magnetic storms making up the spots affected the earth’s own magnetic field, which in turn ‘ionised’ the air. Positive ions, he believed, had a ‘negative’ effect, making people dull, lethargic, and irritable. Negative ions did the opposite. They worked as stimulants; hence the effect of a ‘breathe of fresh air’ after a rainstorm. The ionisation too went through cycles and at the highest concentration of negative ions, things start jumping.21 Mesmer was not as wrong as his critics believed. Magnetism did have something to do with it.
Chizhevsky died in 1964. One odd fact that he missed but others, like Edward Dewey, noticed was that often things on earth occurred slightly ahead of the sun-spot cycle, as if effect preceded cause – or as if events on earth triggered the spots. If this was the case, then something else must be responsible or at least precede both. In 1949 John Nelson, an RCA engineer who had been studying the sun to ‘predict’ when its spots would interfere with communications, hit upon an answer. Somehow, the planets had a hand in it. Although most astronomers would laugh at the idea of a planet’s weak magnetic field having any effect on the sun, this is exactly the conclusion Nelson came to, and which enabled him to predict and avoid blackouts.22 The odd thing was that the planets’ effect on the sun coincided with traditional astrological notions of ‘opposition’ and ‘conjunction’. When planets were in such an arrangement with the sun and the earth, things tended to go haywire. Otherwise, things were fine.
Some contemporary thinkers see in Chizhevky’s work an argument against free will. In The Bond, Lynne McTaggart states that “if we are essentially at the mercy of the slightest move of the sun and its activity,” then Chizhevsky’s work stands “as a gigantic refutation of our misguided belief in ourselves as masters of the universe – or even of ourselves.”23 This is a not uncommon reflection on human hubris.But it goes against what Chizhevsky himself believed: that the sun does not compel us to do anything in particular, only to do something. It acts as a stimulant; what we do when stimulated is up to us. There may be increased belligerence during intense sun-spot activity, but there are always pacifists, conscientious objectors, and quiet people at home, sitting out the riots.
As astrological lore has it, ‘the stars incline, they do not compel’. This was something Gurdjieff knew when he told Ouspensky that one could choose which influences one fell under.24 Man could escape being ‘food for the moon’ by working on himself and, in his interior planetary system – spelled out in fascinating detail by Rodney Collin, a student of Ouspensky, in The Theory of Celestial Influence – could become an ‘inner sun’, under a minimum of cosmic laws.25 As its students know, this too was an aim of Hermeticism.26 The stars in their courses may spark events here on earth, but we still have the responsibility of steering our way through them.
About the Author
GARY LACHMAN is a former student of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, as well as a counterculture expert. In 2001 he published his first book, Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius, a history of the 1960s occult counterculture. During the 1980s, Lachman avidly studied philosophy, psychology, history, science, and esotericism. His public figure rose in the late 1970s as he toured with pop rock group Blondie. In March 2006, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his outstanding work with Blondie. Lachman became a full-time writer in 1996, when he moved to London. His books include A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult and A Secret History of Consciousness, In Search of P.D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff (Quest Books, 2004), Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen, Jung The Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung’s Life and Teachings and Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality.
Footnotes
1. Nicholas Campion, The Great Year: Astrology, Millenarianism and History in the Western Tradition, Arkana, 1994, 76


wakingtimes--2020-06-24--This Way Lies Madness: The Summer of Hate Meets the Age of Intolerance

This Way Lies Madness : The Summer of Hate Meets the Age of Intolerance Marches , protests , boycotts , sit-ins : these are nonviolent tactics that work .
Looting , vandalism , the destruction of public property , intimidation tactics aimed at eliminating anything that might cause offense to the establishment : these tactics of mobs and bullies may work in the short term , but they will only give rise to greater injustices in the long term .
George Floyd ’ s death sparked the flame of outrage over racial injustice and police brutality , but political correctness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to engulf the nation .
In Boston , racial justice activists beheaded a statue of Christopher Columbus .
Protesters in Richmond , Va. , used ropes to topple that city ’ s Columbus statue , spray-painted it , set it on fire and tossed it into a lake .
Columbus ’ crimes against indigenous peoples throughout the Americas are well known .
In San Francisco ’ s Golden Gate Park , protesters tore down a statue of Francis Scott Key , who penned “ The Star-Spangled Banner.
” Key was also a slaveholding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opposing slavery .
Activists who object to Yale University being named after its founder Elihu Yale , a slave trader , are lobbying to re-name the school .
Students at Harvard University want to re-name Mather House , one of the dorms named after Increase Mather , the college president from 1685 to 1692 and a slave owner .
Administrators at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden , N.J.—named after the nation ’ s 28th president , who guided the nation through World War I while upholding segregation policies—are now looking for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be more culturally sensitive , Land O ’ Lakes has removed from its packaging the image of a Native American princess that had been featured on its products for a hundred years .
The distributors of Aunt Jemima Pancake Syrup , Uncle Ben ’ s Rice and Mrs. Butterworth ’ s Syrup have also announced plans to re-brand and re-name their products in an effort to avoid perpetuating racist stereotypes .
Cream of Wheat is considering what to do about the smiling black chef that graces its breakfast porridge ( his visage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Not to be outdone , Dreyer ’ s Ice Cream plans to retire the 99-year-old name for its Eskimo Pie frozen confections on a stick because “ Eskimo ” has been denounced as a racist nomenclature used by “ colonizers to Arctic regions to refer to Inuit and Yupik people.
” Gone with the Wind , the Civil War epic that won 10 Academy Awards and has long been considered one of the greatest films of all times , was temporarily pulled from HBOMax ’ s streaming service in response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racial prejudices ” that “ were wrong then and are wrong today.
” The University of Georgia ’ s marching band has removed “ Tara ’ s Theme , ” the opening orchestral theme from Gone with the Wind , from its musical repertoire .
What is the end sum of all these actions ?
What started as a movement to denounce police brutality in the wake of George Floyd ’ s death at the hands of killer cops has become a free-for-all campaign to rid the country of any monument , literal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have at any time in history expressed a racist thought , exhibited racist behavior , or existed within a racist society .
The police state has got us exactly where it wants us : distracted , distraught and divided .
While protesters topple statues of men with racist pasts who are long dead , unarmed Americans continue to be killed by militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later .
While activists use their collective might to pressure corporations to rebrand products in a more racially sensitive fashion , the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ State—continues to disproportionately target blacks , Hispanics and other minorities .
And while politically correct censorship is attempting to sanitize the public sphere of words and images that denigrate minorities , it is not doing anything to rid hearts and minds of racism .
As Rod Serling , creator of the Twilight Zone , concluded in the “ Deaths-Head Revisited ” episode : In other words , what we need is more speech , more discourse , and a greater understanding of history and the evils perpetrated in the name of conquest , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we bury the mistakes of the past under a sanitized present , if we fail to at least provide context to the past , we risk allowing the government to repeat those past mistakes—rewritten for a new age—and no one will be the wiser .
It has happened already : we have allowed the government strip people of their humanity ; to segregate them into polarized classes ; to treat them as chattel ; to deny them basic human rights ; and to reduce them to figures on a ledger sheet .
Censoring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer to what ails this nation .
As long as we focus on words and ignore the systemic injustices that undergird the words , the disease will spread .
As long as we continue to allow the most controversial issues of our day—gay rights , abortion , race , religion , sexuality , political correctness , police brutality , et al.—to serve as battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support , we will all eventually lose .
Silencing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disagree—whether it ’ s by shouting them down , censoring them , muzzling them , or criminalizing them—only empowers the controllers of the Deep State .
Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination .
Offensive , politically incorrect and “ unsafe ” speech : Disguised as tolerance , civility and love , political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite .
Consequently , college campuses have become hotbeds of student-led censorship , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red light ” speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable , unsafe or offended .
Bullying , intimidating speech : Warning that “ school bullies become tomorrow ’ s hate crimes defendants , ” the Justice Department has led the way in urging schools to curtail bullying , going so far as to classify “ teasing ” as a form of “ bullying , ” and “ rude ” or “ hurtful ” “ text messages ” as “ cyberbullying.
” Hateful speech : Hate speech—speech that attacks a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attributes such as gender , ethnic origin , religion , race , disability , or sexual orientation—is the primary candidate for online censorship .
Corporate internet giants Google , Twitter and Facebook are in the process of determining what kinds of speech will be permitted online and what will be deleted .
Dangerous , anti-government speech : As part of its ongoing war on “ extremism , ” the government partnered with the tech industry to establish a task force to counter online “ propaganda ” by terrorists hoping to recruit support or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President Obama ) .
In this way , anyone who criticizes the government online can be considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted .
They might even find themselves pulled from their homes , arrested by the police and thrown into a mental hospital for expressing their opposition to government policies , as happened to Marine Brandon Raub .
The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship .
It ’ s a brilliant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other , they ’ re incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners .
The antidote to intolerance is more tolerance .
What this requires is opening the door to more speech not less , even if that speech is offensive to some .
Understanding that freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society , James Madison , the author of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ First Amendment that protected the “ minority ” against the majority , ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure , a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely , pray freely , assemble freely , challenge the government freely , and broadcast his views in the media freely .
The First Amendment is a steam valve .
It allows people to speak their minds , air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no one to hear what the people have to say—frustration builds , anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation .
By bottling up dissent , we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate , distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace .
By becoming so fearfully polite , careful to avoid offense , and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant , hateful or closed-minded that we ’ ve eliminated words , phrases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have entered into an egotistical , insulated , narcissistic era in which free speech has become regulated speech : to be celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority and tolerated otherwise , unless it moves so far beyond our political , religious and socio-economic comfort zones as to be rendered dangerous and unacceptable .
Protest laws , free speech zones , bubble zones , trespass zones , anti-bullying legislation , zero tolerance policies , hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppress speech with which they might disagree ) have conspired to corrode our core freedoms , purportedly for our own good .
On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak .
In reality , however , we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook , Google or YouTube—may allow .
The end result : free speech is no longer free , and injustice persists .
So what we can do to end racial inequality , police brutality , and systemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speech on the altar of political correctness or adopting violent tactics ?
Stop tiptoeing around , easily offended or afraid to cause offense .
Stop allowing the government and its architects to micromanage your life and curtail your freedoms .
Stop being a pawn in someone else ’ s game .
Find your own voice .
Give voice to your own outrage .
Speak truth to power nonviolently .
And throughout it all , love your enemies and put that love into action .
This principle was also at the core of Martin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combat racism and injustice .
In fact , King delivered an entire sermon on what it means to love one ’ s enemies even when they continue to wrong you .
King was not speaking in abstracts .
This was a man who , despite having faced down water cannons , police dogs and police brutality , intimidation and prejudice and assassination attempts , still insisted that “ mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love ” was his best weapon .
The first step in loving one ’ s enemies , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ element of good in them .
“ Within the best of us , there is some evil , and within the worst of us , there is some good .
When we come to see this , we take a different attitude toward individuals .
The person who hates you most has some good in him ; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it ; even the race that hates you most has some good in it… There is an element of goodness that he can never slough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in your enemy .
And as you seek to hate him , find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.
” Second , says King , focus on defeating evil systems , rather than vanquishing individuals caught up in an evil system .
“ Love is greater than like .
Love is understanding , redemptive goodwill for all men , so that you love everybody , because God loves them .
You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual , because you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ working in the lives of men ] in your soul .
And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed , while hating the deed that the person does .
This is what Jesus means when he says , ‘ Love your enemy.
’ This is the way to do it .
When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy , you must not do it.
” Third , says Kings , cut off the chain of hate and the chain of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on , you see , that goes on ad infinitum .
It just never ends… And that is the tragedy of hate , that it doesn ’ t cut it off .
It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe… Men must see that force begets force , hate begets hate , toughness begets toughness .
And it is all a descending spiral , ultimately ending in destruction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says King , hate ends up in tragic , neurotic responses .
“ Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence .
It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life .
So Jesus says love , because hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.
” Instead , use love to redeem and transform those who would do you harm .
King ’ s conclusion to his sermon is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to our present age .
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , we are still fighting the triple evils of racism , poverty and militarism .
We are still struggling to find our way in the world dominated by corporate greed and political ambition .
We are still being manipulated into focusing our anger on flawed individuals rather than working to defeat evil establishments .
Sixty-three years later , King ’ s words are still relevant : “ Our world is in transition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a revolution .
Our nation is facing a revolution .
History unfortunately leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors .
And there are … ways that individuals who are oppressed can deal with their oppression .
One of them is to rise up against their oppressors with physical violence and corroding hatred .
But there is another way .
And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love… This is the only way .
And our civilization must discover that .
Individuals must discover that as they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ o a power-drunk generation … love is the only way… to a generation depending on nuclear and atomic energy , a generation depending on physical violence…love is the only creative , redemptive , transforming power in the universe… .
[ T ] hrough the power of this love somewhere , men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed… because we had the power to love our enemies , to bless those persons that cursed us , to even decide to be good to those persons who hated us , and we even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us.
” Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute , where this article ( This Way Lies Madness : The Summer of Hate Meets the Age of Intolerance ) was originally published .
He is the author of A Government of Wolves : The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto .

This Way Lies Madness: The Summer of Hate Meets the Age of Intolerance
John W. Whitehead, Rutherford
Waking Times
“Violence creates many more social problems than it solves…. If they succumb to the temptation of using violence in their struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence isn’t the way.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
Marches, protests, boycotts, sit-ins: these are nonviolent tactics that work.
Looting, vandalism, the destruction of public property, intimidation tactics aimed at eliminating anything that might cause offense to the establishment: these tactics of mobs and bullies may work in the short term, but they will only give rise to greater injustices in the long term.
George Floyd’s death sparked the flame of outrage over racial injustice and police brutality, but political correctness is creating a raging inferno that threatens to engulf the nation.
In Boston, racial justice activists beheaded a statue of Christopher Columbus. Protesters in Richmond, Va., used ropes to topple that city’s Columbus statue, spray-painted it, set it on fire and tossed it into a lake. Columbus’ crimes against indigenous peoples throughout the Americas are well known.
In San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, protesters tore down a statue of Francis Scott Key, who penned “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Key was also a slaveholding lawyer who tried to prosecute abolitionists vocally opposing slavery.
Activists who object to Yale University being named after its founder Elihu Yale, a slave trader, are lobbying to re-name the school.
Students at Harvard University want to re-name Mather House, one of the dorms named after Increase Mather, the college president from 1685 to 1692 and a slave owner.
Administrators at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden, N.J.—named after the nation’s 28th president, who guided the nation through World War I while upholding segregation policies—are now looking for a new name.
In an apparent bid to be more culturally sensitive, Land O’ Lakes has removed from its packaging the image of a Native American princess that had been featured on its products for a hundred years.
The distributors of Aunt Jemima Pancake Syrup, Uncle Ben’s Rice and Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup have also announced plans to re-brand and re-name their products in an effort to avoid perpetuating racist stereotypes. Cream of Wheat is considering what to do about the smiling black chef that graces its breakfast porridge (his visage has been criticized for being stereotypically subservient).
Not to be outdone, Dreyer’s Ice Cream plans to retire the 99-year-old name for its Eskimo Pie frozen confections on a stick because “Eskimo” has been denounced as a racist nomenclature used by “colonizers to Arctic regions to refer to Inuit and Yupik people.”
Gone with the Wind, the Civil War epic that won 10 Academy Awards and has long been considered one of the greatest films of all times, was temporarily pulled from HBOMax’s streaming service in response to concerns that it depicts “ethnic and racial prejudices” that “were wrong then and are wrong today.”
The University of Georgia’s marching band has removed “Tara’s Theme,” the opening orchestral theme from Gone with the Wind, from its musical repertoire.
What is the end sum of all these actions?
What started as a movement to denounce police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of killer cops has become a free-for-all campaign to rid the country of any monument, literal or figurative, to anyone who may have at any time in history expressed a racist thought, exhibited racist behavior, or existed within a racist society.
The police state has got us exactly where it wants us: distracted, distraught and divided.
While protesters topple statues of men with racist pasts who are long dead, unarmed Americans continue to be killed by militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
While activists use their collective might to pressure corporations to rebrand products in a more racially sensitive fashion, the American police state—aided and abetted by the Corporate State—continues to disproportionately target blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.
And while politically correct censorship is attempting to sanitize the public sphere of words and images that denigrate minorities, it is not doing anything to rid hearts and minds of racism.
Muzzling speech, censoring discourse, erasing history: that’s the worst possible antidote.
As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone, concluded in the “Deaths-Head Revisited” episode:
“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes, all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard. Into it, they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers.”
In other words, what we need is more speech, more discourse, and a greater understanding of history and the evils perpetrated in the name of conquest, profit and racial supremacy. Because if we bury the mistakes of the past under a sanitized present, if we fail to at least provide context to the past, we risk allowing the government to repeat those past mistakes—rewritten for a new age—and no one will be the wiser.
It has happened already: we have allowed the government strip people of their humanity; to segregate them into polarized classes; to treat them as chattel; to deny them basic human rights; and to reduce them to figures on a ledger sheet.
Censoring speech—toppling monuments—kowtowing to political correctness—is not the answer to what ails this nation.
As long as we focus on words and ignore the systemic injustices that undergird the words, the disease will spread.
As long as we continue to allow the most controversial issues of our day—gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.—to serve as battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support, we will all eventually lose.
Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree—whether it’s by shouting them down, censoring them, muzzling them, or criminalizing them—only empowers the controllers of the Deep State.
Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination.
Offensive, politically incorrect and “unsafe” speech: Disguised as tolerance, civility and love, political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite. Consequently, college campuses have become hotbeds of student-led censorship, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and “red light” speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offended.
Bullying, intimidating speech: Warning that “school bullies become tomorrow’s hate crimes defendants,” the Justice Department has led the way in urging schools to curtail bullying, going so far as to classify “teasing” as a form of “bullying,” and “rude” or “hurtful” “text messages” as “cyberbullying.”
Hateful speech: Hate speech—speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation—is the primary candidate for online censorship. Corporate internet giants Google, Twitter and Facebook are in the process of determining what kinds of speech will be permitted online and what will be deleted.
Dangerous, anti-government speech: As part of its ongoing war on “extremism,” the government partnered with the tech industry to establish a task force to counter online “propaganda” by terrorists hoping to recruit support or plan attacks (the program started under President Obama). In this way, anyone who criticizes the government online can be considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted. They might even find themselves pulled from their homes, arrested by the police and thrown into a mental hospital for expressing their opposition to government policies, as happened to Marine Brandon Raub.
The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship.
It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other, they’re incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.
The antidote to intolerance is more tolerance.
What this requires is opening the door to more speech not less, even if that speech is offensive to some.
Understanding that freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society, James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the media freely.
The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world.
When there is no steam valve—when there is no one to hear what the people have to say—frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation. By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace.
By becoming so fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful or closed-minded that we’ve eliminated words, phrases and symbols from public discourse, we have entered into an egotistical, insulated, narcissistic era in which free speech has become regulated speech: to be celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority and tolerated otherwise, unless it moves so far beyond our political, religious and socio-economic comfort zones as to be rendered dangerous and unacceptable.
Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) have conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good.
On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
The end result: free speech is no longer free, and injustice persists.
So what we can do to end racial inequality, police brutality, and systemic injustice that does not involve sacrificing free speech on the altar of political correctness or adopting violent tactics?
Stop tiptoeing around, easily offended or afraid to cause offense. Stop allowing the government and its architects to micromanage your life and curtail your freedoms. Stop being a pawn in someone else’s game.
Find your own voice. Give voice to your own outrage. Speak truth to power nonviolently. And throughout it all, love your enemies and put that love into action.
That last point, to love your enemies, is the hardest of all, yet it was the principle that Jesus Christ spoke of most often: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.”
This principle was also at the core of Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts to combat racism and injustice. In fact, King delivered an entire sermon on what it means to love one’s enemies even when they continue to wrong you.
King was not speaking in abstracts. This was a man who, despite having faced down water cannons, police dogs and police brutality, intimidation and prejudice and assassination attempts, still insisted that “mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love” was his best weapon.
The first step in loving one’s enemies, says King, is to discover the element of good in them. “Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it… There is an element of goodness that he can never slough off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.”
Second, says King, focus on defeating evil systems, rather than vanquishing individuals caught up in an evil system. “Love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape [the love of God working in the lives of men] in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, ‘Love your enemy.’ This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.” Third, says Kings, cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe with love. “If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends… And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn’t cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe… Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody.” Fourth, says King, hate ends up in tragic, neurotic responses. “Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life. So Jesus says love, because hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.” Instead, use love to redeem and transform those who would do you harm.
Lastly, don’t resort to violence.
King’s conclusion to his sermon is a timeless message, sent through time, to our present age. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are still fighting the triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism. We are still struggling to find our way in the world dominated by corporate greed and political ambition. We are still being manipulated into focusing our anger on flawed individuals rather than working to defeat evil establishments.
Sixty-three years later, King’s words are still relevant:
“Our world is in transition now. Our whole world is facing a revolution. Our nation is facing a revolution. History unfortunately leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors. And there are … ways that individuals who are oppressed can deal with their oppression. One of them is to rise up against their oppressors with physical violence and corroding hatred. But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love… This is the only way. And our civilization must discover that. Individuals must discover that as they deal with other individuals… [T]o a power-drunk generation … love is the only way… to a generation depending on nuclear and atomic energy, a generation depending on physical violence…love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power in the universe…. [T]hrough the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed… because we had the power to love our enemies, to bless those persons that cursed us, to even decide to be good to those persons who hated us, and we even prayed for those persons who despitefully used us.”
About the Author
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, where this article (This Way Lies Madness: The Summer of Hate Meets the Age of Intolerance) was originally published. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto.
Image Source: Moscow Times


wakingtimes--2020-06-24--15,000 Gallon Oil Spill Threatens River and Drinking Water in Native Alaskan Village

Around 15,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled in a Native Alaskan village Saturday , threatening a nearby river and the local drinking water supply .
The spill occurred during a routine fuel delivery to the Northwest Arctic village of Shungnak .
The fuel spilled around 12:30 p.m. June 20 , but was not discovered by the villagers until 1:06 p.m .
They reported it to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation ( ADEC ) immediately thereafter , The Arctic Sounder reported .
“ A response crew from Shungnak responded to the spill immediately , removing the spilled heating oil using @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into containers , ” ADEC said in a situation report .
There have been no injuries reported and the oil spill has not harmed any wildlife so far .
However , there are concerns that it could spread to sensitive areas .
“ The extent of contamination has been reported by the incident commander to be approximately 160 feet from the Kobuk River and approximately 295 feet from the Shungnak drinking water source , ” ADEC said .
The spill occurred when fuel intended for the Shungnak Native Store was delivered to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caused fuel tank # 1 to overflow .
The fuel was being transferred from a barge on the Kobuk River .
All transfers have now been stopped .
The cleanup efforts have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic , Alaska Public Radio reported .
Because of travel restrictions , officials from ADEC and the Environmental Protection Agency can not travel to the spill site .
Instead , both agencies are in contact with local responders .
“ ADEC will continue to monitor the response actions and review plans being developed to clean up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heating oil migration to nearby resources , ” ADEC said , according to The Arctic Sounder .
The Kobuk River flows for 380 miles from the Endicott Mountains to Kotzebue Sound , according to the National Park Service .
It is one of the only two spawning grounds for the Kobuk/Selawik population of sheefish and also an important habitat for grayling , arctic char , whitefish , chum salmon and lake trout .
It is also a subsistence fishing site for Native Alaskan communities and the wintering grounds for the Western Arctic caribou @ @

15,000 Gallon Oil Spill Threatens River and Drinking Water in Native Alaskan Village
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Waking Times
Around 15,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled in a Native Alaskan village Saturday, threatening a nearby river and the local drinking water supply.
The spill occurred during a routine fuel delivery to the Northwest Arctic village of Shungnak. The fuel spilled around 12:30 p.m. June 20, but was not discovered by the villagers until 1:06 p.m. They reported it to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) immediately thereafter, The Arctic Sounder reported. “A response crew from Shungnak responded to the spill immediately, removing the spilled heating oil using sorbent material and also by pumping it into containers,” ADEC said in a situation report.
There have been no injuries reported and the oil spill has not harmed any wildlife so far. However, there are concerns that it could spread to sensitive areas. “The extent of contamination has been reported by the incident commander to be approximately 160 feet from the Kobuk River and approximately 295 feet from the Shungnak drinking water source,” ADEC said. The spill occurred when fuel intended for the Shungnak Native Store was delivered to the school instead, KTUU reported. This caused fuel tank #1 to overflow. The fuel was being transferred from a barge on the Kobuk River. All transfers have now been stopped.


wakingtimes--2020-06-25--Over 1 Million People Sign Petition To Designate KKK As Terrorist Organization

Over 1 Million People Sign Petition To Designate KKK As Terrorist Organization An online petition calling for the Ku Klux Klan to be labeled as a terrorist organization has gathered more than one million signatures .
Pressure to identify the white supremacist group as a terrorist organization has mounted amid growing protests for racial equality , especially since US President Donald Trump promised to label Antifa as a terrorist organization .
The KKK has been notorious for its violence in the United States for generations , but they have begun to re-enter the public sphere in recent years , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the county .
Members of the organization have been accused of violence during recent protests as well .
For example , self-described Klan leader Harry H. Rogers drove into a peaceful crowd during recent protests against police brutality in Virginia .
Under the current legal framework , neither the KKK nor Antifa can be labeled as a terrorist organization , because that is a classification that is only for foreign actors .
Domestic terrorism is recognized as a threat by the US Department of State , but there is no clear designation for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these groups also claim their right to free speech under the first amendment of the US Constitution to protect their ideology and their ability to organize .
Meanwhile , other popular petitions are calling for racially motivated crimes to be considered acts of terror .
A petition for the creation of something called “ George ’ s Law ” has gathered over 200,000 signatures .
This petition calls for the creation of a law that would make a “ racially motivated crime an act of terror ” as well as designating hate groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture , and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems .
He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast .

Over 1 Million People Sign Petition To Designate KKK As Terrorist Organization
John Vibes, Truth Theory
Waking Times
An online petition calling for the Ku Klux Klan to be labeled as a terrorist organization has gathered more than one million signatures. Pressure to identify the white supremacist group as a terrorist organization has mounted amid growing protests for racial equality, especially since US President Donald Trump promised to label Antifa as a terrorist organization.
“Terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims. We ask if ISIS or ISIL is labeled a terrorist group for their acts, then surely the KKK fit the clear description of a terrorist,” the petition reads.
The KKK has been notorious for its violence in the United States for generations, but they have begun to re-enter the public sphere in recent years, as the white supremacist movement has grown in the county. Members of the organization have been accused of violence during recent protests as well. For example, self-described Klan leader Harry H. Rogers drove into a peaceful crowd during recent protests against police brutality in Virginia.
Under the current legal framework, neither the KKK nor Antifa can be labeled as a terrorist organization, because that is a classification that is only for foreign actors. Domestic terrorism is recognized as a threat by the US Department of State, but there is no clear designation for groups within the country.
Many of these groups also claim their right to free speech under the first amendment of the US Constitution to protect their ideology and their ability to organize.
Meanwhile, other popular petitions are calling for racially motivated crimes to be considered acts of terror. A petition for the creation of something called “George’s Law” has gathered over 200,000 signatures. This petition calls for the creation of a law that would make a “racially motivated crime an act of terror” as well as designating hate groups as terrorist organizations.
About the Author
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast.
Image Source: SPLU


wakingtimes--2020-06-25--New Study Shows How Magic Mushrooms Work In The Brain To Dissolve Your Ego

New Study Shows How Magic Mushrooms Work In The Brain To Dissolve Your Ego A study published last month in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology has shown that psychedelic experiences can dissolve the ego , which is something that psychedelic advocates have been saying for decades .
In the study , researchers looked at how psilocybin affects glutamate activity in the brain .
Glutamate is the most common neurotransmitter in the brain which is thought to play a role in self-esteem and other personal traits .
The researchers found that glutamate levels seemed to fluctuate during psychedelic experiences .
The researchers used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ monitor the brains of 60 healthy volunteers .
Among many other significant findings , the researchers observed that different experiences seemed to correlate with different levels of glutamate in different parts of the brain .
In the study , the authors wrote : “ Analyses indicated that region-dependent alterations in glutamate were also correlated with different dimensions of ego dissolution .
Whereas changes in [ cortical ] glutamate were found to be the strongest predictor of negatively experienced ego dissolution , changes in hippocampal glutamate were found to be the strongest predictor of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the volunteers , they did notice a dissolution of the ego , but they are still unsure how it is linked to glutamate levels .
A previous study in 2018 , also published in the journal Psychopharmacology , showed that psychedelics tend to make people more resistant to authority .
They also found the psychedelic experience induced by these mushrooms also causes people to be more connected with nature .
These conclusions match theories that psychedelic drug users have had for many years , and if true , this could explain why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drugs .
Terrence McKenna , one of the frontrunners of the modern psychedelic age , understood the nature of this situation very well and toured around the world to speak with audiences about the wonders of psychedelic shamanism .
In one of his lectures , Terrence articulated this psychedelic inquisition quite well by saying : “ All cultures are involved in the culture game and psychedelics transcend the culture game , and whether you ’ re a citizen of Jerusalem , a Tokyo stockbroker or a tribal islander when you take psychedelic substances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more relativistically revealed to you .
And that is political dynamite .
Psychedelics challenge the assumptions of any cultural or political system and that makes them dangerous to every culture or political system .
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture , and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems .
He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast .

New Study Shows How Magic Mushrooms Work In The Brain To Dissolve Your Ego
John Vibes, Truth Theory
Waking Times
A study published last month in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology has shown that psychedelic experiences can dissolve the ego, which is something that psychedelic advocates have been saying for decades.
In the study, researchers looked at how psilocybin affects glutamate activity in the brain. Glutamate is the most common neurotransmitter in the brain which is thought to play a role in self-esteem and other personal traits. The researchers found that glutamate levels seemed to fluctuate during psychedelic experiences.
The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor the brains of 60 healthy volunteers. Among many other significant findings, the researchers observed that different experiences seemed to correlate with different levels of glutamate in different parts of the brain.
In the study, the authors wrote: “Analyses indicated that region-dependent alterations in glutamate were also correlated with different dimensions of ego dissolution. Whereas changes in [cortical] glutamate were found to be the strongest predictor of negatively experienced ego dissolution, changes in hippocampal glutamate were found to be the strongest predictor of positively experienced ego dissolution.”
Through interviews with the volunteers, they did notice a dissolution of the ego, but they are still unsure how it is linked to glutamate levels.
“Our data add to this hypothesis, suggesting that modulations of hippocampal glutamate in particular may be a key mediator in the decoupling underlying feelings of (positive) ego dissolution,” the researchers suggest.
A previous study in 2018, also published in the journal Psychopharmacology, showed that psychedelics tend to make people more resistant to authority. They also found the psychedelic experience induced by these mushrooms also causes people to be more connected with nature. These conclusions match theories that psychedelic drug users have had for many years, and if true, this could explain why government entities are so afraid of psychedelic drugs.
Terrence McKenna, one of the frontrunners of the modern psychedelic age, understood the nature of this situation very well and toured around the world to speak with audiences about the wonders of psychedelic shamanism.
In one of his lectures, Terrence articulated this psychedelic inquisition quite well by saying:
“All cultures are involved in the culture game and psychedelics transcend the culture game, and whether you’re a citizen of Jerusalem, a Tokyo stockbroker or a tribal islander when you take psychedelic substances your cultural values will suddenly be much more relativistically revealed to you. And that is political dynamite. Psychedelics challenge the assumptions of any cultural or political system and that makes them dangerous to every culture or political system.
About the Author
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast.