Consciousness Cafe - Entheogens and Psychedelic Cultural Transmissions

I have heard at least one human story of someone who
was on the beach in Sri Lanka with his child, felt
that the sea looked "wrong", and left about two hours
before the tsunami struck. This probably saved their
lives (they still got stuck in high water but it was
not life-threatening where they ended up).

Early results from the Global Consciousness Project are in.

This project records deviations from randomness by a set of random number generators around the planet. Anomalous readings appeared around the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. Anomalous readings also appeared for the tsunami event.

More information about the Global Consciousness project is at http://noosphere.princeton.edu

This monograph, referenced (under another title) in Jim deKorne's Psychedelic Shamanism, is one of the best guides to navigating the psilocybin experience I have ever read. He deals in deep detail with common internal experiences associated with mushrooms, and offers practical advice on walking that path toward wisdom. He deals in particular with the experience of entity contact and contact with "The Other" in a way that makes sense and is not overly mystical. Highly recommended.

Good quote from the paper:

Since we are living in the transition from one evolutionary stage of culture to another, we are the Ancestors of the emerging cultural form; one which we have scarcely begun to imagine as of yet. These are exciting times to be alive and we feel privileged to be able to contribute to the reemergence of one of the most vital forms of knowledge any culture has ever laid claim to: shamanic gnosis . . .

For those people interested in sustainability issues (there have been some posts here on that issue), there is going to be a project in Potugal to build a complex of 6000 apartments + restaurants, hotels, leisure facilities and the like, which will produce ZERO carbon emissions and ZERO waste. Building will start in 2005. (In addition, land will be set aside to to save an endangered species of Lynx).

For women:

I can imagine the potential tantric uses of the Audi-Oh. Dance, music, perhaps psychedelics, and orgasm could be a powerful combination.

Or how about plugging a light & sound machine into the audi-oh? Or a hemi-sync CD?

With Mind States, there are now two large psychedelic conferences in the Western hemisphere.

Coolest navigation bar I've ever used.

This looks promising though a bit on the pricey side.

The LA Times has a story today about smart drugs. They talk about Provigil, Ritalin and Aricept, as well as other drugs which are expected to come out in the next few years.

The article characterizes these drugs as "Botox for the mind", suggesting
that as baby boomers get into their 50s and beyond they will start using
these drugs to maintain their mental sharpness. Generally it takes a
favorable view towards the practice and suggests that smart drugs will
soon be a routine part of American life. Even students are expected
to benefit; in fact the article describes the widespread use of Ritalin
while taking the MCAT (for medical school admissions).

Besides being beautiful and psychedelic, this picture of the Jovian moon
Europa may be a picture of an ice sheet covering an ocean of liquid water
teaming with life. When we make telepathic contact with incomprehensibly
alien minds, they may be closer than we think. We will never know until we go.

has anybody been to this? it's only $8 and has got
> tracks by the flaming lips, spiritualized and others
> as well as visuals pulled from alex grey paintings.


You are Nucking Futz if you don't see this !! It is the most psychedelic thing in Chicago right now by a long shot. It is running at least through February 2005. Absolutely mindblowing.

Moby mixed the tracks that make it up.

Here's the playlist in order:

Radiohead, Everything in its Right Place
Audioslave, Cochise
U2, Elevation
Moby, Into the Blue (Spiritual Mix)
Stereolab, Metronomic Underground
White Zombie, Blood, Milk and Sky
Goldfrapp, Utopia
Spiritualized, Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space
Brian Eno & David Byrne, Mea Culpa
David Bowie, Heroes
Coldplay, Clocks
Fischerspooner, Emerge
Prodigy, Firestarter
Queens of the Stone Age, First It Giveth
Boards of Canada, Julie and Candy
Moby, We Are All Made of Stars
The Flaming Lips, Do You Realize??
Zwan, Honestly
Moby, God Moving Over the Face of the Waters

>From: NEWS@LISTSERV.METANEXUS.NET
> >>
>Subject: International Interdisciplinary Conference, Calcutta, India,
>July, 2006
>Consciousness, Self-Consciousness and Cultural Identity
>
>The Society for Indian Philosophy & Religion will hold an International
>Interdisciplinary Conference in Calcutta July 27-30, 2006. The Conference
>theme
>is "Consciousness, Self-Consciousness and Cultural Identity".
>
>The theme can be addressed critically, reflectively and creatively by the
>philosophical, religious and scientific traditions of the World's great
>civilizations. The program will include plenary addresses, volunteered papers,
>invited papers and panel discussions. Registered participants who are
>members of
>professional associations or societies are encouraged to submit proposals for
>holding meetings in the conference on behalf of their associations or
>societies.
>The organizers are committed to upholding the highest academic standards with
>emphasis on the exchange of ideas and dialogues among thinkers drawn from
>a wide
>range of the world's cultural traditions and movements.
>
>Possible topics include: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity, Qualitative
>aspects of Consciousness, Phenomenology of Consciousness, Theories of
>Action and
>Agency, Time Consciousness and Memory, Self, Self-Consciousness and Language,
>Consciousness, Knowledge and Reality, Social and Political dimensions of
>Consciousness, Ethics, Alterity and the Phenomenology of Obligation,
>Technology
>and Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness of Self and Other,
>Imagination, Dreaming and Altered States of Consciousness, Consciousness and
>Cognition, Physicalist/reductive vs. non-physical/non-reductive accounts of
>Consciousness, Atomistic and Holistic aspects of Consciousness, Mediations of
>Consciousness: Race,Gender and Ethnicity, Post-modern Selfhood, Relativism and
>Absolutism , Cultural Relativism, Culture and Meaning, Singularity of Culture,
>Tradition and Modernity, Culture: Descriptive and Normative Approaches,
>Values,
>Customs and Culture, Culture and Hermeneutics, Text and Interpretation,
>Globalization of Culture, Sociology of Knowledge, etc. This list is
>illustrative
>and not exhaustive.
>
>The Program Board comprises: Elysabeth Agnew (USA), David Blanks (Egypt),
>Victoria Harrison-Carter (U.K), Geoff Berry (Australia), Elysabeth Koldzak
>(Poland), Richard Libendorfer (USA), Craig Matarrese (USA), Devasish Mukherjee
>(India), Nityananda Saha (India), Joel Wilcox (USA)
>
>Registration: The advance registration fee for the conference is $100 and on
>site registration fee is $140. Conference events are currently expected to
>include a reception and an evening cultural program.
>
>We welcome your participation and suggestions. The deadline for submission of
>abstracts is May 25, 2005. The advance registration fee of $100 (due by
>October
>31, 2005) should be paid by check drawn in favor of the Society for Indian
>Philosophy and Religion mailed to the Secretary, Society for Indian Philosophy
>and Religion, 1210 Jamestowne Drive, Elon, North Carolina 27244, USA.
>If you would like to contribute a paper to this event please send an
>abstract of
>about 150 words to:
>Dr. Chandana Chakrabarti
>Society for Indian Philosophy & Religion
>E-Mail: chakraba@elon.edu
>Phone: (336) 524-9349

This is the website for the murals of Aurora Danai, the artist who put
together the Naked Anti-Slam. Pretty interesting work.

Interesting story from the UK
> Magic mushroom case judge tells prosecutor: chill
> out
>
> Mark Honigsbaum
> Wednesday December 15, 2004
>
>
> The Guardian
> The law on the distribution and sale of magic
> mushrooms was thrown into
> disarray yesterday after a court decision to stay
> the prosecution of two
> men accused of illegally selling the hallucinogenic
> fungi at a record
> shop in Gloucester.
>
> Arguing that Home Office advice to importers and
> distributors was
> "fudged", the crown court recorder Claire Miskin
> told Dennis Mardle and
> Colin Evans that the law was so ambiguous that to
> put them on trial
> amounted to an "abuse of process". She recommended
> that parliament
> consider new legislation to clarify the legal
> position.
>
> It is the first time the issue of magic mushrooms
> has reached the crown
> court, though potential court actions are pending in
> Birmingham and
> Canterbury.
>
> Mr Mardle, 52, and Mr Evans, 57, both from
> Gloucester, began selling
> magic mushrooms after reading an article in the
> Guardian last November
> which cited Home Office advice that while psilocin
> and psilocybin, the
> psychoactive constituents of the mushrooms, were
> illegal, it was "not
> illegal to sell or give away a freshly picked
> mushroom".
>
> But earlier this year the Home Office wrote to
> mushroom importers saying
> that hallucinogenic mushrooms might constitute a
> "product" under the
> Misuse of Drugs Act if they had been "cultivated,
> transported to the
> marketplace, packaged, weighed and labelled".
>
> Although the courts had previously ruled that it was
> legal to possess
> magic mushrooms except where they had been "altered
> by the hand of man",
> the Home Office also advised that merely chilling
> the mushrooms might
> constitute alteration.
>
> It was on this basis that Gloucester police raided
> Mr Mardle's and Mr
> Evans's shop, Collectors Choice, in March, seizing
> four bags of
> mushrooms and one punnet from a fridge and six
> further punnets stored in
> a cool bag behind the counter.
>
> The local prosecutor, Phillip Warren, told the court
> that while the law
> prohibited the freezing of the mushrooms, the
> legality of cooling or
> storing them in a fridge had never been tested and
> the case should go to
> trial in order to clarify the situation.
>
> However, after hearing from experts that chilling
> did not alter the
> chemical makeup of the mushrooms, Ms Miskin ruled
> that to bring the case
> to trial would be a breach of the men's rights.
> Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
> 2004

Short notice, but this sounds really interesting.

>Tuesday 14 December 2004
>ohm series presents:
>DUELING DJs @ chicago cultural center
>MEG DUGUID's DUELING DJs
>
>featuring:
>TOM PAZEN
>RADIOHIRO
>
>this event will feature these two djs playing separate sets to 15 wireless
>headsets apiece (i.e. no sound to all other observers). you will be able
>to sign up to rent/use these headsets for 30 min on a first-come
>first-serve basis. bring a valid state ID for equipment rental. otherwise
>just enjoy the spectacle.
>
>with chill-out room featuring a video mixing installation from the VIDEO
>JANITORS, and remixed holiday songs and winter-themed music.
>
>chicago cultural center, in the randolph cafe
>77 e randolph
>all ages
>7 pm - 9 pm
>free

A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness : From Impostor
Poodles to Purple Numbers

by V. S. Ramachandran

Editorial Review From Publishers Weekly

What does an amputee who still feels a phantom limb
have in common with an avant-garde artist, or a
schizophrenic who claims to be controlled by alien
implants, or an autistic child who can draw a
hyper-realistic horse? According to neuroscientist
Ramachandran (coauthor, Phantoms in the Brain), named
by Newsweek one of the 100 people to watch in the 21st
century, the answer lies deep in the physical
structures of the brain, and his new book offers a
thought-provoking survey of his area of research.
Through examples, anecdotes and conjecture,
Ramachandran aims "to make neuroscience... more
accessible to a broad audience." In this he succeeds
admirably, explaining how the roots of both
psychological disorders and aesthetic accomplishment
can be located in the various regions of the brain and
the connections (or lack thereof) between them. The
text is engaging and readable , feeling as though
Ramachandran had sat down for an afternoon to explain
his research over tea (no surprise, as the book grew
out of the author's 2003 BBC Reith lectures). Though
the topic of neuroscience might initially seem
daunting, readers who enjoy science popularization in
the vein of Oliver Sacks, Richard Dawkins (both of
whom enthusiastically blurb this book) and Stephen Jay
Gould will find much to appreciate here.

http://www.star.niu.edu/campus/articles/041504-psyched.asp

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Get psyched!
Class about mind-altering drugs opened to all NIU students for fall

Article by:
Jamie Luchsinger - Staff Reporter
• jluchsinger@northernstar.info

LSD, marijuana, ecstasy, ayahuasca, DXM and peyote are among the many drugs discussed in Psychedelic Mindview.

Psychedelic Mindview, once an honors-only seminar about psychedelic drugs, now is being offered to all NIU students starting this fall.

Graduates and undergraduates are welcome to sign up. Although it’s not an honors seminar, honors students still may take the course under an honors contract with the professor for honors credit, said Thomas Roberts, the current Psychedelic Mindview professor.

Only one section is being offered and only 25 seats are available, so students are advised to register early, Roberts said.

EPS 492-1 is not in the undergraduate course catalog and only can be found on T.R.A.C.S., Roberts said. In addition, EPS 592-1 for graduates is listed as a seminar in education psychology. Four committees are in the process of approving the class to be a catalog course, Roberts said.

Roberts has taught the class since 1979 and said he hopes to teach students that psychedelic drugs have beneficial uses as well as dangers.

“It’s a complex area that intersects with almost every discipline,” Roberts said.

Psychedelic Mindview isn’t difficult, said Mary Thomas, a junior anthropology major who currently is enrolled in the class.

“But it does challenge what our culture has taught us about psychedelics,” Thomas said.

The class requires a higher level of thinking, Roberts said, and students will run across new ideas. The biggest challenge for students is entering the class with very little knowledge about psychedelic drugs besides what they were taught in the D.A.R.E. program, Roberts said.

Psychedelic Mindview gives an opposite spin on what most people already know about drugs, said Dave Della Terza, a junior communication major and a student in the class.

“I’ve learned that psychedelics can be used to help people and that what we were taught isn’t always true,” Thomas said.

Both Thomas and Della Terza recommend the class. It’s a very open and unstructured class that allows students to talk about what they are interested in and doesn’t rely strictly on lecture, Thomas said.

The class helps students understand drugs in a different light and touches on four main aspects of psychedelics ­ the nature of the human mind, creativity, social and political background of the 1960s and psychotherapy use, Roberts said.

“I think I’ve learned a lot about the potential of psychedelic drugs in use for medical reasons and, if controlled properly, it could really benefit many people,” junior meteorology major Matt Lacke said.

Students are required to do quite a bit of reading, Roberts said. “The Doors of Perception” by Aldous Huxley; “Storming Heaven” by Jay Stevens; “Realms of the Human Unconscious” by Stanislav Grof; and “Psychoactive Sacramentals,” edited by Roberts himself, are among the books assigned.

Students will choose a class-related book and present a book review to the class, Roberts said. An individual paper that relates a specific topic to Grof’s view of the mind also will be completed.

A few videos, some lecture, class discussion, Internet field trips and many stimulating visuals related to psychedelics will be presented in class as well, Roberts said. Test formats will consist of a class discussion and either an in-class essay or group writing, Roberts said.

Psychedelic Mindview was offered in the past but wasn’t available to the general student population until the early- to mid-1990s, Roberts said. The class will continue to be offered to all students as long as the departmental schedule allows for it, he said. Similar classes have been offered at other colleges but never lasted, Roberts said.

“The class is very insightful and it’s very different from your run-of-the-mill liberal arts and sciences,” Della Terza said.


© 2004 Northern Star. All Rights Reserved.

Thanks to G.D.

http://www.12net.gr/kafkalides/
 
http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/kafkalides01/preface.htm
 
http://www.isppm.de/

The UDV church has once again had affirmed by the
Supreme Court its legal right to conduct the
psychedelic ayahuasca rite.

> My dear supporters, family and friends;
> At 1:44 pm Eastern Standard Time today,
> December 10th 2004, the entire Supreme Court of The
> United States convened and determined to deny the
> Department of Justice's request for that Court's
> further intervention in the UDV's legal case. The
> stay that Justice Breyer had temporarily granted on
> December 1st is now vacated (lifted). The UDV, under
> Protective Order from the Federal District Court of
> New Mexico, (twice affirmed by the United States
> Court of Appeals) will now be free to practice our
> religion in this country.
> It is my profound privilege and honor to share
> this good news with each of you. In a time where
> many have seen the increasing cultural influence of
> darkness, ignorance and intolerance, the Holy Light
> of Goodness has once again been affirmed. I extend
> my heartfelt thanks to each of you for your care,
> interest and most sincere support.
> With Love and in Peace,
> Jeffrey Bronfman

> ETHAN NADELMANN SPEAKING EVENT: CURRENT ISSUES IN
> U.S. DRUG POLICY
>
> WHEN: December 15, 2004 9 - 10 a.m.
> WHERE: Roosevelt University, Congress Lounge, 2nd
> Floor, 430 S. Michigan Avenue,
> Chicago, IL 60605
> INFO: To RSVP, please contact the RSVP line at:
> (312) 341-2457
>
> Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann will
> discuss the crucial drug-related issues facing the
> nation.
>
> "Let's even stop trying to get closer to a drug-free
> society and instead just accept that drugs are here
> to stay. Then we can focus on reducing the harm both
> of drug use and of drug prohibition." - Ethan
> Nadelmann to The Washington Post.
>
> Described by Rolling Stone as "the point man" for
> drug policy reform efforts, Ethan Nadelmann is
> widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug
> policy reform both in the United States and abroad.
> Nadelmann has been invited to Chicago by the
> Institute for Metropolitan Affairs at Roosevelt
> University, and the Midwest Harm Reduction
> Institute.

Yow! Book explosion. Here's another good one, a new book by R.U. Sirius, co-founder of Mondo 2000 and speaker at the 2002 Mind States conference.

Counterculture Through the Ages : From Abraham to Acid House
by KEN GOFFMAN, DAN JOY

Review
“In an age of corporate cool-hunting and target-marketed faux rebellion, along comes an inspirational work of scholarship to remind us of just how beyond ‘cool’ true rebels really are, and have always been. I am forever grateful to Ken Goffman for serving as my first guide through the starlit mire of countercultural thought and activity. Read this book, by all means. He knows his way around.”
–DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, author of Cyberia, Media Virus, Ecstasy Club, and Nothing Sacred

“I read Ken Goffman’s least musings with utterly focused, indeed almost reverent attention.”
–BRUCE STERLING, author of The Zenith Angle and Tomorrow Now

“Being of the same energy field myself, I now throw a sack full of gold dust into the arena and dare anyone to be either funnier or smarter than this R. U. Sirius.”
–ANDREI CODRESCU

“This is a brilliant book. R. U. Sirius lived and created the cyberpunk culture in the 1980s. Now he and coauthor Dan Joy have written a sweeping history of countercultures through the ages, starting with the myth that still helps define our relationship with technology, that of the fire-snatching hacker Prometheus. Defying authority with creative edge has been a powerful force throughout history, and R. U. Sirius captures the magic with the authentic insight of someone who's been a rider on that wave.”
-Walter Isaacson, former chairman and ceo of CNN, author of Benjamin Franklin: an American Life

"Edge-thinker and media rabble-rouser Ken Goffman has done us all a great service with his entertaining and enlightening book Counterculture Through the Ages. With passion and wry humor, Goffman unfurls a secret history of rebels, ranters, mystics, and bohos united by their distrust of authority. By placing more recent social struggles in this juicy (and sometimes hilarious) context, Goffman and coauthor Dan Joy reveal the deeper dimensions of our current quest for freedom and fun in a shrinking world of surveillance and control."
-Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information




amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375507582/qid=1102652105/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-4595373-4591303?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


review: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49813-2004Dec8.html

Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age 1945-2000

By Martin Torgoff

Simon & Schuster, 545 pages, $27.95

Chronicling the irrepressible onslaught of mind-altering substances from the end of World War II through the close of the century, Torgoff (whose previous publishing efforts have centered around rockers Elvis Presley and John Cougar Mellencamp) intersperses the personal with the historical. Laying the groundwork with his own recollections of indulgence beginning in the late 1960s, the author flashes back to the Beat era, which he asserts opened the door for all that followed. Interviews with the obscure and celebrated add color and detail to the chronicle. Here's Herbert Huncke, the unapologetic hustler and heroin addict who lurked on the periphery of '50s bohemian scene and turned up as a character in William Burroughs' pulp memoir Junkie. Into the 1960s, there's acid guru Timothy Leary, poet Allan Ginsburg, record producer Paul Rothchild, Woodstock MC Wavy Gravy, and others caught up in a wave of revolutionary experimentation and excess. The '70s leads to the cocaine craze (embodied here by party girl Suzie Ryan), which begets drug wars (with plenty of casualties on both sides), Just Say No, the crack epidemic, and rave culture. While Torgoff's tome is too capricious to serve as the final word on America's drug obsession, it's eminently readable and entertaining, thanks to its expansive, pop-culture-informed tone. There's an almost insane momentum to this tale, with dozens of astonishing twists and turns. Imagine Jimmy Carter's drug czar, Dr. Peter Bourne, snorting cocaine at a party thrown the by pot legalization group NORML. Then picture George H.W. Bush's point man on drugs, William Bennett, remarking in an interview that it would be "morally plausible" to behead drug dealers. So much for moderation. --Steven Stolder

A new book on American "drug culture"

Here's a review: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~28~2572568,00.html

On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743230108/qid=1102651651/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-4595373-4591303

I thought this was a nice counterpoise to our discussion of Blackmore:

Thu Dec 9, 4:57 PM ET

By RICHARD N. OSTLING, AP Religion Writer

NEW YORK - A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God ­ more or less ­ based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

 At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.

Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.

There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.

Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"

The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.

The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.

The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.

This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Books.

Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.

Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."

Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.

A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15.

Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all.

Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.

___

On the Net:

Varghese page: http://www.thewonderoftheworld.com

Infidels on Flew: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/index.shtml

>From: "Aurora Danai" teridanai (AT) muralivegot (DOT) com
>
>
>>
>what: NAKED POETRY ANTI SLAM
>when: FRIDAY DEC 10, 2004
>where: 3829 N. BROADWAY
>(2 blocks s. of irving park above strawdog theatre)
>time: 8 PM PERFORMANCE
> 11 PM DANCE PARTY
>cost: 10$ DONATION
>
>do i have to be naked to attend?:
>while all performers will be partially or totally nude, and audience nudity
>and participation is ENCOURAGED, you may be as nude or clothed as you are
>comfortable with. "BARE AS YOU DARE"
>
>Naked Poetry Anti-Slam is a NON SEXUAL, NON COMPETITIVE space for gentle and
>sensitive people to share their ponderances.
>Come be enjoy our giant loft, bubble machine, art walls, body painting, and
>Chicago's hottest Banghra DJ KENNY DREAD!! There are three rules: 1) no
>cameras 2) no drunk puking 3) no unsolicited sexual advances
>Anyone who doesn't follow these rules WILL BE EJECTED. YOU MUST BE 21+ WITH
>ID IF YOU ARE GOING TO DRINK.
>
>PS Naked Poetry Anti-Slam will be featured on WGN CHANNEL 9 Morning News
>between 7-8 am, this Friday Dec. 10th!

In the Goa article I posted recently http://www.techgnosis.com/index_hedonic.html there is a great paragraph that shows how psychedelic experience can take you completely off the map, not shore up spiritual preconceptions but rather introduce disturbing new ideas that really don't reinforce beliefs or make one sleep better at night:

reminded me of the almost sinister edge to psy-trance's science-fictional imaginary, an edge most visible in the thankfully fading images and lore of the Grey aliens. Such images should curb any easy attempt to sacralize the dance floor as either a utopian site or an essentially archaic one. This is a music, a consciousness, ghosted by futurity, which for contemporary (post)humans has become a great abyss, however full of marvels. In many ways, this consciousness is a testament to the seriousness of the scene's psychedelia, because serious psychedelia plumbs many spaces far outside conventional markers of the spiritual. If more mainstream clubbers are willing to sacralize the Teletubby bliss of MDMA, then psy-trance dancers tip their hats to the cosmic reptiles that snicker eternally from the inky depths of psilocybin. Shamanspace is no walk in the park.