The war on SOME Drugs

Written By: Diogenes
Date: 2007-03-17 10:49:03
<a href="/article/4902914-the-war-on-some-drugs">Article Link</a>

Whoever perpetrated the marijuana hoodwink on parliamentarians, succeeded also, by extension, hoodwinked all who accepted, without question, the pronouncement of those who perpetrated the “hoodwink”

Justice Southin makes a valid observation with her pronouncement of the hoodwinking of parliamentarians and the making of much work, paid work, for lawyers, judges and peace officers and her observation deserve our considerations also.

What were and are the motives for perpetuating this ‘Marijuana Hoodwink’ on legislators?
Why was and is it done?
Why the subterfuge?
Whose ox is being gored?
Whose agendas threatened?

Was the “hoodwink” used to create an altered state of conciseness also, a lower state of consciousness? For it must be considered consciousness can be dampened as well as heightened, must it not?

Away back in 1972, 31 years ago Dr. Andrew Weil wrote “The Natural Mind, a new way of looking at drugs and the higher consciousness”. Here we are, thirty some odd years later and the subjects is still debated from the same positions, and while doing so hundreds of lives have been ruined. Ruined not so much by the substances ingested as by system of laws based on emotionally charged argumentations and biases served up with a healthy dollop of junk science.

It is well noted in North American culture and perhaps world culture as well that people use mind-altering substances and behaviors as a means of escape. I must strongly emphasis the word escape here. It really does not matter whether the means used is staring at mindless televised fluff, guzzling beer, sexing, or “comfort food” binges. The desire to shift ones conscious is pervasive.

Rarely considered are the possible *beneficial aspects* of perception change by the deliberate use of psycho-active substances deliberately used as a means to mind expansion.

There are also, and mostly ignored, myriad amounts of evidence in support of the benefits of perceptual changes occurring with the use of mind-altering substances and practices.
Perception depends on ones perspective.

Here are two dramatic examples of diametrically opposed and polarized positions cited in Weil’s book-The Natural Mind

“When I was conducting human experiments with marihuana in Boston in 1968, a Federal Narcotics Bureau agent told me that no matter how my experiments came out, he would remain convinced that “marihuana makes people aggressive and violent.” My research had nothing to do with that possibility, but I asked him what his evidence was for his belief. He had one piece of evidence dating back from the early 1950s, when he had been seized by a curiosity to watch people smoke the drug. (His official duties were exclusively concerned with large-scale underworld heroin traffic and he had never come into contact with actual users of marihuana.) Accordingly, he had disguised himself as a beatnik and made his way to a Greenwich Village tea party. When he revealed himself as a Narcotic Bureau agent, “everyone there became aggressive and violent.” Most people laugh when I tell this story because the logical fallacy is obvious. But when I tried to point it out to this well-meaning man in Boston, he said, “That’s what I saw with my own eyes.”

“In February 1970 I attended a conference in California at which a young, radical sociologist presented data on drug use in American communes. He stated his belief that “marihuana often facilitates the development of communal life.” Asked to give evidence on this point, he explained that the question of who was going to wash the dishes was representative of problems encountered in making communes work. He said he had visited communes where the problem had been solved “by having everyone getting stoned on marihuana and make a game of dish washing,” and he added that “marihuana is known to aid in the performance of repetitive tasks.” When I objected to this last statement, he replied, “Well, that’s what I saw it with my own eyes.”

To continue with Weil’s observations –
“When you ask a question in research and the data comes back in this unhelpful way… you have asked the wrong questions.” Or made to wrong assumptions.
And so it is with the desire to alter ones consciousness.*****

A large part of the problem, as I see it, is the use of such missives as absolutes as in the expression ‘get high’. ‘Get high’ says nothing and has little positive charge to the listener whose perception is fixed on an assumed net loss off faculties. This ‘fixed-in-belief’ attitude becomes unshakeable or in other words “Right.” People who smoke pot become “drug users” and that label takes on a life of its own including all the intended negative aspects and suspicions of those who would make decisions on behalf of those who use non-pharmaceutical drugs.

The “hoodwink” is now firmly fixed in consciousness.

Perhaps when the stoners vocabulary advances “ OH WOW” and “Far Out Man!” and he is able to describe the subtle nuance in his perceptual shifts, then those of the choose to limit perceptions might become open their minds to a views other than the ones they now hold.

Whether Madame Justice knows it, or not, she has exposed a very important point also addressed by Andrew Weil-

“The relative merits of straight versus stoned thinking is by far the most important of all of the garbled issues of the drug controversy, and it is the most anxiety-provoking. The anxiety arises entirely from ego-based consciousness because it concerns the deeply felt issue of self-esteem. When people who use drugs claim to have reached a higher consciousness or greater awareness, they automatically produce negative thoughts of lower levels of consciousness and lesser awareness in people who do not use drugs. Thus, these groups become polarized and begin to fight with each other symbolically, ritually, or even physically. When people are fighting they often fail to notice important things, such as the evidence that higher levels of consciousness exist and are available to all of us.”

In Roger Bacon's terms, the Middle Ages held argument to be the primary path to knowledge: argument from authority. Experience, the other mode of knowledge to which Bacon refers, was slowly beginning to make its way into Western life. We can get a feeling for the medieval mode of knowledge from the anecdote about the stable boy who heard the scholars arguing about how many teeth a horse had. The scholars consulted Aristotle concerning this weighty issue, while the stable boy went to the barn and counted the actual number of teeth a horse had. After reporting his findings to the learned gentlemen, the stable boy was, of course, summarily dismissed, because experience had nothing to do with knowledge. Knowledge was found in authority and system.

Is knowledge the hoodwinkery to be found was found in the aforementioned “authority and system”?

Some and perhaps most of Humankind have developed intellect to the point that it believes the mind can know ultimate reality. But others are convinced that the mind has become the dupe of its own ideas and assumptions.
To be sure, there are subtleties which a mind-absorbed or ego-obsessed consciousness is simply incapable of registering.

I use the following quote by the American philosopher William James to underline my point regarding the states of consciousness. Quite possibly there is a parallel line of reasoning similar to the one in linguistic thought that states- “It is not WHAT is said, but rather HOW it is said that directs the result.”

For states of consciousness, might we not chose to consider it is not “what is used”, but rather “HOW it is used” rather than attacking with a morality borne of fear of steeped in ignorance.

Pay attention to the words of William James the American philosopher
“….One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens; there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge toward a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance.”

At this time I present a radical and provocative departure from the status quo thinking of today-
Perhaps all this anti-drug hoopla has its purpose in holding society in a LOWER state of consciousness and hence hoodwinked, so it, society, and their thoughts are easier to mold. I underline my pondering with the following words from Dr. Norman Livergood, a man concerned with promoting what he calls Enlightened Thinking.

“Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the conspiracy to reduce consciousness to intellectual awareness of the physical world has been in evidence for at least five thousand years. Over the centuries the spiritual powers that Perennialist savants possess have been filtered out of most people, so that we now assume that our narrow, tightly-bound consciousness is normal and natural. "Ordinary consciousness" is "normal" only in the strict sense of "statistically most frequent," not inherently "good" or "natural" as the term is sometimes misconstrued to mean. When contrasted with supernormal consciousness experienced by some people, our current rigid, intellect-based awareness is highly abnormal and unnatural.”

“Human beings possess a whole range of dormant, "hidden powers" of which they are usually unaware. Experience of these latent powers occurs accidentally or to those who learn the necessary procedures. These powers include inspiration, clairaudience, clairvoyance, psychometry, precognition, and telepathy. In his book, Beyond the Occult, Colin Wilson conjectures that we have gradually lost these powers ". . . because we no longer need them." On the contrary, we have needed and continue to need such powers--for the completion of our potential and for participating in human evolution.

Our psychic powers have become forgotten and atrophied from neglect because the vast conspiracy of the ideology of Mammon (material wealth as the highest value) has conditioned untold generations to believe that mind-bound consciousness of the physical world is all there is. Non-ordinary states were said to be "psychotic"--evil, abnormal and debilitating. Persons who even spoke of spiritual or psychic powers were classed as weird, insane, and perverse.

We have very little understanding of "consciousness," since it is by definition a nonmaterial quality or state of being aware. Scientists study only the physical correlates of consciousness, such as brain waves, not consciousness itself.
From their early experiments with LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline at Harvard, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert discovered the importance of set and setting:

o "Set is a person's expectations of what a drug will do to him, considered in the context of his whole life."

o "Setting is the environment, both physical and social, in which a drug is taken." 2 The Natural Mind page 29 Andrew Weil-(disk 4)

Without the concepts of "set" and "setting”, we're unable to explain why drugs vary so unpredictably in their physiological and psychological effects on various users.
"...the combined effects of set and setting can easily overshadow the pharmacological effects of a drug as stated in a pharmacology text. One can arrange set and setting so that a dose of an amphetamine will produce sedation or a dose of barbiturate stimulation.” 3 The Natural Mind Page 29, Andrew weil

Thus it's absurd to speak of "the effect of marijuana," "the effect of meditation," and so on. The "effect" depends on what users expect and on the expectations of the social setting in which they take the psychedelic drug or carry out specific procedures. But federal and state governments have continued to oppose any use of psychedelic drugs, claiming that they're all bad under all circumstances. Our nation's leaders continue to push the mind-and body-destroying "official" drugs of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, among many others created by a pharmaceutical industry which buys politicians in large economy quantities.

Mind-Altering Substances
With the proper set and setting, psychedelic drugs can produce an altered sense of reality. Such experiences of altered consciousness usually last from one hour to several days. Though alcohol is often used in a negative "setting" such as at a bar or a party, where the expectation is aggressive behavior, with the proper set and setting alcohol can promote a heightened state of awareness.

One of the great mysteries of human life, as Michael Pollan explains, is that "there are plants in the garden that manufacture molecules with the power to change the subjective experience of reality we call consciousness." 6

"In ancient times, people all over the world grew or gathered sacred plants (and fungi) with the power to inspire visions or conduct them on journeys to other worlds; some of these people, who are sometimes called shamans, returned with the kind of spiritual knowledge that underwrites whole religions."

At the beginning of most of the world's religions we find some kind of psychoactive plant or fungus: the peyote cactus, the Amanita muscaria and psilocybin mushrooms, the ergot fungus, the fermented grape, ayahuasca, and cannabis. Ancient people experimented with these psychotropic (mind-altering) substances to achieve a heightened state consciousness.

Some of the most important Greek thinkers--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Euripides, and others--participated in the Mysteries of Eleusis. The Mysteries consisted of initiation rituals in which the participants ingested a powerful mind-altering potion--probably an alkaloid produced by a fungus (ergot) that closely resembles LSD in its chemical makeup and effects. The ecstatic ritual was so powerful that those who participated kept their vow never to reveal its nature.

Under the influence of psychotropic substances, humankind has invented or evolved new ideas and paradigms--new ways of viewing the world. The human mind, we have now discovered, has a built-in receptivity to a particular plant: marijuana. The evolution of this discovery is fascinating.

In the 1960s an Israeli neuroscientist named Raphael Mechoulam identified the chemical compound responsible for the mind-altering effects of marijuana. He named it delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, a module with a structure unlike any found in nature before or since.

Then in 1988 Allyn Howlett, a researcher at the St. Louis University Medical School, discovered a specific receptor for THC in the human brain--a kind of nerve cell that THC binds to as if it were a molecular key fitting into a lock. When this binding takes place, the nerve cell is activated.

The brain has a number of neuronal networks involving compounds such as dopamine, serotonin, and the endorphins, among others. Howlett discovered a new cannabinoid receptor network in the human brain which triggers mind-altering effects when THC is present.

Thirty years after his discovery of THC, Raphael Mechoulam--working with collaborator, William Devane--found that the brain produces its own THC-like substance which he named anandimide, from the Sanskrit word for "inner bliss."

We have to wonder why a plant such as marijuana evolved in exactly the way it has so that it produces an altered state of consciousness in humans. Among many other reasons is surely that this has resulted in humans having an intense and abiding interest in it, to make sure that it evolves in the direction of enhanced power to alter human mind states.

The U.S. government's hysterical, criminal warfare against marijuana involves taking away civil liberties through property confiscation, incarceration resulting from suspicion only, and using military personnel in contravention of the posse commitatus act. Along with its struggle to keep marijuana an illegal drug--so the power elite can reap huge profits from its sale on the black market--there may also be a subliminal realization of the strange and powerful connection the human brain has to THC. As the number of people using marijuana continues to grow, the old, violence-prone ways of thinking may be challenged and replaced by more positive ways of viewing the world.
The important factor in all of these approaches is whether or not the techniques or substances assist us in achieving a positive altered state of consciousness which provides an insight into deeper spiritual dimensions within us.

(c) by Aint Sayin/Diogenes

Very interesting read Dio, and original which is always refreshing. I love to
read other people's thoughts and opinions, especially when they have been
well thought out and well researched.

There are a couple of questions which come to my mind after reading this,
if people are using marijuana to alter their consciousness and it creates such
beneficial results, why don't more people use the awareness in a positive way?
Why has our society eroded in the negative fashion it has when so many
people for the last 40 years or so have been using it?

Do you think that the negative labels and risk to personal safety interfere with
the outcome of such experiences? I would expect that with so many people
using it for so many years that we would have a more aware society, more
positive, and yet that doesn't appear to be the result.

Where are the deep thinkers? Those who explore issues and realities and offer
either solutions or new ideas cannot simply be hiding out and waiting for the
results of their experiences to be accepted? Forward thinking requires us to
step out even when it is unpopular, and usually a new idea is unpopular.

Anyway thanks so much for posting this...excellent work Dio.

---
"aaaah and the whisper of thousands of tiny voices became a mighty deafening roar and they called it 'freedom'!"' Canadians Acting Humanely at home & everywhere

I found this statement to be so very appropriate and very funny! Quote from
the article;

“When I was conducting human experiments with marihuana in Boston in
1968, a Federal Narcotics Bureau agent told me that no matter how my
experiments came out, he would remain convinced that “marihuana makes
people aggressive and violent.” My research had nothing to do with that
possibility, but I asked him what his evidence was for his belief. He had one
piece of evidence dating back from the early 1950s, when he had been seized
by a curiosity to watch people smoke the drug. (His official duties were
exclusively concerned with large-scale underworld heroin traffic and he had
never come into contact with actual users of marihuana.) Accordingly, he had
disguised himself as a beatnik and made his way to a Greenwich Village tea
party. When he revealed himself as a Narcotic Bureau agent, “everyone there
became aggressive and violent.” Most people laugh when I tell this story
because the logical fallacy is obvious. But when I tried to point it out to this
well-meaning man in Boston, he said, “That’s what I saw with my own eyes.”

---
"aaaah and the whisper of thousands of tiny voices became a mighty deafening roar and they called it 'freedom'!"' Canadians Acting Humanely at home & everywhere

The War on SOME drugs is like cancer research: both have become entities unto themselves, and the original intent lies somewhere back in the dust. Perish the thought that either cancer be beaten or drugs un-illegalized.........

---
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
-Max Planck

Ok I will take us further of topic with these sites 
 
 
<a href="http://www.sharinghealth.com/researchers/clark.html">http://www.sharinghealth.com/researchers/clark.html</a> 
 
<a href="http://www.cancertutor.com/Cancer02/DandelionRoot.html">http://www.cancertutor.com/Cancer02/DandelionRoot.html</a> 
 
And this one is a must see 
 
 
<a href="http://www.healthwatcher.net/Quackerywatch/">http://www.healthwatcher.net/Quackerywatch/</a> 
 
and this 
 
 
<a href="http://columbus.craigslist.org/vnn/282972758.html">http://columbus.craigslist.org/vnn/282972758.html</a> 
 
 
Hold on CWC 
I will answer your excellent questions 
--- "And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan." 
 
* George Bu

There is, of course, a history behind how the article came about. 
At the time I I wrote it I was approached by the originator of a Salon* in Kelowna to present a topic for discussion. I was very flattered by the offer as all those before me were professionals and recognised in their fields. 
 
 
Well to make a long story longer … 
After sweating blood to first come up with a topic and then committing it to paper , after the assistance of a teacher of English I had what I placed here. 
I’d love to say it was a resounding success and cannot for it was rejected as being to controversial, (and maybe a tad to ‘in your face’) 
 
 
I’ve kept it anyway because I am proud of my first serious attempt at overcoming a deep rooted fear of writing. 
 
Now, to answer your questions Catherine … 
I believe that oft times we ask to wrong questions, and do so because we have been programmed to not enquire after knowledge labeled “Taboo” 
 
 
Start here 
 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna</a> 
 
<a href="http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/mckenna/">http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/mckenna/</a> 
 
This one especially 
<a href="http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:7EIUYkFyGIcJ:www.alchemylab.com/cannabis_stone3.htm+Monks+Hashish+use&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3">http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:7EIUYkFyGIcJ:www.alchemylab.com/cannabis_stone3.htm+Monks+Hashish+use&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3</a> 
 
The Alchemist Monk Francois Rabelais 
One brave philosopher who dared to challenge the ban on hemp in medieval Europe was the Benedictine monk and qualified Bachelor of Medicine, Francois Rabelais (1494-1553). Rabelais was familiar with the alchemical writings of the Sufi s, via Avicienna, as well as the medieval Templars , referring to the good knights of the Templar a number of times in his works, indicating he was most likely sympathetic with their cause. 
Like the Templars , Rabelais suffered the harsh persecution from both the Roman Catholic Church and the civil authorities. The Papacy and political rulers were angered over the contents of his famous books Gargantua and Pantagruel , which made a mockery of both church and state and also contained many hidden references to things occult. We are here more concerned with the books of good Pantagruel , which is based around a parody of the Grail myth. The books of Pantagruel also contain references to hemp which were written esoterically. 
The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais is an esoteric work, a novel in cant. The good cure of Meudon reveals himself in it as a great initiate , as well as a first class cabalist. — Fulcanelli, Master Alchemist, Le Mystere des Cathederales 
The 20th century alchemist, Fulcanelli also referred to this language of cant, as the Language of the Birds, echoing the Sufi author Attar’s Conference of Birds (see chapter 14, Moslem World), a mystic ode to hashish . Author Kenneth Rayner Johnson comments on this language of cant in The Fulcanelli Phenomena: 
All initiate s, Fulcanelli states, spoke in cant — including the masons who built the cathedrals and who were the operative predecessors of today's speculative Freemasons. Eventually he maintains, the “language verte” or “green language” (green...being the color of initiation in the secret societies referred to earlier) became the mode of speech of the poor, humble and oppressed. An indication of this fact can be discerned in the use of “rythming slang” among London’s Cockneys, or in the jar¬gon of “hip” or “jive-talk” originally derived from American Negro blues artists and other musicians. 
Fulcanelli says: 
“It remains the language of a minority of individuals, living outside accepted laws, conventions, customs and etiquette. The term voyous (street-arabs), that is to say voyants (seers), is applied to them and the even more expressive term, sons or children of the sun….” — Quoted by Kenneth Rayner Johnson, The Fulcanelli Phenomenon 
<a href="http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/2.htm">http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/2.htm</a> 
 
 
 
 
It is not so much that there isn’t info available as it is that the info has been restricted. 
 
*<a href="http://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_archives/articles/2977-1.html">http://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_archives/articles/2977-1.html</a> 
 
 
ps thank you for the compliments CWC 
most encouraging!--- "And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan." 
 
* George Bu

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_notable_drug_culture_figures">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_notable_drug_culture_figures</a> 
 
visit and ... well you'll see 
 
--- "And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan." 
 
* George Bu

Thanks, Dio. This certainly is an eloquent and vital commentary (but where are your footnotes?).
I have also been researching these phenomena, i.e., evolutionary levels of consciousness which are alternate/synchronous reality. May I hurriedly add a few (unpolished) comments before getting back to my book (which is also about recognizing and enabling the transcendent evolution of humanity)?
That’s a great quote from William James. He seems to be building on the work of the nineteenth century pioneer Richard Maurice Buck, who discovered his very own "cosmic consciousness" by accident one evening in Ontario. Today Dr. David Hawkins further develops the Buck/James theme and applies quantum physics to partially explain such different realities, as does Michael Talbot in The Holographic Universe. Dr. Hawkins claims to have experienced a life-changing “subjective” metaphysical experience that awoke him to the possibilities, the beauty, bliss and the awesome realization of unity. Regardless, none of these men referenced drugs as they developed their deep insights into the possibility of the evolution of the human spirit in conjunction with the devolution of synthetic cultural and intellectual boundaries.
And, Dr. Livergood is certainly on target when he speaks of the dominators’ need to silence the "perennialist savants" in order to maintain a beneficial status quo for those hopelessly bound to the material world. All of these great pioneers are concerned with moving the human situation forward for the greater good. It is important that Dr. L. discussed ‘perennialist savants’, which is an implicit recognition that some people have somehow achieved levels of consciousness and awareness, truly “supernormal consciousness”, that are simply way beyond almost everybody else. Society dictates that they must be labeled “wrong”, seen as a threat and demonized no matter what (I watched Ayn Rand’s 1943 Gary Cooper version of The Fountainhead last night just before reading your submission here).
In answer to CWC’s earlier question, it is the specific level of development of an individual’s consciousness as well as the “set” and “setting” that determines the ultimate physical/mental/metaphysical experience through partaking consciousness raising drugs; in fact, neophytes’ expectations are obviously predetermined by their purpose in seeking the mystical psychedelic experience, and a higher purpose (through a higher understanding) will always propel one into a higher level of consciousness, whether it is a psychedelically induced mental state or a true “out of body” spiritual experience achieved without strong drugs. Which brings up a glaring omission - you did not even mention the validity of out of the body experiences even though you did discuss the demonization of “psychotic” non-ordinary states of mind.
Perhaps it would be helpful to imagine a continuum of our potential levels/dimensions of being: normal everyday reality, slightly elevated cannabis levels of awareness, various intensities of psychedelic levels of awareness, out of body near-death experiences, “perennialist savant” consciousness and (finally?) the complete spiritual oneness experienced through Transcendent Evolution (my original term for this ultimate and humbling out of body experience), “the kind of spiritual knowledge that underwrites whole religions” as Michael Pollan succinctly puts it.
However, for such valid spiritual knowledge to be appropriately applied on a universal secular level (for this primordial personal knowledge suddenly becomes unattainable when rationed in its diluted and miscreant “organized religion” form) in order to prevent mankind from driving ourselves to extinction, the world needs a foundational psychosystem revolution from the sub-conscious upwards.
Let the games continue! Will mankind turn out to be Champions or chumps?
Thanks, again. Michael

---
Michael

“…but where are your footnotes?)”
Good question I hadn’t even considered footnote until I was doing more research early this am. And saw footnotes in some of the articles I was reading and made the connection that I should have added some in my article even though it was only a basis for discussion and a guideline for that purpose.

Hell, Up till about five years ago I was categorised as a functional illiterate. Wear that hat for fifty years and see what it does to the psyche’

It has only been in recent year that I discovered the concept of Indigo Adults and Indigo Children.
Had there been an enlightened educator in the 40’s and 50’s when I went to school…
But there weren’t! So there!

My verbal skills have served me well over the years, but I did miss out on a lot by not being able to express myself through writing.

“Let the games continue! Will mankind turn out to be Champions or chumps?”

I hold out no hope for humanity as I’ve seen precious little to do so. I do though know there are those among us who have and will continue to evolve as long as they have that rarest of commodities: an open mind

I stumbled on Norman Livergood a while back and quite admire his positions and was fortunate enough to d/l the perennial traditions while it was on line

---
"And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan."

* George Bu

Sorry about being so particular about the footnotes, Diogenes, just curious about the exact source of the good quotes.

You're correct, we can only do what we can do if we are able, and that means educated in a way that may not even be available in today's world. Society does really need to be woken up, though. Only wholesale mental evolution will prevent disaster.

---
Michael

“Sorry about being so particular about the footnotes, Diogenes, just curious about the exact source of the good quotes”. 
 
“You're correct, we can only do what we can do if we are able, and that means educated in a way that may not even be available in today's world. Society does really need to be woken up, though” 
 
The foot notes are a great idea and an important component. So No apology necessary. 
 
And now for a dollop of way off topic, 
I am in need of a proposal writer so I can shop financing. 
 
I Am Endless Enterprises and a proposal writer is worth a percentage of any endeavour I launch. 
 
<a href="http://www.sagewisdom.org/usersguide.html">http://www.sagewisdom.org/usersguide.html</a> 
 
See the connection? 
 
As an Entrepreneur ... one only need, as an associate, a Master of English or better yet the skills of a cunning linguist to create presentations (lures) to attract venture capital 
 
Point: “Only wholesale mental evolution will prevent disaster.” 
 
Failing that…. Those that can are. 
 
“He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool - shun him. He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple - teach him. He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep - wake him. He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise - follow him.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
--- "And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan." 
 
* George Bu