Adventures With Cassiopaea

Chapter 17

Abraham Maslow became a father figure to the new "wave" of those desiring to fill the gaping hole of their reality with "peak experiences." Maslow cited psychedelic drugs as one of the means in which even ordinary people could have a little of what the Eastern Mystics worked many years to develop. Now, it could be had for a weekend seminar at Big Sur, or a study by mail course at only $29.95 per lesson! What a deal!

Peak Experiences - experience, experience, experience - became the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of the 1960's. No one needed to live in Existential Despair any longer! Everyone could become a "spiritual voyager" and achieve extended periods in realms of consciousness they had only heard about in veiled, mysterious allusions down through the ages.

Encounter groups, radical therapies, old and new combinations of theories and practice came rolling off the conveyor belt of techno-spirituality. The intangibles of spirit had been harnessed! Anyone could evoke some desirable experience by manipulating awareness at the basic physical and psychological levels. Never mind that all of this bypassed the vital processes of reason and conscious decision making. By its very nature, the whole techno-spiritual machine operated completely without critical thinking; it tapped the bottomless pit of feeling - emotion - primal being. Never mind that much of this emotion was negative, confusing, anxious and fearful! Let's just get it ALL out here in the open and have a party with it!

Each of the many techniques developed during this time was fully capable of producing an emotional high of one sort or another. There were endless "peak experiences," and dramatic "personal breakthroughs." The mixtures of Zen, yoga, meditation, drugs along with strict mechanical technology was a veritable adventure in awareness!

The only problem was: in the midst of all this peaking, mind-blowing, turning on and tuning in, ecstasy and encountering, many people encountered things that, perhaps, ought not have been awakened. Boundaries were breached into unseeable and terrifying realms of consciousness.

So preserve yourselves, my brothers, from the calamities of this place, for distinguishing it is extremely difficult! Souls find it sweet, and then within it they are duped, since they become completely enamored of it. [Al-'Arabi, Futuhat, III 38.23, translated by William Chittick]

Nowadays most people interested in the spirituality of the East desire the "experience," though they may call what they are after intimate communion with God. Those familiar with the standards and norms of spiritual experience set down by disciplined paths like Sufism are usually appalled at the way Westerners seize upon any apparition from the domain outside of normal consciousness as a manifestation of the "spiritual." In fact, there are innumerable realms in the unseen world, some of them far more dangerous than the worst jungles of the visible world. [Chittick, 1989]

Thus, by the end of the decade of the 60's, the "human potential" movement had become a veritable potpourri of religion, science, mysticism, magick and "the occult." The drug use got out of hand, the "techniques" began to show serious flaws in the many tragedies that occurred in any given practice, and the whole idea of human beings becoming "psychic supermen" hit the skids. The promise of the 60's decayed into an aimless lethargy - old hippies living in communes, braiding their gray locks and lusting after the sweet young teeny boppers while they fired up another bong and reminisced about the "good old days" at Esalen.

But wait! Something else happened here! Remember, this is America! The home of the Free - Market that is.

Big business saw a gold mine in the consciousness raising movement of the 60's and we saw the development of slick, newly packaged psychoanalysis and psychodrama! There was mass distribution and Madison Avenue marketing of things like Mind Dynamics, Arica, Silva Mind Control, Transcendental Meditation, and on and on.

And the cults proliferated. Yes, many of the mind-wounded ran straight back into the arms of their childhood faith; but many more became victims of the many up and coming cults that were happy to take them in and patch the holes in their psyches, or fix them up for a few weekends of Merkaba Meditations, Equinox Workings, Mystery School Mish-mash, or Pagan Pow-wows. Many of the cults, and even the old time religions, took advantage of the new marketing strategies and polished up their images, sent their people to advertising classes and then out into the world in massive fundraising and recruitment drives. Many of them even have their own admen!

So, the race was on again! Only now, it was like buying Coca-Cola! The "pause that refreshes" right here in this very tape set, consciousness raising course, or cult practice! It had become a form of spiritual masturbation where everyone was "meeting their own needs" in private. You could put on your strobe glasses, listen to your astral travel tape, channel your very own guides, confer with the Ophanic Intelligences, merge with the "Nine Neters," and get high without ever leaving the farm! You could "change your beliefs," "create your own reality," indulge your "inner child/ego," and become One with all Creation, by mail, by golly!

What nobody seems to be talking about, however, is the concomitant changes in our world that very well may be the direct result of this so-called "shift in consciousness." Nobody wants to talk about the hard reality of what is really going on out there. One correspondent described it so well that I will reproduce his comments:

I think I am noticing a vast world of things going on that, just a few short years ago, would never have happened. Almost everywhere I look, when I see circumstances and reactions and goings-on, the thought explodes into my head - "What in the world is going on here?"
The modern-day Roman circus spectaculars of Elians, O.J.s and Monicasƒ
The appeal of today's non-music, music that appeals to the most base of human emotion and responseƒ
The opiate of the mindless drone and flicker of constant televisionƒ
The dangled carrot of a manipulated and contrived economyƒ
The apathy toward the government and their meaningless platitudesƒ
The increase in violence and attacks from close and least expected sources, which appear to be designed by outside forces to both provide an energy feeding frenzy, as well as, divert those seeking awareness and understanding from a path of discoveryƒ
The dark side of Tesla geniusƒ
The easy access of Internet porn and the proliferation of cyber-sex as an option to replace "real life"

And to the above I would like to add:

One out of every 100 Americans is living in a prison, a figure unprecedented in our history.
The numbers of people on prescription, mind altering drugs is even higher than the number of people in physical prisons.
We are now diagnosing and drugging even our children for behavior that was once considered to be "normal" for a child!
Gang proliferation throughout all levels of society, where once such things existed only among the very poor and disadvantaged.
Violence among children who are becoming violent at younger ages than ever before.
Mass killings have become so common they aren't even reported on the front page anymore!

Continue to page 127

The owners and publishers of these pages wish to state that the material presented here is the product of our research and experimentation in Superluminal Communication. We invite the reader to share in our seeking of Truth by reading with an Open, but skeptical mind. We do not encourage "devotee-ism" nor "True Belief." We DO encourage the seeking of Knowledge and Awareness in all fields of endeavor as the best way to be able to discern lies from truth. The one thing we can tell the reader is this: we work very hard, many hours a day, and have done so for many years, to discover the "bottom line" of our existence on Earth. It is our vocation, our quest, our job. We constantly seek to validate and/or refine what we understand to be either possible or probable or both. We do this in the sincere hope that all of mankind will benefit, if not now, then at some point in one of our probable futures.

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