2nd Renaissance -41 : Melbourne Indymedia

Beyond Material States [278]
In the early 1900s, grant-governed science cut itself off from the metaphysical and all phenomena that could not be objectively measured and repeated under laboratory conditions, and ushered in the 20th century Dark Age of knowledge. During this time the ascendency of capitalism in economic matters also reinforced materialist views of our existence and the nature of life and death. Not surprisingly, a large proportion of the world population, particularly in the West, largely eschewed religion and paid their 'faith' only lip service, preferring to 'worship' the acquisition of tangible possessions instead of finding a path to spiritual enlightenment. You can find these folk in shopping malls on most Sundays, instead of in church. And you can find the churches largely empty, unless they stage hot-gospel music, church-jazz or some other hyper-religious attractions to fill their pews.

Some science has always pursued the answers to non-material phenomena and other states of consciousness. Considerable work of this type was carried out in the USSR during the Cold War, and other independent scientific minds have also been active in many parts of the globe. As already stated, this freesite is not heavily focused on the nature of spirituality and metaphysics. Those subjects really merit their own site that includes the best available references and insights. Nonetheless, it is appropriate to say a little more at this point about the significance of Dr Rick Strassman's experiments with DMT.

While DMT is the active constituent of the brews made with ayahuasca that are used by shamans as an aid to perceiving non-material states and reportedly gaining knowledge from the spirit world, it is also a prohibited substance in Western societies. The latter fact is somewhat incongruous because DMT is a naturally occurring organic hallucinogen that is produced by our bodies and always found within our brains. Technically, in terms of the Rule of Law, we are all 'manufacturing' and using this prohibited substance.

In his book The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, Jeremy Narby gives the following accounts of the history of hallucinogens.

* "For several weeks, I went over the scientific literature on hallucinogens and their supposed effects on the human brain.

Here is a fact I learned during my reading. We do not know how our visual system works. As you read these words, you do not really see the ink, the paper, your hands, and the surroundings, but an internal and three-dimensional image that reproduces them almost exactly and that is constructed by your brain. ... How the brain goes about reuniting these sets of categorised information [form, colour, movement, depth, etc] into a coherent image is still a mystery. This also means that the neurological basis of consciousness is unknown.

If we do not know how we see a real object in front of us, we understand even less how we perceive something that is not there. When a person hallucinates, there is no external source of visual stimulation, which, of course, is why cameras do not pick up hallucinatory images."

* "Strangely, and with few exceptions, these basic facts are not mentioned in the thousands of scientific studies on hallucinogens; in books with titles such as Origin and Mechanisms of Hallucinations, experts provide partial and hypothetical answers, which they formulate in complicated terms, giving the impression that they have attained the objective truth, or are about to do so."

* "The neurological pathways of hallucinogens are better understood than the mechanisms of hallucinogens. During the 1950s, researchers discovered that the chemical composition of most hallucinogens closely resembles that of serotonin, a hormone produced by the human brain and used as a chemical messenger between brain cells. ...

LSD, a synthetic compound unknown in nature, does not have the same profile as the organic molecules such as dimethyltryptamine [DMT] or psilocybin. Nevertheless, the great majority of clinical investigations focused on LSD, which was considered to be the most powerful of all hallucinogens, given that only 50-millionths of a gram brings on its effects.

In the second half of the 1960s, hallucinogens became illegal in the Western world. ... Ironically it was around this time that several researchers pointed out that, according to science's strict criteria, LSD most often does not induce true hallucinations, where the images are confused with reality. People under the influence of LSD nearly always know that the visual distortions and cascades of dots and colours that they perceive are not real. ...

So the scientific studies of hallucinogens focused mainly on a product that is not really hallucinogenic; researchers neglected the natural substances, which had been used for thousands of years by hundreds of peoples, in favour of a synthetic compound invented in a twentieth-century laboratory."

"In 1979, it was discovered that the human brain seems to secrete dimethyltryptamine - which is also one of the active ingredients of ayahuasca. This substance produces true hallucinations, in which the visions replace reality convincingly. ... Unfortunately, scientific research on dimethyltryptamine is rare. To this day [1998], the clinical studies of its effects on 'normal' human beings can be counted on the fingers of one hand."

Rick Strassman changed the above situation when, between 1990 and 1995, he conducted DEA-approved clinical tests of the effects of DMT on sixty human volunteers, at the University of New Mexico. Jeremy Narby could have been unaware of Strassnan's studies and findings at the time he wrote the above comment about the rarity of DMT field trials. The fact is that, until Rick Strassman did the experiments, science did not know what human subjects will experience when they are injected with measured doses of DMT, under properly controlled double-blind conditions. The results of his work are truly startling.

The DMT molecule was first synthesised by a Canadian chemist named Manske, in 1931. The presence of DMT in plants was first discovered in 1946, when it was isolated from a South American tree used to make psychedelic snuffs. But it was not until 1965 that a German research team isolated DMT from human blood. Today, it is known that DMT is in many living organisms, not just Amazon plants and humans. Until Strassman's study nobody had seriously tried to answer the question: What is DMT doing in our bodies? Finding the answer to that question was the aim of the work done by Rick Strassman and his colleagues at the University of New Mexico.

Perhaps the most significant finding was totally unexpected by Strassman. He was prepared for vivid descriptions of altered states of reality; those are the responses that hallucinogens typically produce. But he was deeply surprised to find a considerable degree of consistency throughout the records of what the various volunteers 'saw'. Because people saw the same things and often met the same beings while under the influence of DMT, Strassman was faced with the astounding postulate that the 'other worlds' and 'beings' actually exist. What else could he conclude when many of the volunteers, who did not know which session involved the injection of a placebo and which involved DMT, reported essentially similar experiences, but only from their DMT sessions and not from the control studies?

The DMT experience also had a profound effect on many of the volunteers, all of whom had been selected for their prior use of psychedelics and who should have been less shocked than inexperienced 'first timers'. But the participants were shocked nonetheless and most claimed they had never experienced anything like the 'visions' that they were immersed in by DMT.

The regimen of injections involved several sessions and different steps from 'low dose' to 'high dose' levels, the latter being 0.4 mg/kg. The deep spirituality that many of the volunteers experienced during and following their high dose sessions is captured succinctly in the following comment made by one subject:

"You can be an atheist until zero point four".

Rick Strassman recorded around a thousand single-typed pages of notes of the sixty volunteers reports directly after their DMT experiences and subsequent reviews by them of these records. Here is a small selection to give you the flavour of their encounters with the spirit molecule.

* "There was an initial sense of panic. Then the most beautiful colours coalesced into beings. There were lots of beings. They were talking to me but they weren't making a sound. It was more as if they were blessing me, the spirits of life were blessing me. They were saying that life was good." _ _ Gabe

* "The most reassuring experience of my life ... the separation of mind and body was effortless ... if death is like this, there's nothing to worry about." _ _ Chris

* "As I went into it, I heard a sound: hmmm. Then I heard two to three male voices talking. I heard them say "He's arrived."

I felt evolution occurring. These intelligences are looking over us. There is hope beyond the mess we are making for ourselves.

I couldn't change the experience at all. I couldn't have anticipated it or even imagined it. It was a total surprise! I tried to open to love but that was silly. All I could do was observe it." _ _ Jeremiah

* "This time I quickly blasted through to the 'other side'. I was in a void of darkness. Suddenly, beings appeared. They were cloaked, like silhouettes. they were glad to see me. They indicated that they had had contact with me as an individual before. They seemed pleased that we had discovered this technology. I felt like a spiritual seeker who had gotten too far off course and, instead of encountering the spirit world, overshot my destination and ended up on another planet.

They wanted to learn more about our physical bodies. They told me humans exist on many levels. I needed to reconnect with my body in time for the blood pressure check and blood sampling. It was as if they, rather than Laura, were collecting the information, and they appreciated my doing it for them. Somehow we had something in common. They told me to embrace peace." _ _ Sara

* "The other side is very, very different. there are no words, body or sounds there to limit things. ... It's like a cosmic joke. If we all knew what was waiting for us, we'd all kill ourselves. That's why we stay in this form for so long, to figure that out. ...

Everyone should try a high dose of DMT once. I don't know if the beings today were saying "Try death once" or "Try life once". That place is so full and so complete that the idea of this place is to try and be as complete as possible. Yet when I came back into my body it was so heavy and so confining. Also, time here seems so strange. Eternity is an attribute of the place. It would have to be." _ _ Willow

* "The 0.2 was harrowing - this was way beyond. I knew the boundary beyond life existed. I never thought I'd be there, though, as such an early age. It's one of those things that old men talk about ... " _ _ Carlos

* "There was a movement of colour. The colours were words. I heard what the colours were saying to me. I was trying to look out, but they were saying, "Go in". I was looking for God inside. they said, "God is in every cell of your body." And I was feeling it, totally open to it, and I kept opening to it more, and I just took it in. The colours kept telling me things, but they were telling me things so I not only heard what I was seeing, but also felt it in my cells, happening in my cells. That God is in everything and that we are all connected, and that God dances in every cell of life, and that every cell of life dances in God.

I am changed. I will never be the same. To simply say this almost seems to lessen the experience. I don't think that anyone hearing or reading this can truly grasp what I felt, can really understand it deeply and completely. The euphoria goes on into eternity. and I am part of that eternity." _ _ Cleo

* "The great power sought to fill all possibilities. It was 'amoral', but it was love, and it just was. There was no benevolent god, only this primordial power. All of my ideas and beliefs seemed absurdly ridiculous. I never wanted to forget this. I was aware I could open my eyes and relate to those around me. But first I had to wait for all this to solidify, to allow the fullness of the experience to congeal, so I could bring it back to the others.
I wondered, "Why come back?" I was reluctant to open my eyes. When I did, the room seemed very bright, but otherwise quite as I had left it." _ _ Elena

Not all of the subjects had euphoric and revealing experiences under the spell of the spirit molecule. Rick Strassman was surprised and concerned to find that 42% of the volunteers in the study had 'adverse' effects and reported feelings of pain and fear. Strassman wondered why such a high proportion of the participants fell into this category. He had thought that by using volunteers with experience of psychedelic drugs he could minimise such negative sessions. But that was not the case. Here are a couple of reports of neutral or unfriendly receptions on the other side of the veil.

* "It started with a sound. It was high-pitched like a tightly taut wire. There were four or five of them. They were on me fast. As crazy as this sounds, they looked like saguaro cactus, very Peruvian in colour. They were flexible, fluid, geometrical cacti. Not solid. They weren't benevolent but they weren't non-benevolent. They probed, they really probed. They seemed to know time was limited. They wanted to know what I, this being who had shown up, was doing. I didn't answer. They knew. ..."
_ _ Dimitri

* "there was a humming sound, I couldn't tell if it was the air conditioner. Then I felt like I was suddenly in the presence of an alien or of aliens, vaguely humanoid. There were serpentine colours surrounding them, producing an outline of their shape. Based on my reading, I expected leprechauns, not anything like this.

The bed was spinning, rocking, it was uncomfortable, alarming. there was some constriction in my chest. That feeling then turned into the alien presence. I tried to make contact and relax into it. It seemed a lot more in control than I was. It was interested in my fear and in me.

I remember that feeling when I was a kid. When I was scared I would relax and say to myself, "The worst thing that can happen to me is I'll go to God" when I was afraid." _ _ Rex

Because of the emotive and belief-shaking nature of the implications of Rick Strassman's work it is important that you read his book, DMT the Spirit Molecule, before forming conclusions from the above excerpts. It is not possible in this limited space to capture or present the exceptional balance and honesty of Strassmans writing about his findings and conclusions. Many important facts and insights, of necessity, are unsaid here.

For example readers might think that the volunteers who were injected with DMT ran the risk of addiction, but the truth is that the spirit molecule is not addictive (however this does not mean that it is safe to use DMT in unsupervised conditions). Or, readers might consider that the experiences described were simply wild dreams. The fact is that the participants strongly refuted this suggestion and pointed out that, unlike the dream state, some parts of their DMT experiences took place while they were fully conscious and aware of the people in the room with them, Strassman and others. They were also able to take off their eyeshades and open their eyes and see both the DMT vision and the room at the same time. This is nothing like dreaming.

There are may other possible misconceptions, thus the best thing to do is read DMT the Spirit Molecule in full before venturing your own conclusions about Strassman's studies and what they mean.

WARNING:
Using DMT can be very dangerous. Impacts on heart rate and blood pressure can be extreme. Shamans prepare to use ayahuasca by following a strict dietary regime for several days and by sexual abstinence. Do NOT experiment with DMT unless you are medically supervised or under the guidance of a traditional Shaman. DMT is a banned substance in most Western countries, including the US and Australia.

Why Is DMT In Our Bodies? [279]
Finding answers to this question was the primary reason for Dr Strassman's work on DMT. The following excerpts from DMT the Spirit Molecule are intended to provide a partial window into the author's findings and conclusions in this matter. Again, it is recommended that you actually obtain and fully read the book before applying these insights to your own thinking and belief system.

* "It is almost inconceivable that a chemical as simple as DMT could provide access to such an amazingly varied array of experiences, from the least dramatic to the most unimaginably earth-shattering. From psychological insights to encounters with aliens. Abject terror or nearly unbearable bliss. Near-death and rebirth. Enlightenment. all of these from a naturally occurring chemical cousin to serotonin, a widespread and essential brain neurotransmitter.

It is just as fascinating to ponder why Nature, or God, made DMT. What is the biological or evolutionary advantage to having various plants and our bodies synthesize the spirit molecule? If DMT is indeed released at particularly stressful times in our lives, is that a coincidence, or is it intended? If it is intended, for what purpose?"

* "I had expected to hear about some of these types of ["spirit-world"] experiences once we began giving DMT. I was familiar with Terence McKenna's tales of the "self-transforming machine elves" he encountered after smoking high doses of the drug. Interviews conducted with twenty experienced DMT smokers before beginning the New Mexico research also yielded some tales of similar meetings. Since most of these people were from California, I admittedly chalked up these stories to some kind of West Coast eccentricity.

Therefore I was neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared for the frequency with which contact with beings occurred in our studies, Neither, it seemed, were many of the volunteers, even those who had smoked DMT previously. Also surprising were the common themes of what these beings were doing with so many of our volunteers: manipulating, communicating, showing, helping, questioning. It was definitely a two-way street.

As strange as the reports that follow are, our 1990s research was not the first in the scientific literature to describe DMT-induced "contact". There also are reports from the 1950s quoting volunteers to that effect. These older DMT cases are remarkable in their foreshadowing of the stories we were going to hear almost forty years later. What is even more striking is that I have been unable to locate any similar reports in research subjects taking other psychedelics. Only with DMT do people meet up with "them", with other beings in a nonmaterial world."

* Here we quote the notes of a volunteer named Willow's experience that gives a useful indication of what DMT is doing in our bodies, why it is there.

"Something rushed through me, out of me. I remember thinking at some point. Here comes the separation." I felt my body only when I swallowed or breathed, and that really wasn't a physical feeling as much as a way of setting ripples through the experience. I felt strongly, "This is dying and this is okay."

I had heard of the bright light tunnel, but I didn't expect it to be the way it was here today. I thought it would be primarily in front of me, but this took turns on both sides and then joined in front. Nor was it as bright as I thought it might be.

I'm amazed DMT is in the body. It's there for a reason. It's there for dying today. I had a sense of dying, letting go and separating, after the beings in the tunnel helped me along."

* Quoting Rick Strassman again:

"Most of us, including the most hard-nosed neuroscientists and non-materialistic mystics, accept that the brain is a machine, the instrument of consciousness. It is a bodily organ made up of cells and tissues, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. It processes raw sensory data delivered by the sense organs using electricity and chemicals.

If we accept the "receiver of reality" model for brain function, let's compare it to another receiver with which we're all familiar: the television. By making the analogy of the brain to the TV, it's possible to think of how altered states of consciousness, including psychedelic ones brought about by DMT, relate to the brain as a sophisticated receiver.

The simplest and most familiar levels of change to which the spirit molecule provides access are the personal and psychological. These effects may be like fine-tuning the television image; adjusting the contrast, brightness, and colour scheme. These "images" consist of feelings, memories, and sensations that are not at all unusual or unsuspected. There is nothing especially new, but what is there is now seen much more clearly and in finer detail.

Low doses of DMT brought about these types of responses in our volunteers. They sometimes also occurred at higher doses in those whose personal needs and makeup required a deeper reworking of their own lives and relationships.

In performing these conscious adjustments, DMT does not differ much from other drugs or processes used in the psychotherapeutic process."

* "What happens when the spirit molecule pulls and pushes us beyond the physical and emotional levels of awareness? We enter into invisible realms, ones we cannot normally sense and whose presence we can scarcely imagine. Even more surprising, these realms appear to be inhabited.

At a certain point, I decided to accept at face value volunteer's reports. This thought experiment replaced my original tendency to explain away, interpret, or reduce their experiences into something else, such as a disordered brain's hallucinations, dreams, or psychological symbolism. Now, after several years of additional study and reflection, I think it's worth considering seriously whether it's possible that these experiences indeed were exactly what they seemed to be."

* "I have struggled personally and professionally with developing the following radical explanations for our volunteers' apparent contact with nonmaterial beings. Even after stating them, I remain sceptical about their merit. Why couldn't I stick with tried and true biological or more traditional psychological models?

... However, whenever I tried to react to being-contact sessions with anything I knew or believed previously, it just didn't work. I was stuck. So, I decided to engage in the thought experiment ... That is, I tried responding to volunteers' reports of contact as if they were true. At first, this involved simply listening, and asking for clarification. Later on, as more tales accumulated, I could refer to other people's accounts in an empathetic manner that made it easier for volunteers to feel I understood and accepted what they had to say. That way they could share with me their most unusual and almost embarrassingly unexpected encounters."

* "Therefore. let's consider the proposal that when our volunteers journeyed to the further bounds of DMT's reach, when they felt as if they were somewhere else, they were indeed perceiving different levels of reality. The alternative levels are as real as this one. It's just that we cannot perceive them most of the time.

In making this suggestion, I'm not discarding the brain-chemistry and psychological models. Rather, I wish to add to the options we entertain in attempting to develop explanations that are helpful to volunteers, intellectually satisfying to researchers, and perhaps even testable using methods not yet invented but theoretically possible."

* "Returning to the TV analogy, these cases suggest that, rather than merely adjusting the brightness, contrast, and colour of the previous program, we have changed the channel. No longer is the show we are watching everyday reality, Channel Normal.

DMT provides regular, repeated, and reliable access to "other" channels. The other places of existence are always there. In fact, they are right here, transmitting all the time! But we cannot perceive them because we are not designed to do so: our hard-wiring keeps us tuned in to Channel Normal. It takes only a second or two - the few heartbeats the spirit molecule requires to make its way to the brain - to change the channel, to open our mind to those other places of existence. "

The fact that Rick Strassman, as a medical researcher, had difficulty coming to terms with such an explanation does not weaken it. The conclusion is actually strengthened by the fact that he was unable to answer the question of what DMT is doing in our bodies within any of the existing biological and psychological models. Strassman tried hard to fit the phenomena reported into those conventional frameworks, and he could not do it. He was left with the postulate above; DMT enables us to change the reality channels of our existence. Under its influence we can be 'here' then 'there' and then back "here" again.

This is how Amazonian Shamans have used DMT (in ayahuasca) for thousands of years; to contact 'spirits' in other states of reality and gain knowledge and advice from them. They have been consistently ridiculed as fakes and unscientific primitives, but the shamans of the Amazon, and other parts of the world, continue to maintain that they have gained their vast knowledge, of the extensive range of plant-based drugs and medicines they manufacture and use, from the spirits.

Today, Western pharmaceutical corporations are feverishly collecting - and patenting - the store of pharmacological knowledge possessed by such 'primitive' people. Will the West soon be forced to also adopt the explanations of how shamans have obtained their extensive knowledge and repertoire of cures for hundreds of diseases and ailments? That they simply tuned their consciousness to a different channel of reality?

Look back to Vogt and Sultan's theory of the seven levels (they call them 'dimensions') of information perception and access. Their model, you will recall, fits within the third theory domain, the realm of non-material existence - where science and religion meet. The use of DMT to access 'other channels' corresponds closely with Vogt and Sultan's 5th level. The explanatory mechanisms differ between Strassman and Vogt and Sultan, but they are essentially describing the same level of ability to receive and perceive information that is normally beyond the reach of our five lower senses, and the brain that interprets the information we receive from those sources. There is definitely a convergence of thinking happening. Scientists and other theorists in the West are starting to develop explanations that are coming to resemble the spiritual beliefs and teachings of the East, and of religions such as Buddhism.

More dialogue and open-mindedness is needed before there is a fusion of the explanations of science and the spiritual beliefs of the world's religions. Writing of his own difficulty in coming to terms with the tales of the volunteers in the DMT study, Rick Strassman makes exactly this point. Here are the relevant excerpts.

* "It may be that I have such a hard time with these stories because they challenge the prevailing world view, and my own. Our modern approach to reality relies upon waking consciousness, and its extensions of tools and instruments, as the only ways of knowing. If we can't see, hear, smell, taste, or touch things in our everyday state of mind, or using technology-simplified senses, it's not real. Thus, these are "nonmaterial" beings.

In contrast, indigenous cultures are in regular contact with denizens of the invisible landscape and have no problems with straddling both worlds. Often they do this with the aid of psychedelic plants.

Many modern-day scientists possess an abiding faith in the spiritual. However, these same scientists are caught in a profound conflict between their personal and professional beliefs. what they say and what they feel may contradict each other profoundly. It is difficult to be "objective" about matters of the heart and spirit. Scientists may compartmentalise their faith and can't conceive of verifying or validating their spiritual intuition. In other cases they may water down the nature of those beliefs to maintain some consistency with their intellectual understanding. ...

Lack of open dialogue about these issues makes it much more difficult to even imagine enlarging our view of the reality of nonmaterial realms using scientific methods. What would happen to the study of spirit realms if we could access them reliably using molecules like DMT?"

Indeed, what would happen if consenting scientists had regular access to and use of the spirit molecule in their work? Might not the slow convergence of thinking between science and religion be rapidly advanced?

Related:

2nd Renaissance -40

Those in their middle-life stages would also be concerned with meaning, but they are so enmeshed in their repayments - mortgages, credit cards, etc - and a daily struggle to advance within a system of relentless economic scarcity, that they have little time to think about such esoteric matters as the meaning of life. Even women, who used to stay at home and raise their children on a full-time basis, are now forced to work to make ends meet. Only the very young and the very old presently have the luxury of time to wonder and search for meaning. But the situation will change as it becomes apparent that there are new alternatives to economic scarcity and predatory globalism. Soon, everybody will be seeking new meaning and new opportunities to climb as many ladders in the game of life as they possibly can. Once this happens a Level 4 Civilization will be assured.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/114153.php

2nd Renaissance -39

We are living through the downfall of a whole system of civilization, and growing chaos is inevitable. All the while the snowmen and the parrot people will trumpet the 'advances' being made in the War On Terror (aka War On Freedom) and lionise 'good' citizens such as federal agents, police, border guards, and the like. Citizens will be encouraged to inform on each other to 'keep our country safe'. This had already started to happen. It will accelerate as the threat of people breaking away from the control of the old order increases,

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/113936.php

2nd Renaissance -38

The prison system has never been reformed except in name. The prison system is, by now, incapable of reform, and the same can be said for the law enforcement and justice systems which feed it. This reality applies in most nation states within the old Level 3 Civilization, it is not confined to Australia, Britain and the USA. But that doesn't make it right for those administrations to be engaging in the incarceration of women and children. The practice is barbaric wherever it is practiced and by whomever it is authorised and administered.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113687.php

2nd Renaissance -37

The World Organisation for Human Rights USA site also documents another innovation that enables guards to control greater numbers of prisoners, with consequent savings in operating costs.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113467.php

2nd Renaissance -36

It is not fanciful to believe that criminals can be rehabilitated or that the harm they have caused might be repaired, various tribal societies managed to achieve such outcomes for thousands of years. It can be done, and discussing the presently catastrophic regimes of justice and incarceration will lead people to fathom ways of doing so again, within a Level 4 Civilization.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113284.php

2nd Renaissance -35

But, before considering the implications of the death penalty, there is reason to consider how we already treat each other in relation to the imprisonment and punishment of women and their families. Great barbarity is going on right now in this area; within the ambit of the rule of law and the revenge and punishment systems of our "civilized" societies.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113143.php

New Strategy for an Autonomous Politics

My aim in this article is to present some hypotheses on issues of strategy for anti-capitalist emancipatory movements. The idea is to rethink the conditions for an effective politics, with the capacity to radically change the society we live in. Even if I will not have the space to analyze concrete cases, these reflections are not a purely "theoretical" endeavor, but spring from the observation of a series of movements I had the chance to be part of -the movement of neighbor's assemblies in Argentina, some processes of the World Social Forum, and other global networks- or that I followed closely in the past years -the piquetero (unemployed) movement also in Argentina, and the Zapatistas in Mexico.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113147.php

2nd Renaissance -34

Punishment By Imprisonment Is A Medieval Concept [258] Although this is the 21st century, the societies of the Level 3 Civilization have not yet abandoned the medieval notion of prisons being places of punishment. Today’s institutions of incarceration are called 'Correctional Centres' and other sanitised terms, but they remain vehicles for revenge and punishment exacted by courts under the Rule of Law.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113003.php

2nd Renaissance -33

The natural, some would say instinctive, organisation model for humans is the tribe. But there is no suggestion here of attacking or harming the less numerous members of big government and big business organisations that are structured along institutional and militarist lines. Any physical attack on the forces of the OWO would not only violate the sixth commandment, it would fail to advance humanity or benefit society in any way. No, the conflict between the OWO and the rest of us is a battle of ideas and, as such, it holds great potential as a transformational force that will benefit all of humanity - even those people who are presently on the side of federalism, capitalism and a creeping totalitarian control of the many by a few.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112747.php

2nd Renaissance -32

Then the penny drops, literally. The earthlings are selling water, they are treating it as a commodity. For the sellers of water this means that the scarcer fresh water is the higher the price and the greater the profit. There is still CAPITALISM on Earth; a system that became redundant in most galaxies aeons ago. No wonder water is scarce here.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112562.php

2nd Renaissance -31

The dissemination of information about the end of the 20th century scientific Dark Age and the advent of wondrous new spike technologies is something we can all do. It is not yet illegal to write or talk about such matters. In order to help raise general awareness of already existing opportunities to end economic scarcity it is necessary to first discover and absorb information that is never presented by the OWO controlled media. Then it is time to spread those alternate perspectives of science and technology at the interpersonal level.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112310.php

2nd Renaissance -30

"Near-Spike technologies will ensure that everyone could have access to this cornucopia, and while different cultures and moieties within those cultures will respond idiosyncratically to the great change, we might expect a general drift back toward the ancient codes implanted by evolutionary pressures. Humans have evolved in a million years and more of moderate ease, each tribe's small numbers drawing modestly upon the self-replenishing bounty of the earth. We will slip easily back into that blissful state, spared its occasional murderous bouts of uncontrollable fire, flood, drought, plague and infestation.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112101.php

2nd Renaissance -29

There is a simple answer, however, and that is to set up the bomb, and arm it to go off when the Sun passes through the required geometric point. The newspapers warn us that the tests will be carried out over a series of months, so we sit back with a set of astro tables and paper on which to calculate Sun positions, and wait for the results. When the first start coming in, we must confess to a certain excitement. What began as a theory is proving in actuality to be perfectly correct. We have cracked a code that the atom bomb countries have long tried to hide. "

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/111933.php

2nd Renaissance -28

Far Out Ideas For a Far Out Century [226] This freesite is not concerned with the existence or otherwise of aliens or UFOs, nor is it concerned with what such beings might be doing in our skies. There are thousands of web sites and publications that deal with UFOs and aliens. This freesite is concerned with far more serious threats to the freedom and well-being of humanity than extraterrestrial visitors. These threats have already been identified as takerism, nationalism, capitalism, and militarism. The iron grip of the OWO on the world's resources has far more serious consequences than the alleged activities of aliens and UFOs.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/111733.php

2nd Renaissance -27

At first impression this might seem a good thing, but the real price of such a concealment has been more than seven decades of denying the means and capability to bring abundant energy to the whole world. Not only could the release of such knowledge have ended all militarism and the related suffering caused by wars, it could have enabled presently 'developing' countries to feed, house and clothe their populations to levels that would have freed them from poverty, disease, and the burden of debt they currently 'owe' to the capitalist West.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111574.php

2nd Renaissance -25

This diagram is not reproduced here to suggest that the absolute amount of energy that can be obtained from matter is known, Cramp points out that it is theoretical. The purpose of the diagram is to drive home the realisation that energy is by no means scarce. All that is required to tap it is the right knowledge. Tesla and many others have already shown that such knowledge exists and that it is practical to draw energy from beyond matter - from the ether itself.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111235.php

2nd Renaissance -24

The defection of large numbers of people from federal citizenship, and the establishment of free cities that will run on free energy, can and will break the hold of old ideas and false scientific notions that held us back during the entire 20th century. That 2nd Dark Age is now behind us and the way to a better, Level 4 Civilization, is open. How soon the transformation is accomplished is now in the hands of ordinary folk, it has very little to do with our federal 'representatives', the industrial councils of big business, the parrot press, or the dogma specialists of orthodox science.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111028.php

2nd Renaissance -23

While it is far less radical than Tesla's idea of 'broadcasting' power to everyone on earth, the Christie/Brits generator could revolutionise domestic power supply, if it were ever allowed to do so. Once a household had one of these devices it could not only meet all its own power requirements, it could also feed around 10 kW of energy into the local power grid each day. When a family moved home, it would be practical to take the generator with them to their new residence. Given the long service life of the device, many generations of the family would inherit it, and it would continue to pump out 24 kW of clean power every day.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/110786.php

2nd Renaissance -22

Tesla was arguably one of the most outstanding geniuses of the late 19th century. But he was never astute in business, being far too naive and trusting. Tesla thought that everyone would readily support a discovery that would make energy available to all, and do much to end poverty and scarcity in the world. The capitalist/militarist establishments of the US thought quite differently.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/110212.php

2nd Renaissance -21

Who Is Running The Universe? [205] There is a common piece of street wisdom that describes how to determine who is really running any strange town that you come to on a journey. The advice is to listen to who is mentioned in conversations about the affairs and administration of the town. It is never the people who are talked about in connection with town matters or politics who are actually running things. The rule says that it is always the people who are never mentioned who are in real control. If you want to know who has the power, find out who is never mentioned as having any. When you begin to learn about and debate science with other non-scientists like yourself, remember this piece of street wisdom. Nothing is what it seems to be. The mayor or the police chief might seem to wield the power but, in reality, the power lies elsewhere, and that truth is seldom mentioned.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/109956.php

2nd Renaissance -20

Who are the most imaginative and lateral thinking people in our present society? Are they the scientists, or possibly the high IQ individuals employed to find new products and markets? Are they the entrepreneurs of the world, or are they advisors and consultants to industry and government? The answer to this question is known, and it is surprising to most people.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109767.php

2nd Renaissance -19

A key principle in such situations will be to limit the time that any individual can serve in political office. One or two terms should be the limit, there should be no opportunity for people to make a career out of politics. Nor should it be possible for generation after generation of any family to be employed in politics or as politicians. One only has to look at the distortions and inequalities that some of these political dynasties have introduced to the course of legislation in Australia and the US to know that long-term careers and generation to generation successions are not a good idea.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109519.php

2nd Renaissance -18

It is worth learning geometry as the ancients taught it because music is geometric. It is worth studying music in a geometric sense because this uncovers truths about vibrations and patterns of vibrations, Vibrations are important because all matter is formed from them. The 2nd Renaissance involves an explosion of knowledge and discovery that is taking humanity beyond the old 'drop in on your foot' materialistic and mechanistic view of the world and the universe beyond. The 21st century talent collectives that will build new technologies to defeat scarcity and create abundance will do most of their work in the realms of invisible vibration patterns. All young people, both boys and girls, now need to learn within these fields of knowledge, because humanity's future will be built there.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109198.php

2nd Renaissance -17

Education systems in free cities and regions must be very different to those of nation states. It is not just the methods of encouraging learning that will distinguish education in free cities from that of nation states, but the truth that the knowledge is rooted in. There is no point in swotting to pass examinations in subject knowledge that is wrong. Yet, that is exactly what young people in state education systems are doing. Neither they, or their parents, or their teachers realise this fact, but it remains the case.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109002.php

2nd Renaissance -16

Supporting secessions and the formation of free cities and regions is going to be crucial. Only in these new beachheads of tomorrow’s society will such innovations as home-schooling, and a lack of state censorship and media spin, enable young people to discover the truths they will need to know to build a Level 4 Civilization.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108722.php

2nd Renaissance -15

Historically, there have been periods when legal distinctions between animals and humans have been blurred. For instance, in medieval Europe, in the 14th and 15th centuries, numerous trials and executions of animals occurred. One source identifies 34 recorded instances of pigs having been tried and cruelly put to death. Besides pigs; rats, chickens, goats, and bees were similarly tried. Some of the pigs were fully dressed in human clothes at the time they were, inevitably, found guilty. In one case a vicar excommunicated a flock of sparrows that infested his church. All this happened despite the theological stance that animals had no soul, and no morals or conscience. They could not really be guilty of transgressing the Rule of Law.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108557.php

2nd Renaissance -14

Withdrawing Support For Militarism [179] The problem with revenge is that it lowers the humanity of those who exercise it down to the same level, of even below, those who committed the original crime. Although we can't yet know who was responsible for 911 or 1012, we do now know that forces of the Coalition of the Willing (CoW) have, on occasions, been just as barbaric as the people who killed on those dates. This has been amply demonstrated in Afghanistan and again in Iraq. If you doubt this, seek out more facts about the CoW's use of DU and NDU weaponry and cluster bombs. These horror weapons continue, to this day, to put young children and adult civilians at risk of injury or death from unexploded munitions, radiation, and toxic substances in the ground water and the food chain.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108373.php

Surveillance

It is up to ordinary people to raise the level of debate about the undemocratic surveillance practices of the many faceless and unaccountable agents who make daily intrusions on individual privacy, and about the apologists and propagandists for the War nn Terror who applaud every new attack on human rights and freedoms as "prudent" or "necessary". If there is no discussion of reverse surveillance in the national media, create it on the streets on a citizen to citizen basis. If nobody is talking about the outrageous assaults on privacy and human rights embodied in the new antiterrorist acts forced through US, UK and Australian legislatures, start talking about it to your neighbours and friends.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108175.php

2nd Renaissance -13

Such a development is part of the phenomenon of reverse surveillance that will come to characterise the 2nd Renaissance and a rapid transition to a Level 4 Civilization and a truly free society. You can learn more about reverse surveillance at the 'Surveillance' freesite. Reverse surveillance principles extend well beyond the use of ubiquitous digital imaging technologies, and include audits of all aspects of federal government operations, by randomly selected teams of citizens. The Feds and the parrot people will be quick to pronounce that such monitoting is "not in the national interest," but it will definitely be in our interests, and those of future generations of humanity.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/107989.php

2nd Renaissance -12

There are reports that in one Balinese kampong that provided labour to the clubs in Kuta Beach, seven empty coffins were buried, because there were no identifiable remains of the missing workers. It was as if they had been vaporised. Scores of people, mainly locals, are thought to have disappeared without trace.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/107756.php

2nd Renaissance -11

Fortunately, the power and control of government and military elites is illusory in the 21st century. The world no longer works the way it did, and there is nothing to compel people to support failed, outdated systems any longer. This is an understanding that must be widely and quickly shared. The future of our children and the planet depends upon our changing our thinking about governments, and our support for them.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107560.php

2nd Renaissance -10

In the Afghanistan turkey shoot the CoW forces used vast numbers of hard target weapons and other munitions containing depleted uranium (DU). This substance is almost twice as dense as lead. When it punches through concrete bunkers, armour, or mud huts, DU disintegrates into a chemically toxic and radioactive dust. In contrast to the earlier DU weapons used in Gulf War I, the newer ordinance produced deaths and deformities within weeks of the start of military action by the CoW. Between 1990-91 and 2001 the US arms manufacturers are thought to have "improved" the DU technology by introducing milled uranium ore to their warheads. This non-depleted uranium (NDU) is - wait for it - cheaper to produce and far more potent than DU. It poses massive health risks to civilian populations exposed to it, and constitutes, in every sense of the word, a weapon of mass destruction, or WMD. "Hey they're hunting them in Iraq, aren't they?"

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107216.php

2nd Renaissance -9

The Old World Order will not do anything to smooth the path to a Level 4 Civilization, and a better world. On the contrary, they will do whatever they can to make it difficult. The police, the military, the media, the financial system, the rule of law, and all the mechanisms of civil control and surveillance will be mobilised in defence of the status quo. But, once they understand their options, the people of the world will not engage in a battle with the forces of the OWO. They will simply abandon the old way of living under national rule, for a better, freer, life in new tribal societies. Kinship mechanisms will help people cope with the pressures of official opposition to radical changes that will finally enable them to escape the invisible prison that the OWO had fashioned around them.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107047.php

2nd Renaissance -8

Ultimately the old order will lose the battle to preserve their privileged way of life, based on all prevailing scarcity, pseudo-democracy, and the rule of law. But in the interim, hundreds of millions of innocent people might lose their lives in bloody resistance to the changes being made by the Old World Order (OWO).. If such a terrible thing happens, it will all have been for nothing, because:

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106816.php

Tales of Adam
Daniel Quinn*
http://ishmael.com/index1.cfm

2nd Renaissance -7

When coupled with the introduction of artificial scarcity and taker concepts of property ownership and legal tender, Western death-fearing religions played a significant role in subduing, otherwise independent, tribal peoples.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106537.php

2nd Renaissance -6

The second route involves the setting up of entirely new living spaces on tribal lands that were previously seized by colonising governments that espoused and followed Taker philosophies. This route has greater credibility, in the sense of secession rights, where clear historical ownership of the land can be shown.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106327.php

2nd Renaissance -5

Quinn contends that while governments can imagine a revolution they can't imagine abandonment. As he puts it, "..even if it could imagine abandonment , it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support."

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106136.php

2nd Renaissance -4

In due course, there is one achievement of overriding significance that Caral might well provide. One great contribution or lesson that can be applied to the 2nd Renaissance. How to live in peace, with spiritual meaning, and without warfare, for a thousand years.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105935.php

The New Renaissance
Daniel Quinn*

http://www.mnforsustain.org/quinn_d_new_renaissance.htm

2nd Renaissance -3

Plichta writes of this model as follows. "There was a time I used to make fun of the Apocalypse of St John and believed it to be a totally unreliable historical source. Today I am filled with deep humility, perhaps because I am now able to give a concrete description of the foundation of the world as seen by St John with my mathematical discoveries, and thus possibly open a new way to all of humanity which has now reached a dead end."

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105799.php

2nd Renaissance -2

Georg Cantor (1845-1918), by his origination of modern set theory and his studies of the nature of infinity, left science a valuable legacy. Cantor was regularly admitted to a psychiatric clinic within the University of Halle, in Germany, where he lectured and worked as a Professor of Mathematics. On each occasion that he became ill he had been thinking about infinity and the continuum hypothesis. Such intense thought, at the boundaries of his comprehension, caused Cantor to suffer repeated mental breakdowns. Infinity drove him mad.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105634.php

2nd Renaissance

This story was published in September 2004 and it was a big secret. I received it on disk but I think it should be public by now anyway. It is interesting to look back at it and in terms of today's world some two years on. I will link each chapter as I go along over the coming weeks.- The Old World Order - Happy reading!

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105519.php

Fight Iemma - Debnam

All they can say is 'lock em up'

It seems we are in the thick of it again - the stupid, heartless "Law & Order" auction.

Premier Morris Iemma and Opposition leader Peter Debnam are trying to outdo each other with idiotic "tough on crime" policies.

Original Article
http://oldsydimc.cat.org.au/front.php3?article_id=64701