TDP - Too Good To Be True?

From Mindfully.org:

In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil. Really.

"This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming."

Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true.

"Everybody says that," says Appel. He is a tall, affable entrepreneur who has assembled a team of scientists, former government leaders, and deep-pocketed investors to develop and sell what he calls the thermal depolymerization process, or TDP. The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

Read the rest of the article (with pics and diagrams of the TDP process) here.

Three Angles on World Changing

From R.U. Sirius' latest Neofiles.

The demise of the digital revolution has been much exaggerated. We are still producing strange hybrids and lucid networked solutions — dissolving the old hard categories. Thus, for NeoFiles #14, we have the collective problem solving of Jamais Cascios, the non-linear media surfing of DJ Spooky, and the post-ideological libertarianism of Nick Gillespie. Three very different angles united by a sense of pace — despite the outward dreariness of the endless Iraq war and the slow drift towards social insecurity, this world is changing fast and real transformations are possible.

Thanks Bruce.

Galactic Gradients, Postbiological Evolution and the Apparent Failure of SETI

www.astrobiology.com/news/viewsr.html

Abstract:

Motivated by recent developments impacting our view of Fermi's paradox (absence of extraterrestrials and their manifestations from our past light cone), we suggest a reassessment of the problem itself, as well as of strategies employed by SETI projects so far. The need for such reevaluation is fueled not only by the failure of searches thus far, but also by great advances recently made in astrophysics, astrobiology, computer science and future studies, which have remained largely ignored in SETI practice. As an example of the new approach, we consider the effects of the observed metallicity and temperature gradients in the Milky Way on the spatial distribution of hypothetical advanced extraterrestrial intelligent communities. While, obviously, properties of such communities and their sociological and technological preferences are entirely unknown, we assume that (1) they operate in agreement with the known laws of physics, and (2) that at some point they typically become motivated by a meta-principle embodying the central role of information-processing; a prototype of the latter is the recently suggested Intelligence Principle of Steven J. Dick. There are specific conclusions of practical interest to be drawn from coupling of these reasonable assumptions with the astrophysical and astrochemical structure of the Galaxy. In particular, we suggest that the outer regions of the Galactic disk are most likely locations for advanced SETI targets, and that intelligent communities will tend to migrate outward through the Galaxy as their capacities of information-processing increase, for both thermodynamical and astrochemical reasons. This can also be regarded as a possible generalization of the Galactic Habitable Zone, concept currently much investigated in astrobiology.

www.astrobiology.com/news/viewsr.html

Tripping & Pitching

In June of 1970, Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter in a 50,000 seat stadium while high on LSD. This now-legendary event was retold reccently in the Dallas Observer.

What's weird is that sometimes it felt like a balloon. Sometimes it felt like a golf ball. But he could always get it to the plate. Getting it over the plate was another matter entirely. Sometimes he couldn't see the hitter. Sometimes he couldn't see the catcher. But if he could see the hitter, he'd guess where the catcher was. And he had a great catcher back there. Jerry May. You could make mistakes with him, and he would compensate. He'd know if he called for a curveball, he could look at the follow-through of your arm and see if you were gonna hang it. So he'd get ready to slide and block. Also, he had this reflective tape on his fingers that was by far the easiest thing to see.
Ellis had no idea what the score was, and he knew he'd been wild--he ended with eight walks, one hit batsman and the bases loaded at least twice--but here it was, bottom of the seventh, and he was still in the game.

The hardest part was between innings. He was sure his teammates knew something was up. They had all been acting strange since the game began. Solution: Do not look at teammates. Do not look at scoreboard. Must not make eye contact. His spikes--that's what he concentrated on. Pick up tongue depressor, scrape the mud, repeat. Must. Clean. Spikes.

Sometime in the fifth or sixth, he sensed someone next to him. Looking. He turned. It was rookie infielder Dave Cash.

"Dock," Cash said. "You've got a no-hitter going."

Singularity and the "Prevail Scenario"

I went to a talk by Joel Garreau who just published the book Radical Evolution. The subtitle of the book is "The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means To Be Human." The talk and the book are about the radical changes to come amidst a world of limitless technology.

I normally avoid these talks because I have—so I've thought—internalized the interesting perspectives on where the Singularity will take us. Turns out I just only have two extremist views. There's Ray Kurzweil who, in The Age of Spiritual Machines, describes a "Heaven" scenario for mankind, wherein we upload our minds to machines and simulate a paradise of infinite beauty. Then there's Bill Joy who asks: In a world where a million people can make an atom bomb, how do we stop ourselves from self-annihilation? (cf: Why the future doesn't need us). We can call his the "Hell scenario."

Garreau introduces an alternative view titled the "Prevail Scenario," which he ascribes to Jaron Lanier.

The rest of this post is about the Prevail Scenario, pulling quotes from Chapter 6 of Garreau's book.

In both the Heaven and Hell Scenarios, the embedded assumption is that human destiny can be projected reliably if you apply enough logic, rationality and empiricism to the project.

This is referring to Moore's Law and its extrapolations which see chip speed and technological progress as following a smooth, exponential (accelerating incline) curve. It is practically an article of faith among technologists that the computing power of the brain will fit on a chip the size of a penny within a few decades. However, Kurzweil and Joy are obsessed with this prediction, according to Lanier.

In The Prevail Scenario, by contrast, the embedded assumption is that even if a smooth curve does describe the future of technology, it is not likely to describe the real world of human fortune. The analogy is to the utter failure of the straight-line projections of Malthusians, who believed industrial development would lead to starvation, when in fact the problem turned out to be obesity.

Another Singularity-like exponential curve seems fishy upon a modest glance of history. One could say that there has been an exponential curve in warfare technology, starting with the invention of the phalanx by the Ancient Greeks moving on to guns during the Napoleonic Wars. After World War I, it seemed that warfare would come close to world annihilation. And a couple decades later, with the atom bomb dropping, fatalists would think that it was only a matter of years before nuclear winter would destroy humans. Sixty years later, we have prevailed. So while there has been an exponential development in warfare, a Singularity of human annihilation hasn't happened as would have been predicted.

The Prevail Scenario is essentially driven by a faith in human cussedness. It is based on a hunch that you can count on humans to throw The Curve a curve.

The Prevail Scenario is actually not a single scenario, but a plurality of scenarios that see technology's impact on humanity not as an exponential curve that leads to a vertical line of progress, but rather as a spaghetti of outcomes that is as rich and unpredictable as human history has been.

Lanier espouses a particular instance of The Prevail Scenario which focuses on human connectedness. In this perspective, technology's best contribution is in bringing humans closer together. To him, it is "the quantity, quality, variety and complexity of ways in which humans can connect to each other" that constitute the relevant Curve.

Garreau also provides a list of "warning signs" why the Heaven and Hell Scenarios seem unlikely:

• Resistance to The Curves of change is actually having an effect worldwide.

• Certain technologies that affect human development and enhancement are globally seen as worth slowing down or stopping, in the way that the use of nuclear weapons was effectively prevented for the second half of the 20th century.

• Technologies that were seen as inevitable turn out to take much longer to develop than anticipated. Predictions common in the early 21st century begin to sound as silly as those of the middle of the 20th century, such as the paperless office, hotels on Mars and self-cleaning houses.

• Researchers voluntarily stop working on topics they view as too dangerous.

• Researchers decline funding for certain topics that they view as too fraught with human peril, putting their ethics ahead of their promotions, tenure, graduate students and intellectual curiosity.

• Researchers decline funding from organizations they view as too laden with problems, such as corporations and the military.

• Computational power is no longer seen as achieving exponential growth because of the inability of software to keep up the pace of innovation.

• There is little correlation between any exponential change in technology and the development of human society.

To close, I'll end with a nice refutation of a nanotech "Hell Scenario:"

He [Lanier] completely believes that the moment nanobots are poised to eat humanity, for example, they will be felled by a Windows crash. “I’m serious about that—no joke,” he says.

A few notes about the talk itself:

The talk was held at the SAP forum in Palo Alto and put together by the Bay Area Future Salon. The audience was comprised of about fifty people, most above the age of thirty. The crowd was well-versed in futurism topics, such as Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns. My guess is that Garreau took the time to speak here because this small group contains lighting rods for his kind of message. Garreau's book came out last month, so perhaps this is also part of some book tour. While the talk was simple, it had cogent details and an engaging narrative.

(This article is a cross-posting from my blog Philosophistry)

Black Pyramids and the Land of Gaia

The horizon shuddered slightly, a shiver in space itself like water rippling across the surface of a painting. There was a sudden stillness unlike anything ever before and not yet since that grabbed at your skin, drawing it in lava-like blobs from muscle and sinew, fascia and bone. It was like falling very slowly into a glowing vat of honey, every moment framed in still life, blurring into one another, soft with bee fur.

And then it was gone.

I can't say the exact year. It was '92 or '93... I can't quite remember that period of my life very well. It was a hazy time. Or, rather, time itself was hazy and seemed often unburdened by the demanding expectations of physics and linearity. There's a loose temporal outline I hold, pieced together from the timelines of college classes, addresses, and major events. Mostly I just remember moments, ideas, happenings, and friends, but they're like pictures hanging on a wall: flat and eternal.

It was that time in one's life - in my life - when everything was being explained in great magickal revelations washing over my world day in and day out, when me and my friends were like magnets for unfathomable circumstances, beacons strobing in hyperspace catching the eye of Time's great architect. Psychedelics and empathogens, esoteric guides and manuals, wild rock and rave communions, bounding through forests and meadows, under full moons dancing on the mercurial tides, all whipped together and pitched on its side. Even people around us, innocents, were getting caught up in the freakish whirlwinds of synchronicity and electricity that seemed to arc off of us.

I believe it was Winter. Cold and wet. A frenzied Friday evening on the verge of rain. We were at a friend's house, the seven of us, in the midst of a party filled with many people none of us knew. We sat at the dining room table, talking, drinking beers, when M pulled out the crinkled plastic baggy we'd been given by some guy from Reed College in Oregon who knew we were involved in the Santa Cruz psychedelic community. He claimed it was ayahuasca, though none of us could rationalize that claim with the actual contents of the baggy: 20 or 30 very small bits of what looked like dried apple lining the bottom. Watching M curiously it took a moment to realize what was going on - a moment too long as he popped a piece in his mouth and chewed. Then another. Then J was chewing and, moments later, we'd all consumed a roughly even portion of the bitter, spicy little bits, not really understanding why, just suddenly caught up in some aetheric swell intent upon carrying us into this experience. It was a possession, sudden and mindless.

Maybe a half hour later we were in a side room smoking a chillum and laughing a little bit more than usual for much less of a reason. Whatever it was we'd eaten was beginning to take hold, creeping up out of our stomachs along our spines, tickling the synaptic webs and retuning the receivers of our brains. We all knew we were heading out fast and needed to take bold action in order to secure our set & setting as soon as possible. No vision questing at the Friday night college party. We arranged for friends to drive us all home immediately.

Stumbling out of the hazy room, giggling and wide-eyed, I remember distinctly the sudden silence of an entire room full of people all staring at us, like we were absolutely completely out of place. You could almost hear the record come scratching to a grinding halt, then the drop of a single pin. We pushed through the door and stumbled out into the electric night laughing hysterically. Poor mortals... They had no idea.

------

There were enormous leaves, bigger than most plants, everywhere, wet and luscious and tumescent, protruding from great vines & liana. A rainbow of greens colored everything I saw from my seat in one of the larger leaves in the jungle. Water cascaded down from the canopy above adding it's gentle cacophony to the symphony of life buzzing all around me. Jerry's guitar seemed just as wet and green echoing through the trees, bouncing off the ethnic percussion bubbling up from unseen drummers no doubt milling about just out of sight within the jungle. The space was solid and consistent and real and it wasn't just me but six other minds sharing it, co-creating it simultaneously all wired together in some telepathic array, feeling and sensing and imagining each leaf and each note as the rainforest concert of our minds grew more and more real until we could only all suddenly laugh together, opening our astonished eyes to peer at one another sitting in a pile on the living room couch before returning back to the collective magick of the jungle.

------

Somehow we made it home. I only recall more laughter and a moment's view of the stormy night outside the car window (which I insisted on rolling down in spite of the cold). Two sober housemates were home and, upon learning of our state, tried to set us up with crayons and pens and paper, but even such a rudimentary feat as drawing proved to require far too much focus for the raging bolts of energy coursing through our bodies. Well-intentioned but clearly defeated, the housemates left us alone and concealed themselves downstairs for the duration. Too much freakiness had been suddenly visited upon the home and they needed to simply hide out and weather the storm.

I keep speaking in terms of we, in part because there were seven of us, but more so because of the great degree of connectivity that was shared between us. Harmala, which is the primary component of ayahuasca brews and contributes the MAOI component, was originally called telepathine when it was isolated after many stories of remote viewing and shared non-verbal communication. One western researcher under it's influence in some South American village suddenly saw his father dying back home in Florida. The next day he learned that, indeed, his father had suffered a major heart attack and passed away at just about the same time as the vision. For me it was like being covered in clear, luminescent psychic goo that stretched between each of us, binding our hearts and souls and minds. It wasn't just my individual experience, though at times it was only my vision that I could apprehend. Ultimately, it was a collective journey shared between us on what seemed to be a cellular level. I still feel bound to those friends, even those who've long since passed out of my life.

We ended up all packed in side-by-side along a great orange couch in the living room listening to "Blues for the Rainforest", a spectacular collaboration between Merle Saunders and Jerry Garcia. All lights were off leaving the living room dancing in the shadows thrown off by a single candle next to the stereo. Those little tiny bits of harmless, desiccated apple were now in complete charge of our little world blasting out into hyperspace and completely rewiring reality as we knew it. This was beyond mushrooms or acid. Way beyond. Superfantastic and hyperreal yet so true and solid, like pulling aside the curtains to reveal The Way Things Really Are. No words passed between us. We were incapable of speaking coherently, though it really seemed unnecessary. Thought and feeling was fluid and unconfined to mere bodies. We were all diving into the aya space led by Jerry and Merle into the great archetypal jungle. The most astonishing aspect of the whole experience was this deep sense of telepathic communion. I can only describe it from my perspective. As I focused on the music with my eyes closed, feeling it swell with my own emotions towards some intangible peak until it grew so amazing and beautiful that I had to burst out laughing, at that exact same moment everyone else on the couch would burst out laughing. This happened again and again and again over the course of the entire album until it was so obvious that we were all existing in the same numinous space, our thoughts and emotions totally shared and flowing through all of us. It wasn't just my attention and emotion tracking the music. It was all of us moving in the same fugue together. Speechless, we could only laugh and stare at one another with amazement at the sheer impossibility of it all.

-----

As I laid face down on the floor, kaleidoscopic visions consuming my inner vision, I pressed my hands down and began to push myself off the rug. In that movement I suddenly became aware that my arms and torso were no longer human but that of a large black panther rising from the jungle. My fur was oily and sleek, bristling slightly with ozone and static. My muscles were thick and powerful wrapping around bone and tendon pulling at the claws protruding from my feet. I felt intensely capable and proud, as if I could easily master anything the jungle could throw at me. I stretched out and arched my back before rising to my feet and stepping out of the panther, back into the living room.

-----

Eventually we left the group huddle of the couch and scattered out through the living room, each off to pursue our own visions now dominating the experience. I recall fending off momentary concerns about having drank a few pints of beer around the time of eating the aya. I couldn't remember if it was any type of alcohol that could inspire a hypertensive crisis when mixed with a MAOI, or if it was just red wine. J was the only one with similar concerns though we didn't vocalize these to the group. Ultimately it was moot. We were here and we'd end up wherever the experience would drop us off. In such deep psychedelic rapture, death can seem like not such a big deal after all.

I walked out onto the balcony under the night sky. The cul de sac was a whirlpool of energy whipping through the tall eucalyptus trees, the large oaks, and assorted other trees and shrubbery. The vast pines rising up behind our house were revealed to be armies of giant insect sentries stacked on top of each other watching over our innocent dimension. Each oak was itself a giant, alive and personal, aware of the life moving so quickly around it against the decades of it's resting. All of the trees exhibited this deep personality and uniqueness. They were each so very present and aware, wise with age and insight, the vastness of their roots clutching at the red earth, tickling each other below. The eucalyptus grove running along the side of the house seemed taller than skyscrapers, rustling and swaying in the wind, bending and flexing with the pulsing energy of the biosphere. Gazing up at them every cell in my body longed to climb up those thin trees, up to the tops then leaping through the rubbery branches beneath the darkened sky and swollen moon. I could feel it so very deep in my bones and knew that, if it weren't for the censor of sensibility clinging to the remnants of my ego, there would be nothing to stop me from pulling myself up into the canopy. I am, after all, an ape, perhaps long from brachiation but fully capable of returning to the trees. And there was a strong, nostalgic part of me that wanted nothing more than to run naked through the forest at night, proud and masterful.

-----

There's a point in any psychedelic experience worth it's salt when you have to just lie down and let the visions roll over you. This was it, the point of concrescence converging with the infinite domain of archetypes where self and other become interpenetrating, undifferentiated. Fractal landscapes pulsed and glowed, ebbing and flowing with my breath and heart beat, luminous and laden with unspeakable meanings, the rich, multimedia glossolalia of hyperspace. Every image is a feeling, a memory, a thought, reflecting back from futures past, somehow codified in these abstract patterns and geometries, deeply verbal yet astonishingly mute. Like passing across the event horizon, my body seemed to dissolve into it's component parts, smaller and smaller, to be re-assimilated into the black hole of consciousness like warm cheese pressed through fine cloth into a vat of black ink. With each exhalation I came to exist less in this space, my body falling away into the darkness lost below the neon signscape rising up all around me, the material world receding like a speck of dust beneath a rocket ship. I was anesthetized and laid to rest, the weight of flesh no longer anchoring my consciousness, no longer tied down but free to walk through the quantum gateways dividing matter from spirit, open and unrestrained inviting gnosis and transformation from whatever timeless angels or kaleidoscopic aliens might be passing by.

Amidst the raging optic storm of rainbow chrysanthemums and multidimensional hieroglyphics, dense and rich with unnamable meaning and depth and impossible volumes of information pouring into my third eye, the tempest came to a sudden stillness, thick and black and silent with the weight of a thousand suns. Chromed slivers of light betrayed the seeming emptiness of this space dancing along the edges of an enormous shape slowly revealing itself. As it rotated into view I beheld a shimmering black pyramid barely visible against the background yet powerfully present and engaging. All sense of scale was lost. It could have been an inch high but it felt to me to be the size of ocean's, continents, entire moons. Entranced I followed it's movement tracing my sight up along the reflective edges towards the apex. In the crown I beheld a great golden eye watching me with unimaginable intent and awareness, holding me in it's unblinking gaze. The eye aligned with my vision, then reflected itself on my forehead caressing the pineal to gently open. My third eye beheld the golden eye of the pyramid beholding me and in that instant seer and seen merged completely and I could see both myself and the pyramid through the same single eye of creation shared by all moments of consciousness, the timeless eternal Now of existence, so fleetingly transient yet always here and never parting. In that moment of perfect union and understanding, so completely beyond normal human awareness, beyond language and logic and thought, like the reflected image of the thing behind the thing we call God, in that moment "I" saw it all for a brief moment, then committed the great mystic mistake and was overwhelmed with astonishment.

The vision passed and I was back in my body lying on the living room floor amidst scattered friends.

-----

As the morning light began to creep around the edges of our world I returned to the balcony and took a seat on the weather-beaten old couch. Closing my eyes I reached out with my senses to the waking morning and was amazed to be living among so many birds. There must have been hundreds and hundreds just within earshot and I could hear each and every one distinctly, like picking a single tenor out of a cathedral chorale. For each bird I tuned into I could "see" them perched on a branch or seated in a nest feeding their young, leaping from tree to tree and soaring over the cul de sac. I could change my focus from the entire chorus to a specific group to one individual. In my mind's eye I was among them all living a bird's life.

A very curious property of ayahuasca mixtures is that they seem to function as a very specific key to a set of archetypal experiences. Unlike LSD or mushrooms, everyone who takes ayahuasca properly will apprehend visions of nature, jungles, large cats and snakes. The aya complex appears to be a very powerful technology that runs like software in the brains of the human species, delivering the divine understanding of Nature, of the Goddess. It is a tool of communion that takes any user and downloads the matrix (mater) of the biosphere into their consciousness, regardless of location, affiliation, race, or religion. Ayahuasca is a powerful ally trying to lead us back down the path to our now-distant aboriginal bond with the womb of our planet, and offers perhaps no less than the salvation of our species so lost in the mechanistic gears of consumption and unrestrained expansion.

Myself, S, and J wanted to be at the beach for sunrise so we layered up against the morning cold and padded out towards the street. We made it only as far as the eucalyptus grove which seemed so inviting and alive. Walking in amongst the trees was a moment of communion, breathing the air and touching the peeling bark and soft trunks underneath. We tore ourselves away and marched through the streets out to the coast feeling a million miles away from the morning commuters buzzing past in their steel horses.

We reached the cliff just in time to watch the sun break over the horizon like a fiery orange blast of pastiche exploding across a hazy blue canvas. Standing on the stone ridge the sea below was a wash of purples breaking on the sandy brown shore. The passing of it's tides had left thin, wavy grooves covering the shore like flames licking off the tips of the sea. The fire in the sky was reflected in the earth, washed and recycled by the water of the sea which, itself, was nourished and continuous with the air above. Standing amidst it all were the three stoned humans giving our share of spirit living on the same four elements coursing through our light bodies. This was the final seal - the pentagram merging with hexagram, microcosm and macrocosm, as above, so below. The night, the journey, the vision... it was all an act of magick and a powerful ritual of planetary shamanism binding us each and all to the breathing holosphere of Gaia, Luna, Sol, and beyond into the infinite blackness of forever.

As the raging star rose up into the sky radiating it's loving warmth down onto our humble planet, each of us glowed with joy at having been allowed into the halls of Eleusis to see past the veils of consensus reality and apprehend the true glory of creation dancing madly all around us every single moment and just a breath away.

Illumination Design

A reader who just signed up with the Forums has a most excellent website - very psychedelic, very cool art, and all around fun. Check it out:

http://www.illumination-design.com/

Cary Grant's Thoughts on LSD

From the Cary Grant Website, Chapter 14.

Here are his thoughts on LSD:

Without the ability to fully love or be fully loved, so many of us think that the acquisition of money can bring self-esteem and happiness. I’ve enjoyed friendship with some exceedingly wealthy people. If money brought happiness, then each of them should be ecstatically happy. But I doubt whether any of them is any happier than any of my less well-to-do friends. Money, it seems, attracts more envy than empathy. More lust than love.

In 1932 the practice of psychiatry was little known or respected. The public seemed to regard it, just as I probably did, with skepticism. For years I absurdly treated subjects with which I was unfamiliar, or sports in which I was not proficient, or books which I should have read but didn’t, with disdain. But by 1956, lacking the foundation of early spiritual training and suspecting that there was more happiness available than I seemed able to grasp, I had grown much more tolerant of, and receptive to, the knowledge of others. Other searchers, other sharers. Humanitarians in all fields of endeavor. At the age of 53, after three unsuccessful marriages, either something was wrong with me or, obviously, with the whole sociological and moralistic concepts of our civilization.

Now, I believe in caring for my health; and I trust you do too. Physical health is a product of, and dependent upon, mental health — one nurtures and nourishes the other. And so, together with a group of other interested Californians — doctors, writers, scientists and artists — and the encouragement of Betsy, who was interested herself, I underwent a series of controlled experiments with Lysergic Acid, a hallucinogenic chemical or drug known as LSD 25. Experiment is perhaps a misleading word; to most people it signifies patronization and objectivity. For my part I anxiously awaited their personal benefits that could be derived from the experiences, and was quite willing to be less than objective. Any man who experiments with something that cannot benefit himself, or add to his happiness, and that of his fellow man in turn, is a fool and a menace to society. I’ve heard that a man here and there died during LSD25 sessions; but then I’ve heard that men died during poker games and while watching horse racing; but that didn’t seem to stop such occupations. Those men might have died anywhere while doing anything. Men have also died testing airplanes and parachutes, vaccines and common cold cures. In attempting to traverse the next step into progress and knowledge, men have always died. But there is a difference between the man who knows what he’s about with a high-powered airplane, and an idiot who puts wings on a bicycle and takes off from the edge of Niagra Falls.

As a philosopher once said, “You cannot judge the day until the night.” Since it is for me evening, or at least teatime, I can now look back and assess the day. It’s been a glorious adventure up to here — even the saddest parts — and I look forward to seeing the rest of the film. Just as I did in 1932 when I sat in that Paramount Studio office. I took up the pen and wrote for the first time “Cary Grant.” And that’s who, it seems, I am. Well, as some profound fellow said, “I’d be a nut to go through all that again, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.” And that goes for this autobiography.

Mind States VI & States of Mind

Sorry for the delay in posting. As many of you know I was at Minds 6 this year. My primary reason for going was to meet people I've come to know online. I made a point this year of working the event the opening day. I was lucky enough to find myself working the reception desk, which meant that I stamped every persons hand who came in. This turned out to be a rather intimate experience, as this was most people’s first impression as they came in. With years of customer service behind my belt, I made a point of being very friendly, and making a variety of jokes as people came in. The stamp was a large copyright symbol. I told many people that now they have been stamped, they have also been copyrighted, scanned, cataloged and assimilated. It made for some good laughs. Before people could get stamped, they had to pass through the opening door with ticket in hand. This was worked by a lady who worked for the Palace of Fine Arts - so she knew nothing about who we are, and the people and celebrities of our community. Since I know a lot of people in the community, including many of the speakers this year, I was able to smooth this process. It was quite funny when she tried to stop Sasha Shulgin. I don't think he had a ticket, but with Sasha this event would probably not even exist! Sasha is like royalty, and so we made sure he got the red carpet treatment.

Another celebrity was John Gilmore. A lot of people don't know who he is, but for me he is also a celebrity. I told the lady to let him in without checking his ticket, and then stamped him right away. He tried to tell me who he was, and I said, "Hi John, yep, I know you who are. How's that lawsuit coming along?” John turns out to be a really nice guy. Later, seeing how tired I was, he offered me some chocolate beans from Peru that kick started me again.

There were lots of great presentations. Mark Pesce managed to record his entire presentation using his Ipod around his neck. Mark's presentation was smooth, brilliant and hilarious. Definitely the best he has ever given. Here is the torrent.

Mark Pesce - Hyperpeople.torrent

On Saturday night, a whole bunch of us including Mark, Earth and Fire Erowid and myself went out to dinner. I ended up leaving my cell phone there. I didn't realize it until I was already back at the conference. This ended up becoming a kind of epic search. I went back to the restaurant, and the waitress told me that a guy with silver hair had picked it up. There were about 15 people in our group. When I got back to the conference, I was able to figure out who that was; unfortunately a new round of talks had begun and would not end until 10pm. So I waited until those were over. I finally spotted him coming out, and he told me that "The Finish Guy" had it. Then I had to remember what he looked like. Fortunately others in our group remembered his face. Also being Finish he was quite tall, so we were able to spot him. Sure enough he had the phone. I was hugely relieved and we all laughed about it. Mark ended up taking a picture with his camera phone of the Finish guy and myself, and then we got a picture of Mark and myself here:

The next morning was Sunday, and it turned out to be a picture perfect day. The temperatures were in the high 70's. I could not have asked for a more beautiful day - it was glorious. If you have ever been to San Francisco, you might understand the rarity of such days. Mark Twain once said, "The coldest winter I ever knew was a summer in San Francisco." I ended up taking tons of pictures. Here is a classic post-card shot I took that day.

I wanted to hear Alex Grey talk, so we rushed back just in time to hear it. Afterwards I was walking around the vendor’s area when LVX23 called my name. It was delightful to finally meet him. We ended up getting caught up in conversation with several others. I was pretty tired by then, so I stepped out of the conversation to grab some tea. I was walking around when I came across this guy doing some yoga in the chill space. I can't tell you how I knew, but I just knew I had to meet this guy. When I sat down next to him, he said he had just begun to explain Kundalini yoga. However, I quickly discovered that he wasn't explaining it so much as actually getting me to do it! Within 3 or 4 minutes I was getting very relaxed and centered. As we worked through the charkas, I could feel my kundalini actually move up my spine. I have been doing various forms of mediation and yoga for 20 years. I like to think I have a really great and powerful system to work through powerful energies and resolved any kind of negative emotion or pain. However, with what was happening with me here was beyond description. This young buddha-teacher, who goes by name of Anson Vogt, was articulating all these things that I had been waiting to hear for years. I really can't explain it much better than that, only to say he said all the things I have needed to hear for a very long time. As the energy moved through my heart chakra, and up past my throat chakra towards my crown, I went into this profound state of love and bliss like I had never felt before. The whole world become unified in my consciousness. I could feel my head become the sky. I could no longer remain sitting, and I laid on my back as I wept tears of joy. As this happened, my whole life took on new meaning. Many of the "issues" I had been struggling with resolved immediately. I had multiple epiphanies simultaneously. It suddenly became clear precisely where my life is heading next, what I need to do. There is way too much to tell here, and much of it is intensely personal. Needless to say I am a changed person, and I have never felt so good before. I'm still high today, a week after this experience. I have a new found respect for the power of kundalini yoga, and plan on integrating it more profoundly into my work going forward.

Who would have thought that at Mind States, a conference largely devoted to the drug experience, would find myself having one of the most sublimely transformative experiences without drugs. I am very grateful I went.