Ashtar Command

Transmission from the Ashtar Command

2012-12-20T16:09:00.000-08:00

Information is nearly instantaneous nowadays. Instead of needing to remember things, it has grown far more important for us to be able to search information systems like the web in order to find the things that we are looking for.

Rather than memorizing baseball stats for the last 100 years or world capitals, it is far more effective and efficient to know how to find that information online. While we could train ourselves to learn systems of complex math in our head, it’s easier and more accurate to just use a calculator.

When looking at the web, we are sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there, we can instantly find any bit of information we are looking for. While this power is nearly god-like, it does bring about a certain amount of complacency towards the information and stories that are out there.

It feels like sometimes we just glaze over when we are faced with the infinite stores of knowledge that we have available at our fingertips; why bother to learn anything if we can just bookmark and look at it at some point in the future.

The art of learning and exploring has turned many of us into lazy collectors of bookmarks. When we know we can find the answers with ease, we sometimes stop asking questions.

The purpose of this blog is to excite the mind again. All of these articles and stories here have been taken from some node on the web. They are presented here as starting points for future searches and explorations. What we have done and continue to do is collect the stories that excite our minds.

Much in the same way that a DJ chooses songs they like and plays them for an audience, we have made a playlists of the stories that excite and inspire us. They are stories from cutting edge science (like the immortality of wheat and quantum teleportation), and the occult (aleister crowley and the order of the golden dawn), to edge of consciousness (remote viewing, and out of the body experiences). It’s a place for us to put our favorite remixes and edits, and experiments, and showcase music and art which stir our minds and move our souls.

This collection will continue to grow and evolve, and hopefully the site will be place you can go to remind yourself of the beauty and wonder of our world.

Since this is set up as a blog, the dates and posting times are merely arbitrary place holders. Please try to dig deep into the archives, and use the keywords to start your searches.

Enjoy,
Ashtar Command

ashtar command website is up

2010-11-19T22:32:00.000-08:00

The Ashtar Command website is finally up. It's a work in progress. Hope you enjoy. It features the artwork of Joanna Skumanich.

www.ashtar-command.com

awesome cartoon featuring "deadman's gun lyrics"

2010-11-10T03:34:00.000-08:00

chris holmes (voice project) remix of edward sharpe's "home" featuring the gulu widows choir

2010-11-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

"Home" in Gulu from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Edward Sharpe "Home" (chris holmes voice project gulu choir remix)

download remix

go to voice project homepage

This is awesome... Fermilab is Building a 'Holometer' to Determine Once and For All Whether Reality Is Just an Illusion

2010-10-25T01:59:00.000-07:00

From popsci.com

Researchers at Fermilab are building a “holometer” so they can disprove everything you thought you knew about the universe. More specifically, they are trying to either prove or disprove the somewhat mind-bending notion that the third dimension doesn’t exist at all, and that the 3-D universe we think we live in is nothing more than a hologram. To do so, they are building themost precise clock ever created.

The universe-as-hologram theory is predicated on the idea that spacetime is not perfectly smooth, but becomes discrete and pixelated as you zoom in further and further, like a low-res digital image. This idea isn’t novel; recent experiments in black-hole physics have offered evidence that this may be the case, and prominent physicists have proposed similar ideas. Under this theory, the universe actually exists in two dimensions and the third is an illusion produced by the intertwining of time and depth. But the false third dimension can’t be perceived as such, because nothing travels faster than light, so instruments can’t find its limits.

This is theoretical physics at its finest, drowning in complex mathematics but short on hard data. So Fermilab particle astrophysicist Craig Hogan and his team are building a “holometer” to magnify spacetime and see if it is indeed as noisy as the math suggests it might be at higher resolution. In Fermilab’s largest laser lab, Hogan and company are putting together what they call a “holographic interferometer,” which – like a classic interferometer – will split laser beams and measure the difference in frequencies between the two identical beams.

But unlike conventional interferometers, the holometer will measure for noise or interference in spacetime itself. It’s actually composed of two interferometers – built one atop the other – that produce data on the amount of interference or “holographic noise.” Since they are measuring the same volume of spacetime, they should show the same amount of correlated jitter in the fabric of the universe. It will produce the first direct experimental insight into the fundamental nature of space and time, and there’s no telling what researchers delving into that data might find out about the holographic nature of the universe.

So enjoy the third dimension while you still can. Construction on the first instrument is already underway, and Hogan thinks they will begin collecting data on the very nature of spacetime itself by next year.

Build Your Own Spacetime-Measuring 'Holometer' at Home: Just kidding. Don't. Sam Waldman, MIT/Craig Hogan, Fermilab PAC

free Ashtar Command "Gravity" mp3 download

2010-10-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

ashtar command gravity video release on thecobrasnake.com

2010-10-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

photos from the ashtar command video release from thecobrasnake.com

thanks to everyone again for coming out

http://thecobrasnake.com/partyphotos/cults/index.html

tokyo travel log photos from tokyo and atoms for peace at fuji rocks

2010-10-22T12:22:00.001-07:00

Le Baron, Tokyo Aug 29

I am always surprised by the universality of nightclubs; the top shelf drinks they sell, the songs the DJs play, the style of clothes the cool kids wear, even the haircuts they all have. They usually look and dress the same regardless of race or ethnicity, just slightly different versions of people you know in other cities. Each town always has it’s own version of the Cobrasnake.

With the instantaneous spread of the cultural memes through the internet, it’s now like the underground is one massive scene with a different clique in each city. You no longer need to live in London to be able to listen to an Erol Alkan set. You can download it and then download of the all the individual tracks he played in the comfort of your dorm room and play them out at our local club the next night.

That being said it’s always a little surprising to see actually familiar faces in foreign countries. It was nice to see Andrew from MGMT, and Mike and Tyler from Classixx at hanging out at Le Baron. Our DJ gig was unannounced, and they just happened to be at the club. I had just seen both of them less than a week ago at the MGMT aftershow in Hollywood.

The DJ before us was playing 80s new wave hits. I opened up with Desdemona by John’s Childern and played it into Dominique Young Unique. I had no idea what a Tokyo audience would want to hear, but they seemed to be happy with every song I played which was a great feeling.

After a short set Thom and Nigel went on and DJed. The crowd went bananas. You could see people immediately began to twitter that Thom and Nigel were playing as soon as they stepped into the booth.

It’s always great to watch Nigel and Thom DJ together, they both are amazingly intuitive DJs. Thom always pushes the audience and Nigel pulls them back in again. Thom will play an Acid House track and then Nigel will follow will an Old School Hip Hop track. It is a joy to watch.
It’s also always great to watch the crowds when they DJ. There are always a few superfans that are trying secretly (or in most cases not so secretly) to take pictures with their cameras and cellphones. There are others that are shazam-ing every song. Some sit in front and stare like it’s an exhibit in a museum (Thom usually tells them to dance or get the fuck off the dance floor), and then there are those that lose themselves in joy of it all.

They are the ones that let go of awkwardness having one of the favorites musicians be so close. They are ones that actually dance and share in the communal moment between themselves and the DJ. There aren’t inching towards the DJ booth in hopes of starting up a conversation with Thom or Nigel, with an awkward request or pretending to not know who they are. They are content with experience. They are in the moment. They aren’t twittering about it. It’s these times that I am reminded why I love music and DJing.

Fuji Rocks July 31

We took a relaxing bus ride up to Fuji Rocks. It’s about 3 hours outside of Tokyo at a ski resort. The drive up was amazing. My favorite part of traveling in foreign countries is stopping at the gas stations and seeing what weird things they sell. green tea flavored Kit Kat bars, (my new obsession), Hello Kitty protective face masks, portable cigarette ashtrays. It’s the little things that make me happy.

The landscapes outside of Tokyo were beautiful. Usually on DJ tours I fly everywhere, so it was great to be able sit and actually see some of the rural Japan, even if it was on a bus going 60mph.

We arrived at Fuji Rocks around 4pm. As I walked into the backstage area, I ran into my friend Diva Zappa. She had flown out for her birthday. I love how festivals bring so many friends together. It’s always a bit like summer camp for adults who never grew up.

The space where Fuji Rocks is held is enormous. The stages are spread out in what seemed like miles from each other. We had to take a minibus to get to mainstage area (I much prefer the crazy golfcarts of Coachella). We went backstage and then walked around the crowd for a bit. It had rained the previous two days of the fest, and the fields were covered in deep think mud. Everyone wore rain boots, but seemed completely content.

As Vampire Weekend played we walked around the field. People had camped out. Occasionally someone would recognize Nigel and Joey and stop them to take photos. I documented our journey with a stop motion animation on my iphone. Most people shyly smiled and waived. It’s always a beautiful thing to see people singing along to every word of a foreign song. They may not speak English, but they most of the crowd knew every word of every song. I guess I’m the same way when I’m at Sigur Ros concert.

I hate watching shows from the side of stage, you can never hear anything, and you are always in someone’s way. I decided for the Atoms for Peace show to watch the show from the pit. I would take some pictures, and avoid the chaos of the crowd, and manage to stay out of the crews way all at the same time.

I had a new camera and hadn’t really tried to use it to do any live band photography. In the pit I was surrounded by around 50 professional photographers. I did my best to stay out of their way, and took some pictures and enjoyed the show.

Atoms For Peace are amazing live. To have Joey, Flea and Mauro playing along with Thom and Nigel is such amazing chemistry. It is the best rhythm section I’ve ever seen. I grow more and more in awe after every show I see. Each song feels like a masterwork of a artist at their prime. I did my best to try to capture some of that magic in my photos.

Ashtar Command Gravity (Official Full Length Music Video) plus documentary

2010-10-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Debut full length Ashtar Command video plus opening documentary, directed by Marc-Edouard Leon. Uncensored version online for the time being. Music video starts at 6:08. Spread the Light!

more photos from the "Gravity" video release party by Tristan Bayer

2010-10-20T04:31:00.001-07:00

photos from the ashtar command "gravity" video release party

2010-10-17T18:07:00.001-07:00

Ashtar Command Video release party!!!!!

2010-10-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

science & industry "who knew you worked it out so well" (adam 12 remix)

2010-09-29T17:33:00.000-07:00

it still feels like summer, here is a fun song we made with all my favorite people (james curd, jdub, marnie, and adam-12)...it's free...enjoy...it's like whodini with tom-tom club...

ashtar record is coming out very soon!!!!!!!!

http://www.mediafire.com/?cx2vlfq2bk44c5w

ashtar command deadman's gun live

2010-08-10T19:22:00.001-07:00

Ashtar Command's "Deadman's Gun" on Red Dead Redemption Soundtrack

2010-05-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

click for itunes
lyrics
your hand's upon
a deadman's gun
and you're looking
down the sights
your heart worn
and the seams are torn
and they've giving
you a reason to fight
and you're not going to take
what they've got to give
and you're not going to
let them take your will to live
cause they've taken enough
and you've given
them all you can give
and luck won't save them tonight
they've given you a reason to fight
and all the storms you've been chasing
about to rain down tonight
and all the pain you've been facing
about to come into the light

ashtar command interviews heaven's gate 1994

2010-05-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

Editor’s Note: In September, 1994, Chris Holmes interviewed members of The Away Team cult. A few year’s later, they achieved international infamy in their mass suicide, under the name of Heaven’s Gate.

By Chris Holmes

In late July, posters labeled “UFOs, Space Aliens, and Their Final Fight For Earth’s Spoils” were plastered up all over Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, reading like a comic-book conspiracy plot tying together the end of planet, evil aliens, holographic classrooms and UFO-riding angels. The group behind the poster, a self-proclaimed UFO cult, goes by several names: “The Away Team,” “The Representatives of the Next Level,” “The Next Evolutionary Level Above Human” and “Total Overcomers Anonymous.” They have no phone number, no permanent address, and no overt interest in converting new members. They simply want to spread their message; they assume that those who bear “the chip of recognition” will find them and join their organization.

On a summer’s Monday night, “crew members” June, Matt, Oliver and Ross—they refuse to disclose their last names—come to radio station WHPK to share their message. Unlike the Amish or other religious groups whose outward appearance makes them clearly recognizable, “Away Team” members dress conservatively, as if to not stand out. All in their late thirties to early forties, they wear their hair short, and the men are clean-shaven with slightly longer than average sideburns; members sport tennis shoes, slacks, and button-down shirts, untucked but with the top button fastened in L.A.’s. Latin gangster style. They wear identical gold bands on the right-hand ring finger. Asked if the rings have any significance, they seem surprised, then explain that the rings signify devotion to their beliefs and, in a way, their marriage to each other.

Having joined the group in their teens, June, Matt, and Oliver have been Away Teamers for 18 years now. Despite their posters’ sensationalism, the cult is no fly-by-night organization, but rather an offshoot of a seventies organization named “The Two,” (after the two witnesses mentioned in Revelations 11). Founded by a former college music teacher and registered nurse who went under the names Bo and Peep—aka Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles—”The Two” garnered a lot of media attention in the early seventies after the Manson Family killings and the Patty Hearst kidnapping put all cults under close scrutiny. In the mid-seventies, Bo and Peep decided the end of the world lay close at hand. They convinced followers to leave their families, give up their worldly belongings, lead a life of abstinence, and move to a Montana ranch to prepare for the end-times, when angels in UFOs would be spirit the chosen up to heaven.

In 1976, after the misguided but highly publicized apocalypse prediction proved wrong, the group went underground. Leaders encouraged members to lead normal lives, while preparing themselves for the next announcement that the apocalypse was at hand. Members integrated into society working as computer technicians and bakers, bank tellers and salesman. Like Rome’s Christians, they met in secret at “monasteries” to study the arcana of UFOs and world religions. And so, for nearly two decades, they waited for the next announcement.

In January 1994, leaders announced the time had come. Away Teamers sold all worldly belongings, liquidated their bank accounts, cut all social ties and began traveling around the country looking for others with “the chip of recognition.” Clearly Ross had one of those chips. A newcomer to the organization, Ross claimed he had read a manifesto the group printed as an ad in USA Today while flying back from France on a business trip. He says it struck a chord with him. He decided to quit his job, and “walk out of the door” of his life to join the group. Ross still looks like a businessman on holiday, though he seems very excited to be included in the groups’ excursion to the radio station.

He keeps very quiet, continuously nodding his head in agreement to points made by the others, while June, Matt, and Oliver do most of the talking, explaining their apocalyptic message with metaphors from Star Trek and computer technology. They refuse to detail their tour itinerary, but Matt’s sunburn suggests the crew descended from sunnier parts. Careful not to give a specific date, they state that the end is very near, the unredeemed’s window of opportunity closing quickly.

Looking a little like Holly Hunter, with her short brown hair and small frame, June launches the point-by-point explanation of their beliefs: “There is a kingdom level above human which uses UFOs as its method of transportation. We call it an Evolutionary Level Above Human. It is synonymous with what the Bible calls the Kingdom of God. It existed before the human kingdom; before the planet existed, and in a very real sense, we are an experiment for this kingdom.”

Tall and thin, with a mostly bald pate and a vague resemblance to “Star Trek” character Jean-Luc Picard, Oliver kicks in the next step: “We refer to earth as a holographic classroom. I don’t know how many people out there watch Star Trek, but a lot of us do at times. On the show, when you go on the holodeck, it’s like a whole artificial reality that’s created for the crew’s purpose. Wharf goes there to fight battles, others go there for psychological reasons, but the bottom line is they all go there to learn lessons and then return to the ship better for the experience. We feel Earth is a “holographic classroom” created by ‘The Next Evolutionary Level Above Human’ to teach human souls how to graduate to the next level.” Unfortunately for those with incompletes and failures, the Away Team fliers explain that “the hologram is about to be rebooted—canceled and restarted—for its usefulness and serviceability as a classroom has come to an end.”

Graduation, explains June, involves hooking up with those already having made the grade. The cult’s founders, “Bo and Peep were picked and prepped by next-level bodies. It was like taking the brain of Einstein and sticking it into a dog. It took them three years to sort out the information. In order to get to the kingdom level above human you have to hook up with them. You have to walk out of the door of your life. You have to overcome things which you are addicted to.” His football player’s frame topped off by a shock of thick brown hair and ruddy complexion, Matt further explains these tenets, “We know that we are going to be occupying vehicles (bodies) that are androgynous. We need to program our souls to be compatible with that kind of activity. When you’re a crew member aboard your spaceship in the next level you can’t have your mind clouded with human sexuality.”

Bringing thing back to the real matters at hand, Oliver lays out the situation in harsh black-and-white: “The end is coming soon. The window of opportunity is open. This classroom has ended. Heaven is a physical place. UFOs from the kingdom-level above human will physically pick up our bodies and take them to that next level. The only way an individual can get to the next level is by following the formula.”

Maybe angels will come down from heaven blazing in flying saucers to take us to the promised land. Maybe Mother Earth has had her run. Maybe Gene Roddenberry understood all of this and encrypted it in the scripts of Star Trek. Without a definite date it’s hard to prove them wrong. In any case, the Away Team plans to keep spreading its message. Before leaving, they ask if doing “The Jenny Jones Show” seems like a good idea.

chris holmes and voice project at coachella

2010-04-16T00:24:00.000-07:00

More...

Ashtar Command featured on Grey's Anatomy

2010-03-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Ashtar Command "holding out for love" on ABC's Grey's Anatomy.

Song plays for about the first 3 minutes of the episodes at the opening.

http://abc.go.com/watch/greys-anatomy/93515/255421/suicide-is-painless?cid=fullepisodeaccess

listen to the song on youtube here

science & industry "this is how it's meant to be"

2010-03-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

science & industry's "this is how it's meant to be" is up on rcrdlbl and hype machine-here is a free download link of the track.

science & industry is a collaboration between Chris Holmes (of Ashtar Command), James Curd (DFA, greenskeepers) and JDub(DFA, greenskeepers)

Ashtar Command w/Sinead O'Connor

2010-03-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

This was one of first Ashtar Command songs. We recorded Summersend with Sinead O'Connor and producer Marius de Vries in London

It's one of my favorites

Ashtar Command with Sinead O'Connor-Summersend

Ashtar Command covering Mazzy Star's Into Dust

2010-03-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

Ashtar Command cover of Mazzy Star's Into Dust. Guest vocals by Quincy Coleman. It is available on itunes on the OC soundtrack

From the OC soundtrack

Ashtar Command with Quincy Coleman "Into Dust"

kavinsky "nightcall" dj edit

2010-03-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

here is an edit I made of one of my favorite people in the world Kavinksy

click here for youtube link

click here for mp3

enjoy

Ashtar Command remix of Ladytron "Runaway"

2010-03-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

Ashtar Command remix of Ladytron's Runaway

available on itunes

Ladytron-Runaway (Ashtar Command remix)

radiohead-reckoner (ashtar command 12 lbs pounds of sunshine remix)

2010-03-22T01:23:00.000-07:00

Radiohead-Reckoner (Ashtar Command 12 lbs of Sunlight Mix)

new har mar tall boy remix by chris holmes (ashtar command) free download

2009-10-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

Download CHRIS HOLMES' remix of Har Mar Superstar's "Tall Boy" here:http://soundcloud.com/celestronica/har-mar-superstar-tall-boy-chris-holmes-remix

touchable holograms

2009-09-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

new microchip that runs on air

2009-09-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

from the new scientist

this is amazing,

There's no shortage of ways to perform calculations without a standard electronic computer. But the latest in a long line of weird computers runs calculations on nothing more than air.

The complicated nest of channels and valves (see image) made by Minsoung Rhee and Mark Burns at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, processes binary signals by sucking air out of tubes to represent a 0, or letting it back in to represent a 1.

A chain of such 1s and 0s flows through the processor's channels, with pneumatic valves controlling the flow of the signals between channels.

Valve computer

Each pneumatic valve is operated by changing the air pressure in a small chamber below the air channel, separated from the circuit by a flexible impermeable membrane. When the lower chamber is filled with air the membrane pushes upwards and closes the valve, preventing the binary signal flowing across one of the processor's junctions.

Sucking out the air from the chamber reopens the valve by forcing the membrane downwards, letting the signal move across the junction.

The two researchers used the valve-controlled channels to produce a variety of logic gates, flip-flops and shift registers, which they linked together to create a working 8-bit microprocessor. That means that the longest discrete pieces of data it can handle are eight binary digits long, like the processors used in 1980s consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

It's even possible to watch the pneumatic components in action, because the valve membranes reflect light strongly whenever they are forced downwards (see movie).

Lab helper

But the air processor is far from just being a computational curiosity, say Rhee and Burns: it has the potential to improve the "lab-on-a-chip" devices tipped to automate complex chemistry tasks and improve disease testing, DNA profiling and other lab jobs.

These pocket-scale microfluidic devices are yet to be much practical use, say the Michigan team, perhaps because they typically require a large number of bulky and expensive off-chip components to control their operation.

Using logic circuits is one way to bring most of those controls onto the lab-on-a-chip itself and reduce running costs. But because many microfluidic systems have no electronic components, adding standard electronic valves to the device would require a new fabrication process, says Burns.

"Many microfluidic systems use pneumatic valves to control liquid flow, so adding the pneumatic control circuits should be relatively simple and inexpensive," he says.

Although the device still requires an off-chip vacuum source to operate, the volume of the microprocessor is so small that the required vacuum can be generated by a hand pump.

Versatile approach

Andrew de Mello, a microfluidics expert at Imperial College London, UK, thinks that the simplified method of operation could lead to useful microfluidic devices for developing countries.

"The fact that you can generate that vacuum from a hand pump means these devices are low power, and suited for remote locations," he says.

However, the device is unlikely to have applications beyond its use in microfluidics – the "air" or "vacuum" signals are very sluggish compared with the lightning-quick flow of electrons through a standard circuit.

"Shrinking the device would mean that the signals would travel shorter distances and thus operate at higher 'clock speeds'," says Burns.

DJ AM

2009-08-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

It's hard to come up with words to memorialize DJ AM. He glowed, and embraced life with a passion that was apparent to everyone he encountered. He was so respectful, supportive, kind hearted and encouraging of his fellow artists and DJs.

In a town that is famous for insincerity and gladhanding, I have never heard a single negative word uttered about Adam.

He loved music with the innocence of a child and that joy was contagious. He was an ambassador and host for the city of Los Angeles. Whenever anyone was in town he would invite them to his house for dinner and a screening. He was someone who grew up in LA, and knew the history of every street corner, every bar or club that had come and gone over the years. He could talk to you with the same depth of knowledge and joy about the newest Daft Punk remix as easily as he could about an old psych track, or house classic, or obscure punk rock jam.

He was technically one of the greatest DJs I've ever seen. I was in awe of his talent, and the ease that flowed out of him behind his laptop and serato mixer. He was always excited to show you some new little trick he had came up with, or some secret feature that they had added to serato as his request. He inspired us.

He was generous to a fault. I remember one year at Steve Aoki's birthday at the Cinespace, he gave Steve a brand new macbook filled with thousands of his favorite songs as a birthday present. While other friends were giving Steve hugs and high fives, Adam had given him a piece of his soul.

He will be missed dearly by all not only for the obvious reasons, but for the little things as well; someone you could always have an intelligent conversation with at a crowded bar, someone who would always save you a space at the table, someone who would always ask what you have been up to before ever talking about himself.

He made his fellow djs feel like it was all worthwhile. You don't dj and remix for the people in front of the turntables, you do it for the ones like Adam, the ones that make you care, make you want to be better, and remind you that you are never alone.

We love him, and will miss him dearly. His joy will always guide me whenever I stand behind two turntables at a club.

lollapalooza and sebastian and busy p at the pool

2009-08-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

photos from the voice project pool party

2009-07-15T12:56:00.001-07:00

www.voiceproject.org

or look up voice project on facebook

new beck/record club tracks up on beck.com

2009-07-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico "Venus In Furs" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico "Femme Fatale" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

game night at malo!

2009-06-21T12:13:00.001-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=94890851710
game night at malo, 4326 w. sunset, los angeles

with special guests this week

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=94890851710

my friend noa's awesome photoblog

2009-06-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

check it out,

it's awesome

http://noavi.com/journal/?p=1466

click here

beck and record club present sunday morning

2009-06-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

record club track and video up with beck, joey, nigel, thorunn, giovani, bryan, bram and me covering the velvet underground

http://www.beck.com/

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico 'Sunday Morning' from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

new nasa video for a volta

2009-06-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

here is a new video from our good friends at n.a.s.a. for their song "a volta", inspiring by example

a volta

new chris holmes remix for n.a.s.a. "gifted" featuring kanye west, lykke li, and santo gold

2009-05-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

here is the new remix for the n.a.s.a. track "gifted" featuring kanye, lykke, and santo

Chris Holmes remix of n.a.s.a.'s "gifted"

yyy's shame and fortune edit

2009-04-23T23:36:00.000-07:00

Chris edit of Yeah Yeah Yeahs Shame and Fortune

yyy's shame and fortune edit download link

2009-04-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

shame and fortune edit

coachella and mccartney pics

2009-04-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

youtube video of coachella dj set before mccartney

2009-04-23T13:58:00.001-07:00

busy p's bday bonzana

2009-04-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

cobrasnake photos from cinespace

2009-04-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

coachella/paul mccartney dj set

2009-04-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ashtar Command DJ set for Paul McCartney Coachella

paul mccartney coachella dj set download link

2009-04-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Last night was amazing. Here is a zip file of my dj set of beatles edits and remixes I made exclusively for coachella. Enjoy

download mix

Ashtar Command at Coachella

2009-04-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ashtar Command is playing coachella on the mainstage with Paul McCartney on Friday around 945. We are so excited to be asked to be part of Paul set. It's amazing.

Ashtar Command's Matt Walker and Solomon Synder will be playing drums and bass with Morrissey just before us with Morrissey just before the dj set.

I will post the set and edits and remixes after the show on Friday, along with photos and video.

DJing Busy P's BDAY@Cinespace April 21st with Busy P, Sebastian, Kavinsky, DJ Mehdi, and So-me!

2009-04-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am playing with my favorite Frenchmen at Cinespace April 21st to celebrate Busy P's birthday.

It will be bananas

here are some photos from last year

Ashtar Command Studio Tracks

2009-04-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

We have just completed mixing the first batch of 17 songs for the upcoming Ashtar trilogy

We hope to have them mastered and out to you all very soon

sebastian and tiga on airplace at coachella

2009-04-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

radiohead/kraftwerk tour photos

2009-03-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

kraftwerk robots live in santiago, chile

2009-03-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

chris holmes and talib kweli at art of elysium benefit

2009-01-23T23:52:00.000-08:00

Monday Night At the Bar

2009-01-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

The most consistently awesome night in l.a. for 3 years running now

Every Monday night

The Bar

5851 Sunset Blvd.

10pm-2am

Featuring

Sean Patrick

Adam 12 (She Wants Revenge)

Chris Holmes (Ashtar Command)

Zach Rosencrantz

Metalocalypse episode 201 "Dethecution"

2008-12-11T19:04:00.000-08:00

Watch Chris Holmes' cameo in Adult Swim's Metalocalypse get strapped to a rocket, shot out of jail, blown up by a laser beams, and have his body parts scattered over the countryside all in the name of metal and his favorite band Dethklok--- in his animated guest appearance in "Dethecution" -- Episode 201 of Adult Swim's Metalocalypse.

Buy at iTunes

check me out in action at 2:05 in

Ashtar Command Remixes

2008-12-09T17:51:00.000-08:00

ASHTAR COMMAND REMIXES

Fischerspooner - The 15th (Ashtar Command remix)

Greenskeepers featuring Colette-Keep It Down (Ashtar Command remix)

She Wants Revenge-Tear You Apart (Ashtar Command vs. Bystanders remix)

Usher-Caught (Ashtar Command Acid mix)

Hole-Awful (Ashtar Command Wall of Sound mix)

Bravery-Fearless (Ashtar Command mix)

Regina Spekter-Fidelty (Ashtar Command vs. Phillipians mix)

Nikka Costa w/Prince-I Do Not Think We've Met (Ashtar Command vs. Felix Da Housecat mix)

She Wants Revenge-Out of Control (Ashtar Command mix)

Rachael Yamagata-Worn Me Down (Ashtar Command mix)

Dandy Warhols-Used 2 B Friends (Ashtar Command mix)

lockhead martin senior scientist boyd bushman interview on anti-gravity,

2008-07-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

click beneath for parts 2, and 3

ufo interviews-mp3s in advance of the landing

2008-07-15T02:19:00.000-07:00

Interviews from my old radio show In Advance Of the Landing with Chris Roth...
more to come post-haste

Rev. Dr. Frank Stranges

Hopi Indians and Aliens

Touching a Hybrid Baby

id="audioplayer5" height="24" width="290">

Explaining the Experience
lue="http://snipr.com/2x0vo-iz446x">

radiohead's house of cards video

2008-07-14T20:03:00.003-07:00

the video

the making of the video

Ashtar Command DJ mixes

2008-07-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

Ashtar Command DJ mix 2008

Ashtar Command Special Daft Punk Mix for BPM Online

Ashtar Command BPM White Label Session Mix

Ashtar Command Jeremy Scott Fashion Show Mix

Ashtar Command OG Mashup Mix 2003

Nobel Prize Winning Biologist Paul Nurse Finds That Immortality Might Lie in the DNA of Yeast

2008-07-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Paul Nurse on Charlie Rose extended interview

Priscilla Ahn's new record is out!

2008-07-13T03:36:00.001-07:00

The brilliant and amazing Priscilla Ahn's debut record is available on itunes, do you self a favor and buy a copy.

Priscilla sings guest vocals on several Ashtar Command songs. She also sang on Joshua Radin's We Were Here record. She is the best ever.

click here to link to itunes
Priscilla Ahn- A Good Day

Ashtar Command DJ Edits

2008-07-12T23:55:00.000-07:00

ASHTAR COMMAND/CHRIS HOLMES DJ EDITS

2 Live Crew vs. Giorgio Moroder-Chase Some Pussy (Ashtar Command edit)

Kinks-You Really Got Me (Ashtar Command more cowbell edit)

? and the Mysterions-96 Tears (Ashtar Command edit)

The Knack-My Sharona (Ashtar Command edit)

E.L.O.-Don't Bring Me Down (Ashtar Command edit)

The Who-Can't Explain (Ashtar Command more cowbell edit)

Vanilla Ice-Ice, Ice Baby (Ashtar Command edit)

Roxy Music-Let's Stick Together (Ashtar Command edit)

The Clash-Train in Vain (Ashtar Command edit)

Rolling Stones-Turd On the Run (Ashtar Command edit)

AC/DC-You Shook Me All Night Long (Ashtar Command more cowbell edit)

Foreigner-Urgent (Ashtar Command more cowbell edit)

Ashtar Command presents Lollapalooza afterparties!!!!!!

2008-07-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

Ashtar Command Yoga Mixes

2008-07-12T18:49:00.000-07:00

As an experiemental for our yoga master, blog guru imarobot3000, Ashtar Command made a series of instrumental mixes of our songs for his yoga sessions.

I have posted them here.

Enjoy

Ashtar Command-Ballad of the Undiscovered Yoga Mix

Ashtar Command-Into Dust Yoga Instrumental

Ashtar Command-Let the Sunshine In

Ashtar Command-Song About the Sun

Ashtar Command-Ballad of the Undiscovered with the Warsi Brothers

Ashtar Command-Song About the Sun with the Warsi Brothers

Kenneth Anger Films available for online streaming

2008-07-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

Brilliant director and Angeleno Kenneth Angers' landmark films are available for online streaming

http://www.subcin.com/anger.html
Scorpio Rising

Invocation of My Demon Brother

Lucifer Rising

Aleister Crowley 8 Lectures On Yoga

2008-07-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/yoga/

Eight Lectures On Yoga

by
Mahatma Guru
Sri Paramahansa Shivaji
(Aleister Crowley)

Preface

Aleister Crowley has achieved the reputation of being a master of the English language. This book which is as fresh and vibrant today as when it was penned over thirty years ago demonstrates this fact. It shows how impossible it is to categorize him as a particular kind of stylist. At turns he can be satirical, poetical, sarcastic, rhetorical, philosophical or mystical, gliding so easily from one to the other that the average reader is hard put to determine whether or not to take him at face value.

His description of mystical states of consciousness clarifies what tomes of more erudite writing fails to elucidate. It is in effect a continuation of Part I of Book 4 brought to maturity. Nearly three decades had elapsed between the writing of these two books, in which time his own inner development had soared ineffably. A great deal of what he has to say may seem prosaic at first sight, but do not be fooled by this. Other of his comments are profound beyond belief, requiring careful and long meditation if full value is to be derived from them.

This is not a book to be read while standing or running. It is a high water mark of Crowley's literary career, incorporating all that we should expect from one who had experimented with and mastered most technical forms of spiritual growth. There is humor here, a great deal of sagacity, and much practical advice. This book cannot be dispensed with for the student for whom Yoga is 'the way.'

Israel Regardie
March 21, 1969
Studio City, CA

all hail har mar

2008-07-12T15:22:00.001-07:00

HAR MAR SUPERSTAR

ON TOUR WITH NEON NEON

CONQUERING THE CIVILIZED WORLD

ONE BROKEN HEART AT A TIME

Chris Holmes/Ashtar Command named to URB magazine's next 100 for 2008

2008-07-12T14:52:00.001-07:00

http://www.urb.com/permalink/2321/URB-Next-100:-Issue-151-Preview.html

BPM Magazine interview with Chris Holmes

2008-07-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

www.chrisholmes.net/blog/blogvideo/bpminterview.pdf

brain implants: Delgado's stimoceiver

2008-07-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

Dr. José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado (b. 1915) was a Spanish professor of physiology at Yale University, famed for his research into electrical stimulation of regions in the brain.

Delgado was born in Ronda, Spain in 1915. He received an Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Madrid just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, in which he served as a medical corpsman on the Republican side. After the war he had to repeat his M.D. degree, and then took a Ph.D. at the Cajal Institute in Madrid.

In 1946 he began a fellowship at Yale, and was invited by the noted physiologist John Fulton to join the department of physiology in 1950.

Delgado's research interests centered on the use of electrical signals to evoke responses in the brain. His earliest work was with cats, but later did experiments with monkeys and humans.

Much of Delgado's work was with an invention he called a stimoceiver, a radio which joined a stimulator of brain waves with a receiver which monitored E.E.G. waves and sent them back on separate radio channels. This allowed the subject of the experiment full freedom of movement while allowing the experimenter to control the experiment.

The stimoceiver could be used to stimulate emotions and control behavior. According to Delgado, "Radio Stimulation of different points in the amygdala and hippocampus in the four patients produced a variety of effects, including pleasant sensations, elation, deep, thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation, colored visions, and other responses." Delgado stated that "brain transmitters can remain in a person's head for life. The energy to activate the brain transmitter is transmitted by way of radio frequencies." (Source: Cannon; Delgado, J.M.R., "Intracerebral Radio Stimulation and recording in Completely Free Patients," in Schwitzgebel and Schwitzgebel (eds.))

The most famous example of the stimoceiver in action occurred at a Cordoba bull breeding ranch. Delgado stepped into the ring with a bull which had had a stimoceiver implanted. The bull charged Delgado, who pressed a remote control button which appeared to cause the bull to stop its charge. Delgado claimed that the stimulus caused the bull to lose its aggressive instinct; skeptics suggested that the electrical impulse had caused the bull to turn aside.

Although the bull incident was widely mentioned in the popular media, Delgado believed that his experiment with a female chimpanzee named Paddy was more significant. Paddy was fitted with a stimoceiver that detected a brain signal called a spindle. When a spindle was detected, the stimoceiver responded with a signal to the central gray area of Paddy's brain, producing an 'aversive reaction'. Within hours her brain was producing many fewer spindles.

In 1974, Delgado returned to Spain to help organize a new medical school at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

hemi-sync and the out of the body experiences

2008-07-11T20:05:00.000-07:00

HEMI-SYNC

Hemi-Sync is a trademarked brand name for a process developed at the Monroe Institute, used to create audio patterns containing binaural beats, which are commercialized in the form of audio CDs. Other companies have also created and marketed products based on the concept of binaural beats such as Holosync by the Centerpointe Institute.

Hemi-sync is a technology developed by Robert Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute. Hemi-sync is short for Hemispheric Synchronization aka Brainwave synchronization. Monroe claimed that the technique synchronizes the two hemispheres of one's brain, thereby creating a 'frequency-following response' designed to evoke certain effects. Hemi-sync can allegedly be used for many purposes, including relaxation and sleep induction, learning and memory aids, helping those with physical and mental difficulties, and reaching altered states of consciousness through the use of sound.

The technique involves using sound waves to entrain brain waves. Wearing headphones, Monroe claimed that brains respond by producing a third sound (called binaural beats) that he believed to encourage various brainwave activity.

THE MONROE INSTITUTE

The Monroe Institute (TMI) is a nonprofit education and research organization devoted to the exploration of human consciousness, based in Faber, Virginia, United States. Over the last three decades, many people have attended TMI’s residential programs, and/or used their trademarked Hemi-Sync audio technology for various purposes, including meditation, lucid dreaming, and remote viewing.

TMI’s methodology does not contain bias towards any particular belief system, religion, or political or social stance.
TMI was founded by Robert Monroe after he started having what he called "out of body experiences." It is comprised of several buildings on land owned by the Monroe family in Virginia, USA. One of its activities includes teaching various techniques, based on Hemi-Sync, in order to expand consciousness and explore areas of consciousness not normally available in the waking state.

More...

A reporter for The Hook, weekly newspaper for Charlottesville, Virginia, who visited the Monroe Institute said, "...with a few exceptions, the only "normal" people with whom I could fully identify were the trainers, who seemed remarkably well-grounded for people whose day-to-day experiences include astral projection and disembodied spirits."

The reporter also concluded that "there is something significant being developed at the Institute. Whether it's just a brilliant guided meditation (complete with trance-inducing stereoscopic sound) or a doorway to a world of spirit entities, I cannot say."

ROBERT MONROE

According to his own account, while experimenting with sleep-learning in 1958 Monroe experienced an unusual phenomenon which he described as sensations of paralysis and vibration accompanied by a bright light that appeared to be shining on him from a shallow angle. Monroe goes on to say that this occurred another 9 times over the next six weeks, culminating in an out-of-body experience. Monroe recorded his account in his 1971 book Journeys Out Of The Body and went on to become a prominent researcher in the field of human consciousness.

Monroe later authored two more books Far Journeys and Ultimate Journey and in 1978 he founded the Monroe Institute. A non-profit education and research foundation that described itself as being "devoted to the exploration of human consciousness".

Hemi-Sync

In 1975, Monroe registered a patent for an audio-visual device designed to stimulate brain functions until the left and right hemispheres became synchronized. Monroe held that this state, dubbed Hemi-Sync (hemispherical synchronization), could be used to promote mental well being or to trigger an altered state of consciousness. Monroe's concept was based on an earlier hypothesis known as binaural beats and has since been expanded on a commercial basis by the self help industry.

An example of hemi-sync
listen with headphones, with eyes closed in a relaxed environment

DO NOT LISTEN UNLESS YOU ARE IN A SAFE PLACE

hemi-sync freeflow 12 extended edit

Chris Holmes/Ashtar Command Opens For Daft Punk in Monterrey, Mexico. Full BPM Article/Photo Blog

2008-07-11T19:47:00.000-07:00

Download full pdf of BPM article

quantum teleportation article from cal tech

2008-07-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

Quantum Optics Group
Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics
California Institute of Technology

A great article explaining this experiment can be found at ABC news. See the October 23, 1998 issue of Science magazine for the article in full, or read the Caltech press release for a summary.

In quantum teleportation, an unknown quantum state is faithfully transferred from a sender (Alice) to a receiver (Bob). To perform the teleportation, Alice and Bob must have a classical communication channel and must also share quantum entanglement -- in the protocol we employ*, each possesses one half of a two-particle entangled state. Alice makes an appropriate projective measurement (Bell measurement) of the unknown state together with her component of the shared entangled state. The result of this measurement is a random piece of classical information which Alice sends to Bob over their classical communication channel. Bob uses this information to choose a unitary transformation which he performs on his component of the shared entangled state, thus transforming it into an output state identical to the original (unknown) input. Notice that the input state is destroyed by Alice's projective measurement, so that teleportation does not result in "cloning" of a quantum state.
(*Teleportation protocol of C. H. Bennett et al., PRL 70, 1895 (1993).)

Teleportation with Squeezed Light

We have implemented quantum teleportation with light beams serving as both the entangled pair and the input (and output) state. Squeezed light is used to generate the entangled (EPR) beams which are sent to Alice and Bob. A third beam, the input, is a coherent state of unknown complex amplitude. This state is teleported to Bob with a high fidelity only achievable via the use of quantum entanglement.

More...

Teleportation Apparatus
Entangled EPR beams are generated by combining two beams of squeezed light at a 50/50 beamsplitter. EPR beam 1 propagates to Alice's sending station, where it is combined at a 50/50 beamsplitter with the unknown input state, in this case a coherent state of unknown complex amplitude. Alice uses two sets of balanced homodyne detectors to make a Bell-state measurement on the amplitudes of the combined state. Because of the entanglement between the EPR beams, Alice's detection collapses Bob's field (EPR beam 2) into a state conditioned on Alice's measurement outcome. After receiving the classical result from Alice, Bob is able to construct the teleported state via a simple phase-space displacement of the EPR field 2.
Fidelity (Quantum vs. Classical?)
Quantum teleportation is theoretically perfect, yielding an output state which equals the input with a fidelity F=1. In practice, fidelities less than one are realized due to imperfections in the EPR pair, Alice's Bell measurement, and Bob's unitary transformation. By contrast, a sender and receiver who share only a classical communication channel cannot hope to transfer an arbitrary quantum state with a fidelity of one. For coherent states, the classical teleportation limit is F=0.5, while for light polarization states it is F=0.67. The quantum nature of the teleportation achieved in this case is demonstrated by the experimentally determined fidelity of F=0.58, greater than the classical limit of 0.5 for coherent states. Note that the fidelity is an average over all input states and so measures the ability to transfer an arbitrary, unknown superposition from Alice to Bob.

how to build a dream machine

2008-07-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

The plan below is for a 78 rmp dreamachine. See below the drawings of the plan

for the explainations for a 45 rpm dreamachine.

More...

EQUIPMENT

- 1 record player working at the speed of 78 tours/minute,

- 1 big cardboard sheet, rigid enough for the future cylinder to stand up, and soft enough to be easily cut and worked; you can get sheets of different thickness and dimensions in an office stationery. Choose the darkest colour you can find as the cardboard must be opaque to the light of a 100 watts bulb.

1 graduate rule of 30 or 40 cm long,

1 set square,

1 thin lead pencil,

1 rubber,

cardboard glue,

1 cutter,

1 100 watts bulb,

1 lamp socket,

1 male plug,

electric lead (5 to 6 meters long),

1 multiplug,

1 tape measure to measure the circumference of the turn table of the record-player,

clothes pegs.

PRINCIPLE OF THE DREAMACHINE

To build a dreamachine, you need a cylinder with holes in it, fixed uppon the turntable of a record player turning at the speed of 78 tours/minute.

In the middle of the machine, one 100 watts bulb. When you seat in front of the machine, the light of the bulb must come in front of your closed eyes intermittently, according to a rythm from 7 to 13 light-flashes per second, which is the rythm of alpha waves of the brain.

For the effects, refer to "Colloque de Tanger", vol. 1, Christian Bourgois éditeur, or "Here to Go - Planer R 101", Brion Gysin - Terry Wilson.

BASIC CALCULUS

- The rythm of the light flashes is from 7 to 13 flashes/second.

- The turntable of the record-player turns at the speed of 78 tours/minute = 78 tours/60 seconds.

- In one second, the turntable makes : 78/60 = 1,3 tour.

- 1 flash correspons to a hole in the cylinder.

- 1 row of 6 holes (6 flashes) will give for every tour a rythm of 6x1,3 = 7,8 flashes/second

- 1 row of 7 holes : 7x1,3 = 9,1 fl/s

- 1 " " 8 " : 8x1,3 = 10,4 fl/s

- 1 " " 9 " : 9x1,3 = 11,7 fl/s

- 1 " " 10 " : 10x1,3 = 13 fl/s

The length of the cartdbord sheet must be equal to the circumference of the turntable. The dimensions of the plan are the ones of a Dual 1010 record player; the circumference of its turntable is 85,5 cm.

PROCEDURE

1. Measure the circumference of the turntable with the tape measure.

2. Transfer this dimension on the length of the cardboard sheet from the left side at the top and at the bottom of the sheet. Draw a line joining the 2 points, parallel to the width of the sheet.

3. Once the line is drawn, draw another one, parallel to the first one, 4,5 cm on the right far from it; this is to delimit a little band which, at the end of the operations, will be stuck to the left width to make the cylinder. With the cutter, cut the sheet along the second line. So the final length of the cardboard is : 85,5 cm + 4,5 cm = 90 cm.

4. At the top of the cardboard, on the right and left widths, measure 2,5 cm. Draw a line joining the 2 points. You get a band of 85,5 cm x 2,5 cm. Do the same at he bottom of the cardboard in drawing a band of 3 cm wide (see the drawing). The width between the 2 bands is 65,5 - (2,5+3) = 60 cm.

5. Now divide this width of 60 cm in 5 equal parts of 12 cm. Measure 5 times 12 cm on the right and left widths. Draw the lines joining those new points. You get 4 new lines, parallel to the length.

6. Now calculate the dimensions of the holes in every row. The upper row will contain the most numerous holes (10) and the row of the bottom, the less numerous holes (6), so the base of the cylinder is as solid as possible (see the plan of the cardboard of the cylinder).

a) Upper row :

* Divide this row in 10 equal parts : 85,5/10 = 8,55 cm

* Measure 10 times this dimension at the top and at the bottom of the upper row, in beguinning by the left.

* Draw the lines joining the new points : you get 9 parallel lines 8,55 cm far from one another (these lines will be in the middle of the holes) delimiting 10 rectangles of 12x8,55 cm.

* Take the plan of every hole : the line IJ represents the new lines you have just drawn. On this line IJ, measure 2 times 1,5 cm, from I and from J, so you get the points K and L. From these points, perpendicularly to IJ, measure the points A, B, C and D, 2 cm far from K and L. raw the lines joining A and B, B and D, D and C, C and A. The rectangle you get is the hole.

* Proceed the same way to get all the holes of the row. On the left width of this row, you only get half a hole. On the right side, at the end of the row, the last hole encroaches upon the band to stick; the second half of this hole will fit to the half hole on the left when you stick the cylinder, and this for every row. In other words, the left half hole and the hole at the right end of the row will make the same hole.

b) Second row :

It will contain 9 holes. Proceed as you did for the upper row, but divide the length of the cardboard by 9 : 85,5 / 9 = 9,44 cm. Proceed as before with this new demension and so for the other rows :

c) Third row :

8 holes : 85,5 / 8 = 10,62 cm

d) Forth row :

7 holes : 85,5 / 7 = 12,14 cm

e) Fifth row :

6 holes : 85,5 / 6 = 14,16 cm

Every hole has the same dimensions, whatever the row may be.

7. Once you have delimited all the holes, cut them with the cutter. Put the cut pieces of cardboard aside, you will need them later on.

8. Put the cardboard sheet upon the turntable in giving a cylindric shape to it. Temporarily fix the 2 widths the one on the other with clothes pegs. Make sure the base of the cylinder fits with the dimensions of the turntable and that the left half holes fit with the holes of the right width. Do not stick the edges yet.

9. If the turntable is covered with a rubber surface, delicately unstick the edges of this surface; you are going to use it to maintain the cylinder in position. If there is no rubber surface, take a thick piece of rigid cardboard and cut it according to the exact dimensions of the turntable. Make a hole in the middle, like a LP record, in introducing it in the axis of the turntable.

10. Go back to the cardboard sheet. Take the cut rectangles ABCD you had previously put aside, and solidly stick them at the bottom of the sheet on the width so you get little tongues to be fold and slipped perpendicularly under the rubber surface, to keep the cylinder upon the turntable. Put as many tongues as needed.

11. Your cylinder is ready. Stick the 2 widths one upon the other, maintaining the stuck band with the clothes pegs, in adapting them in the holes. Leave the pegs untill the cardboard and the glue are dry.

If the upper row is not perfectly circular, in cases the cardboard would fold over the holes, make the cardboard more solid in sticking the remaining little triangles ABCD inside the cylinder.

12. Then you adapt the cylinder on the turntable in slipping the little tongues under the rubber surface or the cardboard disc. The body of the dreamachine is ready now. If you turn the record player on, the cylinder must turn on the turntable in remaining solidly fixed.

13. Then you take the bulb, the lamp socket, the electric lead and the male plug. Fix the whole lot together.

14. Put the dreamachine on a stool, near a power point, let the bulb hang in the middle of the cylinder without it to touch the edges. Adjust the length of the lead over the dreamachine in the most adapted way to the room where you are (you can pass the lead in a hook screwed in the ceiling, make a bracket system, etc...). The length of the lead must be adjustable, so the bulb can be put in front of every row.

15. Plug the bulb, plug the record player, turn it on in setting it on the 78 tours speed. Sit comfortably in front of the machine and approach your face the closest you can. Close your eyes and watch : you get inside your head mlulticoloured geometric and stereoscopic 360° images, and lights, the colors, shapes and designs of which constantly changes. You can vary the images in increasing or lessening the pressure of your eyelids andd the distance between your face and the machine and in experimenting the different rows.

A record has been specially made to be listened to while watching the dreamachine, its rythm is the same as the light flashes: "Heathen Earth", Throbbing Gristle (International Records), best in stereo with a headphone.

Brion Gysin

DREAMACHINE 2 Extract from BRION GYSIN INTERVIEW RE Search William Burroughs - Brion Gysin - Throbbing Gristle

R/S: What's happening with the Dreamachine ? At one point ... you said it could have been the drugless turn-on of the 60s. Why didn't it happen ?

BRION : One of the reasons is that ... I think it scares people... Because of the cact that it deals with this area of interior vision which has never been tapped before. Except in history, one knows of cases - in French history, Catherine de Medicis for example, had Nostradamus sitting up on the top of a tower (which is now just being restored, at the present time, over there). And there was no pollution in those days... one didn't have any screen between the man on top of the tower and the sun. And he used to sit up there and with the fingers of his hands spread like this would flicker his fingers over his closed eyes, and would interpret his visions in a way which were of infuence to her in regard to her political powers.

R/S: But they wee good visions -Byron Gysin

Brion : They could also foretell bad things too. Peter the Great also had somebody who sat on the top of a tower and flickered his fingers like that in front of his closed eyelids... And any of us today can go and look out the window or lie on a field and do it, and you get a great deal of the type of visions - in fact, it's the same area of the alpha bands of excitation of the brain - within the alpha band between eight and thirteen flickers a second. And the Dreamachine produces this continuously, without interruption, unless you yourself interrupt it by opening your eyes like that.

So the experience can be pushed a great deal further - into an area which is like real dreams. For example very often people compare it to films. Well, who can say who is projecting these films - where do these films come from ? If you look at it as I am rather inclined to now - like being the source of all vision - inasmuch as within my experience of many hundreds of hours of looking at the Dreamachine, I have seen in it practically everything that I have ever seen - that is, all imagery. All the images of established religions, for example, appear - crosses appear, to begin with; eyes of Isis float by, and many of the other symbols like that appear as if they were the Jungian symbols that he considered were common to whole mankind.

And then one goes very much further - one gets flashes of memory, one gets these little films that are apparently being projected in one's head ... one then gets into an area where all vision is as in a complete circle of 360 degrees, and one is plunged into a dream situation that's occuring all around one. And it may be true that this is all one can see... that indeed the alpha rythm contains the whole human program of vision. Well - that is a big package to deal with - and I don't think anybody particularly wants ... amateurs sitting in front of Dreamachines fiddling with it , perhaps...

Allan Bennett Bio from golden dawn

2008-07-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Allan Bennett
1872 - 1923

Allan Bennett was an analytical chemist by training who was brought up as a Roman Catholic by his widowed mother. He was the typical Sagittarius who radiated much spiritual intensity. He was a man with very distinguishing features, burning eyes and thick brows.

He was recognized as an Adeptus Minor in the Golden Dawn by the age of 23. He is most remembered as the first teacher of practical magic to the famed Aleister Crowley.

Bennett was always close to the Mathers and had made frequent visits to their home to stay, sometimes for days, even weeks. Although Bennett's effect upon the Order of the Golden Dawn wasn't as influential as other members like William Westcott, Annie Horniman, or William Butler Yeats, he contributed a part of himself to the Order in his own silent way. Bennett helped Mathers in collating a mass of papers and valuable Order material. Some of these works were later undertaken by the hands of Crowley and published under the title, Liber 777. Much credit was also given to Bennett for laying out the ground work of the Sepher Sephiroth.

One of Bennett's better assets was his talent and performance in practical ceremonial magic. One popular composition was the rite of evocation of the Spirit Taphthartharath to visible appearance. Much of this work can be accredited to Bennett.
Bennett left England and the Golden Dawn to live in the east, where he studied Buddhism in Situ. He joined the Sangha and took the name Swami Maitrananda, and later Ananda Metleya. He traveled to Burma, where living the life of a Bhikkhu was sufficient for him. After some years in the Eastern world, he returned to Britain as a missionary. He founded a Buddhist lodge which later developed into the Buddhist Society. At this time, all workings between him and the Golden Dawn, or even Crowley for that fact, were almost non-existent.

Bennett eventually lost hope and satisfaction with the Eastern path to spiritual enlightenment. In the 1920's, he again took up residence in England. He had outgrown his Buddhist life. As deep and prolonged as the time had been, it still had not quenched his insatiable hunger for spiritual attainment.

Allan Bennett was a clear thinker and a natural ascetic. Having divested himself of his few possessions on entering the Sangha, he was extremely poor. He rented a back room, unfurnished except for a small table with two or three books and his famous "blasting rod". He seems to have preferred this to the wands recommended in the Golden Dawn. He charged it with considerable magnetism, and would mount it in a wooden handle painted with words of power. The words of power could be changed according to the nature of the operation proposed. Beyond this, his room was filled with machinery. His mechanical works were devoted to the aim in perfecting a device to establish conscious communication with the astral world.

Bennett's health grew worse than ever in England. It had first declined there in his earlier years due to the climate. In a final attempt to relieve his misery, he tried at Liverpool to board a ship bound for a warmer climate. The captain, unwilling to take responsibility for anyone so gravely ill, refused him passage.

Bennett died almost instantly from severe asthma spasms and convulsions. He died leaving behind very little. The location of his writings, books, journals or manuscripts were unknown to many save perhaps to only those of his brethren of the Buddhist Society and close relatives & disciples.

In his last days, shortly before his death, he resigned from the Buddhist Lodge which he had formed. He was sick, tired, and realizing that his time on this earth was now at an end, he perhaps not in a formal way, but in a way that matters most, in his heart, he stood once again within the Hall of the Neophyte before the Banner of the East, and before an etheric figure of his late mentor, MacGregor Mathers.As his eyes may have glanced upward, he saw descending upon him, the Light of his own Higher Genius.

secretary of the future, an interview with john perry barlow

2008-07-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

MacGregor Mathers bios

2008-07-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

Samuel Liddell (or Liddel) "MacGregor" Mathers, born as Samuel Liddell (January 8 or 11, 1854 – November 5 or 20, 1918), was one of the most influential figures in modern Occultism. He is primarily known as one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a ceremonial magic order of which offshoots still exist today.

Early life

Samuel Liddell was born on January 8 or January 11, 1854 in Hackney, London, England. His father, William M. Mathers, died while Samuel Liddell was still a boy. His mother, whose maiden name was Collins, died in 1885. He attended Bedford Grammar School, subsequently working in Bournemouth, Dorset, as a clerk, before moving to London following the death of his mother.
His wife was Moina Mathers (née Mina Bergson), sister of the philosopher Henri Bergson.

Freemasonry

Mathers was introduced to Freemasonry by a neighbour, alchemist Frederick Holland, and was initiated into Hengist Lodge No 195 on October 4, 1877. He was raised as a Master Mason on January 30, 1878 and in 1882, the same year he demitted from Masonry, he was admitted to the Metropolitan College of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia as well as a number of fringe Masonic degrees. Working hard both for and in the SRIA he was awarded an honorary 8th Degree in 1886. He became Celebrant of Metropolitan College in 1891 and was appointed as Junior Substitute Magus of the SRIA in 1892, in which capacity he served until 1900. He left the order in 1903, having failed to repay money which he had borrowed.
Upon the death of William Robert Woodman in 1891, Mathers assumed leadership of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. After a schism in 1900, Mathers formed a group called Alpha et Omega.

Translations
Mathers apparently knew how to read and translate a number of languages, including English, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Gaelic and Coptic. His translations of such books as The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, The Kabbalah Unveiled, The Key of Solomon The King and The Lesser Key of Solomon, while probably justly criticized with respect to quality, were responsible for making what had been obscure and inaccessible material widely available to the non-academic English speaking world. They have had considerable influence on the development of occult and esoteric thought since their publication.

In addition to many supporters, he had many enemies and critics. One of his most notable enemies was one time friend and pupil Aleister Crowley, who portrayed Mathers as a villain named SRMD in his 1929 novel Moonchild. According to Crowley's memoirs The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Mathers was in the habit of playing ostensible chess matches against various pagan gods. Mathers would set up the chessboard and seat himself behind the white pieces, with an empty chair opposite him. After making a move for himself, Mathers would then shade his eyes and peer towards the empty chair, waiting for his opponent to signal a move. Mathers would then move a black piece accordingly, then make his next move as white, and so forth. Crowley did not record who won.
[edit]Death

Mathers died on November 5 or November 20, 1918. The manner of his death is unknown; his death certificate lists no cause of death. Violet Firth (Dion Fortune) claimed his death was the result of the Spanish influenza of 1918. As few facts are known about Mathers's private life, verification of such claims is difficult.

from kheper.net

S.L. "MacGregor" Mathers was one of the most important, and certainly the most-misunderstood, occult figures of the late nineteenth century. He was a major figure in the founding of the Order of the Golden Dawn, wrote its rituals and eventually became its head. In an interesting parallel to Mme Blavatsky, who he met prior to the founding of the Golden Dawn, he claimed to have derived many of the teachings from a group of superhuman adepts, the Secret Chiefs. He was an eccentric and brilliant scholar, unemployed and unemployable, the ideal person to be head of a magical order. His magical names were Deo Duce Comite Ferro ("With God as My Leader and the Sword as My Companion") and 'S Rioghail Mo Dhream (Gaelic for "Royal is My Race"), which reflect his authoritarian, military and Jacobite inclinations. At the same time he was also a vegetarian, probably a vegan, and an anti-vivisectonist. He campaigned for women's rights. He married Mina, or Moina, Bergson, sister of Henri Bergson, the philosopher, whom Mathers attempted, unsuccessfully, to convert to a belief in magic. From 1894 on, the couple lived in Paris, where they founded an Ahathoor Temple and celebrated 'Egyptian Masses' with much stately ceremonial in honour of the goddess Isis, whose religion he attempted to revive.

Mathers added "MacGregor" to his name in the belief that he was descended from the Scots clan, styled himself Comte de Glenstrae, and was imbued with Jacobite ardour for the restoration of the House of Stuart to the British throne. According to some of his contemporaries, he was the reincarnation of James IV, the wizard King of Scots. He used to ride a bicycle through the Paris of the 1890s in full Highland dress. Mathers's over-bearing ego were too much for the other members of the Golden Dawn and he was expelled in 1900. He was the magical patron of Aleister Crowley, who, following the break with Golden Dawn members, he saw as his magical heir. But the two men later quarrelled (after Crowley puplished tracts of Golden Dawn material in his own magazine, The Equinox), and even conducted an occult battle against each other. A lot of the negative perception of Mathers is due to Crowley's ostentatious record of things.

There is no substance to Dion Fortune's allegation (since repeated by many others) that Mathers died of the influenza epidemic sweeping Europe just after the end of the Great War.

Mathers literary output involved translations of several important occult texts. These included an English translation of the Key of Solomon, the most famous of the grimoires ("Grammars") or textbooks of European ritual magic; part of Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabbalah Denodata as The Kabbalah Unveiled, together with notes and commentary, which was to become the seminal work for Western occult Kabbalistic studies; and a translation of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, perhaps the most significant of all the ancient grimores. But his greatest contribution lay in his central role in the establishment of an occult current of ceremonial magic - the Golden Dawn tradition - that has become the wellspring for all western occultism ever since.

KLF videos

2008-07-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

here is a small collection of videos, interviews, and documentaries about one of the most important bands of the 20th century

klf burn a million pounds

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the last train to trancentral

what time is love

the rites of mu

fuck the millenium

timelords-doctorin the tardis

kylie said to jason

3AM Eternal

KLF the documentary

KLF interview

KLF-it's grim up north

KLF behind the scenes

teleportation between light and matter

2008-07-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

First quantum teleportation between light and matter

Physics / Physics
The concept of quantum teleportation - the disembodied complete transfer of the state of a quantum system to any other place - was first experimentally realised between two different light beams. Later it became also possible to transfer the properties of a stored ion to another object of the same kind. A team of scientist headed by Prof. Ignacio Cirac at MPQ and by Prof. Eugene Polzik at Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen has now shown that the quantum states of a light pulse can also be transferred to a macroscopic object, an ensemble of 10 to the power of 12 atoms (Nature, 4 October 2006).
This is the first case of successful teleportation between objects of a different nature - the ones representing a "flying" medium (light), the other a "stationary" medium (atoms). The result presented here is of interest not only for fundamental research, but also primarily for practical application in realising quantum computers or transmitting coded data (quantum cryptography).

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Since the beginning of the nineties research into quantum teleportation has been booming with theoretical and experimental physicists. Transmission of quantum information involves a fundamental problem: According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle two complementary properties of a quantum particle, e.g. location and momentum cannot be precisely measured simultaneously. The entire information of the system thus has to be transmitted without being completely known. But the nature of the particles also carries with it the solution to this problem: the possibility of "entangling" two particles in such a way that their properties become perfectly correlated. If a certain property is measured in one of the "twin" particles, this determines the corresponding property of the other automatically and with immediate effect.

With the help of entangled particles, successful teleportation can be achieved roughly as follows: An auxiliary pair of entangled particles is created, the one being transmitted to "Alice" and the other to "Bob". (The names "Alice" and "Bob" have been adopted to describe the transmission of quantum information from A to B.) Alice now entangles the object of teleportation with her auxiliary particle and then measures the joint state (Bell measurement). She sends the result to Bob in the classical manner. He applies it to his auxiliary particle and "conjures up" the teleportation object from it.

Are "such "instructions for use" merely mental games? The great challenge to theoretical physicists is to devise concepts which can also be put into practice. The experiment described here has been conducted by a research team headed by Prof. Eugene Polzik at Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. It follows a proposal made by Prof. Ignacio Cirac, Managing Director at MPQ, and his collaborator Dr. Klemens Hammerer (also at MPQ at that time, now at University of Innsbruck, Austria).

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First the twin pair is produced by sending a strong light pulse to a glass tube filled with caesium gas (about 1012 atoms). The magnetic moments of the gas atoms are aligned in a homogenous magnetic field. The light also has a preferential direction: It is polarised, i.e. the electric field oscillates in just one direction. Under theses conditions the light and the atoms are made to interact with one another so that the light pulse emerging from the gas that is sent to Alice is "entangled" with the ensemble of 10 to the power of 12 caesium atoms located at Bob's site.

Alice mixes the arriving pulse by means of a beam splitter with the object that she wants to teleport: a weak light pulse containing very few photons. The light pulses issuing at the two outputs of the beam splitter are measured with photo-detectors and the results are sent to Bob.

The measured results tell Bob what has to be done to complete teleportation and transfer the selected quantum states of the light pulse, amplitude and phase, onto the atomic ensemble. For this purpose he applies a low-frequency magnetic field that makes the collective spin (angular momentum) of the system oscillate. This process can be compared with the precession of a spinning top about its major axis: the deflection of the spinning top corresponds to the amplitude of the light, while the zero passage corresponds to the phase.

To prove that quantum teleportation has been successfully performed, a second intense pulse of polarised light is sent to the atomic ensemble after 0.1 milliseconds and, so to speak, "reads out" its state. From these measured values theoretical physicists can calculate the so-called fidelity, a quality-factor specifying how well the state of the teleported object agrees with the original. (A fidelity of 1 is equivalent to a perfect agreement, while the value zero indicates that there has been no transfer at all.) In the present experiment the fidelity is 0.6, this being well above the value of 0.5 that would at best be achieved by classical means, e.g. by communicating measured values by telephone, without the help of entangled particle-pairs.

Unlike the customary conception of "beaming", it is not a matter here of a particle disappearing from one place and re-appearing in another. "Quantum teleportation constitutes methods of communication for application in quantum cryptography, the decoding of data, and not new kinds of transportation", as Dr. Klemens Hammerer emphasizes. "The importance of the experiment is that it is now possible for the first time to achieve teleportation between stationary atoms, which can store quantum states, and light, which is needed to transmit information over great distances. This marks an important step towards accomplishing quantum cryptography, i.e. absolutely safe communication over long distances, such as between Munich and Copenhagen."

Citation: Jacob F. Sherson, Hanna Krauter, Rasmus K. Olsson, Brian Julsgaard, Klemens Hammerer, Ignacio Cirac and Eugene S. Polzik Quantum teleportation between light and matter Nature 443, 557-560(5 October 2006).

Source: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics

Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney

2008-07-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney

on view June 26 - September 21, 2008

One of the great American visionaries of the twentieth century, R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) endeavored to see what he, a single individual, might do to benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the minimum of the earth's resources. Doing "more with less" was Fuller's credo. He described himself as a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," setting forth to solve the escalating challenges that faced humanity before they became insurmountable.
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Fuller's innovative theories and designs addressed fields ranging from architecture, the visual arts, and literature to mathematics, engineering, and sustainability. He refused to treat these diverse spheres as specialized areas of investigation because it inhibited his ability to think intuitively, independently, and, in his words, "comprehensively."

Although Fuller believed in utilizing the latest technology, much of his work developed from his inquiry into "how nature builds." He believed that the tetrahedron was the most fundamental, structurally sound form found in nature; this shape is an essential part of most of his designs, which range in scale from domestic to global. As the many drawings and models in this exhibition attest, Fuller was committed to the physical exploration and visual presentation of his ideas.

The results of more than five decades of Fuller's integrated approach toward the design and technology of housing, transportation, cartography, and communication are displayed here, much of it for the first time. This exhibition offers a fresh look at Fuller's life's work for everyone who shares his sense of urgency about homelessness, poverty, diminishing natural resources, and the future of our planet. - Jennie Goldstein

http://www.whitney.org/www/buckminster_fuller/about.jsp

french spiderman Alain Robert

2008-07-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

Bio

Alain Robert (born as Robert Alain Philippe on 7 August 1962), is a French rock and urban climber, from Digoin, Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne, France. Nicknamed after the Marvel Comics character "Spider-Man," or "The Human Spider" he is famous for scaling skyscrapers.

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Alain Robert climbing Petronas Tower 2 in March 2007
Robert has scaled 85 giant structures around the globe including many of the world's tallest structures, most of which he has scaled using only his bare hands and climbing shoes.

Robert began climbing as a young boy, scaling rock cliffs in the area around his home. His buildering career began at the age of 12 when he forgot his keys and was locked out of his parents' eighth-floor apartment. Instead of waiting for them to return home, he simply scaled the exterior wall to his home.

In 1982 he suffered two accidents, the first in January at the age of 19 and the second in September at the age of 20. He fell 15 metres (49 ft) on both occasions. He suffered multiple fractures and now suffers from permanent vertigo. The doctors considered him 60 percent handicapped and told him he would not be able to climb again. However, within 6 months he was climbing again. He kept taking on more and more challenging structures and improving his skills. He polished his rock-climbing skills in the French Alps before turning to buildings.

Strategy

Because authorities will not normally give him permission for such dangerous exploits, Robert usually appears, at dawn, on the side of whichever giant skyscraper he has chosen to climb. His exploits attract crowds of onlookers who stop to watch him climb, in awe of what is happening. As a consequence, Alain has been arrested many times, in various countries, by law enforcement officials waiting for him at the end of his climb. The arrests and trials are normally little more than brief formalities and he has always been discharged.

Robert's physical conditioning and expert climbing technique allow him to climb using the small protrusions of building walls and windows (such as window ledges and frames). Many of his climbs provide him no opportunity to rest and can last over an hour. At 1.65 m (5'5") tall, he is short and light, attributes that enhance his dexterity while climbing. He sometimes has a small bag of climbing chalk powder (similar to powdered rosin), which is used to absorb sweat, fastened around his waist.

Career

Robert's urban climbing career has been characterized by an ever-expanding list of famous landmarks which includes the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House and the Montparnasse Tower in Paris, as well as the world's tallest skyscrapers. In the 1990s, as his exploits brought him worldwide media exposure, speculation began as to whether or not he would attempt the tallest building in the world at the time: the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Although Malaysian authorities were expecting his attempt, they were still astonished when one day in 1997 he suddenly appeared several floors up on the side of the tower. He was eventually arrested at the 60th floor, 28 floors below the top.

While scaling the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois in 1999, he encountered the most challenging climbing conditions in his career. Near the top of the 110-story building, a thick fog set in that covered the glass and metal wall of the last 20 floors with moisture, making it dangerously slippery. Although the climb became agonizingly slow and very strenuous, Alain Robert overcame the difficulties and reached the top.

In 2000, Robert climbed the 23 metres (75 ft) high Luxor Obelisque in Place de la Concorde, France.
In February 2003, he legally climbed the 200 metres (656 ft) National Bank of Abu Dhabi, UAE, watched by about 100,000 spectators.

It has become more frequent for Robert to be paid to scale buildings as part of publicity efforts. In May 2003 he was paid approximately $18,000 to climb the 95 metres (312 ft) Lloyd's of London to promote the premiere of the movie Spider-Man on the British television channel Sky Movies.

On October 19, 2004, he scaled the 187 metres (614 ft) headquarters of the French oil company Total while wearing a Spider-Man costume.

Robert scaled Taipei 101 on December 25, 2004, a few days before its grand opening as the tallest building in the world. The 508 metres (1,667 ft) climb was legal, part of the week's festivities. The skyscraper's outwardly slanting sides posed no apparent difficulty for him, but heavy rains in Taiwan resulted in a climb lasting four hours--double his estimate.

On June 11, 2005 he climbed the Cheung Kong Centre in Hong Kong, scaling 283 metres (928 ft) to reach the top of the 62-story tower.

On September 1, 2006, he climbed the tallest building in Lithuania and the Baltic States - Europa Tower, 148 metres (486 ft), in Vilnius. Wearing a black suit and using a safety rope, which he detached several times, he reached the observation deck of the building, 114 metres (374 ft), in 40 minutes. In 2006 he also climbed Torre Vasco da Gama in Portugal as part of an advertisement for Optimus, a national mobile operator. He finished the year climbing the Santa Fe World Plaza in Mexico City, on December 7th. On 23 of February 2007, he legally climbed the headquarters Building of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) on the coast of Abu Dhabi city (United Arab Emirates).

On March 20, 2007, he again climbed the Petronas Twin Towers, marking the tenth anniversary of his previous ascent of this building. Upon reaching the 60th floor, he allowed himself to be apprehended . He flew the Malaysian flag and drew applause from waiting police, fire crew, and media representatives before handing himself in. He was handcuffed and escorted off the premises before being driven to a police station.

On May 31, 2007, he scaled the 88-story Jin Mao Building in Shanghai, then China's tallest skyscraper, once again wearing a Spider-Man costume. Robert was later arrested and jailed for 5 days before being expelled from China. In November 2007, Robert was invited by the local government of Zhangjiajie, a scenic region in the southern province of Hunan, to climb the 1,518 metres (4,980 ft) Tianmen mountain to boost the profile of the region and bring in tourists.

On September 4, 2007, he climbed the 244 metres (801 ft) Federation Tower office building in Moscow, (Russia's tallest skyscraper), in 30 minutes using a ladder. Detained by police, he could face a fine for violating safety norms at a construction site despite being told by his sponsor that permission had been granted for him to climb safely.

On December 18, 2007, he climbed the 29-story Portland House office building in London, (Westminster's tallest building). It took him just over 40 minutes. Police taped off the area and later arrested him for criminal damage and wasting police time.

On April 15, 2008, he climbed the 60-story Four Seasons Place in Hong Kong. The police and 4 fire engines were standing by and it took him almost 1 hour to reach the top. Alain encountered difficulty at the top when he found that the last 5 metres were impossible to climb. He had to climb sideways until he reached a corner and managed with difficulty to reach the top. He almost fell when a woman on the other side of the glass screamed and almost fainted. Witnesses said that he was detained upon completing the climb. He stated that his climb was intended to increase awareness of global warming.

On June 5, 2008, he climbed the New York Times Building in New York City, USA. He unfurled a banner with a slogan about global warming, and then was arrested by police on the roof. The banner read "Global warming kills more people than 9/11 every week" At the time, he was wearing a sweatshirt advertising his website: TheSolutionIsSimple.org

Notable climbs

Alain Robert climbing Torre Agbar (Barcelona, 2007-09-12.
A few of the more than 85 skyscrapers and monuments climbed by Alain Robert:[10]
Sydney, Australia – Sydney Tower and the Sydney Opera House
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Hotel Vermont
Montreal, Quebec, Canada – Crown Plaza Hotel
Hong Kong
Four Seasons Place
The Far East Finance Centre
The Cheung Kong Centre
London
One Canada Square
Lloyd's building
Portland House
Paris, France
Eiffel Tower
Grande Arche at La Défense
The Luxor Obelisk in Place de la Concorde
Tour Montparnasse
Tour Cristal at Front de Seine
Mercurial Towers at Bagnolet
Frankfurt, Germany – Dresdner Bank Tower
Milan, Italy – Banca di Milano building
Tokyo, Japan – Shinjuku Center Building
Warsaw, Poland – Marriott Hotel
Johannesburg, South Africa – IBM Tower
Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates – National Bank of Abu Dhabi and the Etisalat building
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority [ADIA], Headquarters Building, UAE
United States of America
New York Times Building– New York City
Empire State Building – New York City
Sears Tower – Chicago, Illinois
Golden Gate Bridge – San Francisco, California
Blue Cross Tower – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Luxor Hotel pyramid – Las Vegas, Nevada
Tampere, Finland – Hotel Ilves
Malaysia
Petronas Tower 1 – Kuala Lumpur (arrested at the 60th floor in 1997)
Petronas Tower 2 – Kuala Lumpur (arrested at the 60th floor in visit Malaysia year 2007)
Sabah Foundation Building – Kota Kinabalu, Sabah (for fund raising)
Melia Hotel – Kuala Lumpur
Singapore – Overseas Union Bank Centre (arrested at 21st floor in 2000)
Taiwan – Taipei 101
Venezuela – Parque Central Torre
Barcelona, Spain – Torre Agbar
Portugal
Torre Vasco da Gama
25 de Abril Bridge[11]
Mexico City- Santa Fé World Plaza Corporate Tower
Bratislava, Slovakia – Slovak Radio Building
Shanghai, China – Jin Mao Building
Moscow, Russia - West Federation Tower
São Paulo, Brazil - Edifício Itália[12]
[edit]Accidents

In a 2005 interview, Alain Robert said that he has fallen seven times in his life. The worst was his second fall in 1982.
On January 18, 1982, at 19, he fell 15 metres (49 ft) when his anchor and rope gave way during training. He fractured his wrists, heels and nose and underwent three operations.

On September 29, 1982, at 20, he fell 15 metres (49 ft) when his rope came undone during rappelling, (abseiling). He was in a coma for five days and fractured both forearms, his elbow, pelvis, and nose. His elbow was also dislocated and a nerve was damaged leaving him partially paralyzed. He also suffered cerebral edema and vertigo. He underwent six operations on his hands and elbow.

In 1993, he fell 8 metres (26 ft) while showing students how to rely on their legs when climbing. He kept his hands behind his back on an easy route but lost his balance and fell headfirst shattering both wrists. He went into another coma and spent two months in the hospital.

In 2004, he fell 2 metres (6.6 ft) when climbing a traffic light whilst posing for a photo in an interview. He landed on his elbow and needed forty stitches, but a month later he climbed the world’s tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101, as part of its official opening week.

Arrests

On November 22, 2005, he was arrested as he began to climb the One Houston Center building in Houston, Texas. He was charged with criminal trespassing and misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. The controlled substance charge was due to two pills that the police found in his possession. He claimed the pills were the prescription drug Urbanyl, a medication used to prevent epileptic seizures. He spent two days in jail and then appeared in court on November 29 and provided proof of a doctor's prescription for the medication, asking that the drug charges be dropped. On December 20 he climbed the Cristal Tower in Paris in protest of the arrest. His next court appearance was scheduled for January 4, 2006, but Robert said that he would be climbing in Mexico at that time.

On March 15, 2006 he climbed one of the 122 metres (400 ft) Mercurial Towers in Bagnolet in protest of the presumed seven-day sentence, prior to returning to Texas to serve the sentence. On March 31 he appeared before a Houston court. The drug charge was dropped because of the valid prescription, and the jail sentence was reduced to one day and a $2000 fine for trespassing. The previous time served in November was credited so Robert did not have to serve any more time in jail.
On May 31, 2007, after scaling the 88-story Jin Mao Building in Shanghai, he was arrested and jailed for 5 days before being expelled from China.

On February 27, 2008 he climbed the Edificio Italia, one of the tallest buildings in Brazil despite being unauthorized to do so. He was detained by the police after his successful attempt.
On April 15, 2008, he climbed the 60-story Four Seasons Place in Hong Kong. According to witness reports, he was detained by police upon completing the climb.

On June 5, 2008 (11:40 am local time), he climbed the 52-story New York Times Building, hanging a yellow banner on the 9th floor which read, "Global warming kills more people than 9/11 every week" He was arrested upon reaching the roof at 12:25 pm.

Upton Sinclair's Mental Radio

2008-07-11T03:16:00.000-07:00

Mental Radio: Does it work, and how? (1930) was written by the American author Upton Sinclair. This book documents Sinclair's test of psychic abilities of Mary Craig Kimbrough, his second wife, while she was in a state of profound depression with a heightened interest in the occult. She attempted to duplicate 290 pictures which were drawn by her husband. Sinclair estimated Mary successfully duplicated 65 of them, with 155 "partial successes" and 70 failures. These experiments were not done in a controlled scientific environment.

The preface was written by Albert Einstein who praised Sinclair's observation and writing abilities as well as good faith and reliability. Einstein writes "The results of the telepathic experiments carefully and plainly set forth in this book stand surely beyond that which a nature investigator holds to be thinkable. On the other hand, it is out of the question in the case of so conscientious an observer and writer as Upton Sinclair that he is carrying on a conscious deception of the reading world; his good faith and dependability are not to be doubted." William McDougall was influenced by the book to establish the parapsychology department at Duke University.

Dr. Walter Prince of the Boston Society for Psychical Research conducted an independent analysis of the results in 1932. Based on his analysis it was his opinion that chance, educated guessing, or conscious or subconscious fraud were not sufficient in explaining the data. He asserted that telepathy had been demonstrated in Sinclair's data.

When Mrs. Sinclair's health improved she was tested with precautions by William McDougall. This time the results were less than satisfactory. At one occasion in a seance Upton Sinclair claimed a young psychic levitated a 34-pound table eight feet over Sinclair's head.

Gurdjieff Biography

2008-07-11T00:27:00.000-07:00

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Armenian: Գեորգի Գյուրջիև; Russian: Георгий Иванович Гюрджиев; Georgiy Ivanovich Gyurdzhiev (or Gurdjiev); January 13, 1866? – October 29, 1949), was an Armenian mystic, a teacher of sacred dances, and a spiritual teacher. He is most notable for introducing what some refer to as "The Work," connoting work on oneself according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or as he first referred to it, the Fourth Way.

At different times in his life he formed and liquidated various schools around the world to utilize his teachings. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in other ancient religions and wisdom teachings relating to self-awareness in one's daily life and humanity's place in the universe.
His teachings might be summed up by the title of his third series of writings: Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', while his complete series of books is entitled "All and Everything."
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Biography

The only account of Gurdjieff's early biography before he appeared in Moscow in 1912 can be found in his text Meetings with Remarkable Men. This text, however, cannot be read as straightforward autobiography.

It was in the pre-1912 period that Gurdjieff went on his apocryphal voyage outlined in Meetings with Remarkable Men where he comes upon a map of "pre-sand Egypt" which allegedly leads him to study with the esoteric group the Sarmoung Brotherhood. Coincidentally, Gurdjieff is one of the only sources lending credibility for the existence of this group.
Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol (now Gyumri), Armenia. The exact date is unknown (anything ranging from 1866 to 1877 has been offered). Some authors argue persuasively for 1866 even though his passport states that he was born on November 28, 1877. Gurdjieff grew up in Kars and traveled to many parts of the world (such as Central Asia, Egypt, Rome) before returning to Russia in 1912.

From 1913 to 1949 the chronology appears to stand on the much firmer ground afforded by primary documents, independent witness, cross-reference, and reasonable inference.[4] On New Year's Day of 1912, Gurdjieff arrived in Moscow and attracted his first associates. In the same year he married Julia Ostrowska in St Petersburg. In 1914 Gurdjieff first advertised his ballet, "The Struggle of the Magicians," as well as supervised his pupils' writing of the sketch "Glimpses of Truth". In 1915 Gurdjieff accepted P. D. Ouspensky as a pupil, while in 1916 he accepted the composer Thomas de Hartmann and his wife Olga as students. At this time he had around thirty pupils.

Many authors have speculated that Gurdjieff was a spy, most likely of the Tsar, during the wars. This claim has been neither proven nor widely dismissed, since Gurdjieff had access to most places in Asia. Gurdjieff personally commented indirectly on this claim in his book Beelzebub's Tales when he said that "during a war every person that is somewhat awake is considered a spy because of his seriousness and alertness."

In the midst of revolutionary upheaval in Russia he left Petrograd in 1917 to return to his family home in Alexandropol. During the Bolshevik Revolution Gurdjieff set up temporary study communities in Essentuki in the Caucasus, then Tuapse, Maikop, Sochi and Poti, all on the Black Sea coast of Southern Russia, where he worked intensively with many of his Russian pupils.
In March 1918, Ouspensky separated from Gurdjieff, and four months later Gurdjieff's eldest sister and her family reached him in Essentuki as refugees, bringing news that Turks had shot his father in Alexandropol on 15 May. As Essentuki became increasingly threatened by civil war, Gurdjieff planted a fabricated newspaper story of his forthcoming "scientific expedition" to Mount Induc. Posing as a scientist, Gurdjieff left Essentuki with a following of fourteen (which does not include Gurdjieff's family or Ouspensky). They went by train to Maikop where hostilities detained them for three weeks. In spring of 1919 Gurdjieff met and accepted as pupils the artist Alexandre Salzmann and his wife Jeanne. In collaboration with Jeanne Salzmann, Gurdjieff gave the first public demonstration of his Sacred Dances (Movements in Tbilisi Opera House, 22 June).

In autumn 1919 he and his closest pupils moved to Tbilisi. In late May 1920, when political conditions in Georgia changed and the old order was crumbling, they walked by foot to Batumi on the Black Sea coast, and then Istanbul. There Gurdjieff rented an apartment on Koumbaradji Street in Péra and later at 13 Abdullatif Yemeneci Sokak near the Galata Tower. The apartment is near the tekke (monastery) of the Mevlevi Order of Sufis (founded by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi), where Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Thomas de Hartmann experienced the sema ceremony of The Whirling Dervishes. In Istanbul Gurdjieff also met John G. Bennett.

In August 1921 and 1922, Gurdjieff traveled around western Europe, lecturing and giving demonstrations of his work in various cities such as Berlin and London, capturing the allegiance of Ouspensky's many prominent pupils, notably the editor A. R. Orage. After he lost a civil action to acquire Hellerau possession in Britain, Gurdjieff established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man south of Paris at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon near the famous Château de Fontainebleau. Gurdjieff acquired notoriety after Katherine Mansfield died on 9 January 1923.

In 1924, while driving alone from Paris to Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff had a near fatal car accident. Nursed by his wife and mother, he made a slow and painful recovery—against medical expectation. Still convalescent, he formally "disbanded" his Institute on 26 August (but in fact he dispersed only his less dedicated pupils), and began writing All and Everything.
In 1925 Gurdjieff's wife contracted cancer, and she died in 1926 despite radiotherapy and Gurdjieff's unorthodox treatment. Ouspensky attended her funeral.

Starting in 1929, Gurdjieff made visits to North America where he took over as the teacher of pupils who were at that time being taught by A.R. Orage.

In 1935 Gurdjieff stopped writing All and Everything, having completed the first two parts of the trilogy and only having started on the Third Series (published under the title Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am').
In Paris, Gurdjieff lived at 6 Rue des Colonels-Rénard, where he continued to teach throughout World War II.
Gurdjieff died on October 29, 1949 at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. His funeral was held at the St. Alexandre Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral at 12 Rue Daru, Paris. He is buried in the cemetery at Fontainebleau-Avon.
[edit]Ideas

Gurdjieff claimed that people do not perceive reality, as they are not conscious of themselves, but live in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep."
"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies." Gurdjieff taught that each person perceived things from a completely subjective perspective. Gurdjieff stated that maleficent events such as wars and so on could not possibly take place if people were more awake. He asserted that people in their typical state were unconscious automatons, but that it was possible for a man to wake up and experience life more fully.

Main article Fourth Way
In his early lectures G.I. Gurdjieff described his approach to self-development as the Fourth Way.[10] In contrast to the three eastern teachings that emphasize the development of the body, mind, or the emotions separately, Gurdjieff's exercises worked on all three at the same time to promote comprehensive and balanced inner development. Today, Gurdjieff's teachings are also sometimes referred to as "The Work," "The Gurdjieff Work," "Work on oneself" or simply the "Work."[11] Though Gurdjieff never put major significance on the term "Fourth Way" and never used the term in his writings, his pupil P.D. Ouspensky made the term and its use central to his own teaching of the Gurdjieff Ideas. After Ouspensky's death, his students published a book with that name, based on his lectures.
Gurdjieff's teaching mainly addressed the question of people's place in the universe and their possibilities for inner development. He taught that higher levels of consciousness, higher bodies, and inner growth and development is possible.

In his teaching Gurdjieff gave a distinct meaning to various ancient texts such as the Bible and many religious prayers. He claimed that those texts possess a very different meaning than what is commonly attributed to them. "Sleep not;" "Awake, for you know not the hour;" "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within"...are examples of biblical statements that point to a psychological teaching whose essence has been forgotten.

Gurdjieff taught people how to increase and focus their attention and energy in various ways, and to minimize daydreaming and absentmindedness. According to his teaching, this inner development in oneself is the beginning of a possible further process of change, whose aim is to transform a man into what Gurdjieff believed he ought to be.

Distrusting "morality," which he describes as varying from culture to culture, often contradictory and superficial, he greatly stressed the importance of conscience. This he regarded as the same in all people, buried in people's subconsciousness, thus both sheltered from damage by how people live and inaccessible without "work on oneself."

To provide conditions in which inner attention could be exercised more intensively, Gurdjieff also taught his pupils "sacred dances" or "movements" which they performed together as a group, and he left a body of music inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann. Gurdjieff also used various exercises, such as the "Stop" exercise, to prompt self-observation in his students. Other shocks to help awaken his pupils from constant day-dreaming were always possible at any moment.

Methods

Gurdjieff transmitted his ideas through a number of different methods and materials, including meetings, music, movements (sacred dance), writings, lectures, and innovative forms of group work. He was not consistent in his use of these materials through his lifetime; for example, six years in Paris were devoted primarily to writing, while composition of music and movement centered around a few distinct periods. In Russia he was described as keeping his teaching confined to a small circle, while in Paris and North America he gave numerous public demonstrations.

Gurdjieff felt that the traditional methods of self-knowledge -- those of the fakir, monk, and yogi (acquired, respectively, through pain, devotion, and study) -- were inadequate.
"Gurdjieff's system, which involved music, movement, dance, and self-criticism, enabled the unrealized individual to transcend the mechanical, acted-upon self and ascend from mere personality to self-actualizing essence."

In this way, Gurdjieff's methodology has been compared to fellow Eastern European mystics Peter Deunov and Ottoman Hanish, whose Paneurhythmy and Persian/Caucasoid Yoga work, respectively, also centered on physical movement, music, and dance: "these men come from an ancient tradition scattered around the Black Sea," and stemming from ancient Gnostic Bogomilism, the synthesis of Armenian Paulicianism and the Bulgarian Slavonic Church reform movement. Unlike his contemporaries, however, Gurdjieff quickly became well known in the West, establishing centres from France to New York to Scottsdale, Arizona.

Music
The Gurdjieff music divides into three distinct periods. The first period is the early music, including music from the ballet Struggle of the Magicians and music for early Movements, dating to the years around 1918.
The second period music, for which he is best known, written in collaboration with Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann, is described as the Gurdjieff-de Hartmann music. Dating to the mid 1920s, it offers a rich repertory with roots in Caucasian and Central Asian folk and religious music, Russian Orthodox liturgical music, and other sources. This music was often first heard, and even composed, in the salon at the Prieure. Since the publication of four volumes of this piano repertory by Schott, recently completed, there has been a wealth of new recordings, including orchestral versions of music prepared by Gurdjieff and de Hartmann for the Movements demonstrations of 1923-24.

The last musical period is the improvised harmonium music which often followed the dinners Gurdjieff held in his Paris apartment during the Occupation and immediate post-war years, to his death in 1949. A virtually encyclopedic recording of surviving tapes of Gurdjieff improvising on the harmonium was recently published.
In all, Gurdjieff in collaboration with de Hartmann composed some 200 pieces.

Movements

Movements, or sacred dances, constitute an integral part of the Gurdjieff Work. Gurdjieff sometimes referred to himself as a "teacher of dancing," and gained initial public notice for his attempts to put on a ballet in Moscow called "Struggle of the Magicians."

Films of Movements demonstrations are occasionally shown for private viewing by the Gurdjieff Foundations, and one is shown in a scene in the Peter Brook movie Meetings with Remarkable Men.

Group Work

Gurdjieff taught that group efforts greatly surpass individual efforts towards self-development, and therefore he created innovative ways for individuals to come together to pursue his work. Students regularly met with group leaders in group meeting, and groups of students came together in "work periods" where intensive labor was performed and elaborate meals were prepared.

Gurdjieff student William Segal recounts periods of hard labor "around the clock" in his autobiography[19] A Voice at the Borders of Silence. Gurdjieff's student John Pentland connects the Gurdjieff group work with the later rise of encounter groups. Groups also often met to prepare for demonstrations or performances to which the public was invited.

Writings

Gurdjieff wrote and approved for publication three volumes of his written work under the title All and Everything. The first volume, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, is a lengthy allegorical work that recounts the explanations of Beelzebub to his grandson concerning the beings of the planet Earth. Intended to be a teaching tool for his teachings, Gurdjieff had gone to great lengths in order to increase the effort needed to read and understand the book. The second volume, Meetings with Remarkable Men, was written in a very easily understood manner, and purports to be an autobiography of his early years, but which also contains many allegorical statements. His final unfinished volume, Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', contains a fragment of an autobiographical description of later years, as well as transcripts of some lectures.

As Gurdjieff explained to Ouspensky ... "for exact understanding exact language is necessary." In his first series of writings, Gurdjieff explains how difficult it is to choose an ordinary language to convey his thoughts exactly. He continues..."the Russian language is like the English...both these languages are like the dish which is called in Moscow 'Solianka', and into which everything goes except you and me...".

In spite of the difficulties, he goes on to develop a special vocabulary of a new language all of it his own. He uses these new words particularly in the first series of his writings. However, in The Herald of Coming Good, he uses one particular word for the first time which does not appear in any of his other writings: ..." Tzvarnoharno...leads to the destruction of both him that tries to achieve something for general human welfare and of all that he has already accomplished to this end." According to Gurdjieff, King Solomon himself coined this particular word; as such, it seems to be a key to understanding the legend of Hiram Abiff.

Reception and Influence

Opinions on Gurdjieff's writings and activities are divided. Sympathizers regard him as a charismatic master who brought new knowledge into Western culture, a psychology and cosmology that enable insights beyond those provided by established science.[23] Critics assert he was simply a charlatan with a large ego and a constant need for self-glorification.

Gurdjieff had a strong influence on many modern mystics, artists, writers, and thinkers, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Keith Jarrett, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Fripp, Jacob Needleman, John Shirley, Dennis Lewis, Peter Brook, Kate Bush, P. L. Travers, Robert S de Ropp, Walter Inglis Anderson, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Louis Pauwels and James Moore. Gurdjieff's notable personal students include Jeanne de Salzmann, Willem Nyland, Lord Pentland (Henry John Sinclair), P. D. Ouspensky, Olga de Hartmann, Thomas de Hartmann, Jane Heap, John G. Bennett, Alfred Richard Orage, Maurice Nicoll, George and Helen Adie and Katherine Mansfield. Aleister Crowley visited his Institute at least once. Gurdjieff called Crowley 'dirty,' and wanted him to leave the institute. Privately Crowley praised Gurdjieff's work, though with some reservations.
However one regards Gurdjieff's teaching, or Gurdjieff personally, he appears to have given new life and practical form to ancient teachings of both East and West. For example, the Socratic/Platonic emphasis on "the examined life" recurs in Gurdjieff's teaching as the practice of self-observation. His teachings about self-discipline and restraint reflect Stoic teachings. The Hindu/Buddhist notion of attachment recurs in Gurdjieff's teaching as the concept of identification. Similarly, his cosmology can be "read" against ancient and esoteric sources, respectively Neoplatonic and such a source as Robert Fludd's treatment of macrocosmic musical structures. American psychological culture has seized on one of Gurdjieff's introductions, the enneagram. Although for many students of the Gurdjieff tradition the enneagram remains a "koan," challenging and never explicated once and for all, the enneagram figure has been used as the basis for personality analysis, for example in the Enneagram of Personality, developed by Oscar Ichazo, Helen Palmer, and others, and in that application is not related to Gurdjieff's teaching or to his explanations of the enneagram.

Groups

Gurdjieff had influenced the formation of many groups after his death, all of which still function today and follow his ideas.
The Gurdjieff Foundation, the largest organization directly linked to Mr. Gurdjieff, was organized by Jeanne de Salzmann during the early 1950s, and led by her in cooperation with other direct pupils. The main three branches of the Foundation are The Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, The London-based Gurdjieff Society, the Institut Gurdjieff (Paris), and the network of foundations in South America founded by the late Natalie de Etievan, daughter of Jeanne de Salzmann. Connected to these four foundations are numerous smaller groups around the world, collected under the umbrella of the International Association of Gurdjieff Foundations. The president of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York was Lord Pentland, who retained this position until his death.

There are also other groups formed by one or another of Gurdjieff's pupils. Willem Nyland, one of Gurdjieff's closest students and an original founder and trustee of The Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, left to form his own groups in the early 1960s. Jane Heap was sent to London by Gurdjieff, where she led groups until her death in 1964. Louise Goepfert March, who became a pupil of Gurdjieff's in 1929, started her own groups in 1957 and founded the Rochester Folk Art Guild in the Finger Lakes region of New York State; her efforts were closely linked to the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York. There are also independent groups which were formed and led by John G. Bennett.

There are also third-generation independent groups today such as those of William Patrick Patterson (student of Lord Pentland). Interestingly India, one of the cradles of spiritual traditions since ancient times, also has a Group under the mentorship of Ravi Ravindra who was a student of Mme De Salzmann and Dr. Welch.
Currently, Gurdjieff's influence has expanded from traditional Gurdjieffianism to variants with no relationship to him or his teaching apart from the use of his name.

Criticism

Criticism of Gurdjieff's system largely focuses on his insistence that people are "asleep" in a state closely resembling "hypnotic sleep." Gurdjieff said, even specifically at times, that a pious, good, and moral man was no more "spiritually developed" than any other person; they are all equally "asleep."

The primary criticism of Gurdjieff's work is that it attaches no value to almost everything that comprises the life of an average man. According to Gurdjieff, everything an "average man" possesses, accomplishes, does, and feels is completely accidental and without any initiative.

In his most elaborate writing, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (see bibliography), Gurdjieff records his reverence for the founders of the mainstream religions of East and West and his contempt by and large for what successive generations of believers have made of those religious teachings. His ironical discussions of "orthodoxhydooraki" and "heterodoxhydooraki"--orthodox fools and heterodox fools, from a Russian word -- position him as a critic of religious distortion and, in turn, as a target for criticism from some within those traditions. Gurdjieff has been interpreted by some to have had a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work, and the value of doing right or wrong in general.
Gurdjieff's detractors, despite his seeming total lack of pretension to any kind of "guru holiness," argue that the many anecdotes of his sometimes unconventional behavior display the unsavory and impure character of a man who was a cynical manipulator of his followers. Gurdjieff's own pupils wrestled to understand him. For example, in a written exchange between Luc Dietrich and Henri Tracol dating to 1943: "L.D.: How do you know that Gurdjieff wishes you well? H.T.: I feel sometimes how little I interest him--and how strongly he takes an interest in me. By that I measure the strength of an intentional feeling."

Other Views

Gurdjieff's funeral
With so much surrounding Gurdjieff and his teaching, other views are possible. For example, during the Russian period he spoke with respect of the obyvatel, the simple householder or salt-of-the-earth peasant, who lives by traditional values and slowly develops himself. Much later, in Paris, he gave encouragement and financial help to a multitude of people who were hard up for one reason or another. His Paris flat had, people say, one of the world's worst art collections, consisting of pieces purchased from indigent artists as a cover for providing them with funds without humiliating them. Diogenes, the ancient Greek Cynic philosopher whom Gurdjieff resembles, once said of himself that like the chorus master, he set the note a little high so that the chorus would hit the right note. For his pupils and in his writings, Gurdjieff set the note "a little high" as a goal and inspiration, while in his personal conduct he was generous to "the average man." Many such people attended his funeral at the Russian cathedral, rue Daru. Gurdjieff's pupils did not know them.

Bibliography

Gurdjieff is best known through the published works of his pupils. His one-time student P. D. Ouspensky wrote In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, which some regard as a crucial introduction to the teaching. Others refer to Gurdjieff's own books (detailed below) as the primary texts.
Accounts of time spent with Gurdjieff have been published by A. R. Orage, Charles Stanley Nott, Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, Fritz Peters, René Daumal, John G. Bennett, Maurice Nicoll, Margaret Anderson, and Louis Pauwels, among others. Many others were drawn to his 'ideas table': Frank Lloyd Wright, Kathryn Hulme, P. L. Travers, Katherine Mansfield, and Jean Toomer.

Three books by Gurdjieff were published after his death: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men, and Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'. This trilogy is Gurdjieff's legominism, known collectively as All and Everything. A legominism is, according to Gurdjieff, "one of the means of transmitting information about certain events of long-past ages through initiates". A book of his early talks was also collected by his student and personal secretary, Olga de Hartmann, and published in 1973 as Views from the Real World: Early Talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis, Berlin, London, Paris, New York, and Chicago, as recollected by his pupils.

The feature film Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), based on Gurdjieff's book by the same name, depicts rare performances of the sacred dances taught to serious students of his work, known simply as the movements. The film was written by Jeanne de Salzmann and Peter Brook, directed by Brook, and stars Dragan Maksimovic and Terence Stamp.

God Helmet

2008-07-10T19:51:00.000-07:00

The term God Helmet refers to a controversial experimental apparatus in neurotheology. The apparatus, placed on the head of an experimental subject, stimulates the brain with magnetic fields. Some subjects reported experiences similar to spiritual experiences.[1] The leading researcher in this area is Michael Persinger.

Persinger uses a modified snowmobile helmet or a head-circlet device nicknamed the Octopus that contain solenoids which create a weak but complex magnetic field over the brain's right-hemisphere parietal and temporal lobes. Persinger reports that at least 80 per cent of his participants experience a presence beside them in the room, which they variously say feels like God or someone they knew who had died.

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There is controversy as to whether Persinger measured actual effects or just led his subjects into believing they experienced an electronically-induced epiphany. In December 2004 Nature reported that a group of Swedish researchers, replicating the experiment under double-blind conditions, was not able to verify the effect. Susan Blackmoreexperimental psychologist and experienced researcher of "paranormal" experiences, was reluctant to give up on the theory just yet. She said "When I went to Persinger's lab and underwent his procedures I had the most extraordinary experiences I've ever had....I'll be surprised if it turns out to be a placebo effect." Persinger, however, takes issue with the Swedish attempts to replicate his work. "They didn't replicate it, not even close," he says. He argues that the Swedish group did not expose the subjects to magnetic fields for long enough to produce an effect. He also stresses that some of his studies were double blinded.

A report of an experiment on Richard Dawkins in 2003 said The experiment is based on the recent finding that some sufferers from temporal lobe epilepsy, a neurological disorder caused by chaotic electrical discharges in the temporal lobes of the brain, seem to experience devout hallucinations that bear a striking resemblance to the mystical experiences of holy figures such as St Paul and Moses

Dawkins was reported not to have experienced a religious feeling. The report said "Dr Persinger has explained away the failure of this >Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator. Before donning the helmet, Prof Dawkins had scored low on a psychological scale measuring proneness to temporal lobe sensitivity."

Direct link to this Wikipedia article

The following is an article written by Robert Hercz for the October 2002 issue of SATURDAYNIGHT magazine

THE GOD HELMET

By inventing a piece of wired-up headgear that induces "religious" experiences in the people who put it on, Sudbury neurologist Michael Persinger has shaken the foundation of faith and science. "Now remember, these are subtle effects," says Michael Persinger. "Don't try to force anything. Just relax and go with the experience." I feel him adjust the yellow motorcycle helmet, studded with electromagnets, that I'm wearing. I hear him step out of the soundproof chamber and pull the heavy door closed behind him. If all goes well, I am about to have a powerful mystical experience.

The time - a Saturday night in May - certainly feels ripe. Laurentain University in Sudbury, Ontario, is between semesters and eerily deserted. Besides Persinger and Linda St-Pierre, a research associate, the only living creatures I've seen on campus are lab rats preparing to die for science. Now I'm alone in an unnaturally quiet room with wires attached to my head, I'm wearing a blindfold, and someone working a control panel is about to bathe my brain in complex magnetic fields.

Astonishing things have happened in this chamber. One woman believed her dead mother had materialized beside her. Another felt a presence so powerful and benign that she wept when it faded. British journalist Ian Cotton understood that he was, and always had been, a Tibetan monk. Psychologist Susan Blackmore writing in New Scientist said she felt something "get hold of my leg and pull it, distort it, and drag it up the wall... Totally out of the blue, but intensely and vividly, I suddenly felt anger... Later, it was replaced by an equally sudden attack of fear." Over a thousand volunteers have worn the helmet, and 80 percent of them, Persinger says, experienced a "sesed presence - the feeling that someone's standing near you, the feelings there must be something greater, the feeling of infinite possibilities."

I want some of that.

For the first half of my 60-minute session, though, nothing happenes. When something does, it is - alas - a subtle effect indeed. The field of swirls and blotches on the inside of my eyelids - the ordinary optical noise tat your brain generates when your eyes are closed - begins to brighten. The usual dull reds and browns give way to glowing purple streaks and zigzags with sharp, well-defined edges. It's a silent, vivid little light show that pleases me greatly, but it is over in a minute or two. More silence, more nothing. Then suddenly I feel my head being lifted, expanding, filling the chamber. It's a brief, distorting, yet enjoyable sensation - but it's not the Meaning of Life.

Ah, but I wasn't a good subject for the experiment, Persinger explains afterwards: I had come with expectations. Usually, subjects are told only that they're participating in a relaxation exercise, but I knew that my brain - specifically the first-sized regions under my temples, the temporal lobes - would be stimulated with magnetic fields that can evoke unusual experiences. That knowledge broke the spell. If those subtle effects had come unexpectedly (when I was alone on a mountaintop, perhaps) they might have taken on a much greater significance. And people have such experiences, on mountaintops, in deserts and on roads to Damascus, because the yellow helmet is optional. Some people, Persinger says, create those weak, complex fields by themselves. Others are particularly sensitive to the magnetic fields, natural and manufactured, that wax and wane around us. People who experience a presence that feels powerful, invisible and sentient often associate it with the supernatural. Not surprising - but wrong, Persinger believes. Religious experiences, he says, are creations of the brain.

My results aside, Persinger's work has put him at the forefront of a new field called neurotheology, the attempt to understand religion from the brain's point of view, or why, as another neurologist has said, "instead of God creating our brains, our brains created God." Such quests may capture the imagination of the public, but Persinger's efforts are disdained by the general scientific community. He expects no less. "Most scientists follow the wave. That's what drives granting... everybody follows like a herd," he says. "There are very few scientists who have the courage to pursue the essence of human existance."

Michael Persinger didn't build his helmet to find God. He set out to locate (and perhaps summon) the creative state of necessary for scientific discovery. A common type of epileptic seizure without obvious convulsions - an electrical storm in the brain that has long been associated with mystics and visions - is centered for the most part in the temporal lobes. Persinger guessed that by gently tickling those areas with a magnetic pattern programmed to resemble an epileptic seizure, he might induce similar feelings of insight and significance. Sure enough, his first subjects reported meaningful experiences, most commonly the "sensed presence." When asked to describe them, they didn't call the feelings creative or inspirational, but religious.

From these results with ordinary - that is, not epileptic - subjects, Persinger hypothesizes that true temporal-lobe epileptics aren't different from the rest of us in kind, but in degree. On the spectrum of temporal lobe excitibility (or lability), they're the most extreme cases. Plenty of people ("most of your musicians, artists or writers") have sensitive temporal lobes that undergo what Persinger has termed "micro-seizures." These aren't accompanied by outward signs such as convulsions, but they are sometimes accompanied by a mystical experience. The least temporally sensitive among us have microseizures only under extreme conditions such as anxiety, bereavement or prolonged fasting.

My less-than-supernatural experience with the helmet suggests that my temporal lobes aren't very excitable, which disappoints me. I wanted to be in the sensitive artists group. There is an upside, though. "If you're too temporally labile, you tend to self-medicate with booze and things," Persinger says. Maybe he's just trying to make me feel better.

Research into conciousness is in its infancy, so what actually conjures the sentient presence is anyone's guess. Current studies suggest that the sense of self - which maintains the boundary between you and the outside world - is created in the left temporal lobe. When you lose that boundary, you feel integrated with the whole universe; that's one kind of religious experience. Stimulating the right temporal lobe envokes a right-hemispheric equivalent sense of self, which the brain interprets as another entity. The "sensed presence," in other words, is the right hemisphere's sense of self, which we're only aware of when the signalsin the right lobe rise above normal levels. There are reports of such experiences in every culture, Persinger notes. The ancient Greeks called it the Muses. Moses, St. Paul, Joan of Arc and Mohammed - all of whom were probably epileptic, says some scientists - called it the voice of God.

After my session, we negotiated the basement warren of labs and officers that belong to the Neuroscience Research Group (essentially an alias for Persinger and his grad students) and settle into one of them to talk. Over Persinger's left shoulder are shelves of brains - rat, bear, human, whole, sliced, and quartered - sealed in Tupperware. Persinger, immaculate in a three-piece pinstripe suit, crisp white shirt and gold cufflinks, looks a little incongruois in juxtaposition, but no one has ever seen him in any other attire. "He mows the lawn in a three-peice suit," Linda St-Pierre tells me, which makes me laugh. "No, I'm serious," she says. Persinger later confirms this is true.

Michael Persinger was a navy brat, born in Florida to a chief petty officer attached to an atomic bomb delivery squadron (which took him away for six months at a stretch). He grew up in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and Wisconsin. As a boy he was less academically inclined than "extraordinarily inquisitive," testing electricity's effects on tadpoles and blowing apart bell jars in an attempt to recreate the beginnings of life.

According to his navy father, real men didn't go to college, so Michael was a double disappointment when he entered the University of Wisconsin (on a track and field scholarship) and then became a draft doger. Coming to Canada in 1969 was a serious step; he believed he was leaving the United States for ever. He arrived at the border prepared for a life of exle and conflict, both political and professional.

"I realised that the objectivity and methodology of science often brought you into confrontation with the society of the day," he says. "I knew from the history of science that this was not unusual."

Persinger (who became a Canadian citizen in the early 1970s) has spent his entire career in the psychology and biology departments at Laurentian. While in recent decades science has been sliced into increasingly narrow specialties, Persinger remains a big-picture thinker, as much natural philosopher as scientist. His personality precludes anything else. Ask him a question, and Persinger, talking rapidly, switching from chemistry to biology to psychology, will deliver a riff on the myriad associations your quetsion has triggered. He wishes more scientists thought his way.

"We're frontier researchers, the cutting edge, not necessarily because we're great, but because we do interdisciplinary research," he says. "And interdisciplinary research, unless we change our university system, is going to be gone. Most contemporary scientists are supertechs, the super technicians - and that's not an insult, that's the nature of the technology of our society. But we have to realize that certain problems aren't going to be solved unless you have the integrators. And this problem - the idea of mystical experience, the nature of consciousness, the brain basis to God - isn't going to be solved by any single discipline because it's human experience, which is not a single disipline."

He's an atheist, says religious belief is "a cognitive virus" and proclaims on his web page that his research has been "encouraged by the historical fact that most wars and groups degradations are coupled imlicitly to god beliefs." But he wants to be clear: he is worrid not about religion itself, but about the way it polarizes society. In fact, he says, being religious might be a valuable adaptive strategy, letting us "minimize the fear of death," through "the possibility of immortality." It has to be, or we wouldn't have evolved the capacity for it.

"Suppose you can anticipate your personal demise. Well, that precipitates tremendous anxiety, and anxiety is devastating to cognitive processes. So from a natural selection point of view, you can see why individuals would have been selected if they could minimize that anxiety," he explains. "The minute a person can affiliate themselves with this concept of infinite and forever, there is no personal death, and consequently there is no reason to have anxiety. You can see why people become addicted to it." When Karl Marx wrote that religion is the opiate of the masses, he thought he was being metaphysical. Persinger thinks there's a good chance that Marx was writing the literal neurochemical truth.

This is just the sort of talk that has moved small groups to hold occassional prayer meetings on his office doorstep, but Persinger doesn't see why his helmet should ruffle feathers. He's only claiming that our brains are predisposed to generate religious experiences. He's not saying there is no God, though the way he delivers that message won't gladden the hearts of the faithful. "The way God is defined - infinite, forever - is an empty hypothesis. You can't test it one way or another. Perhaps everything is created by non-physical, invisible pink elephants."

Despite its mystical reverberations, Persinger foresees plenty of practical applications for his work.He's adapting the helmet technology for treating depression and pain; in tests on rats he's found a magnetic pattern that has the effect of morphine. He's also testing it as a means of preventing epileptic seizures. And he thinks the brightly coloured spots I experienced, properly directed, could send visual information directly into the brains of the blind, a kind of "visible braille."

There are more exotic applications. The technology's apparition conjuring ability has already been used for ghost-busting. In 1993 Don Hill, a broadcaster who hosted the CBC radio program Tapestry, bought a house in Canmore, Alberta, which he became convinced was haunted. He had such disturbing experiences that he sold the house in 1994 and began a four-year investigation, which led him to Michael Persinger's lab. In the soundproof chamber Hill re-experienced the ghost that had terrified him in Canmore. Persinger, monitoring Hill's brain activity from outside the chamber, stopped the experiment when Hill panicked. But Hill had seen enough, and the experience liberated him: knowing the ghost was a creation of his own brain extinguished his fear.

Persinger thinks that same sort of demonstration might have a salutry effect on the sorts of people who fly airplanes into buildings. "If we understand more about how the God experience occurs, the idea that it's truly true, without doubt, will at least be challenged. If I can imitate these experiences with a very simple technology, then we know it's coming from the brain, so when someone hears a voice saying, 'Hello, this is Allah, God, Buddha, whoever, go and smash your neighbour's head in,' then maybe there's another way of looking at it." Persinger's surveys show that an astonishing 40 percent of Canadian male university students who have temporal lobe lability, go to church once a week and had a religious experience before their teen years agree with the statement "If God told me to kill, I would do it in his name."

Finally, we come to Persinger's greatest hope for the helmet technology. "Can we use it to decrease the anxiety in an increasingly secular world?" he asks. "People dying of cancer, who don't believe in God - we could use that stimulation to allow the feeling of wholeness, to allow the feeling of personal development. In the future, you may find a space in the average home, much like in the Eastern tradition, which is basically your God centre, where you sit down, 'expose' yourself - it may not be a helmet by then - where you would be able to pursue your own personal development. Do we have a technology here that will allow us to purse the last greatest mystery, which is your own introspection?"

A consummation devoutly to be wished. Also a fine irony: the technology replacing the God it helps unseat.

Persinger's work on religious experiences has attracted a good deal of attention - he's been featured in stories in Wired and New Scientist and in a neurotheology cover story in Newsweek,among many others. But his God-in-the-head work is only a small fraction of his output. In 30 years, he has published more than 300 papers and seven books, and, except for the neurotheology material, the mainstream press doesn't even mention them in passing. Why? Because neurotheology is a safe, and the rest is not. (If neurotheology weren't safe, it wouldn't have made the cover of Newsweek. The new discipline's findings are absolutely consistent, after all, with what science has been doing to religion for 500 years. No one should be shocked. Titillated, maybe, but not shocked.) But Persinger's other interests? The world may not be ready.

The minute I met him, Persinger mentioned that Sean Harribance, a famous psychic, had come to Sudbury to be studied. He sat in the soundproof chamber while handling photographs in sealed envelopes, describing what he couldn't see. "His brain is quite different." After September 11, the Pentagon sequestered Harribance with some photos of its own, Persinger says. "I have a hunch who the pictures were of," he adds.

Persinger has also studied UFO sightings, and here too he occupies a unique spot on the skepticle divide. He believes UFOs aren't alien spacecraft, but electromagnetic discharges created by stresses in the tectonic plates that form the earth's crust. According to Persinger's Tectonic Strain Theory, these discharges can create real, luminous shapes in the air, or generate the inside-the-brain lightening I enjoyed under the helmet. He's found that UFO sightings are correlated with earthquake activity: as the tectonic strain that precedes an earthquake increases, so do the number of reported sightings. (Calling these phenomena spaceships, ironically, is merely a marker of our secular, science-oriented times, Persinger notes. He has published a paper pointing out that in 1968 and 1969, thousands witnessed luminous phenomena over a church in Egypt as seismic activity increased tenfold in the region. They were sure they'd seen the Virgin Mary. in the other eras, they would have seen a spirte or demon.)

There's more, much more, almost all of it built on the belief that we are influenced, in ways we have only recently been able to measure, by the magnetic fields around us. Those fields are thickening. "We're living more and more in a complex electromagnetic environment where the experiences of the effects may not be obvious," he says. Will he use a cellphone? "If I ever had to because of an emergency, yes."

Persinger has written dozens of papers illustrating these effects, describing everything from a young woman who slept with an electric clock 20 cm from her head and claimed to have been impregnated by the Holy Spirit, to geomagnetic storms - high solar activity that creates a worldwide disturbance of the earth's magnetic field - that apparently makes epileptic rats more aggressive and increase the rate of sudden cardiac death. But can these investigations (in truth, more speculations than investigations, most showing correlation, not causion) be called science? Other scientists don't think so, Peringer admits.

"Generally the response from scientists is two-sided - and two-faced," he says. "Under the anonymity of grant reviews, it's always, 'nonsense,' 'Why do it?' When they're in front of you, however, it's always, 'This is fantastic,' 'This is what science is, the pursuit of the unknown.' Initiatory research has never been accepted."

I've experienced that reaction myself, on Persinger's behalf. A few weeks ago, a retired scientist I know asked me what I was working on. I got as far as "There's this researcher who's built a helmet that lets you experience God -" when he interrupted: "In other words, a kook."

When they're on the record, as Persinger notes, scientists are much more generous, offering only mild or no criticism. Andrew Newberg, an assistant professor in the department of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania, has used brain imaging to study people in meditation and prayer. He, like Persinger, has concluded that the brain is pre-wired to experience spiritual states. Newberg is willing to quibble with some of Persinger's theories, for example that temporal lobe seizures cause all religious experiences (if they did, then most temporal-lobe epileptics should have such experiences; in fact only a small fraction actually do), but overall, he says, Peringer's brain research is sound. Still, as far as Persinger knows, not a single researcher has been intigrated enough by his magnetic stimulation to start experimenting with it, which is not an encouraging index of its impact. It also exacerbates Peringer's isolation, since in science there is no credibility without replication.

Funding agencies, where grant applications are peer reviewed under the protection of anonymity, offer another index of Persinger's status in the research community. For 30 years, Persinger has applied to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for a research grant, and 30 times he's been turned down (he's planning to apply again this year). Laurentian provides the space, but almost all of his research has been financed out of his own pocket from the money he makes as a clinical psychologist (which explains why his equipment looks more Canadian Tire than NASA). Last year, he got a small grant, his first in decades, from the Bial Foundation in Portugal, which funds the "scientific study of both physical and spiritual Man."

"The real cutting edge individuals never are funded because funding is a social decision, not a scientific one," Persinger says without a trace of bitterness. "The minute you refer to a peer group to see if they like it, you're asking for social consensus."

Speaking of peers, I'd like to talk to some. Who at Laurentian knows him best? "Actually very few people know me here at Laurentian. This may sound sad, or maybe arrogant, but there really isn't anyone that I interact with," he answers. Anyone? Not even at other universities? "That is correct. I interact more with my wife on these topics than any other peers." In fact, Persinger considers his wife, who has a master's degree in biology, to be his closest peer.

I'm sure his wife thinks he's a real scientist, and for what it's worth, I do, too - an indie scientist. As is the case with indie filmakers, being an outsider leaves him underfunded and ignored, but it gives him the freedom to do what he wants. Unlike them, however, being an "indie" scientist is not yet cool. That makes it all the more admirable.

The first explorers who reached our continent didn't spend years examining and cataloguing the beach they landed on. They wandered exuberantly over the whole face of the new terrain, noting its most prominent features. They wrote subjective impressions in diaries and drew inaccurate maps. They didn't bring home the gold or spices they were looking for, but oddities like tobacco, coffee and coca, whose future value there was no scale to measure. Persinger is the same. Because of a rare personality defect (or strength), he does not require peer approval or recognition. He's a loner content to explore his terra incognita, the magnetic ether we live in. And religious considerations aside, he has found at least one prominent feature of that landscape: with his helmet he seems to have shown that we can perceive a weak magnetic field not with our eyes, ears, nose, mouth or skin, but directly with our brains. That hints at something quite profound: the brain is a sense organ.

If he's right, paradigms will shift and he'll be celebrated. But even if he's wrong, it's still science.

Direct link to article reproduction

video: can live

2008-07-10T19:42:00.000-07:00

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video: eno interviews

2008-07-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

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robots playing hawkwind spirit of the age, maybe the coolest thing ever

2008-07-10T19:34:00.000-07:00

holy shit

J Craig Venter-Brilliantly Inspired, and Changing the World

2008-07-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

The J. Craig Venter Institute

J. Craig Venter Interview in Wired
Picture this: You are standing at the edge of a lagoon on a South Pacific island. The nearest village is 20 miles away, reachable only by boat. The water is as clear as air. Overhead, white fairy terns hover and peep among the coconut trees. Perhaps 100 yards away, you see a man strolling in the shallows. He is bald, bearded, and buck naked. He stoops every once in a while to pick up a shell or examine something in the sand...

Wikipedia Biography

Venter is an ex-surfer and a Vietnam war veteran. According to Time, it was not always evident that he would become a transformative figure, particularly when he was a boy; according to his biography, A Life Decoded, he was said to be never a terribly engaged student, having Cs and Ds in his eighth grade report cards.
He enlisted in the United States Navy and served a tour of duty during the Vietnam War. While in Vietnam, he attempted to commit suicide by swimming out to sea, but changed his mind more than a mile out.

Venter began his academic career at a community college, College of San Mateo in California.

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He received his bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1972, and his Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology in 1975 — both from the University of California, San Diego. In San Diego, he married former Ph.D. candidate, Barbara Rae. After working as a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he joined the National Institutes of Health in 1984. In Buffalo, he divorced Dr. Rae-Venter and married his student, Claire M. Fraser,[ and remained married to Ms. Fraser until 2005.
While at NIH, Venter learned of a technique for rapidly identifying all of the mRNAs present in a cell, and began to use it to identify human brain genes. The short cDNA sequence fragments discovered by this method are called expressed sequence tags, or ESTs, a name coined by Anthony Kerlavage at The Institute for Genomic Research. In a controversial court case, Venter tried to patent these gene fragments and lost the case.

Human Genome Project

He was the former president and founder of Celera Genomics, which became famous for running a parallel version of the Human Genome Project of its own for commercial purposes, using shotgun sequencing technology in 1999. The method was blasted by the international genetics community who derided it as unfeasible. The aim of the Celera project was to create a database of genomic data that users could subscribe to for a fee. This proved very unpopular in the genetics community and spurred several groups to redouble their efforts to produce the full sequence and release it as open access. At the same time, the HGP consortium applied political pressure to appropriate the shotgun technology and the collected data from Venter's company. There were also concerns that Venter might shatter what was supposed to be an "international" face on a landmark event in history. DNA from 5 individuals was used by Celera to generate the sequence of the human genome; one of the 5 individuals used in this project was Venter. In the end, Celera Genomics submitted to the pressure and shared its data and the credit for sequencing of the human genome with the international consortium of the Human Genome Project, which was composed of many groups from around the world. After his inability to collect royalties for the Human Genome, Venter was fired by Celera in early 2002.

Venter resisted efforts by the company board to change the strategic direction of the company.
Despite their differing motivations, Venter and rival scientist Francis Collins of the National Institute of Health jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome in 2000, along with US President Bill Clinton. Venter and Collins thus shared an award for "Biography of the Year" from A&E Network.

Current work

Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in 1992. He is currently the president of the J. Craig Venter Institute, created and funded by TIGR's board (which Venter chairs). In June of 2005, he co-founded Synthetic Genomics, a firm dedicated to using modified microorganisms to produce ethanol and hydrogen as alternative fuels. He used his sloop, Sorcerer II, in the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition to help assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities.

On September 4, 2007, a team led by Sam Levy published the first complete (six-billion-letter) genome of an individual human — Venter's own DNA sequence. Some of the sequences in Venter's genome are associated with wet earwax, increased risk of antisocial behavior, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases. This publication was especially interesting since it contained a diploid instead of a haploid genome and shows promise for personalized medicine via genotyping.
The Human Reference (HuRef) Genome Browser is a Web application (http://huref.jcvi.org) for the navigation and analysis of the Venter's recently published genome.

The HuRef database consists of approximately 32 million DNA reads sequenced using Sanger methods, assembled into 4,528 scaffolds and 4.1 million DNA variations identified by genome analysis. These variants include Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), block substitutions, short and large indels, structural variants like insertion, deletions, inversions and copy number changes.

The browser enables scientists to navigate the HuRef genome assembly and sequence variations, and to compare it with the NCBI human build 36 assembly in the context of the NCBI and Ensembl annotations. The browser provides a comparative view between NCBI and HuRef consensus sequences, the sequence multi-alignment of the HuRef assembly, Ensembl and dbSNP annotations, HuRef variants, and the underlying variant evidence and functional analysis. The interface also represents the haplotype blocks from which diploid genome sequence can be inferred and the relation of variants to gene annotations. The display of variants and gene annotations are linked to external public resources including dbSNP, Ensembl , Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) and Gene Ontology (GO).

Users can search the HuRef genome using HUGO gene names, Ensembl and dbSNP identifiers, HuRef contig or scaffold locations, or NCBI chromosome locations. Users can then easily and quickly browse any genomic region via the simple and intuitive pan and zoom controls; furthermore relevant data in specific loci can be exported for further analysis.
[edit]Mycoplasma laboratorium

Venter is seeking to patent the first life-form created by humanity, possibly to be named Mycoplasma laboratorium. There is speculation that this line of research could lead to producing bacteria that have been engineered to perform specific reactions, e.g. produce fuels, make medicines, combat global warming, etc.

In a recent interview with New Scientist when asked "Assuming you can make synthetic bacteria, what will you do with them?", Venter replied

Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make.
Furthermore it suggests that one of the main purposes for creating synthetic bacteria would be to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels.

golden dawn bios: yeats, mathers

2008-07-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

William Butler Yeats
June 13, 1865 - January 28th, 1939

William Butler Yeats is one of the many famous names to come from the original Golden Dawn. His poetry and writings were a display of his passion for mysticism and the Occult Sciences. These were largely expressed in various publications (e.g. Your Pathway), earning him the Nobel Prize in 1924 for literature. But more important was his desire and striving for knowledge of that which is beyond what we know and that of the unknown.

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William Butler Yeats was third-generation Irish, born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. From day one he was up against a wall regarding his religious beliefs, for his grandfather was a deeply Orthodox Rector in the Church of England, while his father was a complete religious skeptic. With this conflict already in place, young William walked the very fine line of between faith and disbelief.
Being faced with this dilema, Yeats was destined to find the balance by whatever means necessary. This first step occurred after reading numerous text on the subjects of Occultism, the Tibetan Mysteries, Buddhism, and other beliefs. All of these subjects ignited his desire to learn and to know. Aside from his readings, what further expanded his desire was his discovery of a society purporting to be Ancient and non-European. This new movement simply called The Theosophical Society, claimed to have the ability to offer a "synthesis" of religion, science, and philosophy. For at that particular time in human development, none of these three disciplines were ready to integrate with the other, but this is what fascinated Yeats. This is what he longed for.
Upon hearing of the Society, Yeats soon met the founder, Madame Helene Blavatsky, and was very intrigued by her. After many metaphysical conversations with her and many hours of long thought on the issue, Yeats took one of his first steps on his path of occult wisdom, and joined the famed Theosophical Society of London. The Society provided Yeats with a kind of outlet that he needed to express his thoughts and feelings that the Victorian society of the time might have considered risque or improper. After attending various Theosophical meetings, Yeats felt at home.
William felt this way at least on an outside level. But deep on the inside, his heart had another desire that the Society could never touch. Being around others who shared similar lines of thinking was a step in the right direction for Yeats, but he realized that there was more to all this learned knowledge than just plain talk. With the thoughts in his mind forming very strongly, Yeats was once again yearning for more than what his universe had revealed.
But soon after this discovery was made, Yeats also discovered that fellow members of the Theosophical society felt the same. It was at this point that Madame Blavatsky was approached by such people, asking for more. She obliged, and formed an additional branch to the Society called, "The Esoteric Section." This branch of the Society dared to venture into the area of magic and hoped to prove to others that Occult phenomena is possible. This was the answer to Yeats prayers, (to an extent). In addition, the E.S. assured everyone that they would not actually be practicing magic but would be undergoing the necessary magical training before magical power was entrusted to the student.
Such magical training consisted of the learning of magical and esoteric symbols, correspondences, creating interrelationships between the seasons, various parts of the body, the five elements, colors, numbers, etc.
As fulfilling as all of this new knowledge and experience was, Yeats soon lost hope in this new branch, due to the fact that all experiments performed by the E.S. were quite unsuccessful. Several took place; raising the ghost of a flower, evoking a dream by use of a symbol under the dreamer's pillow, all of which failed. Once again, Yeats felt that something was missing. After witnessing many failures and only minimal success, Yeats lost hope in this new branch, and felt it was time to continue on, rather than stay stagnant. This led to his discovery of another society, which many of his friends in the T.S. were joining. This new organization was beautifully titled,
"The Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn."

The Golden Dawn satisfied Yeat's need to dig into his very core, and unleash what has been buried for so long. As Yeats soon discovered, the Golden Dawn Incorporated traditional European Cabalistic Magic and astrology, as opposed to the wisdom of the East. In addition, the Golden Dawn encouraged exploration and wielding of power (over the material universe, unlike Blavatsky who constantly warned students against the practice of phenomena and oftentimes discouraged it altogether.) This highly pleased Yeats, and allowed him to open his magical aspirations to as high as he would go.
Aside from knowing various friends in the Golden Dawn that were previously attending the T.S., Yeats' decision to join the Golden Dawn can be credited to one of the Order's founders: S. L. MacGregor Mathers. His magical powers left a strong and lasting impression upon Yeats, and assured him of the validity of the Golden Dawn's Work.
Instead of handing him theories on how and why things work, the Golden Dawn showed him the answers, gave him the desired results, and the freedom and the opportunity for constant experimentation and expression. This expression was further reflected in his writings. For example, his poem, Images, makes many references to various Occult meanings.
IMAGES

On Abiegino's side a multitude.
Restored by drinking that miraculous wine
to human form: Day beats upon their eyes
Sounds of unfinished battle upon their ears
One sways his head and laughs, another weeps.
Then all laugh out, discovering in laughter
that the dark valley at the mountain forest
Where wold must war on walk, abounding
grass.

Grow out of that foul blood, is magical
That they imagined it and bound themselves.
Therein contented with that bitter sweet
But the wind changes and the valley howls
One howls his answer back and one by one
They drop upon all fours, creep valley -- wards
Question that instant for these forms O heart
These chuckling & howling forms begot
the sages.

Yeats continued his search for knowledge of that which is not written for man to read. But like all things, life comes to an end. His accomplished life ended when the Sun entered Aquarius on January 28th, 1939. Roqueborne, South France was where he took his last breath. A last breath that would be long remembered by those in the world of literature, and the thousands who are thinking with a Western Mind.

Macgregor Mathers

S. L. MacGregor Mathers
1854 - 1918

Samual Liddel Mathers was born in 1854 at what is now 108 De Beauvoir Road, London, N.I.. His birthday is January the eighth, making him a Capricorn. Mathers claimed to be a descendant of the clan MacGregor and of Highland Scottish blood. Thus, this is why he added the name "MacGregor." Mathers, according to William Butler Yeats, had two ruling passions in his life: "magic and the theory of war." (It is interesting to note that although Mathers studied and wrote about military techniques, he was a strong vegetarian and avid anti-vivasectionist.)
It was Mathers who made the first English translation of Knorr Von Rosenroth's, "Kabbalah Denudata." This work was commissioned by Dr. Woodman and Dr. Westcott. It was about that time that the first discussions of the Golden Dawn were taking place. Mathers had an additional mentor who probably had the most impact on his life. This was Dr. Anna Kingsford (1846 - 1888), and it was to her that he dedicated the "Kabbalah Unveiled."
Dr. Anna Kingsford was one of the early fighters for women's rights. This characteristic was adopted by Mathers who demanded that women share equally in all ways in the Golden Dawn. She was also an anti-vivisectionist and a vegetarian. And, at a time when almost every male in English society smoked a pipe or cigar, Mathers was a non-smoker. Without a doubt that Dr. Kingsford, as a friend and as the leader of the Hermetic Society, was of great influence on the young and impressionable MacGregor Mathers.
Mathers used two mottos in the Golden Dawn. One was his Outer Order motto and was the motto of the entire MacGregor clan. The other comes from a mars talisman. They are respectfully:
S.R.M.D. which stands for S' Rioghail Mo Dhrem, meaning "Royal is my race."

D.D.C.F. which stands for Deo Duce Comite Ferro, meaning "God as my guide, my companion a sword."

Unlike many back then and even now, Mathers dedicated his entire life to the Western Mystery Tradition and to the magical way of life. He was not only the Chief of the Second Order of the Golden Dawn, he was the author of almost all of the important Golden Dawn teachings and documents. He masterfully took a dry system of angelic magic brought forth by the early British Astrologer Dr. John Dee and developed it into what may very well be one of the most powerful magical systems in the world.
Much of what we know of the Tarot comes from Mathers and his wife. Today, we take the Tarot for granted, but without the ground breaking work of Mathers and the Golden Dawn, our Tarot symbolism might be basic and trite. Also, the Z Documents of the Order were gigantic contributions in the area of magical methods and techniques. To this day, most reputable sources on invocation, skrying, divination etc. borrow from the Z Documents knowingly or unknowingly. (The Z Documents should not be confused with Z-5, a series of books by Patrick Zawelski.)
Mathers was an eccentric. He loved the drama of good ritual. He often dressed in his Highlander garb when working on or with the Celtic pantheon. Later, he would change his living decor to Egyptian as he produced the public invocation to Isis in Paris. These invocations were very successful, and it was Mathers who brought forth the Egyptian pantheon into the Golden Dawn.
Mathers was seemingly very good with language. He was able to read and translate English, Hebrew, Latin, French, Celtic, Coptic and Greek. This, in itself, is quite interesting in that there is no record of him being taught so many languages in school. He must have learned them through another source or in another way.

Here is a list of books and material Mathers authored:

Practical Instruction in Infantry Campaigning Exercise (1884) (French)
The Tarot: A Short Treatise on Reading Cards (French)

The Fall of Granada: A Poem in Six Duans (1885) (French)

The Qabbalah Unveiled (1888) [Originally in Chaldee, but he translated the seventeenth century version of the Kabbala Dunatta by Knorr Von Rosenroth from Latin.

Egyptian Symbolism (Published in Paris)

The Grimoire of Armadel (French)

The Tarot, Its Occult Significance and Methods of Play (1888) (French?)

The Key of Solomon the King: Clavicula Solomonis (1889) (Hebrew)

The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (1896) (French)

Astral Projection Ritual Magic and Alchemy -(Credit) Original Writings of the Golden Dawn Volume #1

Mathers has been much maligned by authors such as Crowley. Even many modern authors have portrayed a negative view of him. However, many of these authors had connections to organizations that broke away from Mathers and the Golden Dawn.
S.L. MacGregor Mathers, in many ways, remains somewhat of a private individual. No one really knows how he died. Violet Firth (Dion Fortune) claimed it was from the Spanish Influenza of 1918, but at best this is probably just a guess on her part. Moina Mathers claimed he was coherent right up unto the time of his death and that exhaustion from years of work with the secret Chiefs of the Third Order was responsible. It is very peculiar indeed that no body or grave site has ever been located of MacGregor Mathers, and there is no cause of death on his death certificate.
Whatever Mathers was or has become, in our minds, his work lives on in the life and Light of the Golden Dawn.

For more information about Mathers, please read the article The Truth about S.L. MacGregor Mathers.

william butler yeats and the golden dawn

2008-07-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

Written and compiled by George Knowles.

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and prose writer, one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. His poetry and writings were a display of his passion for Irish mythology and folklore mixed with mysticism and the occult Sciences. He was a driving force behind the Irish literary revival and a co-founder of the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin. As a prominent public figure, he served for six years in the Irish Free State Senate (1922-28), and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, his nomination stated that: “…his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”.

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Yeats was a third-generation Irishman, the eldest of four children. He was born on the 13th June 1865 in the seaside village of Sandymount, County Dublin, Ireland. His father John Butler Yeats was a lawyer turned Irish Pre-Raphaelite painter, while his mother Susan Pollexfen came from a wealthy family who had prospered in the milling and shipping business. His mother introduced Yeats and his two sisters: Susan Mary Yeats (1866-1949) and Elizabeth Corbet Yeats (1868-1940) to the Irish folktales and legends he would grow to love so much. His younger brother Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) followed in his father’s footsteps and become an accomplished artist.

Father - John Butler Yeats

In 1867 his father moved the family to London and settled in Bedford Park were he could study art. While there, Yeats attended the Godolphin School in Hammersmith before the family moved back to Dublin. In Dublin, he attended the Erasmus Smith High School, and in 1884, enrolled in Dublin’s Metropolitan School of Art. While studying at the Metropolitan, Yeats met with the poet, dramatist and painter George Russell (commonly referred to as AE), whose interest in mysticism and theosophy inspired him to take a closer look at alternative religions. After reading numerous texts on the Tibetan Mysteries, Buddhism and other religious beliefs, he became fascinated in the subjects of reincarnation, spiritualism and occultism.

George Russell

In the meantime Yeats had started to write, and gained his first publication merits in 1885, when two of his lyrical poems appeared in the Dublin University Review. In 1886, Yeats formed the Dublin Lodge of the Hermetic Society, before returning to Bedford Park the following year to concentrate on his writing. Yeats quickly became involved in the literary life of London, making friends with fellow poets William Morris and W.E. Henley. In 1890 he and Ernest Rhys co-founded the Rhymers Club, whose members included other like-minded poets and writers from London’s literary elite. The group met regularly and published anthologies in 1892 and 1894.

While Yeats returned to Ireland nearly every summer, he was mostly kept busy in London, when not attending lectures or meetings at the Rhymers Club; he spent time in the British Museum of Natural History researching Irelands pre-Christian history. Yeats had always had a fascination for Irish legends and folktales, and as a part of an exploration of his Irish national heritage, he had hopes for an Irish literary revival. His study with George Russell and Douglas Hyde: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry was published in 1888. Yeats later wrote a less detailed version for children called: Irish Fairy Tales, published in 1892. The Wanderings Of Oisin And Other Poems published in 1889 is filled with sad longings, and was based on Irish mythology.

Yeats was often shy around women but made the acquaintance of many who became his friends, including the poet Katharine Tynan (1861-1931) and theosophist Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) founder of the Theosophical Society, which Yeats joined in 1888. The Theosophical Society provided Yeats with the intellectual outlet he needed to express his thoughts and feelings on mysticism, but lacked the deeper practical aspects of magical symbolism that he sought. For this he turned to “The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn”, led by a fellow researcher he first met while studying at the British Museum of Natural History, S.L. MacGregor Mathers.

Madame Helena Blavatsky - S.L. MacGregor Mathers

Yeats was admitted into the Golden Dawn's Isis-Urania temple as a Neophyte on the 7th March 1890, taking for his motto Demon est Deus inversus (D.E.D.I. for short), which translated reads as Devil is the reverse of God, a name he took from the writings of Madame Blavatsky. After fractious events led to the break-up of the original Golden Dawn in the early 1900’s, Yeats joined forces with Dr. Robert William Felkin and John William Brodie-Innes in the Amoun Temple of the newly formed “Order of the Stella Matutina”. Yeats completed his Theoricus Adeptus Minor sub-grade in 1912, advancing to the 6=5 grade of Adeptus Major in 1914, from which time he served as Imperator and Instructor of Ancient Traditions until 1922. Yeats eventually left the Order being disillusioned with the constant in-fighting and power struggles among its members.

Yeats set out his magical beliefs in a lecture to “Golden Dawn” members in 1901:

“I believe in the practise and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe in three doctrines, which have, as I think, been handed down from early times, and been the foundations of nearly all magical practices. These doctrines are:

(1) That the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.
(2) That the borders of our memories are shifting, and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
(3) That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols”.

In 1889 Yeats met the love-of-his-life Maud Gonne, a beautiful Irish actress who became a major focus in his future writings. Yeats worshipped Maud, but his love was hopeless lost. While she liked, admired and respected him, she was not in love with him; her passion was reserved for Ireland. She was a fervent Irish patriot, a rebel, commanding in voice and in person. She became a speaker for the Land League, founded the Daughters of Ireland (a nationalist organization), and helped to organize the Irish brigades that fought against the British in the South African War. It was Maud who influenced Yeats to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood, but while she had devoted herself to political struggle, Yeats viewed her world with suspicion.

Maud Gonne

After the death of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1891, Yeats believed that Irish political life had lost its significance, and felt that the vacuum left by politics might be better filled by literature, art, poetry and drama dedicated to Irelands national heritage, its culture and legends. In 1893, his first effort towards this end was a volume of essays called The Celtic Twilight. In 1896 Yeats returned to live permanently in his home town of Dublin, were he set about reforming the Irish National Literary Society in efforts to promote a new Irish Library.

Charles Stewart Parnell

In 1897, Yeats met Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, with whose patronage he founded the Irish Literary Theatre, which later became the Irish National Theatre Society. In 1904 the theatre moved to new premises and was re-named the Abbey Theatre, after the street in Dublin on which it stood. Yeats remained a director of the theatre for the rest of his life, writing several plays for it, his most famous being The Land Of Heart's Desire (1894) and Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902). Another director was the dramatist John Synge (1871-1909), a close friend of Yeats whose masterpiece The Playboy of the Western World (1907) was greeted with riots.

Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory - Coole Park

Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory was an Irish aristocrat, who after the death of her husband Sir William Gregory in 1892, had become involved in efforts to arouse Irish nationalism through an appreciation of Irish literature and speech. She had collected a vast store of old legends and folklore about Ireland, which Yeats found matched with his own researches of Irelands ancient rituals and beliefs. From 1898, Yeats spent his summers at Lady Gregory's home in Coole Park, County Galway. Later he bought a derelict Norman stone tower situated in the same neighbourhood as Coole Park, called Thoor Ballylee. After restoring it, the tower became his permanent summer home and a central symbol in his later poetry.

In 1899, Yeats asked Maud Gonne to marry him, but she rejected him, and four years later married Major John MacBride, an Irish soldier who shared her feelings for Ireland and her opposition to what she perceived as English oppression. MacBride was one of the rebels later executed by the British government for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916, while Maud herself was imprisoned for her part. After his death, Maud remained active in movements for the release of Irish political prisoners. Their son Sean MacBride later became foreign minister of Ireland and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Due to his association with Maud, a police report of 1899 describes Yeats as “more or less revolutionary”, perhaps he was, but never physically, only literarily, in 1916 he published Easter 1916. It referred to the executed leaders of the uprising and stated: “Now and in time to be, / Wherever the green is worn, / All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born”. In 1902 when his play Cathleen ni Houlihan was first performed in Dublin, it was Maud who played the title role.

During the winters of 1913-14, Yeats vacationed in England, spending time at Stone Cottage in Sussex with his friend the American poet and critic Ezra Pound. Pound, who was acting as his secretary at the time, was also editing translations of the Nō dramas of Japan, which caught the imagination of Yeats. Yeats thought that the Nō dramas could be re-designed for a small audience of initiates, using the resources offered by masks, mime, dance and song to convey his own recondite symbolism, and set about writing what he considered their equivalent in his plays: At the Hawk's Well (first performed 1916) and Four Plays for Dancers (1921).

Ezra Pound in 1913

By the age of 52, having constantly been rejected by the love-of-his-life, Yeats became obsessed with her daughter Iseult Gonne, who also turned down his advances. A few weeks later he proposed to 26-year-old Miss Georgie Hyde-Lees, while half his age she accepted and they married in 1917. Yeats at first doubted the marriage would work, but they were happy. During the honeymoon Georgie demonstrated her gift for automatic writing, and the notebooks they made of their sessions, later formed the basis of A Vision (1925). They had two children, a daughter Anne Butler Yeats born in 1919, and a son William Michael Yeats in 1921.

Georgie Hyde-Lees

In 1922, Yeats turned his attention to politics, and on the formation of the new Irish Free State, accepted an invitation to become a member of the Senate. Yeats served on the Senate for the next six years, where as a politician he defended Protestant interests and took a pro-Treaty stance against the Republicans. This put him at odds with his old flame Maud Gonne, for under the Emergency Legislation that he voted for, her son, Sean MacBride was imprisoned without trial.

In 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and became a celebrated figure, recognized as one of the most significant English-language poets of the 20th century. In 1929, he stayed at Thoor Ballylee for the last time, much of his remaining life was spent outside of Ireland. In his final years with his health declining, he worked on the last version of A Vision (first published in 1925). This was followed in 1936 with his Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1892–1935), a collection of his most favourite poems, and New Poems (1938). Also in 1938, he attended the Abbey theatre for the last time, to see the premier of his play Purgatory.

Yeats in 1930
After suffering from a variety of illnesses for a number of years, Yeats died on the 28th January 1939 at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France. He was buried first at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in France, until in accordance with his final wishes, his coffin was moved to Drumcliffe, County Sligo, aboard the Irish Navy corvette L.E. Macha in September 1948. His grave is now a famous attraction in Sligo, bearing his own unique epitaph, taken from one of his last poems Under Ben Bulben in which he wrote: “No marble, no conventional phrase; On limestone quarried near the spot / By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman; pass by!”

Yeats’ gravestone with his famous epitaph.

Yeats once said, “the place that has really influenced my life most is Sligo”. Sligo is also home to a statue and memorial building in his honor.

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2008-07-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

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