WHEN THE DREAM BECOMES REAL

ENDNOTES

By Michael O'Callaghan


  1. According to the World Heath Organisation, one percent of the world population is diagnosed as "schizophrenic". This means sixty million people in 1999. But the number may in fact be as much as two percent - i.e. one hundred and twenty million - since the official methods of definition vary, some countries like to under-report, and China, where 20% of the world population lives, apparently denies that any such phenomenon exists.


  2. The term schizophrenia was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939), who was noted for his kindness and humanity. Bleuler was Carl Jung's teacher, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Zürich, and head of its Burghölzli Clinic, which was regarded as the most significant institution of its kind in the world at the time. Before this, the medical name for the condition (given by the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin) was Dementia Praecox, from the Latin meaning prematurely out of one's mind. Whereas "dementia" means only infatuation, idiocy, or enfeebled mind, the etymology of "schizophrenia" implies some method in the madness. In medical parlance, the "acute schizophrenic break syndrome" refers to the initial spontaneous onset of a non-ordinary state of consciousness involving visual and / or auditory hallucinations.

    For an excellent review of death / rebirth imagery, see Über Wiedergeburt (On Rebirth), by Carl Gustav Jung, Eranos Jarhbuch 1939, Zürich, 1940.

  3. For good exposés of the interpersonal and social aspects of visionary states of consciousness, see Ronald D. Laing, MD: The Politics of Experience, Ballantine Books, New York, 1968; The Politics of the Family and other essays, New York, 1969; The Divided Self, Pantheon, New York, 1962; Sanity, Madness and the Family, (written with H.Phillipson), Tavistock Publications, London, 1966; Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research. Gregory Bateson also describes mental process cybernetically in interpersonal, international, and ecological terms, in Steps To An Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, 1972, and in his book Mind And Nature: a necessary unity, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1979.

  4. See Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers), Doubleday, New York, 1988; there is also an excellent television series of the same name, available as a six-part boxed set of videotapes which can be purchased by online mailorder from Mystic Fire Video at www.mysticfire.com. See also Joseph Campbell's essential study of the common theme of all mythology (which he called the Monomyth) in The Hero With A Thousand Faces, first published in 1949, and later by Bollingen University Press, New York, 1968.

  5. Gregory Bateson, Perceval's Narrative: A Patient's Account of his Psychosis, Stanford University Press, 1961, Stanford. See also The Double-Bind Theory of Schizophrenia, re-published in his Steps To An Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, 1972.

  6. See Joan Halifax, Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives, E.P. Dutton, New York; re-issued (Rei Edition), Arkana, 1994, ISBN: 0140193480. See also Joan Halifax, Shaman (Art and Imagination), Reprint Edition, Thames & Hudson, 1988, ISBN: 050081029X. See also Joan Halifax, Shaman : The Wounded Healer, Crossroad Publishing Co, 1983, ISBN: 082450061X.

  7. See Terrence McKenna, Plan, Plant, Planet in Whole Earth Review, number 64, POINT, Sausalito, California, Fall 1989. For a thought-provoking and very humorous re-visioning of history focusing on the cultural decline of psychoactive plant traditions, listen to: Terrence McKenna, History Ends in Green: Gaia, psychedelics, and the archaic revival, a boxed set of audio tapes recorded at the Esalen Institute; Mystic Fire Audio, New York, 1992 , which can be purchased by online mailorder from Mystic Fire Video at www.mysticfire.com.

  8. For more on R.D. Laing, see note 3 above. A short interview with Laing may also be found on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/interview/rdlaing.html

  9. John Weir Perry has written a number of books including The Self In Psychotic Process: Its Symbolization in Schizophrenia; with an introduction by C.G.Jung, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1953. The Far Side of Madness, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1974.

    The Heart of History: Individuality in Evolution, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1987; and Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1999.

  10. See Stanislav Grof, MD, Realms Of The Human Unconscious: Observations From LSD Research, E.P.Dutton, New York, 1976; Beyond The Brain: Birth, Death And Transcendence In Psychotherapy, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1985. Also Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes A Crisis; edited by Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof; contributions from R.D.Laing, Roberto Assagioli, John Weir Perry, Ram Dass, Lee Senella, Jack Kornfield, Paul Rebilot, Holger Kalwert, Anne Armstrong, Keith Thompson and others; Jeremy Tarcher Inc., Los Angeles, 1989. See also The Psychological Roots of Violence and Greed, published on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/un/grof1.html. In this connection, see also the web site of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), in Mill Valley, California at www.nbn.com/people/Transpersonal/itahome.html. For more on the ITA, see note 44 below.

  11. Galileo Galilei was condemned by an Inquisition court in 1663 for saying the Earth is not the centre of the universe, as Catholic church teaching then held. While the ancient Greco-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy had held that the Earth was stationary and that it was located at the centre of the universe, Nicholas Copernicus, a Pole, asserted that the earth went around the sun. Galileo endorsed the Copernican view in 1613. Three years later, the church denounced Copernicus's theory as dangerous to the faith, and warned Galileo to stop teaching it. But Galileo published his Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632, and the book was banned. He was put on trial one year later as a heretic. Galileo defended himself by saying that religious understanding would be enhanced by studying nature. But during his trial, the church forced him to renounce his theory that the earth revolves. At the end of the trial, however, he is said to have whispered, "Nevertheless, it does move!" Galileo was condemned to life imprisonment, later commuted to house arrest. He died eight years after, in 1647. More than 350 years later, in October 1992, Galileo was rehabilitated by Pope John Paul II! A Vatican statement said that 13 years of study by the Commission for the Study of the Ptolemaic-Copernican Controversy had ended, and that the church was wrong. Even the Church, it seems, is capable of motion.

  12. Since the mind and the body are not separate, of course different states of consciousness are linked with different states of metabolism. But to make the assertion that someone's spontaneous non-ordinary state of consciousness is caused by a biochemical difference in his or her body is an epistemologically untenable case of outrageously bad logic. This kind of dualistic hangover of the mind-body split has plagued scientific thinking from Aristotle, through Descartes, right up to the socio-biologists. Metabolism and consciousness are at least mutually causal. On a deeper level of epistemological description, metabolism is consciousness, so the issue of causality is a false one to begin with. But the belief that you can fix schizophrenia with a pill is one that materialists relish, since it enables them to deny the mental dimension in favour of the biochemical - and, by resulting in life-long medical treatment, has the added advantage of guaranteeing vast profits for the pharmaceutical industry. In most countries, it also makes it possible for governments, the police, and the medical establishment to have anyone who has had the label "schizophrenic" affixed to them locked up and/or drugged against their will. From this perspective, the whole question of "schizophrenia" is a major human rights issue.

    For more on the mind / body linkage, see The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, Reprint Edition, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1993, ISBN: 0262720213

  13. Defective genes are now being touted as the latest explanatory principle for "schizophrenia". John Weir Perry says that although science may one day announce its discovery of a "gene for schizophrenia", what will really have been found is a gene for sensitivity! When genetic engineering begins to market recombinant human DNA, prospective parents will no doubt be delighted to order their Sears-catalogue designer babies with perfect physiques, profit-maximising attitudes, and not too much sensitivity. No more Buddhas, Christs, Beethovens or Van Goghs to stir up trouble.

  14. Thirty thousand people were lobotomised in the USA before the practise was outlawed.

  15. Nazi Germany was notorious for involuntary sterilisation and / or murder of the "mentally ill". But it happened in many other countries as well. In the USA, by the 1930s, 30 states had passed laws allowing involuntary sterilisation of the "mentally ill." According to Professor Gerald Gelb, author of The Mad Among Us, approximately 60,000 people were given vasectomies or tubal ligations in the USA between 1907 and 1960. Ethnic groups in the US were also targeted. According to the London newspaper, The Independent (Mentally Ill Made Sterile By Force in US, August 30, 1997), the US Government admitted in 1975 that its Indian Health Service had conducted a secret programme of forced sterilisations on about 40 per cent of Native American women. A similar eugenics programme was introduced in Canada in the 1920s. Britain, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, India, China and many South American countries also allowed forced sterilisation of the "mentally ill" (mostly women). In Sweden, according to an article in London's The Independent newspaper ("Dark Shadow On A 'Model State'", August 30, 1997), 62,000 people underwent forced sterilisation between 1935 and 1975 (again, 90 per cent of them were women). This Swedish programme, which predated and outlived Nazi Germany, started out as an attempt to weed out perceived genetic weaknesses, mental or physical defects and ended as a method of social control. In the worst years covered by the Swedish Sterilisation Act, the weak, the poor, the 'feeble-minded', the gypsies and those who did not fit the image of the desired Swedish physique were not allowed by a big brother government to breed." Widespread forced abortion still continues under Chinese-occupied Tibet in the 1990s, where thousands of Tibetan women, discovered to be pregnant without government approval, are aborted at gunpoint by Chinese army doctors.

  16. See The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th. Edition, published by the American Psychiatric Press, 1994, ISBN: 0890420629.

  17. Joan Halifax, Shamanic Voices : A Survey of Visionary Narratives, E.P. Dutton, New York; re-issued (Rei Edition), Arkana, 1994, ISBN: 0140193480. For more on shamanism, see Joan Halifax, Shaman (Art and Imagination), Reprint Edition, Thames & Hudson, 1988, ISBN: 050081029X. See also Joan Halifax, Shaman : The Wounded Healer, Crossroad Publishing Co, 1983, ISBN: 082450061X. See also Mircea Eliade, Shamanism : Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series , vol. 76, New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1964. In popular fiction, see Carlos Castaneda's series of novels about the Yaqui shaman Don Juan.

  18. The Saami - the last truly Indigenous People of Europe - still herd reindeer in the Northern areas of Norway, Sweden and Finland ("Lapland"). Their traditional pastoralist lifestyle has been seriously jeopardised by high levels of radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which contaminated the vegetation on which the reindeer browse. Many herds have had to be destroyed. For more on Saami culture see, The Ancient Religion of the Finns by Professor Juha Pentikäinen (University of Helsinki Department of Religious Studies) on the web at http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/muinueng.htm.

    Regarding the shamanic tradition in archaic Greece, see the chapter entitiled The Greek Shamans and Puritanism, in The Greeks and the Irrational, by E. R. Dodds, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951. See also E. Rohde's books, Psyche (1895?) and Die Religion der Griechen.


  19. The Celts did not traditonally build towns, but this changed in the first century BC, when they founded their Oppida. These fortified settlements came about as advance trading posts for commerce with the expanding Roman empire and with the Etruscan cities of Northern Italy, and served as the main Celtic civil, military and political centres thereafter. These oppida have since developed into some of the greatest Europan cities - including London, Paris, Milan, Dublin, Lyons, Bologna, Turin, Trento, and Boulogne - whose names are all of Celtic origin. For more on this, see Fergus Kelly, Celtic Law, in The Celts, a Catalogue of the 1991 Exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice (published under the editorial direction of Mario Andreose, by Bompiani, Milan, 1991).

    Europe's main rivers also have Celtic names: the Rhone (latin Rhodanus), from the Celtic ro - great, and Danu - the Goddess; the Rhine (Rhenos) from renos - sea); the Seine, from the Celtic river deity Sequanus; the Thames, from the Celtic tamesis - river of darkness; and the Danube (Danuvius) from the Goddess Danu, although its German name Donau also means brown river (don au ) in modern Irish (apologies to Johann Strauss, but having lived on the shore of the Danube at Melk for a whole year, I can assure the reader that this river usually does appear brown rather than blue!). For more on the Celtic legacy in Europe, see Celt and Roman: The Celts in Italy, by Peter Berresford Ellis, Constable, London 1998.

    Regarding the Irish language, the leading linguistic expert Calvert Watkins of Harvard points out that the nominal and verbal systems of Old Irish are far closer to the original Indo European tongue than Classical Greek or Latin, and its structure can only be compared with that of Vedic Sansksrit or Hittite of the Old Kingdom. For more on the Sanskrit - Irish connection, see Miles Dillon, Celt and Hindu (University College Dublin, 1973), and Celts and Aryans (Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Simla, 1975).


    Widespread urbanisation is largely a twentieth century phenomenon. In 1900 only 15 percent of Humankind lived in cities. By 1996 this number had grown to 50 percent. The world's urban population increased from 600 million in 1950 to over 2 billion in 1986. This number is expected to double by the year 2050. In 1996, there were 213 cities of more than one million inhabitants, and twenty-three mega-cities with populations of ten million or more. The largest migration in the history of the human species is happening now: the migration from the countryside to the cities of the developing world. For more on cities, see the web site of the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) at www.undp.org/un/habitat. See also Global Vision's project to develop Sustainable City, a computer programme for any town or city to see itself - and its surrounding environment - as a whole system. Published on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/city/index.html, this web site features a good list of other city-related websites too numerous to mention here. See also Assessing the Future of Urbanisation, by Lester R.Brown and Jodi Jacobson, in State of the World 1987, A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society, W.W. Norton & Company, New York & London, 1987. For a revealing transcultural study of the deep psycho-mythological changes associated with the first appearance of urban centres in various parts of the world, as reflected in the appearance of male gods and the decline of animist and goddess metaphors in the mythological track record, see John Weir Perry, The Heart of History: Individuality in Evolution, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1987.

  20. See Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, 1988.

  21. See Early Irish Myths and Sagas, translated by Jeffrey Gantz, Penguin Classics, London, 1981.

  22. See Martin Brennan, The Stars and the Stones: Ancient Art and Astronomy in Ireland (Thames and Hudson, London, 1983), which contains detailed drawings of the petroglyphs and a very good examination of their astronomical references based on field observations in situ during the relevant astronomical alignments. See also Martin Byrne's excellent Solas Atlantis website at http://gofree.indigo.ie/~ogma which contains alot of detailed information and pictures of Irish megalithic monuments. According to him, the oldest cairn discovered as of 1999 (on a hill called Croughan in the Ox Mountains in County Sligo, on the West Coast of Ireland) has been dated to 5,800 BC. A huge neolithic complex was recently discovered on Benbulben and Kings Mountain, but has not been explored yet.

  23. See The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, Viking Penguin, New York, 1987

  24. The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, W.Y. Evans-Wentz, with a new introduction by Terrence McKenna; Library of the Mystic Arts, Citadel Press, published by Carol Publishing Group, 1990. (Originally published in Oxford, 1911.)

  25. Quoted from C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963.

  26. See Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, Atheneum, New York, 1979.

  27. See The Book of Genesis, where the urban god Jahveh gives man dominion over this Earth.

  28. For a richly illustrated overview of the vast archeological legacy of the Goddess cultures in Europe during the Neolithic period, see Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, with a foreword by Joseph Campbell, Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1989. This legacy includes stunning decorated pottery from the fourth millennium BCE whose refined elegance equals that produced in Minoan Crete three thousand years later. For a psychological overview of Goddess cultures, see Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis Of The Archetype, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim, Bollingen Series XLVII, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955. For a poetic and literary tour de force on the same subject, see Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1948.

  29. From a recommendation to scientists by the English Attorney General, Francis Bacon, in 1870.

  30. Pope Innocent VIII, Summis Desiderantes Affectibus, Rome, 1484.

  31. The conversion of the Europeans from their old religions to Christianity took different forms. In most places, it involved grass-roots missionary proselytising against the evil Pagan ways, followed by a process of gradual osmosis. ("Pagan", by the way, means "peasant" in Latin; Christianity was the new religion of the cities). In Germany, the official "conversion" of the Teutonic tribes from their old belief in Wotan (the lone-hunter God of the forest) appears to have been more a process of coercion. As soon as some Roman Legion had captured a Teutonic chieftain and dragged him back across the Rhine, not only was he forced to abjure his traditional faith himself, but his entire tribe was placed under a legal obligation to adopt the religion of their conqueror, and embrace the trappings of Christianity against their will. "In those times", as Carl Jung points out, "the omnipresent, crushing power of Rome embodied in the divine Caesar, had created a world where countless individuals, indeed whole peoples, were robbed if their cultural independence and of their spiritual autonomy." (C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963). In this regard Jung observed that if one wants to construct a house, it's best to start building up from the foundations, not from the roof down. Jung ascribed the sudden explosion of violent and destructive energies in Fascist Germany in part as the psychological outburst of the accumulated pent-up frustration of the deeper part of the Teutonic psyche which had been repressed under a veneer of Christianity in the first place, rather than being allowed to build itself up organically from pagan roots to a conscious acceptance of Christian values. As Gregory Bateson observed, it is not possible to control absolutely, and any attempt to modify other peoples' behaviour will eventually backfire, and the result will be worse than the original problem the control was meant to cure. In this case, it took ten or fifteen centuries, but the candle was not worth the price. For more on this, see Jung's article Wotan published in the Neue Schweitzer Rundschau, March 1936 (later republished in Essays on Contemporary Events 1947, and in the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Civilisation in Transition, Vol. 10); on this theme see also After the Catastrophe, in the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Civilisation in Transition, Vol. 10, 1945.

    Similar coercion appears to have been used when St. Augustine (354 - 450), one of the founding fathers of Christian thought and the author of De Civitate Dei (the City of God), introduced Christianity to England. Augustine was also much preoccupied with spreading ideas about demons.

  32. The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated with an introduction, bibliography and notes by the Reverend Montague Summers, Dover, New York, 1928 and 1984.

    The hallucinatory "disappearance" of the penis is most likely to have been a psychological projection of subconscious historical fears about the threat to nature's fertility, associated with the first stirrings of the new scientific way of thinking in the European psyche (as explained a few paragraphs further on in the main text). There may be a contemporary parallel in the so-called "Koro syndrome", a culture-bound acute anxiety reaction associated with (real or perceived?) shrinking of the penis, said to occur mostly in China (where it is known as "suk-yeong") and in South-East Asia, but also in Europe. Whereas mainstream psychiatrists have described it as "a psychogenic disorder caused by sexual excesses", and treated it by the administration of electroshocks and medication, a folk cure in Asia precribes fellatio! There is said to be a corresponding syndrome in women with (real or perceived?) shrinking of the breasts and genitals. (These reports come from a book called "Synopsis of Psychiatry", by Kaplan and Sardock).

  33. Pope Innocent VIII, Summis Desiderantes Affectibus, Rome, 1484.

  34. For illustrated details, see Inquisition: A Bilingual Guide To The Exhibition Of Torture Instruments From The Middle Ages To the Industrial Era presented in various European cities; Qua d'Arno publishers, Florence.

  35. As many as nine million people accused of withchcraft were murdered by European Christians, although some historians maintain the number was as low as 100,000. James Sharpe (of the latter persuasion) reckons that 80% of the victims were women. See his book Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550 - 1750, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1996, for a good bibliography on the subject.

  36. See Irish Witchcraft and Demonology, St.John D. Seymour, Hodges Figgis & Co. Ltd., Dublin, 1913.

  37. See J. Français, L'église et la Sorcellerie, Noury, Paris, 1910.

  38. A proper account of the Church's brutal suppression of the spiritual traditions and entire cultures of Indigenous Peoples would fill an entire library. An emblematic example is their destruction of Maya culture. The Maya were the most advanced urban civilisation in the pre-Columbian Americas. They invented the concept of "zero" centuries before it was independently formulated in India, and measured the solar year with an error of only 17.28 seconds. Having flourished for two millennia in an area of 3255,000 sq.km, they were first invaded by Spain in 1527, but put up such fierce resistance that the capital of their last kingdom to fall, Itza at Nojpeten, was not captured until 1697. Had the Maya not been decimated by European diseases such as chicken pox and measles, some historians believe the Spanish conquest might have ended in total defeat. According to Roderick Conway Morris, "One of the greatest crimes perpetrated against the Maya was the destruction of their thousands of books, spearheaded by the Franciscans, who - while preaching harmony and brotherly love - presided over a scorched-earth policy, backed up by the threat of the physical extinction of any who dared to resist it. So complete was the friars' success that only four books in Maya script survived." For more on contemporary efforts to protect Indigenous spiritual traditions, see the reference to the Consejo Interamericano Sobre La Espiritualidad Indigena (Interamerican Council on Indigenous Spirituality) in note 59 below.

  39. Robert Jay Lifton, Professor of psychiatry at Yale University, has shown the devastating psychological effect of the Holocaust on people who survived it.

  40. See Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience, 1964 (check details). Also see Timothy Leary, The Politics of Ecstasy, 1968 (check details).

  41. See Michael O'Callaghan, Future Tapes: A Video Interview Of Buckminster Fuller, published on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/interview/bucky.html

  42. For a devastating critique of how alienated people are easy prey for media manipulation (based on observations of Americans during the 1991 Gulf War), see Noam Chomsky, Media Control, Verso, London and New York, 1991.

  43. For more on this theme, see Consciousness Evolution and Planetary Survival : The Psychological Roots Of Violence and Greed, Abstract of paper presented at the Thirteenth International Transpersonal Conference On the Theme of Spirituality, Ecology, and Native Wisdom. Killarney, Ireland, June 1995. This paper may be found on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/un/grof1.html. See also the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) described in note 44 below.

  44. The Book of Revelations, the final section of the New Testament in the Bible; interestingly enough, Calvin lobbied extensively to have this deleted from future editions of the Bible on the grounds that it was too upsetting to his bourgeois flock. He also destroyed the stained glass windows in all his churches, so perhaps his real motive was fear of too much colour.

  45. Founded by Stan Grof and others, the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) is a scientific and educational organisation with the following purposes: (1) to provide an orientation that can reconcile the viewpoints of various disciplines and formulate a comprehensive and integrated image of human nature; (2) to facilitate the development of new paradigms that will synthesise presently disparate approaches in education, research, teaching, psychotherapy, spiritual practice, the arts and media, socio-economic theory and other areas of human life and knowledge; and (3) to promote scientific research, development, and communication in all areas related to the transpersonal dimensions of human nature. For more information, contact the ITA in Mill Valley, California (tel: + 1 415 383 8779). Details on their excellent annual conference may be found at www.nbn.com/people/Transpersonal/itahome.html. The ITA can also put you in touch with the Spiritual Emergency Network, a worldwide group of psychotherapists specialising in a gentle, non-drug, transpersonal approach to personal crisis.

  46. The San Francisco Chronicle published this obituary of John Weir Perry on 3 November 1998:

    John Weir Perry, a psychiatrist, author and expert ont the disorder known as brief-reactive psychosis, died Thursday of cancer in his Larkspur home. He was 84

    Known as a radical thinker in the mental-health field, Dr. Perry belived that schizophrenia had benefits and that the psychotic state could lead to higher consciousness if allowed to run its course.

    A native of Rhode Island and a graduate of Harvard University and its medical school, Dr. Perry studied in Zurich with Carl Gustav Jung and trained as a Jungian analyst. In 1960 he moved to San Francisco where he practiced for more than 30 years.

    He was an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and a lecturer at the Jung Institute in San Francisco.

    Dr. Perry wrote six books, including "The Far Side of Madness," a 1974 work that described certain psychoses as visionary states.

    In the 1970s he founded Diabasis, a San Francisco residence for young schizophrenics where therapy included painting, dance, massage, meditation and conversation. Such treatment ususally worked better, he said, than "the men in white who come rushing up and the whole atmosphere becomes antagonistic."

    He is survived by his children, Wendy Perry of Larskpur, Brian Perry of Denver, Alice Garofalo of Seattle, Anne Weir of Portland, Maine, and John Weir Ferguson Perry of Vermont.

    A private memorial service will be held Sunday.

  47. For a description of Perry's therapeutic facility at Diabasis, see John Weir Perry MD, The Far Side of Madness, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1974.

  48. Jesse Watkins, A Ten-Day Voyage, quoted in Ronald D. Laing, MD: The Politics of Experience, Ballantine Books, New York, 1968.

  49. William Irwin Thompson, (check details).

  50. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber and Faber, London, 1939.

  51. Carl Gustav Jung, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul, translated by W.S. Dell and Cary F. Baynes, first published 1933, re-published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1961.

  52. Impressionism, by the editors of Realités magazine, Paris.(check details).

  53. This was Salvador Dali's answer to the question "What is the artistic medium of the future?", in a film (possibly Le Mystère Dali by Robert Desharnes, shot on location at Dali's house in Cadaquès, Spain, in 1969).

  54. For an in-depth, systematic, and authoritative overview of the feasibility of attaining a sustainable civilisation in the 21st century, see Beyond The Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future, by Donella H. & Dennis L. Meadows and Jorgen Randers, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, Post Mills, Vermont, USA: 1993. Based on World 3, the most advanced systems dynamics computer simulation of global trends available, they summarise the situation in 1993 as follows:

    "1. Human use of many essential resources and generation of many pollutants have already surpassed rates that are physically sustainable. Without significant reductions in material and energy flows, there will be in the coming decades an uncontrolled decline in per capita food output, energy use and industrial production.

    2. This decline is not inevitable. To avoid it two changes are necessary. The first is a comprehensive revision of policies and practices that perpetuate growth in material consumption and in population. A second is a rapid, drastic increase in the efficiency with which materials are used.

    3. A sustainable society is still technically and economically possible. It could be much more desirable than a society that tries to solve its problems by constant expansion. The transition to a sustainable society requires a careful balance between long-term and short term goals, and an emphasis on sufficiency, equity, and quality of life rather than on quantity of output. It requires more than productivity and more than technology; it also requires maturity, compassion, and wisdom."

    See also the Human Development Report 1997, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New York. See also Agenda 21: this is the historical blueprint for the sustainable development of our planet which was agreed by 112 Governments at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) - the Earth Summit - in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This 250-page document provides a global consensus on 2,500 recommended actions for governments, local authorities, NGOs, the private sector and the media to undertake in order to conserve the Earth's resources for future generations. It may be obtained from the United Nations and is also published on the World Wide Web at www.un.org/dpcsd/dsd/csd.htm .

    Rescue Mission : Planet Earth, an excellent illustrated summary of Agenda 21 for young people has also been produced (in 19 languages) by Peace Child International, The White House, Buntingford, SG9 9AH, UK (tel: + 44 (0) 176 327 4459, fax: + 44 (0) 176 327 4460; web site: www.oneworld.org/peacechild. Authored by teenagers from around the world, this is an excellent teaching tool for classroom use. The
    Rescue Mission organisation which sprang from the book has since produced a Sustainability Indicator pack for secondary level teachers and students to measure the indicators of progress towards sustainability within their own village, town or city, in order to facilitate the implementation of Agenda 21 at the local community level.

    See also Paul Hawken, The Next Economy. (New York: Random House, 1983) and The Ecology of Commerce (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). See also Hazel Henderson, Building a Win-Win World: Life Beyond Global Economic Warfare Berrett-Koehler Pub, 1996, ISBN: 1881052907. See also David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, Berrett-Koehler / Kumarian Press, 1996, ISBN: 1887208011. See also Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Plume, Penguin, New York, 1993. See also Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, E.F. Schumacher, Blond & Briggs Ltd, London, 1973. See also James Robertson, The Sane Alternative. River Basin Press, 1980. See also Lester R. Brown, Building A Sustainable Society, WW Norton, New York, 1981. See also R.Buckminster Fuller, Utopia Or Oblivion: The Prospects For Humanity, Bantam Books, Inc., New York, 1969.

    For an excellent interdisciplinary view of the opportunity for widespread social transformation, see Changing Images of Man, Policy Research Report no. 4, Center for the Study of Social Policy, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, 1974. This seminal paper, commissioned by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, was co-authored by Joseph Campbell, Duane Elgin, Willis Harman, Arthur Hastings, O. W. Markley, Floyd Matson, Brendan O'Regan, and Leslie Schneider.

    In terms of the personal aspects of social transformation, one book which provides an early overview of thinking on this subject in the USA is Marilyn Ferguson's The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980's, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1981. Regarding personal responsibility for future generations, see for example: Theodore Roszak, Person / Planet : the Creative Disintergration of Industrial Society, Doubleday, 1979, ISBN: 0385000820; Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, by Theodore Roszak (Editor), Mary E. Gomes, Allen D. Kanner (Editor), Sierra Club Books, 1995, ISBN: 0871564068; and Joanna R. Macy, Dharma and Development, in Dharma Gaia: A Harvest Of Essays In Buddhism and Ecology, Alan Hunt Badiner ed., Parallax Press, Berkeley, 1990.

  55. For more on Guy Debord and the Situationist International, see Elisabeth Sussman, (ed.), On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: the Situationist International, 1957-1972, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London, 1989. See also A Situation, published on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/art/si.html

  56. Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 6th. century B.C.E.; translated from the Mandarin by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Wildwood House Ltd., London, 1972.

  57. See The Emergent Paradigm, by Peter Schwartz and Jay Ogilvy, Center for the Study of Social Policy, SRI International, Menlo Park, 1979. See also Changing Images of Man, Policy Research Report no. 4, Center for the Study of Social Policy, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, 1974. This seminal interdisciplinary paper, commissioned by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, was co-authored by Joseph Campbell, Duane Elgin, Willis Harman, Arthur Hastings, O. W. Markley, Floyd Matson, Brendan O'Regan, and Leslie Schneider.

  58. Complete details about the Global Vision Project may be found on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org. For background information on the project, see also Michael O'Callaghan, Global Strategy, NGO Position Paper for the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), Second Session, May 16 -28, 1994, published on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/un/strategy/index.html.

  59. See The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, W.Y. Evans-Wentz, with a new introduction by Terrence McKenna; Library of the Mystic Arts, Citadel Press, published by Carol Publishing Group, 1990. (Originally published in Oxford, 1911.)

  60. Although psychedelic substances were outlawed by international treaties in the 1950's and 60's, anthropological and ethno-botanical research indicates that traditional use and knowledge of psychotropic plants is part of a cultural legacy that has been handed on through indigenous cultures since Palaeolithic times. Ethno-botanical knowledge is the speciality of healers in tribal societies. As Stanislav Grof points out, "in the history of Chinese medicine, reports about psychedelic plant substances go back at least 3,500 years. Traditional cultures, especially the oldest hunting-and-gathering cultures, have made known to modern science the extensive psychedelic pharmacopoeia which they themselves use for ritual and medicinal purposes." For an excellent botanical catalogue, see: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing And Hallucinogenic Powers; Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hoffman; Healing Arts Press, Rochester, Vermont, 1992.

    In this regard, CISEI - Consejo Interamericano Sobre La Espiritualidad Indigena (the Interamerican Council on Indigenous Spirituality) organised a Conference on Spirituality and Sacred Plants in conjunction with the 11th International Congress of Traditional Medicine at Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, October 1997. For information, contact Marina Villalobos, Co-ordinator, CISEI, Eucaliptos 74 Col, Balcones de Santa Maria, C.P. 58090, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico (tel: + 43 23 60 00, fax: + 43 23 60 06, e-mail:
    lobos@mail.giga.com ).

    The following examples should convince the sceptical reader of the universality of psychedelic tradition. Different varieties of Psilocybe mushrooms, (including Psilocibe mexicana and cubensis) are known in the pre-Columbian cultures of central America as Teonanacatl or "flesh of the Gods"; the Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata) is common on lawns, pastures and roadsides from late summer to late autumn in Europe. Other varieties of Psilocybe (cyanescens and crobulus) are also found in Europe. The similar Paneolus mushrooms are found from Europe to Asia. Hemp (especially the varieties Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica), and its extracts marijuana, hashish and bhang, have traditionally been used in the Middle East, Africa, India, China, Tibet, North and South America and the Caribbean, and is now widely used - and increasingy de-criminalised - around the world since the 1950s as its recreational and medical uses are being gradually acknowledged. The fly agaric mushroom (Amanita Muscaria) is used by the Ojibway people in North America, by Siberian shamans of the Samoyed, Koryak, Ostiak and Chukchee tribes, and also in Scandinavia. The Peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) is used in healing rituals by the Huicholes of Northern Mexico and in the United States by members of the Native American Church. The ergot-rye fungus (Claviceps purpurea) is thought to have been the secret ingredient of the ritual elixir used for two millennia by initiates of the cult at Eleusis in Ancient Greece. Certain seed varieties of the Ololiuqui or morning glory flower (Turbina corymbosa) are used in Hawai'i. The tropical rain forest vine Ayahuasca or Yagé (Liana Banisteriopsis Caapi), is used by shamans of many tribes in Equador, Peru, Brazil, Columbia and Venezuela, as are the pschedelic snuffs cohoba (made from the sap of Virola theiodora or Virola cuspidata) and epená (from Virola calophylla and Virola theiodora), along with the seeds of Adenanthera peregrina, and the Peruvian San Pedro cactus (Trichocerus pachanoi). In the Congo basin and other parts of equatorial Africa, the shrub eboga (Tabernanthe eboga) is widely used. In the twentieth century, science has provided us with the plant extracts LSD (derived from the ergot rye fungus), Mescaline (from the Peyote cactus), and Psilocybin (from the mushrooms of the same name).

    For more on the use of psychedelic plants in traditional cultures, see: Stanislav Grof, The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions Of Consciousness And New Perspectives In Psychotherapy And Inner Exploration, (Appendix A), State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988; Terrence McKenna, Plan, Plant, Planet, in Whole Earth Review, number 64, POINT, Sausalito, California, Fall 1989; and L.E. Luna, The Concept of Plants as Teachers Amongst Four Mestizo Shamans of Iquitos, Northeastern Peru, Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 11, 1984. For an account of the medicinal use of Psilocybin mushrooms by a Mexican curandera, see: Alvaro Estrada, Maria Sabina: Her Life and Chants, Ross-Erikson Inc, Santa Barbara, California, 1981. See also: Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987. Also: Louis Eduardo Luna, Vegetalismo, available from the author c/o Swedish School of Economy, Helsinki, Finland. For a thought-provoking and very humorous re-visioning of history focusing on the cultural decline of psychoactive plant traditions, listen to: Terrence McKenna, History Ends in Green: Gaia, psychedelics, and the archaic revival, a boxed set of audio tapes recorded at the Esalen Institute; Mystic Fire Audio, New York, 1992 (which can be purchased by online mailorder from the Mystic Fire Video website at www.mysticfire.com. In this connection, see also the web site of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), in Mill Valley, California at www.nbn.com/people/Transpersonal/itahome.html.

    For an excellent article on the issue of legalisation, see "Shopping for a Drugs Policy: Britain's Labour government wants to do a better job of tackling the problems of illegal drugs. How about legalising them?" in The Economist magazine, August 16th, 1997, which states "Prohibition has failed. Over 60% of British 20-22 year olds say they have used an illegal drug, almost half of them in the past three months... Why not try a new approach, if only as an experiment?." The article goes on to say:

    Any debate on drugs law should start with a fundamental question: why are drugs illegal in the first place? The usual answer is that illegal drugs are illegal because they are dangerous. The facts, though, do not really bear this out. The danger varies widely from drug to drug. The least risky is cannabis, which has never been shown to have killed anybody (indeed it is widely canvassed for its medical properties). The most dangerous are opiates (ie. heroin and methadone), which kill about 1.5% of their users each year, according to London's Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence. Tobacco kills 0.9% of its users each year and alcohol 0.5%. Ecstasy, [ie. a "euphoriant" with mild psychedelic properties - ed.] about which there has been huge controversy, kills 0.0002% of its users each year. A motorbike journey is three times more likely to kill you as taking a tablet of street ecstasy and - astoundingly - flying on a civil airliner is one-and-a-half times as dangerous as dropping an "e".

  61. Diodorus Siculus, World History, Vol V:31, Edited by C.H. Oldfather, R.M. Geer, F.R. Walton, C.L. Sherman and C. B. Welles, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass, 1933-1967.

  62. The location of many (but not all) of these megalithic monuments may be found in the excellently detailed maps published by the Director at the Ordinance Survey Office, Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland.

  63. See Martin Brennan, The Stars and the Stones: Ancient Art and Astronomy in Ireland (Thames and Hudson, London, 1983), which contains detailed drawings of the petroglyphs and a very good examination of their astronomical references based on field observations in situ during the relevant astronomical alignments. See also Martin Byrne's excellent Solas Atlantis website at http://gofree.indigo.ie/~ogma which contains alot of detailed information and pictures of Irish megalithic monuments. According to him, the oldest cairn discovered as of 1999 (on a hill called Croughan in the Ox Mountains in County Sligo, on the West Coast of Ireland) has been dated to 5,800 BC. A huge neolithic complex was recently discovered on Benbulben and Kings Mountain, but has not been explored yet.

  64. See The. Hon. Desmond Guinness and Jaqueline O'Brien, Great Irish Houses and Castles, George Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Ltd., London, 1992.

  65. This was the inspiration for Global Vision's initiative to develop a computer simulation programme called Sustainable City, designed to enable any town or city to model its metabolism and footprint. Details may be found on the Global Vision web site at www.global-vision.org/city/index.html. The ecological footprint - the impact of a city on the surrounding ecosystem - has since been defined by a member of this project's advisory committee, the environmental economist William E. Rees, Professor of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, as follows:

    "The ecological footprint is the corresponding area of productive land and aquatic ecosystems required to produce the resources used, and to assimilate the wastes produced, by a defined population at a specified material standard of living, wherever on Earth that land may be located."

    Another one of this project's advisors, Sustainable London Trust Co-Founder Herbert Girardet, has calculated that the footprint of London - with 12 percent of Britain's population covering 170,000 hectares - comes to some 21 million hectares. This is about 125 times the surface area of the city itself, equivalent to the entire productive land in the UK! This demonstrates how contemporary urban civilisation requires a global footprint to supply its current levels of resource consumption, which are clearly not sustainable. In his excellent paper: Revisiting Carrying Capacity: Area-Based Indicators of Sustainability (in Population and Environment: a Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Volume 17, Number 2, January 1996, Copyright © 1996 Human Sciences Press Inc.), William Rees explains (quoted with permission of the author):

    "Since many forms of natural income (resource and service flows) are produced by terrestrial ecosystems and associated water bodies, it should be possible to estimate the area of land/water required by a defined population at a given level of technology. The sum of such calculations for all significant categories of consumption would give us a conservative area-based estimate of the natural capital requirements for that population.

    A simple mental exercise serves to illustrate the ecological reality behind this approach. Imagine what would happen to any modern human settlement or urban region, as defined by its political boundaries or the area of built-up land, if it were enclosed in a glass or plastic hemisphere completely closed to natural flows. Clearly the city would cease to function and its inhabitants would perish within a few days. The population and economy contained by the capsule would have been cut off from both vital resources and essential waste sinks, leaving it to starve and suffocate at the same time. In other words, the ecosystems contained within our imaginary human terrarium would have insufficient carrying capacity to service the ecological load imposed by the contained population.

    This mental model illustrates the simple fact that as a result of high population densities, the enormous increase in per capita energy and material consumption made possible by (and required by) technology, and universally increasing dependencies on trade, the ecological locations of human settlements no longer co-incide with their geographic locations. Twentieth century cities and industrial regions are dependent for survival on a vast and increasingly global hinterland of ecologically productive landscapes. It seems that in purely ecological terms, modern settlements have become the human equivalent of cattle feedlots!

    Cities necessarily appropriate the ecological output and life support functions of distant regions all over the world through commercial trade and the natural biogeochemical cycles of energy and material. Indeed, the annual flows of natural income required by any defined population can be called its appropriated carrying capacity. Since for every material flow there must be a corresponding land/ecosystem source or sink, the total area of land/water required to sustain these flows on a continuous basis is the true ecological footprint of the referent population on the Earth."

    Rees' ecological footprint analysis of his home city of Vancouver, Canada, indicates that city appropriates the productive output of an land area nearly 174 times larger that its political area to support its present consumer lifestyle. Other researchers found that the aggregate consumption of wood, paper, fibre and food by the inhabitants of 29 cities in the Baltic Sea drainage basin appropriates an area 200 times larger than the cities themselves. Rees estimates that the footprint of the Netherlands appropriates between 100,000 sq. kilometres and 140,000 square kilometres of agricultural land, mostly in the third world, for food production alone. He goes on to say:

    "This 'imported land' is five to seven times larger than the area of Holland's domestic arable land... It is worth remembering that Holland, like Japan, is often held up as an economic success story and an example for the developing world to follow. Despite small size, few natural resources, and relatively large populations, both Holland and Japan enjoy high material standards and positive current accounts and trade balances as measured in monetary terms. However, our analysis of physical flows shows that these and most other so-called "advanced" economies are running massive, unaccounted ecological deficits with the rest of the planet... Even if their land area were twice as productive as world averages, many European countries would still run a deficit more than three times larger than domestic natural income. These data emphasise that (most developed countries) are over-populated in ecological terms - they could not maintain themselves at current material standards if forced by changing circumstances to live on their remaining endowments of domestic natural capital. This is hardly a good model for the rest of the world to follow!"

    Ecological deficits are a measure of the entropic load and resultant 'disordering' being imposed on the ecosphere by so-called advanced countries as the unaccounted cost of maintaining and further expanding their wealthy consumer economies. This massive entropic imbalance invokes what might be called the first axiom of ecological footprint analysis: On a finite planet, not all countries or regions can be net importers of carrying capacity. This, in turn, has serious implications for global development trends.

    The current objective of international development is to raise the developing world to present first world materials standards. To achieve this objective, the Brundtland Commission argued for 'more rapid economic growth in both industrial and developing countries' and suggested that 'a five to ten-fold increase in world industrial output can be anticipated by the time world population stabilises some time in the next century.' (WCED, 1987).

    Let us examine this prospect using ecological footprint analysis. If just the present [ie. January 1996 - ed.] world population of 5.8 billion people were to live at current North American ecological standards (say 4.5 ha/person), a reasonable first approximation of the total productive land requirement would be 26 billion hectares (assuming present technologies). However, there are only just over 13 billion hectares of land on Earth, of which only 8.8 billion are ecologically productive cropland, pasture, or forest (1.5 ha/person). In short, we would need an additional two planet Earths to accommodate the increased ecological load of people alive today. If the population were to stabilise at between 10 and 11 billion sometime in the next century, five additional Earths would be needed, all else being equal - and this just to maintain the present rate of ecological decline (Rees and Weinberger, 1994).

    While this may seem to be an astonishing result, empirical evidence suggests that five phantom planets is, in fact, a considerable underestimate (keep in mind that our footprint estimates are conservative). Global and regional-scale ecological change in the form of atmospheric change, ozone depletion, soil loss, ground water depletion, deforestation, fisheries collapse, loss of biodiversity, etc., is accelerating. This is direct evidence that aggregate consumption exceeds natural income in certain critical categories and that the carrying capacity of this one Earth is being steadily eroded. In short, the ecological footprint of the present world population/economy already exceeds the total productive land area (or ecological space) available on Earth.

    This situation is, of course, largely attributable to consumption by that wealthy quarter of the world's population who use 75% of global resources. The WCED's 'five to ten-fold increase in industrial output' was deemed necessary to address this obvious inequity while accommodating a much larger population. However, since the world is already ecologically full, sustainable growth on this scale using present technology would require five to ten additional planets."

  66. D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse, Viking Penguin, New York, 1931.

  67. A similar vision of the city is captured in the wonderful time-lapse film Organism, by Hilary Harris (1975), in which footage of New York City shot over a period of months is compressed into twenty minutes of screen-time. The resulting compression of information reveals all kinds of urban environmental patterns of which one is usually quite unconscious, only because they fall outside the limits of one's normal attention-span. Skyscrapers construct themselves from parking lots before your eyes; traffic pulses through the streets like the blood cells in your capillaries; lights in office building windows flicker on and off like neurones in some vast brain. The true nature of the city becomes visible: a giant self-organising system. Organism won the Blue Ribbon award at the American Film Festival in 1976, and is distributed by Phoenix Films, New York. Karen Cooper of the New York Film Forum said it "leaves one with the sensation of wholeness, of having witnessed a coherent satisfying universe." It must have been an inspiration for that other time-lapse extravaganza, Godfrey Reggio's film Koyaanisqatsi, for which Hilary Harris shot many of the New York scenes.

  68. The Song of Amergin, (check details).

  69. Gregory Bateson, Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilisation, a paper presented at a conference he convened in association with the Mayor of New York City in October 1970 called "Restructuring the Ecology of a Great City" sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Reprinted in Steps To An Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, 1972

  70. For a brilliant scientific exposé of the self-organising principle at work from the macrocosmic organisation of galactic super-clusters down to the subatomic level, see Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution, Pergamon, New York, 1980 (re-issued by Pergamon Press 1980, ISBN: 0080243126).



BIBLIOGRAPHY

FEEDBACK RECEIVED

ENDNOTES

FEEDBACK RECEIVED

TABLE OF CONTENTS


GLOBAL VISION HOMEPAGE