Mysticism and "The Light at the Center"

As reported by Fox News and others last week, a recent study conducted at Johns Hopkins University found that psilocybin, the active hallucinogen found in some types of mushrooms, induces profound mystical experiences in certain takers. I for one am happy that the American academy has made this “discovery” even though people have known it for thousands of years. This recognition by the scientific community - and the federal funding that made it possible - are a huge departure from the beliefs and practices of the last 30 years. The “War on Drugs” made the therapeutic use of these drugs and detailed research about their effects impossible, and that's a damn shame.

Bharati’s book, while at times dry and hyper-academic, is the most lucid analysis of mysticism and altered consciousness I have come across; it represents the pinnacle of such research before it was pushed out of the mainstream. Even as a professor in the hippy era, he took considerable professional risk by tackling such topics. He takes even more risk by freely admitting his experimentation with LSD and his initiation into a Tantric cult. This sort of participant observation is frowned upon in the academy; anthropologists are expected to remain at a safe distance from the people they study, to handle with rubber gloves the traditions of other civilizations.

However, his book is as much a critique of the typical academic’s unwillingness to dive completely into his subject as it is a critique of the modern view of mysticism.

Bharati challenges the idea that the mystical experience is ennobling, that it confers upon us special powers or skills, that it makes us into different people. Bharati calls bullshit on the swamis and mystics who, for selfish or political reasons, try to claim privilege on the basis of their experiences.

He does however assert and explain the existence of a true mystical state, the “zero-experience” as he calls it. This experience consists of temporary ego death, a profound feeling of identification with the fundamental ground of being. In the wake of these episodes, people report them in vocabularies conditioned by their cultures and religious beliefs, but he argues that despite these rhetorical differences, the raw content of the experience is much the same across time and place. Large numbers of people everywhere and for all of recorded history have had the zero experience. Some have sought its recurrence, made careers of discussing it, spent their lives proselytizing. Most have remained silent.

True Conspiracy: You Could Go To Jail For Googling Certain Keywords. It Almost Happened Before

Another blog points out more ways to be watched by the government. Sweet.

My Favorite Obscure Books - Installment 1

I will now quote from The Light at the Center by Agehananda Bharati:

"For our purpose, one theme in [R.D] Laing's work is central: that the true schizophrenic, or more widely, the person labeled mentally ill by any clinical terminology, can make a recovery in clinical terms not by the various professional therapies, but by dismantling his whole person and recreating it from scratch. We have a notable parallel to this in the successful LSD experience. A good trip may not be a strong trip; but trips that are good and strong do just this to the perceptive taker - he casts off all he is, his cognitive, affective, orectic "personality;" his persona, his "mask" or masks are shed one by one. If he sustains the process without capitulating to the alternative, horror and pain, he re-assembles the bits and pieces that make up the total person in the normal state to which he returns - but the bits and pieces have been washed, rinsed, and dried as it were. The world looks different, for a blessed little while at least - not because it its different, which it isn't, but because the instruments by which he perceives it have been cleaned and oiled" (196).

"One of the main objections to Leary's and Alpert's experiments with psilocybin was that they refused to program the participants on medically acceptable lines, in a laboratory setting. Now Leary and Alpert insisted - not yet as prophets and cult leaders, but as scholars - that the laboratory setting was totally dysfunctional, and that it led to "bad trips" almost invariably; that a warm, loving, supportive atmosphere is essential in order to obtain the maximum benefit of the psychosomatic substance. But it was quite clear that such terms as "warm," "supportive," and particularly "loving" were outside the laboratory and research rules – and it was obviously Leary’s and Alpert’s initiatory action that catapulted them into disaster, and into the discontinuation of the Psilocybin Project. Leary and Alpert wrote “the goal of the research sessions run by the Harvard IFIF group was not to produce and study frightening disturbances of consciousness, which was the goal of most psychiatric investigation of model psychoses, but to produce ecstatic experience, to expand consciousness, to provide the subject with the most memorable, revelatory, life-changing experience of his life . . . from the beginning of our research, our attention was directed to the engineering of ecstasy, the preparation for, the setting for, the achievement of ecstasy” (210).

Violent Crime: Not Just for Brown People Anymore

Just last week, Police Chief Charles Ramsey declared a "crime emergency" in my home town, our lovely nation's capitol. Fortunately for me and my irrational desire to be on the streets late at night, this city is no longer the murder capitol of the country, but it is still filled to the brim with crackheads and gangsters. It is right and proper that the city government takes 14 murders in as many days very seriously, but I have some nagging concerns about the reaction.

First, the primary response to the crime wave was to lower the curfew for teenagers to 10 pm. This is completely ridiculous. You can't just confine a large sector of the population to house arrest after dark because of a few murders. Human beings under the age of 18 are still human beings with all the rights pertaining thereto. They get stepped on because they have no electoral power, no public voice to defend themselves. These measures mean that people who want nothing more than to socialize and enjoy the summer nights (the only time when any sane person would be outdoors) will be harassed and fined by DC's finest.

Second, the city government enacting these policies is the same one that just this year violently opposed Congressional discussion of repealing DC's gun ban. Firearms are illegal in this city and yet many of the recent murders were committed with them. What does this tell us? That criminals have access to guns through the same black market connections that buy their stolen wares and provide them with drugs. Us law abiding (more or less) citizens are left unarmed, and the criminals know it. Rather than paying for more man-hours and police cruisers, we could allow the city's citizens to defend themselves. I always carry a blade when I go out, but as a wise man once said, "Never bring an knife to a gunfight." I dread the day some junkie decides he likes the look of my watch or my woman and I am powerless to stop him.

Finally, the only reason that these murders are big news is that some of the more brazen slayings occurred outside the poor and rundown black and Hispanic neighborhoods. They took place in the popular bar districts of Adams Morgan and Georgetown, places that are important for tourism, places that are visible, places that are filled with young, rich, white people. As a young rich white person myself, I suppose I shouldn't be complaining about the protection, but I can't help but feel that if all these killings had been in Anacostia where they usually are, there would be no talk of an emergency, just a busy couple of weeks for the cleanup crews.

This city is so messed up, I don’t even know where to begin fixing it.

Electronic Surveilance and You: A Police State of Our Own

Major U.S. news outlets recently broke a number of stories about covert electronic spying on U.S. citizens, and I, like many Americans, am concerned that the government will soon discover all of the illegal things I do and put me in jail . . . No but seriously, I am not happy about these programs, and I fear that, while benign for the moment, they will be used to repress home grown political organization and dissent at some time in the future.

It is clear that the NSA has been monitoring calls between Americans and foreigners with Muslim names. It is not clear how much data mining from domestic sources has been taking place. If you have a computer, use email, or carry a cell phone, you are at risk of surveillance. There is nothing you can do to stop it, and no way to know if you are being watched at any given moment.

Due to widely documented security vulnerabilities in cellular encryption and cooperation with phone and internet service providers, it is possible and in fact quite likely that the NSA monitors millions of phone calls and emails a day without warrants or disclosure.

Although these surveillance programs are highly classified, we do know a bit about how the most basic ones work. Computers known as "dictionaries" are first programmed with a list of words, phrases, voice signatures, email addresses, IP addresses, or telephone numbers. Using speech or pattern recognition software, these machines can scan huge streams of data, marking and recording the correspondence that matches the programmed parameters. The flagged conversations are then forwarded to a human operator who must determine if the conversation constitutes actionable intelligence.

It is also possible for people to determine where a cell phone (and therefore its owner) is at any time, regardless of whether a call is being placed.

Imagine a world where government agents are tracking your online activity, your correspondence, your friends (through social networks and calling behavior) and your whereabouts. Imagine the innocent little lens and microphone on your cell recording and transmitting real time audio and video. Imagine that your worst enemies can find you any time they please.

Are you worried yet?

Join me in opposing the extension and legalization of electronic surveillance before they have us by the short hair.

Cuba Part 2: Life in a Police State

First things first: the U.S. Department of State classifies Cuba as a totalitarian police state and has no formal diplomatic relations with the government of Fidel Castro. However, the U.S. does still operate an “Interest Section” which is housed in the same building as the old embassy (we “gave” it to the Swiss to avoid being thrown out). The building is surrounded by Cuban troops 24 hours a day, and anybody seen loitering around, walking too close, or gazing into the building is promptly shuffled off by armed men. Nobody gets in or out without showing a passport and having his information recorded and forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior.

The Ministry has its own police force, and when our group arrived on the island, we were introduced to our case officer. We were also issued Cuban identification papers which had to be presented for even the most basic transactions (changing currency, using the library, catching a cab). Our little brown booklets marked us as foreigners while Cubans held a variety of colors to indicate party status and rank within the government.

Our case officer explained that he was responsible for knowing more or less what we were doing and where to find us, and he also told us about the rules of our stay. We were to notify him through our program director any time we left Havana, we were to leave the country as soon as classes were over, and we weren’t allowed to have Cubans anywhere near our living spaces or in our building after 10pm. During the day, they could enter our common area, but they had to present ID and be registered. While these rules were ostensibly for our protection, they allowed the government to keep tabs on us and all the people we associated with.

Out and about in the city, there were uniformed police in kiosks at all major intersections and on almost every corner downtown. I can only speculate as to the presence of plain-clothes officers, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Trucks filled with soldiers rolled through the streets frequently, but they represented just a tiny fraction of the island’s defense force. Cuba’s government requires 2 years compulsory military service from all able bodied 18 year olds, and so practically everyone has been trained and prepared to fight in the event of an invasion. Tunnels, fortifications, and weapons caches litter the city, and drills are held periodically so that everyone knows where to report for duty.

Government offices and facilities (the University where I studied for example) have their own command posts, and employees and students on site when the alarms sound are expected to defend these areas.

In the neighborhoods and apartment complexes, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution handle the mobilization.

The CDR has houses on each block across the country, and they are staffed by an elected neighborhood delegate. They organize social and service events in each community, and these events, while "voluntary," are best attended to avoid being singled out for special surveillance or punishment.

In the early days of the revolution, the CDR network was used extensively to enforce ideological conformity and identify potential counterrevolutionaries. I must say that the CDRs I visited seemed quite benign (my local delegate was a friendly and drunken old man), but it is difficult to tell from the outside how active they still are in reporting dissent and policing the population.

With the state presence so ubiquitous it’s hard to imagine anything slipping through the cracks, but the illegal migrants, squatters, unregistered taxi drivers, prostitutes, drug dealers, and black marketeers are living testaments to the fact that it is impossible for a government to be everywhere and control everything. To put it bluntly, human beings are smart enough to know what they can get away with under any system.

In Cuba, the enforcement of the government’s complex and absurd laws is quite sporadic. If you are unlucky enough to be stopped at one of the main check points surrounding Havana, if you are careless enough to draw official attention to your business, if you do not tow the party line in conversations with strangers, bad things may well befall you.

However, so many people are employed by the government that it is impossible for an impending crackdown to be kept secret. When something serious is about to happen, the news is spread quickly by word of mouth, and people take action to avoid detection.

I remember one fine day it was impossible to catch a taxi. That’s because the government had decided to start randomly checking licenses. Most of the illegal drivers had gotten wind of it, and they wisely decided to take the day off. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get the memo, and so I ended up having to pay some jerk five times the normal rate for a lift home.

It may not be easy, but people survive, people work around the law to live their lives. The vast majority of casual dissidents, law breakers, and petit capitalists are never caught.

This is the reality of every state.

When governments attempt to change the fundamental behavior of their citizens, they are ignored by most, obeyed by some, and supported by those whose natural behavior happens to align with official policy. The state can play its whack-a-mole enforcement game indefinitely, but it cannot change us.

At the very worst of times, we can be cajoled into apparent acquiescence, displays of allegiance, acts of conformity, but the state can never silence the rebellion that takes place inside our minds when our rights our violated.

In the end, I was struck by the similarities more than the differences when I went to Cuba. Family, work, romance, and rest are at the core of life – and oppression and resistance define every society, even our own star spangled paradise.

Fatherland or Death: A Cuba without Castro

As one of the few American students who managed, despite pain-in-the-ass Treasury Department regulations, to spend a semester studying in Cuba, I put my time to good use asking everybody I met, "What on earth is going to happen when Fidel dies?” During my four months at the University of Havana, I assaulted students, professors, taxi drivers, girls in clubs, and strangers on the street.

The answers I received ranged from “I would rather not stick around to find out,” to the more common “No es fácil” (It ain’t easy) - typically followed by a forlorn headshake and a rambling discourse on the various factions within the National Assembly or some similarly depressing theme.

One professor said to me during a conversation after class: “How can you as a foreigner understand Cuba when we don’t understand it ourselves?” She went on, “Why do hundreds of thousands turn out for marches they don’t care about? Why do we all speak one way about the government in our homes and another way in our offices and on the street? There is no hope for you.”

And yet I keep trying.

Don’t be fooled by people who tell you that they know exactly what will happen when the Máximo Líder ends his career as the world’s longest reigning head of state. One thing is certain however: even Castro cannot suspend biology.

The problem for pundits is that, by design, the Cuban system renders impossible the political forecasting that we practice in the United States. Public opinion polls are illegal and rank-and-file Cubans are prohibited from owning all practical methods of information dissemination.

These and other methods of social control certainly annoy the more politically aware Cubans I encountered, but not everyone is as “counterrevolutionary” as some Americans seem to believe. I heard dozens of Cubans exclaim, “You don’t have to like Fidel, but you can’t help but respect him.” To many, he is still a hero, a liberator, a larger-than-life, imperialist-dog-stomping badass.

He is admired as much as he is feared, and this is why he can hold on to power.

Fidel holds back the various fights that could flare up over differences of ideology or class on the island. When he is gone, there is no telling what factions will emerge. In the end, there will be no choice but some sort of market opening, however controlled and limited it might be. The official economy is badly broken, and the black market has stepped in to fill the significant gap between monthly rations and the necessities of life.

As it stands, the extent of the informal economy in Havana is astounding considering the vigorous official discouragement. Professionals and educated people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the inverted wage structure that dramatically favors black marketeers, the tourism sector, and farm workers while leaving doctors and engineers to subsist on the scraps.

One important point for Americans to consider when trying to imagine a post-Castro Cuba is the perception on the part of many Cubans that free universal health care and education, the core promises of Castro’s government, are every bit as important as the freedoms of speech and press enjoyed by residents of the United States. Any party that attacks these "rights" will be wildly unpopular in Cuba, at least in the immediate aftermath of Castro’s departure.

This statist bias is reinforced by the powerful nationalism that pervades the island. Cubans are deeply committed to self-determination regardless of their feelings about the current activities of their government. Cubans of all political stripes view the U.S. embargo as nothing short of economic war whose implied goal is re-colonization, not liberation.

Remember, we did attempt to invade the island during the lifetime of many Cubans. Americans should not believe that the U.S. Government will exert the sort of influence seen in post-Soviet Eastern Europe as Cuba undergoes its transition from Castro.

In fact, a high-profile U.S. government presence during the transition in Cuba could endanger reforms because conservative elements would be able to paint progressive Cubans as U.S. stooges, just as they have since 1959. If we forget about this history, the knee-jerk rejection of U.S. backed policies may doom real reform.

Cubans have no desire to go back to the 1950’s when Americans interests ruled Cuba and the streets of Havana were lined with casinos and hookers instead of clinics and bureaucrats.