Please Help Save The NHS

The NHS has been fixing and looking after me these past 3 days after rushing there on Wednesday in crippling pain (pneumonia). These people are angels and the institution is one of our greatest treasures.

If you can spare a minute and want to help, this blogger would be very grateful.

Dear friends across Britain,

The battle to save the NHS is now entering its final hours. David Cameron and Andrew Lansley seem determined to drag Britain's most famous institution to its grave, but if we now stand together we can get the House of Lords to stop this bill in its tracks.

Public outrage is gripping the country as the Prime Minister persists with a bill that would dismantle the NHS and open the field to private companies. The government refuses to publish its internal report on the risks of the reforms, one reason among many why thousands of health professionals and many politicians oppose the changes. If we now build a massive outcry we can sway our last line of defence -- the House of Lords -- to save the NHS.

Let’s call on the undecided members in the House of Lords to keep the knives off our NHS and ensure we can all read the official risk report -- sign here and circulate. Our voices will ramp up the pressure as we deliver our petition when we reach key milestones between now and Monday:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/last_chance_to_save_the_nhs/?tta

The coalition promised no top-down reorganisation of the National Health Service. Yet it's brought in a bill that threatens to turn large chunks of the NHS over on a plate to private health care companies and cost-cutting consultants, threatening a tidal wave of privatisation that will leave our health system expensive and fragmented, with many of us getting only low-quality care. Citizens are outraged -- according to the latest polls, over half of us want the new bill to be scrapped.

Public opposition has already delayed the bill and forced several amendments, but the government is refusing to halt the reforms, wrongly insisting that opponents are just a minority group of disgruntled health care professionals and political opponents. The fight for the NHS now depends on the 200 members of the House of Lords who don't belong to a political party. They aren't used to public scrutiny, so if we target them now, we can win and ensure that any reforms of our precious health service are done in concert with health professionals and patients.

We only have until Monday to tip the balance. The recommendation to delay the debate until after the risk register has been released will throw the NHS a lifeline and allow us all to see the likely impact of this bill. Sign the petition, and send widely. 

http://www.avaaz.org/en/last_chance_to_save_the_nhs/?tta

Britain is proud of the NHS, which has saved countless lives and won admirers across the world. Let’s act now and ensure our health care system stays free for all.

With hope,

Sam, Antonia, Alex, Alice, Jamie, Ricken and the rest of the Avaaz team

More information:

NHS reforms: Lib Dem divisions resurface as bill returns to parliament (The Guardian)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/13/nhs-reforms-lib-dem-divisions?newsfeed=true

Time is running out to save the NHS (The Mirror)

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/time-is-running-out-to-help-the-nhs-760964

NHS costs soar as GPs focus on health reforms (The Guardian)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/12/nhs-reform-gps-too-busy?

Cabinet 'revolts against health reforms' (The Telegraph)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9073613/Cabinet-revolts-against-health-reforms.html

Cameron should scrap NHS bill and drop Lansley, says influential Tory blog (The Guardian)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/10/cameron-scrap-nhs-bill-lansley

NHS Reforms: More Than Half Of Voters Want To See Changes Dropped (Huffington Post)

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/21/nhs-reforms-voters-poll-dropped-health-and-social-care-bill_n_1289969.html?ref=uk

Terence McKenna: A Better World (Toward The End Of History)

Terence McKenna died April 3, 2000. He was the world’s premier ethnopharmacologist, which is to say he specialized in exotic psychoactive plants. Terence is the author of five books & the famous software program “TimeWave”. Based upon the mathematics underlying the ancient Chinese oracle The I Ching, he discussed this unique time in human history and discusses “The Big Picture”. McKenna’s contributions to science include the theory that psychedelic mushrooms spurred humans to develop consciousness and language; and the “Timewave” theory, described by chaos pioneer Ralph Abraham as “the first model for history that significantly transcends that of the ancients.” Learn About: • Art, Novelty, the Internet, Time & the Future as Terence & his software see it. • Implications for us during the “first-time-ever” period of extraordinary novelty as we enter the 21st century. • How we can align with “The Transcendent Object at the End of Time” 

abetterworld.tv

If you want a copy of this you can buy the DVD from the link above or copy and paste the YouTube page URL  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-zITNiAZJk  into the blank space HERE and press OFF, this will give you links to download the video and MP3.

Hazelwood Trialogue: Part 2 - Homing Pigeons (Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham)

Hazelwood Trialogue: Part 2 - Homing Pigeons

Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham

Hazelwood, Devon, England, June 1993
How do homing pigeons find their way home? All theories attempting to explain this phenomenon have failed. More unexplained biological mysteries. Do animals and humans have senses or powers unacknowledged by science? What are the implications of these powers? Rupert's proposed experiment with a mobile pigeon loft. Pigeon racing. Ralph's visual theory and the elastic band theory. A quantum mechanical perspective on these forces. Why have humans lost contact with such powers? New domains of quantum mechanical biology. To what degree is the assumption that the future is unknowable an artefact of culture and language?

A new understanding of time. How do animals communicate? The sixth sense is a social field phenomenon. Could human problems be linked with our disconnection from this field? The need to go beyond language. Entering the atemporal sphere through assimilating animal understanding. Terence's understanding of animal magic as a hyperdimensional perception of the future. Speaking in tongues. Questions and answers: How our languages affect our view of the world. Animal teachers. Recognising science's blindness to such astonishing natural powers. The large-scale implications of Bell's theorem. 

MP3

Hazelwood Trialogue: Part 1 - Introductions (Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham)

Hazelwood trialogue: Part 1 - Introductions


Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham


Hazelwood, Devon, England, June 1993
In this introduction to the trialogues held at Hazelwood house in Devon, England, Rupert, Ralph and Terence introduce each other and give their perspectives on their friends' lives, characters and work.


The first in a series of 5 parts, I've posted this trialogue before (Hazelwood House 1993) but this version is taken from a different source (http://www.sheldrake.org/) and adds an extra 45mins to the total running time.


MP3

David Lynch: Catching The Big Fish (Audiobook, 2006)

I'm a big fan of Lynch (especially his music) and this book offers a peak through the window into his creative workings. I'm less a fan of TM (Transcendental Meditation) which is David's method for catching the big fish and more in tune with another TM (Terence McKenna) who also speaks about catching the big fish, his method being the use of psychedelics. Lynch is dismissive of psychedelics here, claiming Transcendental Meditation can bring you that experience yet admits he has never tried anything stronger than a joint...this is a great sadness.

However you decide to go fishing is up to you and the notion of catching the big fish is relevant to whatever method you choose.

TubeGnosis

Like most European sewage systems YouTube didn't take into account how much shit would be produced by future generations clogging up the pipes and leaving the cities smelling like everybody's guts.

Thankfully new Tubes are being laid by the man AA knows as #100

http://tubegnosis.com/

Terence McKenna: Happy Birthday Bard!

Terence McKenna: History Ends in Green: Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic Revival

Recorded at a seminar at the Esalen Institute in 1989.

A lecture discussing human cyclical history, its future attractor and ultimate dissolution.

Recalling the '60s, McKenna seeks nothing less than "symbiosis between human beings and the biosphere," and makes a stunning case for achieving this union through the psychedelic experience.

art: bobbycampbell.org/

Terence McKenna: Eros & The Eschaton (1994)

Terence McKenna: Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle. 1994

"We have to stop CONSUMING our culture. We have to CREATE culture. DON'T watch TV, DON'T read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your OWN roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are -- NOW -- is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You're giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y... This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you're unimportant, you're peripheral -- get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."

Terence McKenna: What's So Great About Mushrooms? (1987)

 "Culture is sort of a shockwave which follows behind language. Culture is fossilized language."

"One of the reasons I think these psychedelic compounds still are important is because they catalyze the evolution of language."

MP3

Edited from the  Psychedelic Salon Podcast

Captain Beefheart Under Review (2006)

The film traces Beefheart's entire career and uses rare footage and contributions from numerous Beefheart associates and Magic Band members. Contributors include John French, Mark Boston, Moris Tepper, Elliot Ingber, Ira Ingber, Jerry Handley, Doug Moon, Eric Drew Feldman, Gary Marker and Gary Lucas.

"The war is a pimple on the pope's pet dragon."

Captain Beefheart: Interviews (1969-1978)

Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa (1969) Straight Press Conference UK (5m)

Captain Beefheart (1972) WMMR Philadelphia (14m10s)

Captain Beefheart (1974) KHSU Humboldt State Univesity Arcata CA interview (20m)

Captain Beefheart probably (1974) WMLN Cambridge w/ Augie and Andy Demartino (24m24s)

Captain Beefheart (1978) Houston Interview (10m15s)

MP3

Captain Beefheart: Brown Star Sessions (1972)

1 Boogler Risin' 4:29
2 Dirty Blue Gene I 2:53
3 Dirty Blue Gene II 3:41
4 Clear Spot (instrumental) 3:54
5 Harry Irene 3:00
6 Happy Blue Pumpkin 4:43
7 Kiss 2:42
8 Little Scratch 4:45
9 Your Love Brought Me To Life 3:30
10 Pompadour Swamp 6:46
11 Funeral Hill I 3:54
12 Frying Pan 3:28
13 Dual And Abdul 2:48
14 Best Batch Yet (instrumental) 2:15
15 Suzy Murder Wrist 3:41
16 I Can't Do This Unless I Can Do This 2:10
17 Obenso Cinquo 3:48
18 Funeral Hill II 5:59
19 Flaming Autograph 2:57
20 Scratch My Back 1:37

Daniel Everett: The Pirahã: People Who Define Happiness Without God (2009)

Professor Daniel Everett discusses the Pirahã, the happiest people on earth at the 32nd Annual Freedom From Religion Foundation National Convention in Seattle, Wa. (November 7th, 2009)


Download Links

Daniel Everett: The Pirahã, Faith, Language & Chomsky

Daniel Everett trained as a missionary in field linguistics, in 1977 he and his family moved to Brazil to study Portuguese before moving to a Pirahã village in the Amazon lowlands so he could translate the Bible into their language and convert them to Christianity. He encountered a people who had no creation myth of their own, living only in the present with no interest in the distant past or future. People had come before with this message, not impressed by fiction the Pirahã could not understand why he and others were telling them about a person the storytellers had neither met or heard speak themselves and asked Daniel to stop speaking about this Jesus person. By 1982 Dan was having serious doubts about his belief, by 1985 he had lost his faith.

Through his study of the Pirahã language Everett began to have doubts about another of his mentors ideas. He claims Pirahã is a black swan in Noam Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, in particular universal recursion which the Pirahã seemingly do not use. Chomsky refuses to further discuss Everett's work, calling him a charlatan.

The ZIP includes three interviews with Daniel Everett from Philosophy Bites, Dr. Kiki's Science Hour and Think Atheist in which he talks about his time with the Pirahã, Language and his abandonment of religious faith.

Upcoming Documentary in 2012

Philip K. Dick: Hour 25, Interview (1976)

Hour 25 hosted by Mike Hodel

A Talk with Philip K. Dick (1976)

1) Why Science Fiction? SF is a ghetto.

Why write science fiction, was it a conscious decision? People say 'SF is a ghetto', and 'SF is the literature of ideas'; why? Science Fiction is becoming like silly putty. If it's got enough four-letter-words, then it's not SF. Talk of Harlan Ellison, Barry Malzberg, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Silverberg, Robert Heinlein, and publishers (esp. Doubleday) and publishing. How long were you writing before you sold your first story?

2) Starting out and doing research

"I started out as a really good writer under Tony Boucher's direction." How do you work, what are your working habits? "I love to write, and I'd write if they didn't pay me anything." Deus Irae (with Roger Zelazny) ... now I spend my time doing research, rather than just writing non-stop. Did seven years of research for Man in the High Castle - never wrote a sequel because reading Gestapo diaries was too awful. Discusses using the I Ching to write. Loved Sladek's parody, "Solar Shoe-salesman". "If Science Fiction is going to go down the tubes, I'll go down the tubes with it."

3) Editors and Translations

Discuss Richard Lupoff and money for novels. "Don't believe anything a fiction writer tells you." Had two good books because of two good editors; Pete Israel (Man in the High Castle) and Judy-Lynn Del Ray (A Scanner Darkly) - "probably the greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins". I wouldn't publish the German version of Man in the High Castle unless I could read it first, and they cheapened it into a cheap, adventure novel - they didn't know I could read German. Difficulties with the Japanese version. Begin discussing "A Scanner Darkly".

4) 'A Scanner Darkly' reading and silly putty world of SF

Reads from "A Scanner Darkly", a funny suicide scene. (to 3:45) - about the ultimate ironies of drug use, how far you could push the tragedies of the drug world. Discuss situations and characters; Always tries to find a victim and a master of an idea, so you end up with a bifurcated society. Science Fiction has become very much like a silly putty world.

5) Who do you like? Screenplays and Sci-Fi statement

Asked, "how do you define Science Fiction?" Who do you like in the field; Tom Disch, Barry Malzberg, Phil Farmer, Spinrad, Katherine Kurtz (does not like Bob Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, cannot comment on Ursula K. Le Guin's writing). Discusses John W. Campbell award, and first award in Fullerton. Is the bad Sci-Fi driving out the good (Gresham's Law)? Science Fiction is the novel of the idea, not all we got now. Discusses X Minus One radio show ("Colony" and "The Defenders"). Herb Jaffe, option and screenplay of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Wrote a good screenplay of Ubik. "I hope people will come into the Science Fiction field, and write Science Fiction... Science Fiction is a lot of fun to write... and flip the bird to the people who want money."

Wilhelm Reich: Alone (1952)

Wilhelm Reich  recorded these comments in his home at the Lower Cabin (now called Tamarack) at Orgonon on April 3, 1952. In this recording, he expresses the reality of his existence and his total aloneness in his work.

Michael Harner: The Way Of The Shaman/Shamanic Journey Solo & Double Drumming (1990)

Michael Harner was one of the first Westerners to participate fully in an indigenous ayahuasca ceremony in the Amazon. After drinking a large dose of the bitter hallucinogenic brew he received a spectacular vision in which he saw dragon-like creatures that came to earth fleeing something, perhaps an enemy, 'out in space' after a journey that had lasted 'aeons':

"The creatures showed me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence. Before me, the magnificence of the plant and animal creation and speciation - hundreds of millions of years activity - took place on a scale and with a vividness impossible to imagine. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside all forms of life, including man. They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but the receptacles and servants of these creatures. For this reason they could talk to me from within myself. In retrospect one could say they were almost like DNA, although at the time, in 1961, I knew nothing of DNA."

~Text from Graham Hancock's book, Supernatural

I've included the above text here as it was one of the most striking passages in Graham's book and for it's parallel's to Francis Crick's own vision in the discovery of DNA and the echoing of the Sophia creation myth and the Archons from John Lamb Lash's interpretation of the Gnostic Texts.

Included in the ZIP below is a PDF scan of Harner's book, The Way Of The Shaman, 

and the accompanying audio disc, Shamanic Journey Solo & Double Drumming.

Terence McKenna: True Hallucinations, 1993 (Phoenix Book Store)

Live at the Phoenix Book Store

Presented by Genie Brittingham Erstad (She Who Remembers)

Broadcast by Pacifica Radio on the Roy of Hollywood Show

KPFK 90.7 fm. Los Angeles

Terence gives a talk on True Hallucinations around 1993/1994 at the time 

Harper re-issued it. After setting the scene, including a brief history of the 

genocide of the peoples of La Chorrera (the Columbian village where most of 

the book takes place) in the early part of the 20th century, he reads passages 

of the book with many an aside. There is also his usual erudite Question & 

Answer session around half-way through the talk.

Stanislav Grof: The Transpersonal Vision (1998)

In every mystical wisdom tradition, non-ordinary states of consciousness have served as essential tools for discovering why we are here and how we can live richer, more meaningful lives. For more than 40 years, Stanislav Grof has tested and brought these methods into the field of modern psychology.

Are emotional states and behavioral patterns explained solely by brain chemistry and life experience or could they be expressions of far vaster universal energies? Which specific mind states most powerfully accelerate integration and healing of the self? And how do you access these states?

On The Transpersonal Vision, Grof answers these questions and raises many others in a stunning summation of his groundbreaking life's work. You will learn about transpersonal psychology's daring forays into the worlds of the shaman and the mystic; how your perinatal (birth and prebirth) experiences profoundly affect you even today; what past-life, near-death, and out-of-body phenomena teach us about our life purpose; and much more.

Robert Cox: Alchemy & History Lectures

Robert E. Cox, devoting his life to mastering such abstruse disciplines as the Sanskrit language, the sacred Vedic texts, Pythagorean sacred number and geometry, Alexandrian Hermeticism and laboratory alchemy as well as developing a solid understanding of cutting-edge physics, including string theory, quantum mechanics, and Einstein's theory of relativity,  Robert has forged an amalgam of ancient Eastern and Western sacred philosophy with contemporary science, producing a lucid new synthesis.

Cox's study and rectification of the Vedic cycle of the ages foresees the inevitable establishment of a new Sacred Science, based on the recovery of the science and wisdom of the ancients, amalgamated with the brilliant and most far-reaching insights of contemporary science, which will come to fruition in a not-too-distant Golden Age, an advent that ancient wisdom traditions unanimously indicated will follow the dismantling, now visibly underway, of the structures of materialism, no longer supportable by life on planet earth.

sacredmysteries

John Dee: A Collection Of Works

Mysteriorum

Primus

Primus (Notes)

Secundus

Tertius

Quintus

Uartus

S.D.A.

The Hieroglyphic Monad

The Rosie Crucian Secrets

The Practice Of Enochian Evocation

Terence McKenna: Places I Have Been (1988)

Terence McKenna: Hermosa Beach, CA. 25th May 1988

Terence talking about Botanical Dimensions and his many travels. Botanical Dimensions is a non-profit organization dedicated to the collection and propagation of medicinal and shamanic plants from the tropics around the world. Of equal importance in their work is the gathering of folklore, methods and recipes concerning the traditional uses of such plants. Since the very beginning of humankind, the healing properties of the plant world have been invaluable in maintaining well-being of the body, mind and spirit. Cultures throughout the world have depended on medicinal and shamanic plants as the source of their physical cures and their spiritual guidance, yet many of these plants and their stories are now endangered or forgotten.

Botanical Dimensions

Richard Evans Schultes: Hallucinogenic Plants (Lecture)

Lecture given by Dr. Richard Evans Schultes on the topic of Hallucinogenic Plants, date unknown.

Dr. Schultes was often called the father of ethnobotany, the field that studies the relationship between native cultures and their use of plants. Over decades of research, mainly in Colombia's Amazon region, he documented the use of more than 2,000 medicinal plants among Indians of a dozen tribes, many of whom had never seen a white man before. "I do not believe in hostile Indians," Dr. Schultes was quoted as saying in a 1992 article about him in The New Yorker by E. J. Kahn Jr. "All that is required to bring out their gentlemanliness is reciprocal gentlemanliness."

~ from Schultes obituary in The New York Times