Newsgroups: alt.drugs

Those of you who have been following the little brushfire flame war that 
has been going on against Bruce Eisner's ad campaign for his magazine 
"the Island" somethingorother Newsletter have been kind of curious about 
the open threat I made to reveal his personal email to me if he posted 
another ad. Well, he hasn't so I won't.... yet... If Eisner want to 
publish a magazine, fine by me. However if he wants to use a public 
network for private ends, without even so much as a paragraph of *his* 
work to compensate, that is setting a bad precendent. Soon we will be 
bombarded by billboards and ads for everything under the sun. We will 
have our "lofty net culture" stolen from us and sold back to us for a 
quick buck. It could happen, no lie, if we don't start telling people 
from day one that we aren't going to buy into the 
Madison-Avenue-Sell-Your-Own-Mother way of looking at the world.

Well before everyone starts humming "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" I 
am going to do what I promised I would do. Here is a *FREE* Island Group 
Newsletter, number one part one.... (worth every cent I paid for it)
Everyone is a member of the Island group who says s/he is. I can't 
stop anyone from posting drivel, least of all myself, so if ya don't like 
it then don't read it or write something better.... Send all complaints to
president@whitehouse.gov, because I've got more important things to do.

                    

                    ISLAND GROUP NEWSLETTER

                      NUMBER ONE, PART ONE


A Review of Moksha, Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience 
edited by Micheal Horowitz & Cynthia Palmer.

"But he who contemplates the 3rd mantra of OM, i.e., views God as 
himself, becomes illuminated and obtains moksha. Just as serpent relieved 
of its olded skin, becomes new again,so the yogi who worships the 3rd 
mantra relieved of his mortal coil, of his sins and earthly weaknesses, 
and freed with his spiritual body to roam throughout God's Universe, 
enjoys the glory of the All-Pervading Omniscient Spirit, ever and 
evermore. The contemplation of the last mantra blesses him with moksha or 
immortality."
                
               From The Mandukyopanishat being The Exposition of OM
               the Great Sacred Name of he Supreme Being in the Vedas.
                       Trans. Pandit Guru, Datta Vidyathi,
               Prof. of Psychical Science, Lahore. Lahore 1863 


A breif search of the books by Aldous Huxley at my college library yielded 
this little gem. Moksha is a collection of writings by, to and about Huxley's 
experiences with psychedelics. It contains a number of personal letters, 
interviews and even an edited transcript of one of his psilocybin sessions. 
The book is divided into two parts and is in roughly chronological order. 
The first part, "Precognition", starts with "A Treatise on Drugs" written in 
1931. He follows this with other articles that show his personal fear 
of the use of drugs that numb the mind, while suggesting that a new drug 
"Soma" should be developed to satisfy the need for bliss and escape, one 
that would not have the negative effects of street drugs. In these 
articles he is predicting the mass use of psychedelics, without the 
knowledge of the deeper, more spiritual nature of these drugs. The second 
half, entitled "Psychedelics and Visionary Experience", starts in 1953, 
the year of Huxley's first mescaline session. He is a different man, less 
alienated and cynical and more hopeful and optimistic. The difference is 
striking, and quite inspirational. Only those who have had a psychedelic 
experience will truly appreciate the difference. He takes a writer's 
talent with words, an artist's talent for images and a mystic's talent 
for navigating the mind and combines them together into a synthaesthetic 
whole. This book is truly a tribute to a man whom many saw as a visionary.

ISBN: 0-88373-042-1