What’s going on in the next ten years is centered around the Mid-East. That’s the conclusion I draw from The Fatima Prophecy and all the Bible prophe­cies and the techniques they’re using at the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute. The Bible prophecies start with growing Mid-East tension over oil distribution and religious strife. It looks like someone will throw the Bomb. Finally, a ten-nation common market, including the United States, is formed to bring about peace. The Bible prophecies don’t say which nation is going to head it, but I think it’s the United States. Let’s say that this common mar­ket pulls it off. Peace is restored. As a result, there are new alignments, which once again set Russia and the West at odds. Russia is not a member.

The happy people with big hips and watery lips pulled up by the river and sat down, spent. There trout bubbled at them, trees shaded and grass waved. It was time for a smoke. They sat in a circle, passed the smoke around.

Beginning with the notion that our Western conceptions of consciousness are extremely rudimentary (in Sanskrit, for example, there are twenty terms used to differentiate states of consciousness; in English, we distinguish merely between the conscious and the unconscious), the author says we must construct a more trustworthy map for these inner regions.

Why move? Why persist in it when all my material needs are fulfilled? Is it the playing out, the dance, of neurosis? The urgings of a subtle psychic movement? Why move? Curiosity? There’s something pleasing about motion. For we of the West who are oriented towards achievement, accomplishment, progress, domination, aggression, etc., movement perhaps gives the illusion of going further, of gaining something.

The emergence of psychedelic drugs into contemporary society has probably created as much controversy as any other agent affecting the body-mind complex of man since the discovery of fire.

“In therapy using massive doses of LSD, a condition of chemically enforced insanity takes place. By insanity, I mean a situation in which the conscious mind is forced into a state of powerlessness. There is a literal assault made not only upon the psyche, but upon the organizational framework that makes it possible for you to exist rationally in the world that you know. The ego, of course, cannot be annihilated in physical life. Kill one and another will, and must, emerge from the inner self which is its source.

An individual who experiences regular moments of expanded consciousness also regularly experiences the unhappiness and difficulty of returning to consensus reality. In the moments following his flight from material centeredness, returning may seem like a betrayal of having experienced a somewhat less limited perspective. One may feel compelled to come to terms with the disquieting limitations of his own humanity. Life in physical reality may not appear to be worth living, or, if it seems worth living, it may not appear to be worth taking seriously.

What is the body? Is the brain a biological mechanism that "creates” consciousness , or rather the manifestation of something beyond — and perhaps the source of — the physical?

We are sexual beings from the time of our birth until the last years of our life. Sexuality is not a behavior that occurs between adolescence and “old age.” A male baby’s penis becomes erect about every ninety minutes, and a female baby lubricates her vagina with approximately the same regularity. The ways that we feel and think about our bodies and our sexuality greatly determine how we behave. The messages that our parents conveyed to us about our bodies can have much impact on how we view ourselves today. Some of our parents had/have negative feelings about their bodies, especially their sexual organs, and passed these attitudes to their children.

There are some fundamental reorientations Planet Earth as a whole will have to make if it feign would remain a functioning organism. It’s clear now, that individual and corporate actions do indeed take their toll in the global arena. I say “toll,” because largely that’s the effect of human action, as it is now, based mostly on immediate satisfaction of self-centered and short-sighted goals. We can see these tolls as air and water pollution, which mainly stem from an overpowering consumption urge, to the disregard to need or balance. We can view the same situation in political party platforms, or in the domination of the world financial structure by the developed countries to the exclusion of the developing ones, and so on.

That’s one way to nourish one’s mind and body, and for most Americans today it’s considered the best way. Fill the belly with meat, potatoes, Big Macs, shakes, cokes, coffee — keep stuffing it in. And if there’s no food about chew gum, smoke a cigarette. And words are the food for the mind — no matter if they are empty; keep the noise coming in. Music, too, has become meaningless background filler to keep the mind feeling “full.” Our sounds are as nutritious as our food, and it’s no wonder so many eyes around us seem dead behind their dark glasses.