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