“The rapid progress of the sciences makes me sorry, at times, that I was born so soon. Imagine the power that man will have over matter, a few hundred years from now. We may learn how to remove gravity from large masses, and float them over great distances. Agriculture will double its produce with less labor. All diseases will surely be cured… even old age. If only the moral sciences could be improved as well. Perhaps men would cease to be wolves to one another… and human beings could learn to be human.”
– Benjamin Franklin
Today’s Most Important Stories & Related Resources:
• Track today’s most important stories here: @sunfellow
“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ “
– Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963, Washington, D.C.
Today’s Most Important Stories & Related Resources:
• Track today’s most important stories here: @sunfellow
Today’s Featured Video: Martin Luther King “I Have A Dream” Speech
“I Have a Dream” is the popular name given to the public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. King’s delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters, the speech is often considered to be one of the greatest and most notable speeches in human history and was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, “Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations.”
Today’s Featured Video: Blind Woman Describes Fascinating Near-Death Experience
Vicky Blavon was born blind. In the following Coast-To-Coast interview Vicky describes what it was like to experience sight for the first time. Vicky also describes encounters with Jesus, moving through hellish and heavenly realms, and being told she couldn’t stay on the other side because she was to become a mother and teach unconditional love and forgiveness. Jesus, according to Vicky, also told her to tell others about him and her experience: “let them know of this day and tell them that I AM”…
………….
…
…
…
For more information on near-death experiences, go here.
The following excerpt is taken from Don Lattin’s new book, “The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America”. It’s the story of what happened when three university professors and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in the fall of 1960 at Harvard, where Leary had just begun putting together a controversial psychedelic drug research project. This scene is from a chapter in the middle of the book titled “If you come to San Francisco.” It’s January 1967, and the center of the psychedelic scene has shifted from Boston to Baghdad by the Bay.
The Harvard Psychedelic Club How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: HarperOne (January 5, 2010)
Language: English
……………
Timothy Leary could not be stopped. He was determined to secure his position as the “high priest” of the LSD movement. He knew he needed the news media to spread the psychedelic gospel, and journalists knew they needed Leary to figure out what was going on in the early years of the counterculture. Leary’s concern for public relations was on display the night following the Human Be-In extravaganza in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the event where the former Harvard psychology professor – dressed in white with beads around his neck and a yellow flower tucked behind his ear – first uttered his infamous slogan, “Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.” Leary had just run out to get an early edition of the San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner. He rushed the newspaper over to an apartment in the Haight-Ashbury where Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder and others were in the midst of a post-celebration party.
Leary handed the newspaper to Ginsberg, who read the story, headlined HIPPIES RUN WILD, and let out a moan. “That’s ridiculous,” Ginsberg complained. “Like, it was an aesthetically very good scene. They should have sent an art critic.”
Reporting a complaint
Ginsberg picked up the phone and called the newspaper to register his complaint with the night editor at the newspaper.
“What is this nonsense about hippies running wild?” Ginsberg asked the befuddled editor. “Your story has the kind of inaccuracy of tone and language that’s poisoning the community. Is that what you want to do?”
“We sent our hippiest reporter,” the night editor replied.
“I don’t know what kind of hippies you’ve got over there at your place,” Ginsberg said, chuckling. “Besides, what is this hippie business? What does ‘hippie’ mean, anyway? These kids aren’t hippies – they’re seekers. Today was a serious religious occasion.”
Ginsberg promised to come over to the newspaper first thing Monday morning and talk to the reporter about doing a more accurate follow-up story. The editor said that would be fine. They’d see the famous poet at The Chronicle offices on Monday.
“Well, peace,” Ginsberg said, hanging up the phone.
Ginsberg, still dressed all in white, was sitting on a mattress in the meditation room in the apartment of Michael Bowen, one of the Human Be-In organizers. The mattress and the wall behind him were covered with Indian bedspreads. Sitting next to him was Gary Snyder, who had beads hanging over his turtleneck sweater. Most of the people at the party were still in their Be-In costumes, except for Leary, who had taken off his loose white garments and changed into sports jacket and trousers. That way he looked more professorial when the television news crew showed up dragging klieg lights and cables into Bowen’s apartment.
It’s all about visuals
The cameraman turned away from Leary and held a light meter up to Ginsberg’s face. Here was a guy with a bushy black beard, love beads and white robes. Better visuals for a TV news segment on the hippies.
The poet groaned at the TV crew. “Man,” he said, looking at Bowen, “it’s bad enough that you have a telephone in your meditation room.”
Ginsberg lightened up when the TV reporter offered his take on the day’s festivities. “I don’t know why,” the television guy said, “but this whole day strikes me as absolutely sane and right and beautiful. You guys must have put something in my tea.”
“What’s so insane about a little peace and harmony,” Ginsberg replied. “Thousands of people came to the park today, just so they could relate to each other – as dharma beings. All sorts of people – poets, children, even Hell’s Angels. People are lonely. It’s strange to be in a body.”
Gary Snyder nodded. “People are groovy,” he said.
Ginsberg looked into the television camera. “It was very Eden-like today,” he said. “Kind of like Blake’s vision of Eden. Music. Babies. People just sort of floating around having a good time and everybody happy and smiling and touching and turning each other on and a lot of groovy chicks all dressed up in their best clothes and -”
Today’s Featured Video: Bill Maher On Ending Abusive Relationships – With Your Bank
News from the cutting-edge of human evolution. Your one-stop source for some of planet Earth's most compelling, transformative, and integrally-informed news, information, people, and organizations.
Subscribe
