Ram Dass Portrait by Alex Grey. Psychedelic Artist...

Three years ago today beloved Ram Dass transitioned out of his body.

Sending love to the great teacher who has had such a profoundly positive impact on the spiritual lives of so many including Allyson and I. Truly grateful I was given the opportunity to paint a portrait of Ram Dass, and that he got to advise me on certain parts. Behind and in the halo of the central portrait is Maharaji, Neem Karoli Baba, pulling the lightstrings, passing them through the heart of Ram Dass out through Hanuman's chest to serve the world. One of the blessings Ram Dass brought to the world was he helped to found “Seva,” an organization helping cure blindness in Asia, the eyes in the sky of my painting refer to that organization. The Ram Dass community continues to share his wisdom, now that he has joined the other masters in the spiritual sky. Thank you to my friends Vishnu Dass @vishnudass_ and Stephanie @hammeryogini Schwindenhammer who made it possible to paint this portrait of Ram Dass and receive his loving support. Ram Ram Ram @babaramdass @ramdass_goinghome_film @taoshanumanji @beherenownetwork
On the back of the painting he placed his handprint and signed it! Now on view at the Psychedelic Reliquary in Entheon. Opening next year.

Ram Dass, 2018, 48 x 48 in., oil on wood panel.

https://www.facebook.com/AlexGreyCoSM

Who WAS Ram Dass? In the Sixties, He was a Psychedelics Researcher and Promoter at Harvard with Dr. Timothy Leary. (LSD, Magic Mushrooms and Peyote) Then He went to India Looking for Enlightenment and Met a Guru. Changed His Name and Published a Great Book... "Remember: Be Here Now" - It Has His Autobiography and then Many ART Drawings Explaining Eastern Religion. Real Name: Dr. Richard Alpert...

 

https://beherenownetwork.com/be-here-now/

and Then he wrote a Dozen MORE Books and Gave Many Lectures... ALL WORTHY... I Especially Love "Still Here" because I'm 67 Years Old and The Question of My Own Death is Important To Me... Now...

https://www.amazon.com/Still-Here-Embracing-Aging-Changing/dp/1573228710

It's Important to me to remember that Kermit Michael Riggs Taught Dr. Richard Alpert to BE HERE NOW. Kermit was a Laguna Beach, CA Surfer who was Exploring India... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavan_Das_(yogi) 

I Had a Dream: We were walking towards the Entrance of the Los Gatos Library and there was a Thin Old Man dressed in a Small Bathing Suit ahead of Us. He pulled on the entrance to the Children's room and It was Locked... Disappointed, he turned around and I asked: "Are You Looking for the Man Who Works There?" He Said: "NO" and I Motioned towards the Main Entrance. We all Entered. He seemed lost so I asked: "Do you Need Help?" as I would ask any Lost Old Man... He Said: "NO" and then I asked again: "Can I Help You?" He said: "No. I'm Fine." and then we went on Our Own Ways. By That time it was Obvious to Me That he was Ram Dass and That it was a Rather "Heavy" encounter to Ask Ram Dass If I Could Help Him... a Meaningful Event... and I was Shaking... So we went downstairs and I went searching for a Book that I Has Started reading before (about Philosophy) - and on the same shelf was a large picture book of the Grateful Dead's Fare Ye Well Tour with four CDs (that were missing) and My friend asked me why I would want to check out that book and I said: "Too Look for Pictures of Myself." and then I woke up and Typed this Document... It's Best to Type it Up before I forget it... For Certain, I would have tried to help any Lost Old Man but It seems Important that I Offered Ram Dass Help in my dream. That's One Of His Main Teachings... 

He Wrote The Book: Remember, Be Here Now... and THAT Got My Attention because of the ART! Here are Two of about a Hundred Drawings in that book...

Dr Larry Brilliant and Wavy Gravy

There is a really great book that is called Sometimes Brilliant by Larry Brilliant, M.D. and a lot of it is about his dear friend Wavy Gravy, formerly and sometimes known as Hugh Romney. Dr. Brilliant grew up in the Detroit area and he was helping concert venues with medical practice after he graduated from medical school. Among the miraculous events he describes are how he became involved in a project that eradicated small pox. He was initiated into the Merry Pranksters, although Wavy Gravy asked Ken Kesey to take it easy on him because he was "new." They were focused on trying to do the most good, and had some difficult lessons. There were the monkeys who threw shit all over him and his wife just before he met the Dalai Lama. He learned that Neem Karoli Baba was psychic, actually beyond psychic. When he and the Hog Farm folks were flying on a plane in India, they smoked some hash, and the pilot came back into the cabin. He asked, "is that hashish?" They replied that it was and asked if he wanted some. He replied, "of course," and sat down to join them.

Derrick Jensen: Interesting Author and Environmental Activist Philosopher:.. Deep Ecology Thinker... Required Reading at Humboldt State University...

http://www.derrickjensen.org/   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Jensen

For years, Derrick Jensen has asked his audiences, “Do you think this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of life?” No one ever says yes.

Deep Green Resistance starts where the environmental movement leaves off: industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology can’t fix it, and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it. To save this planet, we need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy.  http://www.derrickjensen.org/deep-green-resistance/

I saw him at the end of the movie "Stare into the Lights My Pretties" talking while wearing headphones/microphone online... He was making a Youtube Video about how we have to destroy the Computer Networks that have hypnotized us all... It really was Ironic to hear him USING THE MACHINE while recommending that we DESTROY THE MACHINE.

However, I Groked his message... If he stopped using the machine as an individual it would have no effect whatsoever on the coming destruction of civilization...

Great Movie: "Stare into the Lights my Pretties" about the cultural impact of computers and The Internet...

Great Movie: "Stare into the Lights my Pretties" about the cultural impact of computers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5qJjNM2Kx0

We live in a world of screens. The average adult spends the majority of their waking hours in front of some sort of screen or device. We're enthralled, we're addicted to these machines. How did we get here? Who benefits? What are the cumulative impacts on people, society and the environment? What may come next if this culture is left unchecked, to its end trajectory, and is that what we want? *Stare Into The Lights My Pretties* investigates these questions with an urge to return to the real physical world, to form a critical view of technological escalation driven by rapacious and pervasive corporate interest. Covering themes of addiction, privacy, surveillance, information manipulation, behavior modification and social control, the film lays the foundations as to why we may feel like we're sleep running into some dystopian nightmare with the machines at the helm. Because we are, if we don't seriously avert our eyes to stop this culture from destroying what is left of the real world.

“Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? What if the point of life, the primary reason for existence, is to lie naked with your lover in a shady grove of trees? What if the point is to taste each other's sweat and feel the delicate pressure of finger on chest, thigh on thigh, lip on cheek? What if the point is to stop, then, in your slow movements together, and listen to the birdsong, to watch the dragonflies hover, to look at your lover's face, then up at the undersides of leaves moving together in the breeze? What if the point is to invite these others into your movement, to bring trees, wind, grass, dragonflies into your family and in so doing abandon any attempt to control them? What if the point all along has been to get along, to relate, to experience things on their own terms? What if the point is to feel joy when joyous, love when loving, anger when angry, thoughtful when full of thought? What if the point from the beginning has been to simply be?”
― Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

Great Americans: Abbie Hoffman, Dr John Lilly and Noam Chomsky - Names That are Almost Completely Forgotten Today... YIPPIE!

Abbot Howard Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist, anarchist,^[1][2][3] a socialist, and revolutionary who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies"). He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement.

Hoffman was arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in protests that led to violent confrontations with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, along with Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. The group was known collectively as the "Chicago Eight"; when Seale's prosecution was separated from the others, they became known as the Chicago Seven. While the defendants were initially convicted of intent to incite a riot, the verdicts were overturned on appeal.

Hoffman continued his activism into the 1970s, and remains an icon of the anti-war movement and the counterculture era.^[4][5] He committed suicide by a phenobarbital overdose in 1989.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman

John Cunningham Lilly (January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001) was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor. He was a member of a generation of counterculture scientists and thinkers that included Ram Dass, Werner Erhard and Timothy Leary, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home. He often stirred controversy, especially among mainstream scientists.

Lilly conducted high-altitude research during World War II and later trained as a psychoanalyst. He gained renown in the 1950s after developing the isolation tank. He saw the tanks, in which users are isolated from almost all external stimuli, as a means to explore the nature of human consciousness. He later combined that work with his efforts to communicate with dolphins. He began studying how bottlenose dolphins vocalize, establishing centers in the U.S. Virgin Islands and, later, San Francisco to study dolphins. A decade later, he began experimenting with psychedelics, including LSD, often while floating in isolation.^[1] His work inspired two Hollywood movies, The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and Altered States (1980).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly

Avram Noam Chomsky^[a] (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian,^[b][c] social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics",^[d] Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, and is the author of more than 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

Here's a Classic YIPPIE 

Absurdist Street Theater Device...

It Causes FEAR and INSANITY!

Point It At Republicans and

Watch Them SH*T Their Pants!

BIG FUN!

No one is challenging the SUBSTANCE of the NY Times OP-ED Article saying Trump is a Danger to the USA. They ask which one of them wrote it but acknowledge its TRUTH of the Article's Message

Frankly I'm GLAD That there are Patriots in the White House that are preventing Trump from Causing Disaster... There ought to be MORE anonymous writers and MORE prevention of Trump's Idiot Actions. History will remember this person as a HERO. If They signed their name to the article, they would get fired and then who will keep Trump from Causing Disasters?

That said, The author seems to think that Tax Cuts for the Rich and Deregulation are GOOD IDEAS and Make America Better. That's Obviously Not True. Those Regulations are in place to protect people from Corporations Polluting the USA and Causing Death... The Tax Cuts for the Rich simply add Trillions of Dollars to the National Debt and Place Burdens on our Children. That National Debt costs money to pay the interest... Money that could be spent on Schools or REBUILDING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE or Inventing Electric Cars or ANYTHING USEFUL.... But NO, we are spending our children's Tax Dollars paying interest on loans that accomplish nothing...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html 

"We believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic."

Interesting author: David Grinspoon - Deep Ecology - How we can engineer our way out of global warming.

Yes, we are clever monkeys... We can figure a way to solve our own problems. Looking at our history over millions of years, we have figured out how to survive every time and it's likely that we will do so this time too. Geoengineering might work!

I saw him talk about his book at the Smithsonian Institute and his words were uplifting. Just because we have not come up with the solution yet is not cataclysmic because there are smart people being born every day. Maybe one of them will think of something new. Like a giant air conditioner that moves excess air pollution into space...

Quote from the Amazon webpage about this book:

For the first time in Earth's history, our planet is experiencing a confluence of rapidly accelerating changes prompted by one species: humans. Climate change is only the most visible of the modifications we've made--up until this point, inadvertently--to the planet. And our current behavior threatens not only our own future but that of countless other creatures. By comparing Earth's story to those of other planets, astrobiologist David Grinspoon shows what a strange and novel development it is for a species to evolve to build machines, and ultimately, global societies with world-shaping influence.

https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Human-Hands-Shaping-Planets/dp/1455589128

https://www.psi.edu/about/staffpage/grinspoon