Me and the Biospheres:
A Memoir by the Inventor of Biosphere 2
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Anyone suffering from the Global Warming Blues will cherish this uplifting account of the most ambitious environmental experiment of our time: Biosphere 2, a miniature Earth under glass, the world’s largest laboratory for global ecology. John Allen’s memoir, Me and the Biospheres is a rich and complex narrative, filled with rollicking adventure, exceptional camaraderie and mind-bending science. Almost as astonishing as the structure is the story of how it came to be. Back in 1969, Biosphere 2 was a mere seed in the luminous mind of writer, actor, philosopher, inventor, and scientist John Allen. He prepared for the manifestation of Biosphere 2 by assembling smaller projects: the creation of a ship to study ocean and river ecologies and cultures; a rainforest enrichment project; a theater group; a world-class art gallery and more. As awe-inspiring as the great cathedrals, Biosphere 2’s building and operation demanded the efforts of the most diverse team of scientists, engineers, artists and thinkers from around the world with whom John Allen worked closely for decades. Me and the Biospheres also is an account of the singular life John Allen has led: his travels to Egypt, Vietnam, Nepal, Tibet and India, his meetings with people like Buckminster Fuller, William Burroughs, Charles Mingus, and Ornette Coleman. From building developments in Iran to adobe houses in New Mexico, from Harvard Business School to cafés in Tangiers, from board meetings in Fort Worth to mystical moments with Sufi sages, John Allen has impacted millions of people with manifest integrity. His humorous and Whitmanesque memoir is a tribute to the ingenuity and dauntlessness of the human mind. Me and the Biospheres is a passionate call to reawaken to the beauty of our peerless home, Biosphere 1, the Earth. |
Birth of Pyschedelic Culture:
Conversations about Leary, the Harvard Experiments, Millbrook and the Sixties
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The popularity of films like What the #S*! Do We Know? might suggest that we are only just getting around to questioning the nature of consciousness. In fact, those who lived through the turbulent sixties will recall that there was indeed an exceedingly earnest and widespread movement at the time which, had it not been for controversies over the movement’s approach and the technological acceleration and eliminative materialism that erupted in the decade following, might have continued uninterrupted. Now, at a time when we find ourselves back at square one in our attempt to illuminate the truth about the human mind and its spiritual connections, we would be wise to reflect on the results of the work of the most influential pioneers of the sixties. Birth of Psychedelic Culture: Conversations about the Harvard Experiments, Leary, Millbrook and the Sixties shines a bright light on the climate of the sixties and experiments undertaken by Professors Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and then-graduate student Ralph Metzner. Based on a series of recent (2003 to 2005) conversations between the survivors of that distinguished trio, Metzner and Alpert, facilitated by psychiatrist/writer Gary Bravo, the book describes their initial experiments with mind-altering substances while at Harvard. It goes on to cover experiments they conducted after being dismissed from Harvard, their trips to India and their reflections looking back through time at all of the above. It is filled with intriguing photographs marking and illuminating the events brought to life through the text. Experiment advisors, supporters and participants who appear in the pages of this astonishing account include Aldus Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Arthur Koestler, William Burroughs, and many other well-known personalities from that time period. Other participants include convicts, graduate students, and Vedantist monks. In addition to an overview of the experiments themselves, the conversations in this book offer vividly-recalled descriptions of particular trips, providing many insights into the nature of hallucinogens and the possibility of transcending social conditioning. No understanding of the history of the sixties would be complete without some grasp of the work of Leary, Alpert and Metzner, the backlash to their experiments, and the way in which drug use became absorbed into society thereafter. Nor can any diligent attempt to study the spectrum of the human mind exclude what we have learned from them about the impact of psychedelic drugs. Dr. Richard Alpert, also known as Baba Ram Dass, is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is the author of the bestseller BE HERE NOW. Along with Timothy Leary, he was dismissed from his professorship at Harvard University in the early 1960s for his experiments on the effects of psychedelic drugs on human subjects. He is also known for his travels to India and his association with the Hindu guru, Neem Karoli Baba. He is the founder of several organizations dedicated to expanding spiritual awareness. Ralph Metzner is the author of several books, including THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE, which he co-wrote with Leary and Alpert. Dr. Metzner is currently a psychotherapist, and a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he was formerly the president. He has been involved in consciousness research, including psychedelics, Yoga, meditation, and Shamanism, for over 40 years. He is a co-founder and president of the Green Earth Foundation, a non-profit educational organization devoted to healing and harmonizing the relationship between humans and the Earth. Currently, he is working on developing the foundations of ecological consciousness or Green Psychology. Gary Bravo, a staff psychiatrist for Sonoma County Mental Health in Santa Rosa, CA, has written numerous articles on psychedelics, psychiatry and transpersonal psychology.
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