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Making the Planetary Personal

Making the Planetary Personal

by | January 5, 2016 | Consciousness & Psychedelics, Releases & Announcements, Sustainability & Ecology

Dear Friends,
Reflecting on this next turn around the Sun and this auspicious moment in human and planetary history, brings to mind some of the key ideas that drive me and our work here at Synergetic Press:
  • We live in the ANTHROPOCENE: The Age when humans are recognized as the dominant geological force of the planet;
  • BIOSPHERICS is the interdisciplinary science essential to understanding planetary and cultural dynamics;
  • The NOOSPHERE, a sphere of intelligence around the planet that is emerging to determine our evolutionary future.
The concept of the noosphere was developed in the 1920s by Vladimir Vernadsky, Édouard Le Roy and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Nearly 100 years ago, in scientific, philosophical, and artistic circles people were discussing the idea of the noosphere, a world in which all of humanity become responsible stewards of the biosphere. I heard about the noosphere in 1984 when I was working at the Biosphere 2 project and published the first English translation of Vernadsky’s theory of the biosphere. Thirty years later, the noosphere has become an essential concept for understanding today’s ecological and culturological crises.

Humanity is undergoing a process of “planetization” becoming a truly global culture and entering a new era of the human journey.

        -Teilhard de Chardin

In the Guardian recently, David Suzuki applauded the landmark Paris agreement on climate change as an indication that “the Age of the Humans won’t necessarily lead to an age of destruction.” But, to change course, we humans must act swiftly and on a grand scale.
However, I’ve been exposed to countless BIG IDEAS about sustainability, consciousness … what practical changes have I made as a result? Christian Schwägerl’s book The Anthropocene, made me really question everything I think I need to live, what I throw away, and how. I began to examine each purchase and found ways to recycle as much as possible. Tony Juniper tells us in What Has Nature Ever Done for Us? that we produce enough food on the planet to feed everyone, but upwards to 50% of the food now produced is wasted. Staggered by this statistic, I have since paid close attention to what’s in the fridge, saving money and produce. Working on Zig Zag Zen with Allan Badiner and Alex Grey inspired me to reenergize my body and brain through meditation and seek to be more conscious of my actions and daily choices in life.
Every book Synergetic Press publishes contains ideas to help us understand how to be better to the planet, better to ourselves. The time is now to think, innovate, regenerate … make the planetary situation personal.
We have an exciting year ahead.
Deborah Parrish Snyder, Publisher

News & Events

Biosphere 2: World’s Largest Laboratory for Global Ecology Documentary Short on YouTube

Pioneer in biospherics and Synergetic Press author, John Allen, with Mark Nelson and other project co-founders and directors, talk about why they built the world’s largest laboratory for global ecology, Biosphere 2, and how eight people lived and worked inside it for two years (1991-1993) growing their food, recycling their air, water and wastes. This experiment, built to put Vernadsky’s theory of the biosphere into practice, defined many aspects of the metabolic connection between humans and the environment that sustains them, while greatly advancing the field of space habitat design. The project has been noted as the first experiment to examine the value of natural ecosystems services in this man-made world.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Photo of Christian Schwägerl and Tony Juniper by Jonathan Greet

The Anthropocene at the Royal Society of Arts and Royal Institution in London

The Anthropocene: The Human Era and How it Shares Our Planet, by award winning environmental journalist, Christian Schwägerl, was launched in London last Spring at the October Gallery, and joined by Tony Juniper in a talk on the subject at the Royal Society of the Arts. CLICK HERE TO VIEW ON THE RSA CHANNEL

And for a brilliant overview on the Anthropocene, see this talk at the Royal Institution in London with Leicester University professor, Jan Zalasiewicz and Christian, moderated by Robin McKie, scientific editor of the Observer. CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Vladimir Vernadsky’s Essays on Geochemistry and the Biosphere Now Available in EBook

Vladimir Vernadsky’s complete, unabridged Essays on Geochemistry and the Biosphere, his two seminal books in one. Translated from the Russian 1944 edition.

Read the Introduction by Alexander Yanshin, VP Emeritus, Russian Academy of Sciences for FREE.

Click Here

Dialogue About Buddhism, Psychedelics and Visionary Art in Santa Fe and London

In April we celebrated publication of the new edition of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics, edited by Allan Badiner and Alex Grey, with events in Santa Fe where editors Alex and Allan were joined by Rick Strassman and Allyson Grey for an engaging discusion of the topics.
In July, Zig Zag Zen released in London with events at Breaking Convention conference and legendary Watkins Bookstore. Zig Zag Zen is a unique collection of wisdom from scholars, teachers, and artists on the best practices for spiritual exploration and the interface with psychedelics.

Forthcoming titles include the Ayahuasca Reader and The John C. Lilly Reader. Click on the covers below for more details. Sign up for our mailing list to keep informed of new titles and events. www.synergeticpress.com
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On the Side of Nature: An Age of Human Stewardship & Bioeconomics

On the Side of Nature: An Age of Human Stewardship & Bioeconomics

by | December 21, 2015 | Sustainability & Ecology

David Suzuki called the UN Paris agreement a milestone in the Anthropocene Era, and an indication that “the Age of Humans won’t necessarily lead to an age of destruction.” (The Guardian) While I’m as optimistic as they come, it’s clear that humanity needs to act swiftly and on a grand scale to effect and uphold the major changes that must occur to prevent a planetary catastrophe.

One of my favorite eco-heros, Tony Juniper, a campaigner, writer, and sustainability adviser reports from Paris conference this month: “Increased atmospheric CO2 is doing much more than warming the Earth, it’s also acidifying oceans, something that is already having major impacts on ocean ecology in the Southern Ocean and the North Atlantic. Likely effects: more CO2 in the atmosphere, more jellyfish … We really have to put the brakes on carbon dioxide and very fast. These effects are already becoming very large and there are huge uncertainties as to how this will affect among other things food production.”(The Ecologist)

Atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest they have been in millions of years and the impacts of climate change are also impacting corporate and government balance sheet at such levels that corporations are starting to sit up and take notice. Trade can no longer trump climate, as the NAFTA’s policy has upheld for decades. There is no part of the economy that doesn’t depend on Nature, says Juniper. If there is no Nature, he argues, there can be no economy, no growth, no business.

The solution, Tony says, is a shift to a “bioeconomy” where our economic system is a subset of Nature, and not the other way around. A world where the technosphere is designed to support and sustain the biosphere, not use it up. See his talk at TEDxWWF.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvUjJrIzUj4″ width=”640″ height=”360″]

TonyJuniper_squareLearn more about how it pays to be on the side of Nature in Tony Juniper’s  book, What Has Nature Ever Done for Us? How Money Really Does Grow on Trees with a foreword by Prince Charles.

Read the Foreword by Prince Charles and Preface for Free Here.

How the Visionary Art of Android Jones Connects Kali, Endangered Species and the Empire State Building

How the Visionary Art of Android Jones Connects Kali, Endangered Species and the Empire State Building

by | December 15, 2015 | Fiction, Poetry & Art

 

Striking images of endangered species were projected onto the side of the iconic Empire State Building as examples of the animals we currently risk losing due to the expansion of industrial activities. In reflecting on these images, we are called to look within ourselves for ways to transform our lives to be inclusive of all life.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYd4S-i_yms” ]

An image of Kali, as painted by Android Jones, was projected onto the Empire State Building after the scenes of endangered species. Jones said “Kali is the personification of time and death. Maha Kali is the fiercest form of Maa Durga representing the destroyer of evil and Darkness.”

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDykLnp6j0M” ]

This projection event on one of the most recognizable buildings on the planet was organized by the group who produced Racing Extinction, a film about the hidden world of the markets and industries behind the extinction of the precious species of this planet.

via Rebelle Society

In an unprecedented and awe-inspiring public display of art by filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and his team, Projecting Change, projected onto the NYC skyline by Obscura Digital, was meant to spark awareness of massive wildlife extinction, and be a chilling call to conservation turning the Empire State Building, New York’s brightest and most recognizable symbol and capitalism’s earliest totem, into the worlds greatest canvas, as well as its most epic tombstone and oracle of the Dark Feminine.

From the colossal projection of Cecil the Lion, whose recent tragic death provoked a mass outpouring of love and outrage, to the images of hundreds of nameless endangered animals, finned ones and scaled ones, horned ones and winged ones, two-legged and four, creeping and crawling and running for their lives across the Empire State Building, this revolutionary and heart-rending project, will not soon be forgotten.

“If you are not heartbroken, you are not paying attention!” this project seems to scream from its illustrious rooftop. For as the parade of near-extinct animals appear on the screen, it is impossible not to face the crushing realization that it is not a question of if hundreds of species will continue to go extinct, but when… Our shiny unsustainable systems based on glamour and greed have taken us to a world on the edge of collapse — only holy darkness can save us now.

And it was Kali, the dark mother, the destroyer of illusions and the personification of time, death and holy change, by Android Jones, that stole the show in New York, as the final, spectacular image of the installation, leaving her fierce gaze to peer into our souls.

If there was ever a sign of the times, this is it. In our bones we all recognize, we are in the death pangs of the old world, and that we make it through is anything but certain.

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It is time to get our Kali on inside and out; to cut off the head and commit to the heart on all levels. So many of us are shedding our false selves, empty certainties and small lives, and no matter how much we wish for the safety of the old, the more desperately we hold on, the hotter the fires of the Real.

The quickening of the New Earth is upon us and what is needed now is the fierceness of Ma Kali. A holy oracle of change, her medicine is darkness, her initiation is by fire — she calls upon us to rise from our own ashes, to speak truth to power, take on all our shadows and take up the arms that we have, our own, to hold, serve and protect all life as we would our own child.

The Divine Feminine energy is pulsing through every pore of the planet right now, every whisper of the world soul is one intimately connected to our ecology. The ecological consciousness is feminine consciousness, systemic, interconnected, relational and embodied; nature and psyche, body and soul, the spiritual and the political can no longer remain apart.

May we burn up the convoluted narratives of separation, deprivation and control, cut off the dead promises of capitalism, step fully into our dharma, and let the Mother guide us through the fires of transfiguration. May all beings be happy. One Body. One Heart. Jai Ma!

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“In preparation for the birth of the Divine, the entire human race is now going through a global dark night, which will result in a new humanity that has been humbled and chastened by tragedy, so that it may open completely to the mystery of divine grace. This dark night cannot be bargained with, explained away, leapt over or mitigated. It is the destined crucifixion of a communal human ego now clearly revealed to be suicidal, matricidal, dangerous to itself and to the whole of creation. No one and nothing will stop Kali dancing Her terrible dance of destruction and re-creation. There will be no resurrection of an embodied divine humanity without a systematic, perfectly organized, brutally complete crucifixion of everything in us that keeps us addicted to the systems of illusion that are now rapidly destroying everything.”  ~ Andrew Harvey

You can read more from Rebelle Society on this story here.

And you can see more of the innovative and esoteric work of Android Jones in the New Edition of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics. 

 

Artist Paul Laffoley Enters the Bardo

Artist Paul Laffoley Enters the Bardo

by | November 18, 2015 | Consciousness & Psychedelics, Fiction, Poetry & Art

The world has lost a leading visionary artist in Paul Laffoley, who passed away on November 16th, 2015. His paintings featured mandala-like imagery, making heavy use of text and trans-disciplinary symbolic elements. His architectural background comes through in his depictions of complex spiritual ideas, providing a sense of looking at the blueprints of the subtle structure of reality.

mindphysics

Mind Physics: The Burning of Samsara in Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics

From the Official Paul Laffoley Website:

The visionary artist and luminary, Paul Laffoley, had died after a long battle with congestive heart failure. He had an extraordinary grasp of multiple fields of knowledge compulsively pursing interests that often lead him into uncharted territory. His complex theoretical constructs were uniquely presented in highly detailed mandala-like canvases largely scaled to Fibonacci’s golden ratio. While an active participant in numerous speculative organizations including his own Boston Visionary Cell since the early 70s, his work began to attract an increasing following in his late career with shows at the Palais de Tokyo (2009), the Nationalgalerie/Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin (2011), and the Hayward Gallery, London, the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and the Yerba Buena Center in 2013. The first book on Laffoley’s oeuvre was published by Kent Fine Art in 1989, followed by several subsequent publications beginning with his first retrospective organized by the Austin Museum of Art (1999). Forthcoming in March of 2016, the University of Chicago Press will be releasing the long awaited book entitled The Essential Paul Laffoley. He was a kind and generous giant, and he will be sorely missed by all of us.

Paul Laffoley was one of the visionary artists featured in Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics.

Visionary Salon: Zig Zag Zen Discussion with Allan Badiner, Alex Grey, & Allyson Grey

Visionary Salon: Zig Zag Zen Discussion with Allan Badiner, Alex Grey, & Allyson Grey

by | November 16, 2015 | Present & Past Events

11-17-zig-zag-zen-chapel-of-sacred-mirrors-new-york-alex-grey-allan-badiner-copy

Join Allan Badiner, Alex Grey, and Allyson Grey at CoSM: the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors on November 21st for an in depth, interdimensional , intersectional discussion exploring the promise of DMT, the path of the Dharma, and how to act creatively and skillfully with whatever tunes us in.

Buddhism and psychedelic exploration share a common concern: the liberation of the mind. This new edition of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (2015, Synergetic Press) has evolved from the landmark anthology that launched the first inquiry into the ethical, doctrinal, and transcendental considerations at the intersection of Buddhism and psychedelics.

A provocative and thoughtful exploration of inner states and personal transformation, Zig Zag Zen now contains an expanded display of remarkable artwork including pieces from Android Jones, Sukhi Barber, Ang Tsherin Sherpa, and Amanda Sage, as well as the original work of Robert Venosa, Mark Rothko, Robert Beer, Francesco Clemente, and many others, including more work by the pioneering visionary artist Alex Grey.

You can purchase tickets from CoSM here: https://www.z2systems.com/np/clients/cosm/eventRegistration.jsp?event=1617&

About the Presenters

Allan Badiner served as the editor in the first and second editions of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (Chronicle Books, 2002; Synergetic Press, 2015), as well as two other books of collected essays, Dharma Gaia: A Harvest in Buddhism and Ecology and Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism. Allan is a contributing editor of Tricycle magazine, and serves on the board of directors of Rainforest Action Network, Threshold Foundation and Project CBD. He has been a student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh for more than 25 years.

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Alex Grey is a renowned American visionary artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art. His work spans a variety of forms including performance art, sculpture and painting. He is a member of the Integral Institute, on the board of advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics and is Chair of Wisdom University’s Sacred Art Department. He and his wife Allyson Grey are co-founders of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a non-profit church supporting Visionary Culture in Wappinger, New York.

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Allyson Grey artist, writer & social sculptor, has co-written & edited a dozen books & all seven volumes of CoSM Journal of Visionary Culture.  Since 1975, Allyson has been artistic partner and studio mate of artist, Alex Grey.  With a Master of Fine Arts from Tufts University, Allyson has been an educator & muse to artists the world over.
  Alex & Allyson are the parents of actress, Zena Grey. Together, they co-founded the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, CoSM, an interfaith church, celebrating creativity as a spiritual path.

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Sukhi Barber – Appearance/Emptiness

 

Even if you aren’t able to attend the event, you can still engage in the conversation with the many voices of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics. 

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