Kukeon at Eleusis  

For nearly two millennia, the foundations of Western civilization in Greece were baptized in and inspired by an entheogenic elixir called the Kukeon. And yet now hardly anyone knows about it.  

Aristotle once said initiates came to the temple at Eleusis, north of Athens, not to learn something but to experience something. From about 1500 BC until AD 392, when the annual festivities were abruptly outlawed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius, a die-hard Christian. Plato described it as the "blessed sight and vision" he witnessed "in a state of perfection" -- the climax of his initiation into "the holiest of Mysteries." 

The elixir was called the kukeon and each pilgrim earned the honorary title epoptes, which means something like "the one who has seen it all." Without doubt, they claimed death was not the end of our human journey. Marcus Aurelius rebuilt the temple in second century AD after the barbarian Kostovoks nearly destroyed it in AD 170. The rebuilt temple has forty-two columns that once supported a 52 x 52 square meter sanctuary.

What exactly happened to initiates upon drinking the Kukeon? Are there substances still on the Earth that provide the same experience as the one hallowed at Eleusis? The holiest of Mysteries is still available to those who know the way and are humble and grateful enough to approach the experience as the sacred portal it is.

The Global Prison Experiment 

How would you conduct an experiment on a global scale? Have similar experiments been conducted before and if so, what questions were asked by those experiments and what lessons were learned? 

Questions like --

What is the power of social situations to overwhelm individuals?

What happens when good people are put in an evil place?

Does the situation outside of you come to control your behavior or will the things inside of you, your attitudes, values, and morality allow you to rise above a negative environment? 

How will people react to an oppressive regime? 

Are decent people just as capable of committing acts against their conscience as those who have perpetrated the worst war crimes?

What happens to people who feel hopeless?

What happens to people who feel out of control? 

How long does it take for stressful situations to distort thinking?

How hard is it for victims of abuse to stand up for themselves?

How easily can people dissociate themselves from horrendous acts they see or they do?

Why will the many stand silently by as the few do horrendous things?

Is there a core in human nature that dictates that good people cannot do bad things and good people will dominate over bad situations?

How can evil situations win over good people?

Two experiments shed penetrating light on human nature and the state of the world today. Dr. Stanley Milgram in the '60's and the electric shock obedience experiment. Professor Philip Zimbardo in the 70's and the Stanford prison experiment. With those experiences considered, we return to the original question -- How would you conduct an experiment on a global scale?

And now we add a new question. Is it really just an experiment?

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted."

 - Aldous Huxley

 

I DON'T NEED TO BELIEVE 

In 1959 the BBC program Face to Face interviewed Carl Jung at age 84, two years before he died.

Interviewer: “Do you believe in God?”

Jung: “Now? Difficult to answer.”  After a pause Jung continued with a grin, “I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.”

Later in the interview, the interviewer asked, “You said that death is psychologically just as important as birth, like it is an integral part of life but surely it can’t be like birth if it’s an end, can it?”

Jung: “Yes, if it’s an end – and there we are not quite certain about this end. Because you know there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche that it isn’t entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see around corners and such things, only ignorance deny these facts. It is quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche in part at least is not dependent upon these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to live in time and space alone, and obviously it doesn’t, then to that extent the psyche is not subjected to those laws and that means a practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychic existence beyond time and space.”

Interviewer: “Do you yourself believe that death is probably the end?”

Jung: “Well, I can’t say. The word ‘belief’ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. If I know a thing, I know it, then I don’t need to believe it. I don’t allow myself to believe a thing just for the sake of believing it. I can’t believe it! But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept.”

Interviewer: “Well now, you’ve told us that we should regard death as being a goal and to stray away from it is to evade life and life’s purpose. What advice would you give to people in their later life to enable them to do this when most of them must in fact believe that death is the end of everything?”

Jung: “Well, you see I’ve treated many old people and it’s quite interesting to see what the unconscious is doing with the fact it is apparently threatened with the complete end. It disregards it. Life behaves as if it were going on and so I think it is better for old people to live on, to look forward to the next day as if he had to spend centuries, and then he lives properly. But when he is afraid, when he doesn’t look forward, he looks back, he petrifies, he gets stiff, he dies before his time. But when he’s living on, looking forward to the great adventure that’s ahead, then he lives. And that is what the unconscious is intending to do. Of course, it is obvious that we’re all going to die and this is the sad finale of everything – but nevertheless there is something in us that doesn’t believe it apparently, but this is a psychological fact. It doesn’t mean to me that it proves something. It is simply so.”

 Have You Been Called An Extremist?

"But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love ... Was not Amos an extremist for justice: 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.' ... And John Bunyan: 'I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.' And Abraham Lincoln: 'This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.' And Thomas Jefferson: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....' So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men...were [all] crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

Fauci's Fumble

We were all warmly touched when Dr. Fauci took time out of his busy schedule being the world's only fact-checked verified authority on everything medical and inoculated Santa Claus with the Covid-19 vaccine. The problem is, children, his action is now causing a super-spreader event of catastrophic proportions. By now, everyone in the world has handled presents received from the North Pole. And as we've been warned, Covid-19 can live on various surfaces for days, including packages handled in busy workshops. Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci neglected to include Santa's elves in his inoculation plans. Neither did he make certain that the elves and Santa adhered to proper social distancing and mask wearing protocols during the present-making process. An added concern is the rumor that Covid-19 passed back-and-forth between reindeer and elves, during which time it mutated into a new, ho-ho-horrific form. Heaven help us all.

105 Years Ago 

As relevant now as then, as human nature remains the same.

"The psychology of the individual is reflected in the psychology of the nation. What the nation does is done also by each individual, and so long as the individual continues to do it, the nation will do likewise. Only a change in the attitude of the individual can initiate a change in the psychology of the nation. The great problems of humanity were never yet solved by general laws, but only through regeneration of the attitudes of individuals. If ever there was a time when self-reflection was the absolutely necessary and only right thing, it is now, in our present catastrophic epoch."  -- C. G. Jung, Zurich - December 1916