Horizon's conference

[ayahuascakhan]

Blessings everyone,

Tonight at 9 PM there will be a reception at the:

Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington South
New York, NY

It should be an eclectic night of music, performance, and art. It's only $10 for the night.

However, if you wish to attend the all day conference Saturday and Sunday it's $25 for everything. I highly recommend coming to this conference if you live in the East Coast. The panel has several powerful messages to deliver:

Saturday September 20
10:00 - 10:15 Introduction
10:15 - 11:00 Daniel Pinchbeck The Future of Psychedelics
11:00 - 11:45 Allan Hunt Badiner Catching the Buzz: Drugs or Dharma?
11:45 - 12:30 Screening: Postmodern Times
12:30 - 2:00 Lunch break
2:15 - 3:00 Robert Forte Psychedelic Drugs and the Religious Experience: The Politics of Methodology
3:00 - 3:45 David Nichols, Ph.D. Is There a Renaissance in Psychedelic Research and How Did it Happen?
3:45 - 4:30 Roland Griffiths, Ph.D. Psilocybin Occasions Mystical-Type Experiences Having Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance
4:30 - 5:15 Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis Ibogaine Healing in America and Gabon: A Contrast in World View and Public Policy
5:15 - 6:00 Dan Merkur The Social Location of Psychedelic Mysticism
6:00 - 6:45 Sasha Shulgin, Ph.D. and Ann Shulgin Q & A with the Shulgins
7:00 - 7:45 Psyche and Delia Reading from a New Opera on the History of Psychedelics


Sunday September 21
1:30 Introduction
1:45 - 2:30 Alex and Allyson Grey Psychedelic Families: What Do We Tell the Children?
2:30 - 3:15 Alex Grey Contemporary Visionary Culture
3:15 - 4:00 Sean Helfritsch & Isaiah Saxon Psilocybin, Experiential Art and the Language of Forms
4:00 - 4:45 Rick Doblin, Ph.D. Mainstreaming Psychedelic Medicine: Patience is the Fastest Way
4:45 - 5:30 Bob Wold Cluster Headaches and Psilocybin: A New Medication on the Horizon
5:30 - 6:00 Adjourn


Speaker Biographies
(in alphabetical order)
Allan Hunt Badiner

Catching the Buzz: Drugs or Dharma?

I'm concerned with the relationship between psychedelics and Buddhism, the philosophical ground they share, the closeted psychedelic roots of Buddhist traditions of the West, as well as the inconvenient duality that undermines any chemically dependent spiritual path. Buddhism and psychedelics share the same ultimate goal: liberation of the mind. Few Buddhists claim that psychedelic use is a path itself, some maintain that it is a legitimate gateway, and others feel Buddhism and psychedelics don't mix at all.

Psychedelic and Buddhist perspectives are like overlapping concentric circles, and they share an acute attraction to mindfulness, and the primacy of direct experience. Certainly, in terms of Buddhist values, the ignorance and cruelty of the drug war evokes great compassion. Everyone has a different view of psychedelics in relation to spiritual practice, and in order to fully grasp any view with useful clarity, all voices need to be heard and respected.

Biography

Allan Hunt Badiner is a writer and an activist who is interested in how Buddhism relates to modern social problems. He is a contributing editor at Tricycle magazine, and serves on the board of directors of Rainforest Action Network. Allan edited the book, Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (Chronicle Books, 2002), as well as two other books of collected essays: Dharma Gaia: A Harvest in Buddhism and Ecology (Parallax Press, 1990), and Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism (Parallax, 2002). His new book, currently in the works, is called Buddhaland: The Eight Great Places of Pilgrimage in India. Allan holds a masters degree in Buddhist Studies from the College of Buddhist Studies in Los Angeles, and he is an Adjunct Professor currently teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.
Rick Doblin, Ph.D.

Mainstreaming Psychedelic Medicine: Patience is the Fastest Way

One day, psychedelic psychotherapy will be legally available in every town in the US. The psychedelics will be pure and prescribed under the supervision of therapists/psychiatrists with special training. This state of affairs will probably precede the establishment of a post-prohibition world. It will begin to develop in about ten years or less, after MDMA is approved by the FDA for the treatment of people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and will take about thirty more years to develop. The growth of the hospice movement is a good model, with the first hospice clinic in the US opening in 1974 with over 3000 clinics in existence by 2004. Today, psychedelic therapy is mostly an illegal practice, with some practitioners still willing to practice their healing work with psychedelics despite the risks involved. A strategy for how the underground becomes mainstream, then eventually taken for granted, will be discussed.

Biography

Rick Doblin, Ph.D. is the founder (in 1986) and president of MAPS. His dissertation (Harvard's Kennedy School of Government) was on "The Regulation of the Medical Use of Psychedelics and Marijuana," and his master's thesis (Harvard) focused on the attitudes and experiences of oncologists concerning the medical use of marijuana. His undergraduate thesis (New College of Florida) was a twenty-five year follow-up to the classic Good Friday Experiment, which evaluated the potential of psychedelic drugs to catalyze religious experiences. He also conducted a thirty-four year follow-up study of Tim Leary's Concord Prison recidivism experiment. Doblin has also studied with Stan Grof, M.D., and was in the first group to become certified as holotropic breathwork practitioners.
Encyclopedia Pictura

Psilocybin, Experiential Art and the Language of Forms

This discussion will focus on psilocybin's effects on the visual artist's emotions, identity, process, and understanding. Through channeling the shamanic archetype and its tools, contemporary artists can discover the devotional mode of creativity and its range of aspects - from enthusiasm to psychosis. Research into the brain's pathways of visual cognition confirms psilocybin's role as a tool to vivify these pathways for an individual artist. Systems-thinking, morphometric imprinting, synesthesia, visual modeling, and augmented reality will be explored. By examining these potentials of visual communication and the current ramp towards mediums that increasingly resemble direct experience, we are led to a better grasp of the artist's opportunities in the current social, environmental, and technological scenario.

Biography

Isaiah Saxon, Sean Hellfritsch, and Daren Rabinovitch are congealed together as the creative team Encyclopedia Pictura. Their film work includes collaborations with Bjork, McSweeney's, Grizzly Bear, and Will Wright's video game "Spore." The E.P. group has a diverse range of enthusiastic pursuits. Their recent actions include the design and construction of 3d camera and viewing systems, large-scale puppetry, body choreography, physical and digital sculpture and painting, and the development of a usable visual language as an augmented reality application. They are currently using permaculture design science to create a regenerative human settlement in the Santa Cruz Mountains whilst they write their first feature film - a 3d shamanic experience for children. Their creative influences include Buckminster Fuller, Hayao Miyazaki, Walt Disney, Terence McKenna, Bill Mollison, Jaron Lanier, and Leonardo DaVinci.
Robert Forte

Psychedelic Drugs and the Religious Experience: The Politics of Methodology

Entheogens burst into western society with profound political consequences that severely hampered the research community from legally exploring the spiritual characteristics of these remarkable substances. What type of psychedelic research would there be if we were free from the narrow scientific and legal parameters that presently define it? Stanislav Grof, for example constructed a novel model of the psyche based on his observations from LSD research that would be near impossible to conduct today. This talk is a continuation of a conversation, begun by Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary in 1961 at the Visionary Experience conference in Copenhagen, about how best to advance the science of religious experience. Leary was much to blame for this important work being pushed aside by politics. If we could push those politics aside and examine what is possible, what would we see?

Biography

Robert Forte is a scholar of the history and psychology of the ancient and modern use of psychedelic drugs. Over the last thirty years he has worked with Frank Barron, Stanislav Grof, Mircea Eliade, Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Claudio Naranjo, and many other seminal figures in the modern psychedelic movement. He is editor of Entheogens and the Future of Religion, Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In, and the 1998 and 2008 editions of The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. He holds a masterÕs degree in the psychology of religion from The Divinity School, University of Chicago , was a director of the Albert Hofmann Foundation, and taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and advisor to the Purdue University Library Special Collection on Psychoactive Substances.
Alex Grey

Contemporary Visionary Culture

Worldwide there is a movement of art and culture inspired by entheogens. Festivals and rock concerts give sanctuary to tens of thousands taking psychedelics and celebrating tribal unity. Alex Grey will offer an illustrated view of current and future trends in contemporary entheo art and gatherings born of the alchemical crucible.

Biography

Alex Grey is an artist, author, and teacher. His series of twenty-one life-sized paintings are illustrated in Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey. Grey's artwork has been exhibited worldwide, and has been included in the album art of such popular rock groups as Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, and the Talking Heads. Alex teaches courses in visionary art with his wife Allyson Grey at the Open Center in New York City, Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO, and Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. He authored a book, The Mission of Art, which represents his exploration of art as a spiritual path. Grey has been a student and practitioner of Buddhism for twenty years.

http://www.alexgrey.com
Alex & Allyson Grey

Psychedelic Families: What Do We Tell the Children?
Growing up in a culture where psychedelics are demonized, mind-altering substances are not a welcome topic of conversation in many homes. Knowing the perils and promise of entheogens, many of us face the question of whether to broach the subject with our children at all and if so, how. Alex and Allyson Grey will share from their own experience and site reports from MAPS, Erowid, Entheogen Review, Drug Policy Alliance, and include both U.S. and European source material. The Greys will lead a discussion where participants will be invited to air diverse points of view.


Biographies

Alex Grey is an artist, author, and teacher. His series of twenty-one life-sized paintings are illustrated in Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey. Grey's artwork has been exhibited worldwide, and has been included in the album art of such popular rock groups as Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, and the Talking Heads. Alex teaches courses in visionary art with his wife Allyson Grey at the Open Center in New York City, Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO, and Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. He authored a book, The Mission of Art, which represents his exploration of art as a spiritual path. Grey has been a student and practitioner of Buddhism for twenty years. http://www.alexgrey.com

The symbol system in the paintings of Allyson Grey represents an essentialized world view comprised of chaos, order and secret writing. The devotional, quality of the paintings resonate with Tantric art, Jain cosmological diagrams, and the science of chaos dynamics. Allyson received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Tufts University, has edited and co-written a dozen books and journals, and has taught at many venues including Tufts University, Boston Museum School and at Omega Institute for 18 years. She has lectured widely, had public art commissions and solo art exhibitions in New York City and throughout the U.S. Allyson, wife and partner of Alex Grey, is co-founder of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in NYC, and the mother of film actress Zena Grey. http://www.allysongrey.com


Roland Griffiths, Ph.D.

Psilocybin Occasions Mystical-Type Experiences Having Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance

Two studies at Johns Hopkins have characterized the effects of psilocybin administration under supportive conditions to carefully screened and well-prepared hallucinogen-naÔve adults who reported regular participation in religious/spiritual activities. During the 8-hour psilocybin sessions, which were conducted individually in an aesthetic living-room-like setting, volunteers were encouraged to use eyeshades and direct their attention inward. As assessed on the session day, most volunteers had a "complete" mystical experience after a high dose of psilocybin, although more than a third of volunteers also indicated that their experiences included fear, anxiety, or unpleasant psychological struggle at sometime during the session.

R. R. Griffiths, M. W. Johnson, and W. A. Richards

Biography

Roland R. Griffiths Ph.D., is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His principal research focus in both clinical and preclinical laboratories has been on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs. His research has been largely supported by grants from the National Institute on Health and he is author of over 300 journal articles and book chapters. He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, and to numerous pharmaceutical companies in the development of new psychotropic drugs. He is also currently a member of the Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence for the World Health Organization. He has an interest in meditation and is Principal Investigator of the psilocybin research initiative at Johns Hopkins.
Dan Merkur

The Social Location of Psychedelic Mysticism

Psychedelics and other entheogens have been used historically in at least five types of social organization. (1) Religious renewal movements are mass social phenomena, considerably spontaneous, and socially disruptive. They rarely last more than a generation. (2) Religious specialists, alone in their communities, may use drugs, and train their students. Examples include shamans, bards, alchemists, and members of some priesthoods and mystical orders. Self-selection to be religious specialists makes these traditions potentially long lasting. The drug experiences tend to confirm the general religions of the cultures. (3) Religious initiations into tribes, sects, or mystical orders are single brief exposures to drug experiences that accomplish spiritual awakenings, but leave further spiritual development to the general religions of the cultures. (4) In cases of religious associations, everyone in the tribe or sect partakes; and the general religions of the cultures or sects are profoundly shaped by the drug experiences. (5) Modern Western psychotherapies have uniquely used drug experiences to promote characterological change, and have at least a potential for an equally unprecedented transgenerational longevity.

Biography

Dan Merkur is a psychoanalyst in private practice and a research reader in the study of religion at the University of Toronto. He is the author of several books, including The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization, The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible, and The Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience.
Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis

Ibogaine Healing in America and Gabon: A Contrast in World View and Public Policy

Dimitri will discuss his experience overcoming a 20 year Heroin, Cocaine, and Methadone dependency with the use of a single treatment of Ibogaine. His talk will focus on his experience treating over 250 drug users with Ibogaine in a non clinical setting, his trips to Gabon, his own Bwiti initiation, and recent incorporation of the Bwiti ritual into the Ibogaine treatments.

Biography

Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis is a founding member of Freedom Root, The Ibogaine Project. He is an Ibogaine treatment provider working in NYC and a Bwiti initiate and Nganga.

Dimitri is a co-founder of VOCAL NYC drug users union and has spoken around the world about drug userÕs human rights, Harm Reduction, Drug policy, and Ibogaine. He has been featured in numerous publications and media outlets including National Public RadioÕs ÒThis American Life,Ó and his work is the subject of an upcoming documentary by Michel Negroponte.

Dimitri recently returned from his most recent trip to Gabon, Africa where he participated in several Bwiti initiations in Pygmy, Fang and Tsogo Villages using the sacrament of Iboga.

He is a poet, musician and lives in Brooklyn with his wife Roman.
David Nichols, Ph.D.

Is There a Renaissance in Psychedelic Research and How did it Happen?

The definition of renaissance is: a renewal of life, vigor, interest, etc.; rebirth; revival. If there is a renaissance in psychedelic research, to what or to whom can it be attributed? Did it just happen spontaneously? This talk will provide an overview of several events that may have contributed to the genesis of this revival. Incorporation of the Heffter Research Institute in 1993 was one such event, but many individuals played key roles in a process that has taken place over at least three decades and has led us to the present moment. This renaissance, if we can call it that, has resulted from the dedication and work of a relatively few individuals who believed strongly that psychedelics did not get a fair shake in their earlier incarnation in Western society and who have worked to educate the public and to increase understanding of the actual nature of these substances.

Biography

David E. Nichols, Ph.D. is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Purdue University, as well as a co-founder of the Heffter Institute, where he serves as Director of Preclinical Research.

Dr. Nichols has published more than 200 research articles on various aspects of the medicinal chemistry and neuropharmacology His laboratory has published numerous studies elucidating details both of the mechanism of action of MDMA and of the biochemical events related to the neurotoxic effects seen in animals following administration. Dr. Nichols coined the name 'entactogen' to describe the unique psychopharmacological effects of MDMA and related compounds.
Daniel Pinchbeck

The Future of Psychedelics

Beyond the potential for psychedelics in medicine and psychotherapy, these substances may have importance as tools for creativity, scientific innovation, and spiritual communion. As psychedelic research develops, we can look at the role of plant teachers and shamanism in tribal cultures for perspectives on what the future of psychedelics might hold for our desacralized postmodern world. Could science and spirituality fuse together to form a new level of human consciousness?

Biography

Daniel Pinchbeck is one of the founders of Open City, an art and literary journal. He was a 1999-2000 Fellow of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University and has written for many leading magazines. Author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) and Breaking Open the Head (Broadway Books, 2002). He is Editorial Director of Reality Sandwich.
Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, Ph.D & Ann Shulgin

Sasha and Ann Answer Questions about Psychopharmacology, Psychotherapy, and Drug Policy Reform

Q&A format on psychedelic chemistry, history, policy, the future.

Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, Ph.D. is a pharmacologist, chemist and drug developer. He and his wife Ann Shulgin authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL. Shulgin discovered many other noteworthy phenylethylamines including the 2C* family of which 2C-T-2, 2C-T-7, 2C-I, and 2C-B are most well known.

Shulgin personally tested hundreds of drugs, mainly analogues to various tryptamines (family containing LSD, DMT, and psilocybin) and phenylethylamines (family containing MDMA and mescaline). There are an infinite number of slight chemical variations, all of which produce slight variations in effect Ð some pleasant and some unpleasant Ð and all of which are meticulously recorded in Shulgin's books.

Ann Shulgin has worked as a lay-therapist with psychedelic substances such as MDMA and 2C-B in therapeutic settings while these drugs were still legal. She often appears as a speaker at conventions, and has continued to advocate the use of psychedelics in therapeutic contexts.

Together with her husband, chemist Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, she has authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL and contributed to the book Entheogens and the Future of Religion.


Bob Wold

Cluster Headaches and Psilocybin: A New Medication on the Horizon

Cluster Headache is not what you usually think of when someone says they have a headache: the pain will wake you up out of your sleep and is so searing painful that people are known to pull out their hair or bang their head against the wall to distract themselves from this pain. Indeed, cluster has been nicknamed "suicide headaches." You will leave this talk knowing a lot more about cluster headache and the story of how patients just like me came to find in psilocybin and LSD a profound medication that helps more than the medicines we currently can get from our physicians. Clusterbusters is doing something about that: we work closely with Dr. John Halpern of McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and are, in fact, sponsoring Dr. Halpern's clinical project to evaluate psilocybin for people with episodic cluster headache. Up to twenty- four subjects will be receiving psilocybin in this project, but please take note that this is a study of cluster headache patients with a psychedelic and not a psychedelic study with cluster headache patients. To bring research with psilocybin to Harvard has been a long and complicated road, but you will learn why it is the most important one to take: many lives depend on it and we want to count on your support.

Biography

Bob Wold is founder and President of Clusterbusters, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit charitable organization dedicated to the research of cluster headache and to support people with cluster headache and their families. Based in greater Chicago with his wife and 4 children, Mr. Wold has talked to 1000s of cluster sufferers. In fact, over 25 years of his adult life was burdened with severe cluster headache that was resistant to all standard treatments. That all changed after he tried psilocybin, which has helped regain control over this illness for him... and now hundreds to perhaps thousands of other cluster headache patients all over the world.
Supporting Program
PostModern Times

Mixing cutting-edge thinkers with state-of-the-art animation, PostModern Times presents a new understanding of our world, highlighting practical techniques for creating a sustainable future. The current planetary crisis issues from severe errors in the Western mindset leading to social and ecological catastrophe. On an exterior level, we tried to dominate nature rather than mesh with the biosphere. At the same time, we denied the individual and interior aspects of psychic reality. Through a mix of interview and narration, PostModern Times explores the work of scientists, philosophers, shamans, and technicians who push beyond the limits of current knowledge to make a new planetary culture.

Directed by Joao Amorim; Executive Producer Daniel Pinchbeck; Produced and Co-directed by Nikos Katsaounis; Edited by Pedro Tarrago; Design Rodrigo Lima; Animation Carlos Duba

Biography

Joao Amorim, is a Brazilian Director focusing on animation and documentary film making. He is currently represented by Curious Pictures, New York.

Joao has worked world wide as an industrial designer, animator, and Animation Supervisor for many years prior to directing. In 2007, Joao directed the short, "Toward 2012" featuring Author Daniel Pinchbeck. This project has lead to the production of the animated web series "Postmodern Times," produced by iclips.net, and focusing on issues around consciousness and sustainability.

He is currently working on 2012, Time for Change, his first feature documentary, highlighting ideas on sustainability and consciousness.

Joao lives in-between New York's East Village and Chapada dos Veadeiros, Brazil. In Chapada, Joao has been developing a permaculture project, putting sustainability in to action.
Psyche & Delia

Scene IV: CIA/MK-Ultra

Readers: Thomas Tuthill, Carleton Schade, and Ed Rosenfeld (co-librettist)


Psyche and Delia is a new opera project about the controversial history of psychedelics.

It is based on a series of events from history concerning real people. The scene being presented is a reading from the opera's libretto of the main scene in the opera concerning the CIA's involvement with psychedelics and other approaches to interrogation and mind control: the MK-ULTRA program. Readers of the scene are: Thomas Tuthill, Carleton Schade and Ed Rosenfeld (co-librettist).

Biographies

Mark Anton Moebius (composer) is a Berlin-based composer of operas, orchestral and choral works. He has been awarded a number of grants and prizes.

Gerd Stern (libretto) is a poet, writer and media artist. He is one of the founders of USCO, a multimedia arts collaborative active since the 1960's. His own work and the group's work has been shown and performed in museums, universities and galleries all over the United States and abroad.

Edward Rosenfeld (libretto) is a writer, editor, publisher and technology consultant. Several of the scenes in Psyche and Delia are based in part on MK-ULTRA, a screenplay written by Rosenfeld.

Isaac Abrams (scenic design) is a self-taught artist with an academic background in journalism and history. Abrams has worked extensively in the areas of painting, sculpture, film animation and computer animation. One of his paintings appeared on the cover of the book "Psychedelic Art."


2007 Speakers

Kenneth Alper MD, Rick Doblin Ph.D, Neal Goldsmith Ph.D, Alex & Allyson Grey, Charles Grob MD, Julie Holland MD, Michael Mithoefer MD, Ethan Nadelmann Ph.D and Andrew Sewell MD.

Click here for more information about 2007 speakers.
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So I really hope to see you guys there. On Saturday I will be wearing a t-shirt with a visual depiction of: monkey + psyilocybin = man, t shirt. I would love to talk to anyone from this forum there.