Journalism

   Imagine a robot that has a limited number of responses. If you say hello to it, the robot automatically reacts with: “Hi, how are you today?” If you keep greeting the robot, the repeated response would get annoying and it would not take long for you to recognise it as a machine. But say the creator programs it so that at every third time someone greets the robot, it changes its response to a second sentence: “Fine day, isn’t it?” In this case you would take longer to catch on it was a robot, but not much longer.

The following is an excerpt from Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey now available from Icaro Publishing.

"The vine has spread her tendrils across the world and a genuine archaic revival was underway. My bags were packed; South America beckoned, and the ancient mysteries of the rainforest awaited. I wanted in on it..."

Iquitos, Wednesday July 5th., 2006

IQUITOS IS ELECTRIC WITH NOONDAY HUMIDITY as Vance, John and I wade through the horde of locals hustling trinkets outside the Parthenon gates and join the other ayahuasca gringos amassing by the pool. It's Bowman's birthday -- he's twenty-four today -- and drinking with Guillermo is going to be his present.

We're waiting for Alexis, a blond, twenty-ish dude from Washington D.C. who's going to help translate the interview with Guillermo I've lined up. Alexis is a Princeton dropout who's backpacking around on a spiritual path, drinking ayahuasca with shamans and asking critical questions to deepen his own understanding. He's drunk with Guillermo four times now, and calls him "a fucking Jedi." When he turns up an hour late, wearing a Corey Feldman School of the Arts t-shirt, I know he'll fit right in with our media crew.

Vance wants to get out to the Espiritu de Anaconda, Guillermo's ayahuasca retreat to take some shots before we lose the afternoon light, so we pile into two motorcarros and speed away from the front of the Hotel Parthenon before the touristos bus has even arrived. But our motorcarros get bogged down on the dirt road turnoff from Km 14, a long undulating strip of mud from recent rains, and we get out to walk. The local villagers are busy building a concrete footpath to run from the highway past their village and towards the ayahuasca retreat a few miles in, and part of me wonders if this will facilitate t-shirt and refreshment stalls springing up wherever the gringos go, like mushrooms after a fresh rain.

COGNITION FACTOR: THE SMART MOVIE


written and directed by Mike Kawitzky, who answers some questions with Undergrowth at the bottom of this article. Photo by Louise Goddard.

The plot takes place in a stream of consciousness as a cyberpunk quests for enlightenment in the digital age.

The viewer is transported to a narrated virtual world in search of answers to the " Big Five" questions. It's a totally human experience as Cognition Factor stitches live conversations with Terence Mckenna, brother Dennis Mckenna, along with Ralph Abrahams, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Metzner, Alex Grey, and twenty more of the top thinkers of our times.

The Cognition Factor is a narrated gonzo documentary, showcast inside a 3D landscape backed by original compositions from top musicians like Dr. Lx Paterson, Dom Beken and Phil Le Gonedic, of The ORB, Merv Pepler (EatStatic/Ozrik Tentacles), Colin Angus& Matt Catt (The Shamen/Pablo_Sandoz), Steve Hillage (System 7), all brought together by ambient composer, performer and originator, Mike Martin (Indidginus).

The Cognition Factor poses Five Big Questions in order of appearance:

   1. What is consciousness/cognition?
   2.  Are we evolving as a species, or are we going extinct?
   3. What do you understand as G-D?
   4. Can the fusion of science and technology occur?
   5. What happens when we die?


"What we're going to do is we're going to all wire ourselves together, linking ourselves together at higher and higher bandwidth, with greater and greater understanding"

– Terence Mckenna - the Cognition Factor

for more info and to buy the DVD visit:

http://www.cognitionfactor.net

 Chanel is pulling its flagship sponsorship project for contemporary art. A newspaper story (the Guardian 29 Dec 2008) describes how in the face of fears that the 'supposedly recession proof luxury market' is falling victim to the credit crisis, the perfume and handbag company is not only shedding 200 jobs but bringing its highly publicized global art installation 'Mobile Art' to an early end for fears that this 'quirky marketing operation' has become a luxury that the brand could no longer support.

 The Silent Question

wow.
that night was nothing like i was expecting at all.

it started out pretty disheveled.
5 powerfull, stubborn minds trying to get into the same frequency to get everything together.
i took my dose around 6pm
with everyone else.
i left all technology behind before we left my house to adventure my backyard.
i live in the middle of nowhere.
my backyard is about 10 acres+a mountain.
the appalation trail runs through this mountain.
we were planning on climbing the mountain all week.

THE other day, when visiting my friend the Imam, I questioned him about a detail concerning Islam which has bothered me. The problem was as follows: Moses advocated the Eye for an Eye philosophy in the Old Testament. Succeeding him, in the New Testament, Christ advised moving on from the “Old Times” and now turning the other cheek, blessing those who hate you, and so forth. If we are, then, to accept Mohammed as a further evolution – through the Koran – why is it that the prophet (peace be upon him) has seemingly gone backwards, reinstating the Eye for an Eye attitude?

Hi.
Today I am going on a spiritual adventure-
2C-E

My plan is to do my research about it now. below i am going to type up some of the information.....and later on i am going to conclude my own description of the drug.

right away i get the picture that this drug isnt for people to just mess around with.
it is meant for spiritual awakening.
a change in perception.
those who are not experienced with psychedelics and who do not have a full understanding for the spiritual world would not get any benefit from this drug.

'It's all about green energy' - Solutions to climate change can lead to a philosophical shift in the way we develop, explains Rajendra Pachauri, winner of the Nobel peace prize and chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

We need a new climate philosophy, says Pachauri. Photograph: Ed Wray/AP

Rajendra Pachauri has a particular mission to bring light out of darkness. The recipient of last year’s Nobel peace prize wants to put electric lighting into the world’s 1.6bn poorest homes, which lack power. So will this increase the world’s carbon footprint? Well, no. He has developed solar powered lamps to market worldwide, including to the 64m rural homes without electricity in India. The handheld lamps will replace kerosene and can be assembled by local entrepreneurs.