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<$Project P.E.A.C.E. -- Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics$>
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Cannabis as Entheogen
"We live in an age when divine vision is dismissed as an hallucination, and desire to experience a direct communication with god is often interpreted as a sign of mental illness.
"Traditionally, the use of the great majority of mind-altering drug plants has been strongly associated with ritual and/or religious activity; indeed, ritualized consumption in vbarious forms, may be unequivocally religious, "as in the Christian Eucharist or the complex wine offerings to the ancestors in the elaborate bronze vessels of Shang and Zhou dynast China.
"A number of these authors believe this kind of use of consciousness-altering plants provided the inspiration for initial human religious experiences, even perhaps three of the world's largest religions, Hinduism, Judfasim, and Christianity."
Excerpt from "Archeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World" M.D. Merlin, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822. Economic Botany 57(3) pp.295-323. 2003. New York Botanical Garden Press, Bronx, NY 10458-5126 U.S.A.
To talk about spirituality is, in a certain way, a dilution of privacy in a dimension of existence that is the ultimate expression of individual relationship with the Life force. To define a spiritual path may be legally convenient, but it does not deepen the evolution of spiritual development in the way that reflection, meditation and silence do.
Having to explain the legitimacy of Cannabis as entheogen obviates the privacy of a person's connection to the energy some call "god." I prefer to use the term "Great YouNameIt" as a way of opening the door of tolerance and mutual understanding that is the foundation of freedom and what I consider to be true spirituality.
to be continued...
posted by projectpeace @
11:13 AM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004  |
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=6&story_id=144
A Letter to the Editor of Expatica, written by PvH in June 2003
Dear Editor,
On the subject of drug abuse by police, you may be interested to know of a conversation I had with Dr Willis Butler, a well-known physician, and Cannabis legalization advocate in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Dr Butler's father was also a physician, who in fact, founded Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Honolulu. The elder Dr Butler's specialty was treatment of addiction, mostly alcoholism.
According to his son, many of his father's patients were law enforcement professionals with alcohol and drug abuse problems. This took place in the 1920s, before Cannabis prohibition.
Cannabis was prescribed by Dr Butler to successfully treat alcoholism and drug addiction. In as few as twelve applications of cannabis, an alcoholic could be cured.
In my own circle of friends and people I have interviewed in the course of my work, Cannabis has been used by several people with years of hard drug problems.
They were able to substitute Cannabis for their previous heroin dependence, and eventually quit drugs, without withdrawal symptoms.
One of the most compelling arguments for an end to cannabis prohibition is its effectiveness in "building a wall between the people and hard drugs - that wall is hashish [Cannabis]", according to the Dutch Minister of Justice, interviewed in the film "The Hemp Revolution".
The fact that cannabis scarcity engenders hard drug abuse is a dimension of the current situation that is severely under-appreciated. Cannabis is a safe and effective herbal therapeutic, for whom mankind has largely lost respect. It is our great loss.
If you care to know more about the true value of Cannabis, please feel welcome to visit the web pages below.
For peace,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace/
posted by projectpeace @
11:07 AM
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The following announcement by Rep. Jay Inslee prompted the response that follows:
Forum on the New Apollo Energy Project
You are invited to my forum on:
The New Apollo Energy Project
A New Energy Future for America
Tuesday, April 13th, 2004
10:00am - 2:30pm
Jackson Federal Building, 4th Floor
915 Second Avenue, Seattle
Seattle, WA
The New Apollo Energy Project is a bold, new energy policy that will marshal the resources of the federal government to provide a vision of how to solve the following challenges:
1. Breaking our addiction to Middle East oil and thereby improving our homeland and national security
2. Addressing the threat of global warming
3. Expanding our economy and creating millions of new jobs.
With our well-trained and highly talented workforce, intellectual capital, and entrepreneurial spirit, the Northwest is uniquely poised to lead the country, and the world, in the development of these clean energy technologies.
This forum will look at problems associated with our country’s current energy consumption patterns, and discuss efforts to create a new energy future. Following the forum, the public will have the opportunity to visit a technology expo of Northwest Clean energy companies.
(End of Document)
This is my response:
Dear Representative Inslee,
I am truly sorry that I will not be able to attend tomorrow's hearing. I am inalterably obliged to care for my neice's children for the day. There is much I feel I have to contribute to the conversation however, and I trust that obligations of family will not present an insurmountable obstacle to participating in helping to securing their future.
Please consider the wisdom of hemp farming as a sustainable means of producing biomass fuel, and diesel seed oil, while reinvigorating farm economics and stimulating jobs in alternative fuel production industries and manufacturing. Essentially I am talking about turning swords into plowshares, a simple idea, but nonetheless timely and of immediate urgency.
Consider that everything that can be made from petroleum hydrocarbons can be made better, cheaper and with less pollution from agricultural carbohydrates. The lack of a hemp industry in this country has crippled organic agriculture and assured our addiction to toxic, unevenly distributed, finite fossil fuels and unsustainable nuclear energy.
In China, Europe, Canada, Russia and many other parts of the world, the hemp industry is a mainstay of agriculture. It is incredible that the U.S. is lagging so far behind in this agricultural renaissance. Please see Dennis Kucinich's website for a rational democratic perspective on the hemp industry and the failure of the drug war against Cannabis plant, the world's most nutritious and valuable agricultural resource.
If mankind is ever to develop energy production systems that are harmonious with the primarily significant Natural Order, then we must retool for that production, basing our energy feedstock on renewable energy crops that benefit other crops grown in rotation with them. Cannabis is a critically determinate resource of achieving this.
The most useful agricultural resource on Earth, Cannabis is capable of producing 50,000 different products including fuels, medicines, food, paper, cloth, building materials, paint, rope, and plastic. That Cannabis has been prohibited for three generations has created an economic vacuum for which we are paying too high a price, as essential resource scarcity continues to suffocate sustainable production in our country.
In 1994 President Clinton signed Executive Order 12919 which identfied "hemp" as a strategic resource, subject to civilian demand. I am making that demand in the form of a weblog at
http://formalcomplaint.blogspot.com/
which I am submitting to you for introduction into the dicussion of alternative energy production.
The diesel engine was never meant to run on petroleum. Vegetable and seed oils are cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy, as are methane, methanol, and hydrogen - all of which can be made from hemp.
Please contact me if you would like to follow up on this information further with a meeting to discuss the relationships between ending the counter-productive prohibition of hemp, stimulation of alternative fuel production, and envigoration of the farming industry, with real benefit to environment, economics, health and social evolution.
Once again please accept my apologies for not being able to attend this important meeting. I support you for your reasonable and intelligent
leadership, and will be spending the day telling my kids about what you are doing to protect their future.
for peace,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace/
posted by projectpeace @
11:09 PM
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Monday, April 12, 2004 |
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