bi11i
01-25-2005, 07:44 PM
Check this trailer for a new movie entitled Entheogen which is opening at a Sundance festival this week in Utah: http://www.maps.org/avarchive/igwana/Entheogen.mov (http://www.maps.org/avarchive/igwana/Entheogen.mov)
Entheogen (http://www.maps.org/sys/nq.pl?id=308&fmt=none)
AWAKENING THE GOD WITHIN
Introduction:
Entheogen is a term derived from two Greek words: entheos, and genesthai, which translate to "that which causes (God) to be in a person."
In modern parlance, the term Entheogen has been created as a substitute for the more slanderous term psychedelic. It is sometimes translated as "creating the divine within," yet this interpretation misses the point. Entheogen implies something that is neither created nor experienced within the user. More accurately, the concept is concerned with eliciting a sacred space where the transcendent and immanent in the human being interweave in a co-creative process with the cosmos. Entheogen acts as a catalyst that allows for this realm of consciousness to be experienced.
Central Vision for the Film:
Entheogen: Awakening the God Within, will be a film that blends several styles of documentary storytelling in a sensory-overload/free-association collage in an attempt to emulate the psychedelic experience. Hearkening back to the clarion call sounded by Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey ("The Ultimate Trip"), we hope to assemble multiple layers of meaning to captivate the audience and literally take them on a trip, ultimately awakening the god within.
The film aims in many ways to invoke an altered state of consciousness, to inspire in the viewer a new conversation about the essence of being. Just as Entheogens are powerful compounds that catalyze a shift in the consciousness of the user, Entheogens: Awakening the God Within will attempt to produce a mystical experience through the accumulated power of image and media.
Through a structured audio/video collage of tribal dance rhythms, archival footage of aboriginal cultures, and interviews with leading scholars and visionaries in the field of entheogenic studies, we will access a realm of unconscious meaning embedded within human experience. What the Bleep Do We Know has emerged as a phenomenon, but we feel that film only develops a minute portion of the unlimited potential to explore these realms of consciousness through film.
Theoretical framework:
Entheogen: Awakening the God Within is a documentary that embeds itself in the larger context of the global evolution of consciousness itself. It hopes to recover the connection between body, mind, and spirit by exploring the annals of history to find resonance with the present rebirth of tribal culture. Though our archaic ancestors routinely experienced effective rites of passage at key moments in their lives, modern industrial societies have done away with such rites of passage, erecting in their place superficial ceremonies that carry little of the transformative effect of the old ways. We hope to use the medium of film reinvent the mystery rite, and the viewing experience will be an initiation into the twenty-first century landscape of consciousness.
As our world becomes increasingly knit together by fiber optic cables transmitting ideas at the speed of light, the archaic mind is communicating with the modern mind. Nurtured and accelerated by the systemic communication provided by the global Internet, contemporary ritual is now being reborn.
From the Burning Man festival in the high Nevada desert to the ecstatic trance- dance parties on the beaches of Goa in southern India, the citizens of the emergent global village are dancing to a new beat, a rhythm that is simultaneously modern and archaic, consciously creating new rituals that seek to reconnect human consciousness to the planetary mind.
The fusion of electronic music and entheogenic substances into contemporary rites of passage create spaces to explore realms hidden to everyday experience. Through an alchemical synthesis of these two threads, youth culture has found a way to cultivate what Terence McKenna called, "Tapping into the Gaian Mindan experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet." Without that experience, he argues, "we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies. But with that experience, the compass of the self can be set. Were figuring out how to reset the compass of the selfthrough community, ecstatic dance, through psychedelics."
The film is the manifestation of this phenomenon, a virtual space inviting the viewer to co-create a new mythology that expresses a profound sense of the embeddedness of human consciousness with the mind of the planet. It affirms the living fact of an innate intelligence that is composed of the interaction between human consciousness and the Gaian mind or world-soul. By weaving together modern techno-tribal culture into its historical roots in the mythic threads of tribal experience, Entheogens will awaken the viewer to his or her place in the evolutionary history of consciousness. We invite the viewer to fundamentally re-imagine their relationship to the earth and to the cosmosin short, to awaken the god within.
Historical Framework:
Entheogens will present interview footage of leading scholars on the history of philosophy and religion. Using a broad historical perspective, we will explore the perennial rites of passage of tribal culture and explore their evolution into the ancient mystery cults of the Pythagorean, Orphic, and Eleusinian mystery traditions of the Ancient Greek world. These key entheogenic experiences were essential to the development of Western thought, laying down the fundamental structures that have evolved into our present constructions of what it means to be a human being and of our place in the cosmos.
Entheogens seeks the conceptual manifestation of the individual and the possibility of connecting to the divine. As we explore the cultural conditions that created the matrix of modern human experience, we will pay special attention to the relationship between human beings and use of psychotropic medicines in the past, present, and future. By framing the discussion into a historical context larger than any before portrayed on film, the overall effect will be a fusion of classical scholarship, dance music, and modern medicine into what we hope will be the most comprehensive, objective presentation of entheogenic experience to date.
Modern Countercultural Movements:
The second narrative thread woven to create the film will be an immersion into the ecstatic experience of rave culture. Through footage of ecstatic dance settings, we will present images of people reconnecting with the root of being that is being rediscovered in a modern industrial context. Trance parties around the globe have gathered people together from all walks of life to participate in rituals that are highly resonant with the mystery traditions of the ancient past. By gathering in communities to dance until dawn, modern rave culture is recreating the archaic rites of passage. As they celebrate the reconnection with a vital essence, participants in this underground culture are dancing to save the world.
"If we are experiencing ecstasy, we are doing it for the purpose of feeling the ecstasy of life itself, and of the diversity of life to which we belong. To do it merely for its own sake at this moment is a supremely dangerous self-deception and abrogation of our mission in life.We are animals. We are beautiful, living mammals, on a garden planet. Feeling the pleasure and the joy and the ecstasy of that reality is our birthright. We have been imprisoned away from it in a truly tragic twist of fate" David Ulansey
Entheogens and Modern Medicine:
No documentary about entheogenic experience would be complete without a thorough discussion of the highly-charged atmosphere in which these psychotropic substances reemerged to the Western Mind. We will explore the complexities of the relationship of these medicines to modern industrial societies in a way that hopes to transcend the typically polarized documentary discussions of the past.
Most important for the film is the documentation of the renaissance of government-sanctioned research into entheogenic substances. Exploring research ranging from the use of MDMA (Ecstacy) for post-traumatic stress disorder at Harvard University Medical School to the use of psilocybin for advanced-stage cancer patients at UCLA, we will explore several of these studies through extensive interviews with the principle investigators overseeing the research.
Format and Style:
Entheogens: Awakening the God Within, is a film that will transcend traditional styles of documentary storytellingit will be a psychedelic experience. Computer graphics, animation, b-roll and archival sampling, voice over, interviews, and reenactments will be assembled into a kaleidoscopic collage. The final product will be an entheogenic ensemble of mind, light, sound, soul, and awakening that allows for multiple layers of meaning to coexist simultaneously. The driving beat of tribal dance musiccapable of entraining thought and sustaining people in collective experience for hours at a timewill be the metronome that unites the film into a coherent whole.
RATIONALE FOR MOVIE:
While there have been documentaries in the past that covered events such as Burning Man, trance parties, and the ceremonial use of psychotropic substances, no film has been produced that considers all three of these topics together. When one examines these phenomena collectively, it is apparent that they are correlated and interconnected. Entheogens will fuse these phenomena into a contemporary rite of passage that hopes to bring to life the mystery traditions of the Ancient World.
When we marvel at the extraordinary success of recent documentary films that have hit a chord in the collective psyche (Fahrenheit 9/11, What the Bleep Do We Know?), and consider this success in conjunction with the collective fascination with films that speak to mythical realities (The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter films), we feel that this is the perfect time to present a documentary film that speaks to all these aspects of the human psyche. This film will be a sensory overload of light, sound, and the history of human experience itself that no one will want to miss.
LIST OF INTERVIEWEES
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH:
Rick Doblin., Ph.D. President of MAPS
Political issues surrounding the rescheduling of entheogens/psychedelics as adjuncts for psychotherapy.
John Halpern, M.D. Psychiatrist Harvard Medical School
John just received a multi-million dollar grant from the NIDA (National Institute for Drug Abuse) studying nuerotoxicity of MDMA and verbal memory deficit disorders(of which, research thus far has proven very minimal). He has also worked on a study involving Native Americans and alcoholism and the church of peyote.
Charles Grob, M.D. Psychiatrist at UCLA Medical School
Currently working on a pilot study with psilocybin and anxiety associated with advanced staged cancer patients.
Francisco Moreno University of Arizona College of Medicine
Study involving psilocybin as the treatment of anxiety and nervous disorders
Michael Mithoefer Psychiatrist in South Carolina
Conducting the only study involving MDMA assisted psychotherapy for chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.
Randolph Hencken
Program director of the Ibogaine Association
Rocky Caravelli
Patient Treatment Supervisor and Coordinator for the Ibogaine Association in Mexico.
PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND:
Brother David Steindl-Rast, Ph.D.
Benedictine Monk who has spent fifty years in a monastery.
Co-author of Belonging to the Universe with physicist Fritjof Capra. Conducts seminars on the art of film.
Alex Grey
Visionary artist www.alexgrey.com
Dr. Francis Lu
Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at UCSF
Film and healing, East and West
Sean Kelly, Ph.D.
Director Philosophy, Cosmology & Consciousness at CIIS
Melody Jackson- Ph.D.
Mythical powers of film
Dav id Ulansey, Ph.D. Professor of philosophy and religion at CIIS
Ancient Hellenic mystery religions / history and theory of shamanism.
Charles Tart Professor of Psychology
Institute for Transpersonal Psychology
Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UC Davis
Altered States of consciousness and transpersonal psychology
Robert McDermott, Ph.D.
President Emeritus California Institute of Integral Studies
Lectures on the evolution of consciousness, Asian and western spirituality.
Chris Bache- Ph.D.
Professor of Religious Studies Youngstown University
Explores the philosophical implications of non-ordinary states of consciousness
Interviews also Scheduled with:
Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.)
Morris Berman, Ph.D.
Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.
Stan Grof, M.D.
Sandra & Michael Harner
And to Be Scheduled:
Fritjof Capra - philosopher author of The Turning Point, Mind Walk, The Web of Life
Matt Groening - creator of The Simpsons
Luther Elliot - Ph.D. at NYU in anthropology: Psychedelic Trance subculture
John Perry Barlow - psychedelic pioneer writer of most Grateful Dead Lyrics
Ken Wilber - comparative philosopher (East / West). Author of: Spectrum of Consciousness, A Brief History of Everything
Youth - visionary Music Producer, poet, and artist, owner of Dragonfly records, Liquid Sound Design records www.youth.me.uk www.liquidsounddesign.com
Jeremy Narby - author of The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the origins of Knowledge. Anthropologist studying the correlation between ayahuasca and the DNA Molecule.
Daniel Pinchback - Author of Breaking the Head Wide Open, Iboga Specialist
Goa Gil - San Francisco psychedelic trance guru
Doc Ellis - 1970 Red Sox Pitcher, pitched perfect World Series game on LSD
Karen P Tandy - Former assistant director of the drug enforcement agency(DEA)
DJ Tiesto - Number 1 trance DJ. Played in Opening ceremony Summer Olympics in Greece 2004.
Dimitris Papaioannou - Choreographer of opening and closing ceremony Athens Olympics 2004, many references to esoteric traditions of the ancient Greeks
Norah D Volkow- Director of the National Institute on drug abuse (NIDA) Partnership for a drug free America a. Stephen j Pasierb- President and CEO
b. Herbert Kleber- Professor of Psychiatry/ Director of Division of Substance Abuse at Columbia University
c. Thomas A Constantine- Former administrator of the US drug enforcement administration.
d. James E Burke- Chairman emeritus /Chairman Emeritus, Johnson & Johnson Incidentally, it was these mystical rites that laid the foundation for Greek Theatre. The evolution of this mode of expression through the ages and its culmination in modern cinema is an irony not lost on us. Indeed this is but one of the unconscious threads that will unite the seemingly fragmentary nature of the images, ideas, and experiences that will be presented to the viewer.
Entheogen (http://www.maps.org/sys/nq.pl?id=308&fmt=none)
AWAKENING THE GOD WITHIN
Introduction:
Entheogen is a term derived from two Greek words: entheos, and genesthai, which translate to "that which causes (God) to be in a person."
In modern parlance, the term Entheogen has been created as a substitute for the more slanderous term psychedelic. It is sometimes translated as "creating the divine within," yet this interpretation misses the point. Entheogen implies something that is neither created nor experienced within the user. More accurately, the concept is concerned with eliciting a sacred space where the transcendent and immanent in the human being interweave in a co-creative process with the cosmos. Entheogen acts as a catalyst that allows for this realm of consciousness to be experienced.
Central Vision for the Film:
Entheogen: Awakening the God Within, will be a film that blends several styles of documentary storytelling in a sensory-overload/free-association collage in an attempt to emulate the psychedelic experience. Hearkening back to the clarion call sounded by Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey ("The Ultimate Trip"), we hope to assemble multiple layers of meaning to captivate the audience and literally take them on a trip, ultimately awakening the god within.
The film aims in many ways to invoke an altered state of consciousness, to inspire in the viewer a new conversation about the essence of being. Just as Entheogens are powerful compounds that catalyze a shift in the consciousness of the user, Entheogens: Awakening the God Within will attempt to produce a mystical experience through the accumulated power of image and media.
Through a structured audio/video collage of tribal dance rhythms, archival footage of aboriginal cultures, and interviews with leading scholars and visionaries in the field of entheogenic studies, we will access a realm of unconscious meaning embedded within human experience. What the Bleep Do We Know has emerged as a phenomenon, but we feel that film only develops a minute portion of the unlimited potential to explore these realms of consciousness through film.
Theoretical framework:
Entheogen: Awakening the God Within is a documentary that embeds itself in the larger context of the global evolution of consciousness itself. It hopes to recover the connection between body, mind, and spirit by exploring the annals of history to find resonance with the present rebirth of tribal culture. Though our archaic ancestors routinely experienced effective rites of passage at key moments in their lives, modern industrial societies have done away with such rites of passage, erecting in their place superficial ceremonies that carry little of the transformative effect of the old ways. We hope to use the medium of film reinvent the mystery rite, and the viewing experience will be an initiation into the twenty-first century landscape of consciousness.
As our world becomes increasingly knit together by fiber optic cables transmitting ideas at the speed of light, the archaic mind is communicating with the modern mind. Nurtured and accelerated by the systemic communication provided by the global Internet, contemporary ritual is now being reborn.
From the Burning Man festival in the high Nevada desert to the ecstatic trance- dance parties on the beaches of Goa in southern India, the citizens of the emergent global village are dancing to a new beat, a rhythm that is simultaneously modern and archaic, consciously creating new rituals that seek to reconnect human consciousness to the planetary mind.
The fusion of electronic music and entheogenic substances into contemporary rites of passage create spaces to explore realms hidden to everyday experience. Through an alchemical synthesis of these two threads, youth culture has found a way to cultivate what Terence McKenna called, "Tapping into the Gaian Mindan experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet." Without that experience, he argues, "we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies. But with that experience, the compass of the self can be set. Were figuring out how to reset the compass of the selfthrough community, ecstatic dance, through psychedelics."
The film is the manifestation of this phenomenon, a virtual space inviting the viewer to co-create a new mythology that expresses a profound sense of the embeddedness of human consciousness with the mind of the planet. It affirms the living fact of an innate intelligence that is composed of the interaction between human consciousness and the Gaian mind or world-soul. By weaving together modern techno-tribal culture into its historical roots in the mythic threads of tribal experience, Entheogens will awaken the viewer to his or her place in the evolutionary history of consciousness. We invite the viewer to fundamentally re-imagine their relationship to the earth and to the cosmosin short, to awaken the god within.
Historical Framework:
Entheogens will present interview footage of leading scholars on the history of philosophy and religion. Using a broad historical perspective, we will explore the perennial rites of passage of tribal culture and explore their evolution into the ancient mystery cults of the Pythagorean, Orphic, and Eleusinian mystery traditions of the Ancient Greek world. These key entheogenic experiences were essential to the development of Western thought, laying down the fundamental structures that have evolved into our present constructions of what it means to be a human being and of our place in the cosmos.
Entheogens seeks the conceptual manifestation of the individual and the possibility of connecting to the divine. As we explore the cultural conditions that created the matrix of modern human experience, we will pay special attention to the relationship between human beings and use of psychotropic medicines in the past, present, and future. By framing the discussion into a historical context larger than any before portrayed on film, the overall effect will be a fusion of classical scholarship, dance music, and modern medicine into what we hope will be the most comprehensive, objective presentation of entheogenic experience to date.
Modern Countercultural Movements:
The second narrative thread woven to create the film will be an immersion into the ecstatic experience of rave culture. Through footage of ecstatic dance settings, we will present images of people reconnecting with the root of being that is being rediscovered in a modern industrial context. Trance parties around the globe have gathered people together from all walks of life to participate in rituals that are highly resonant with the mystery traditions of the ancient past. By gathering in communities to dance until dawn, modern rave culture is recreating the archaic rites of passage. As they celebrate the reconnection with a vital essence, participants in this underground culture are dancing to save the world.
"If we are experiencing ecstasy, we are doing it for the purpose of feeling the ecstasy of life itself, and of the diversity of life to which we belong. To do it merely for its own sake at this moment is a supremely dangerous self-deception and abrogation of our mission in life.We are animals. We are beautiful, living mammals, on a garden planet. Feeling the pleasure and the joy and the ecstasy of that reality is our birthright. We have been imprisoned away from it in a truly tragic twist of fate" David Ulansey
Entheogens and Modern Medicine:
No documentary about entheogenic experience would be complete without a thorough discussion of the highly-charged atmosphere in which these psychotropic substances reemerged to the Western Mind. We will explore the complexities of the relationship of these medicines to modern industrial societies in a way that hopes to transcend the typically polarized documentary discussions of the past.
Most important for the film is the documentation of the renaissance of government-sanctioned research into entheogenic substances. Exploring research ranging from the use of MDMA (Ecstacy) for post-traumatic stress disorder at Harvard University Medical School to the use of psilocybin for advanced-stage cancer patients at UCLA, we will explore several of these studies through extensive interviews with the principle investigators overseeing the research.
Format and Style:
Entheogens: Awakening the God Within, is a film that will transcend traditional styles of documentary storytellingit will be a psychedelic experience. Computer graphics, animation, b-roll and archival sampling, voice over, interviews, and reenactments will be assembled into a kaleidoscopic collage. The final product will be an entheogenic ensemble of mind, light, sound, soul, and awakening that allows for multiple layers of meaning to coexist simultaneously. The driving beat of tribal dance musiccapable of entraining thought and sustaining people in collective experience for hours at a timewill be the metronome that unites the film into a coherent whole.
RATIONALE FOR MOVIE:
While there have been documentaries in the past that covered events such as Burning Man, trance parties, and the ceremonial use of psychotropic substances, no film has been produced that considers all three of these topics together. When one examines these phenomena collectively, it is apparent that they are correlated and interconnected. Entheogens will fuse these phenomena into a contemporary rite of passage that hopes to bring to life the mystery traditions of the Ancient World.
When we marvel at the extraordinary success of recent documentary films that have hit a chord in the collective psyche (Fahrenheit 9/11, What the Bleep Do We Know?), and consider this success in conjunction with the collective fascination with films that speak to mythical realities (The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter films), we feel that this is the perfect time to present a documentary film that speaks to all these aspects of the human psyche. This film will be a sensory overload of light, sound, and the history of human experience itself that no one will want to miss.
LIST OF INTERVIEWEES
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH:
Rick Doblin., Ph.D. President of MAPS
Political issues surrounding the rescheduling of entheogens/psychedelics as adjuncts for psychotherapy.
John Halpern, M.D. Psychiatrist Harvard Medical School
John just received a multi-million dollar grant from the NIDA (National Institute for Drug Abuse) studying nuerotoxicity of MDMA and verbal memory deficit disorders(of which, research thus far has proven very minimal). He has also worked on a study involving Native Americans and alcoholism and the church of peyote.
Charles Grob, M.D. Psychiatrist at UCLA Medical School
Currently working on a pilot study with psilocybin and anxiety associated with advanced staged cancer patients.
Francisco Moreno University of Arizona College of Medicine
Study involving psilocybin as the treatment of anxiety and nervous disorders
Michael Mithoefer Psychiatrist in South Carolina
Conducting the only study involving MDMA assisted psychotherapy for chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.
Randolph Hencken
Program director of the Ibogaine Association
Rocky Caravelli
Patient Treatment Supervisor and Coordinator for the Ibogaine Association in Mexico.
PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND:
Brother David Steindl-Rast, Ph.D.
Benedictine Monk who has spent fifty years in a monastery.
Co-author of Belonging to the Universe with physicist Fritjof Capra. Conducts seminars on the art of film.
Alex Grey
Visionary artist www.alexgrey.com
Dr. Francis Lu
Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at UCSF
Film and healing, East and West
Sean Kelly, Ph.D.
Director Philosophy, Cosmology & Consciousness at CIIS
Melody Jackson- Ph.D.
Mythical powers of film
Dav id Ulansey, Ph.D. Professor of philosophy and religion at CIIS
Ancient Hellenic mystery religions / history and theory of shamanism.
Charles Tart Professor of Psychology
Institute for Transpersonal Psychology
Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UC Davis
Altered States of consciousness and transpersonal psychology
Robert McDermott, Ph.D.
President Emeritus California Institute of Integral Studies
Lectures on the evolution of consciousness, Asian and western spirituality.
Chris Bache- Ph.D.
Professor of Religious Studies Youngstown University
Explores the philosophical implications of non-ordinary states of consciousness
Interviews also Scheduled with:
Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.)
Morris Berman, Ph.D.
Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.
Stan Grof, M.D.
Sandra & Michael Harner
And to Be Scheduled:
Fritjof Capra - philosopher author of The Turning Point, Mind Walk, The Web of Life
Matt Groening - creator of The Simpsons
Luther Elliot - Ph.D. at NYU in anthropology: Psychedelic Trance subculture
John Perry Barlow - psychedelic pioneer writer of most Grateful Dead Lyrics
Ken Wilber - comparative philosopher (East / West). Author of: Spectrum of Consciousness, A Brief History of Everything
Youth - visionary Music Producer, poet, and artist, owner of Dragonfly records, Liquid Sound Design records www.youth.me.uk www.liquidsounddesign.com
Jeremy Narby - author of The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the origins of Knowledge. Anthropologist studying the correlation between ayahuasca and the DNA Molecule.
Daniel Pinchback - Author of Breaking the Head Wide Open, Iboga Specialist
Goa Gil - San Francisco psychedelic trance guru
Doc Ellis - 1970 Red Sox Pitcher, pitched perfect World Series game on LSD
Karen P Tandy - Former assistant director of the drug enforcement agency(DEA)
DJ Tiesto - Number 1 trance DJ. Played in Opening ceremony Summer Olympics in Greece 2004.
Dimitris Papaioannou - Choreographer of opening and closing ceremony Athens Olympics 2004, many references to esoteric traditions of the ancient Greeks
Norah D Volkow- Director of the National Institute on drug abuse (NIDA) Partnership for a drug free America a. Stephen j Pasierb- President and CEO
b. Herbert Kleber- Professor of Psychiatry/ Director of Division of Substance Abuse at Columbia University
c. Thomas A Constantine- Former administrator of the US drug enforcement administration.
d. James E Burke- Chairman emeritus /Chairman Emeritus, Johnson & Johnson Incidentally, it was these mystical rites that laid the foundation for Greek Theatre. The evolution of this mode of expression through the ages and its culmination in modern cinema is an irony not lost on us. Indeed this is but one of the unconscious threads that will unite the seemingly fragmentary nature of the images, ideas, and experiences that will be presented to the viewer.