I have just returned from speaking at the Health, Happiness and Soul expo, at the Gold Coast Convention centre, and at the Rainbow Serpent Festival, outside Beaufort in Victoria. Talk about extreme opposites. The Health, Happiness and Soul expo, advertised with huge banners featuring Buddha, lotuses and similar imagery was in a commercial expo environment - a huge hall with concrete floors, fluorescent lighting and aisles of personal trainers in matching polo shirts flogging new weight loss machines or mass produced foods. On the upside there were lots of psychics. The highlight was Jason McDonald who is a terrific psychic and entertainer, and a mesmerising performance by Sacred Earth which was so powerful it overrode the piped music and commercial atmosphere of the place and stopped people in their tracks. These mind, body, spirit festivals used to be filled with energy and life and colour and I was left wondering what had happened to the new age.
The following weekend at the Rainbow Serpent festival, I found out. I could hear the thumping of the electronic base kilometres before even arriving. Parked the car, stepped through the gate into another world. Here was the magic, the jugglers, the village atmosphere, the dancing, the vision. Here was the revival of the hippie dream but set to fantastic electronic music. There were stages set amongst the trees with DJs working their magic, chill-out tents, dancing in the streets, and thousands of people living it dressed in unique and expressive ways, living their dream.
I realised that the new age went straight and was now catering primarily to straight people, and all the adventure and mystery had shifted into these enormous festivals are catering to a new generation seeking something else, many using drugs to make it real. I gave a talk on Psychedelic Evolution at Rainbow Serpent, which is an idea I have been working through for a while. It is based on my growing conviction that nothing happens by chance and that if we have a recreational drug industry worth $400 billion dollars a year, we have some serious potential to work with in terms of changing the world. If we have literally millions of people who have been honing their exteroceptive information transmissions skills, we now have a massive force in place that can change the world. I do think the nine-to-five version of material reality that most people are living is finished, its just no-one has realised yet. It will only become obvious if all those ex-drug users understand what they are sitting on and commit to working with it.
Even though my talks are all planned beforehand, while I speak things come to me, and some of things I said at Rainbow Serpent really stuck in my mind. One was that if you are psychedelic, you are psychedelic for life and the other was, if you are taking drugs and living the dream at these festivals, afterwards (and there will be an afterwards) don’t try and be straight. I think we have an opportunity now, a door has opened again and we need to go through it this time.
Who is responsible for commercialising and wrapping the new age in plastic, and where did it begin? Is it a matter of simplifying and dressing up something meaningful and evolutionary to slowly introduce into cultures that are dogmatic and atheistic? Or is it just the marketing people trying to reduce everything down to a sales friendly package?
New age media and magazines are so full of flighty ideas, and article-authors trying to do the same thing, pursue their life purpose and re-write the same article in different words about the path of surrendering the ego and being in the NOW.
So now that’s been over done, what’s next?
Maybe we should start a new, new age. Called the Authentic age. Where people are encouraged to break out of all the boxes and cliches and explore their own infinite possiblities by looking within, and not subscribing to other people’s ideas about how to live.
Come on people, society is becoming so over regulated, distracted, complacent and hypnotised! Let’s be real!
Firstly, Jost I really am intrigued by your suggestion of some kind of post-drug abuse ‘utopia’ that might come out of the current state as it is - it has always been my notion too, that all of this couldn’t have come about for ‘no reason’.
There must be a purpose behind the immense popularity and consumption of recreational drugs, and I hope to hear more from you regarding this issue.
Have you read ‘Breaking Open The Head’ - by Daniel Pinchbeck?
Regarding the commercialisation of the New Age - I think this has been a very subtle and effective ’snuffing out’ of the revolutionary potential that this movement once had, by the ever-pervasive workings of the capitalist machine. What better way to reduce the threat of something than by effectively ‘purchasing’ it, and selling it back to people, albeit in a very watered-down version?
People’s desire for new spiritual potentials has created a huge demand for New Age products, but also left some of them wide open to exploitation - people led by their hearts who have been sold a less than ‘authentic’ (Zenophobia) product/experience.
One has to wonder, can ‘authenticity’ be purchased?
I do believe in a socially responsible/responsive form of capitalism, but it would take a new vision for this to become a reality - perhaps that is part of the work that this current generation of drug-users will be called upon for…..
Hi Seashelles. Thanks for your thoughts. My Teacher always told me that authenticity can’t be bought, it can only be obtained by daily meditation and Chi & strengthening practice.
Fascinating article.
Over a decade ago, I used to hang with the Rainbow serpent crew (Green Ant) with their earlier parties and was a bit of a groupy/trance travelling tripper. I was also massively into the new age, meditation and shamanic practices and I saw the connect between the two movements back then. That whole psy trance psychedelic movement was just delightful to be a pioneer of. That scene has now become massively popular where I thought it would die off. Amazing. Also amazing that it has stayed true to its roots.
I got out of partying in this scene becuase I was going a little mad. And the drugs were shifting from psychedelics to pills and speed and even drinking etc. Very hard on the body and mind with the late nights etc.
I got out of the new age movement not long after raving, and after trying to heal myself from drug abuse through new age systems. After a while, I felt it was far too diluted and I started to begin to lose trust in a few of the practitioners I saw. Too much fluff, not enough substance. So I swore to myself that I would knuckle down and become an ordinary Aussie Bloke, who goes out to the pub, who has a regular blokes job and functions in normal tick tock society. Doesn’t trip out, doesn’t have the highs and lows, doesn’t think too much about things. Just gets on with it. It was quite a concious decision at the time.
I have to say after a decade long journey through that mission, I think the average aussie bloke isn’t really that satisfied, fulfilled or really all that happy. Or maybe it’s me, I’ve seen too much and just can’t settle for anything less.
I think the first chance I had to get back into it with some sense of faith was when I discovered you Jost, randomly at a new age expo here in Melb some yrs back. Your ideas pretty much got my ass off drugs within a year (and I didn’t follow everything you taught either, simply the knowledge of what they were doing to my inner systems was enough to start my journey away from drugs permanently).
Now years later I am happy to find this site and even happier that your systems are developing and evolving. This is a great thing. thanks.
Ant