(Listers - I replied to Khem offlist,  thinking we were straying off  
topic, but Khem felt otherwise, so we're back!)

Khem, I'm fascinated to hear that you worked with both Andrija  
Puharich and Harry Smith - perhaps you can share some of your  
memories about these characters with the rest of us?

Puharich is an intriguing character to me - as is the loose network  
of well-connected people surrounding him. The  psi research  
community  in the US in the 1970s - at Esalen on the West coast and  
Ossining on the East coast - included representatives from science,  
the arts, politics, finance, intelligence, psychedelia, ufology,  
occultism. It really is quite incredible and I'm sure there are many  
stories to tell from this period. I'm always struck by images such as  
a photograph I've seen of Satanist Anton Lavey stood between french  
ufologists Jacque Vallee and Aime Michel at a party in San Francisco.  
It conjures up some wonderful cross-cultural possibilities!

Handily, Stuart Holroyd's book, Briefing for the Landing on Planet  
Earth, which gives an interesting impression of some of the strange  
ideas that were circulating, and the things that were going on around  
that scene, is online in its entirety here:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/landing_planetearth/ 
brflist.htm


On 22 Dec 2005, at 00:28, Khem Caigan wrote:

> Mark Pilkington writes:
>> I've moved this offlist as I didn't feel it's necessarily relevant  
>> to  its main current as it were.
>
> I think that's a shame, but as you wish.
>
>> That's very interesting about other people seeing things in the  
>> area.  I knew there were the other books about UFO sightings, yes.  
>> A friend  of mine here in London grew up in the Hudson Valley in  
>> upstate NY,  home to repeated UFO encounters. She told me that  
>> everyone knew about the "UFOs" and that the lights - or at least  
>> some of them -  were caused by sparking power lines in the woods  
>> around there. As a teen she and her friends would spend time  
>> watching the saucer spotters.
>
> Yes, the 'Hudson Valley Siege' doesn't cover the half of it.
> We have related stories in the papers going back to the
> colonial period. Alf Evers touches on a little of it in his
> books on Woodstock and the Catskills - and helpfully points
> to a wealth of material in the old regional papers.
>
>> The San Antonio connection is also intriguing – and I don't just  
>> mean the LSD and bud! Again, another American I know here, and I  
>> suspect a few other London listers know, claims to have been  
>> enrolled in some strange govt psychic schooling as a child, and  
>> has had several odd visionary/mystical experiences since then in  
>> her adult life. I believe that her programme was connected to the  
>> work of Andrija Puharich, who was deeply embroiled in the US  
>> Intelligence psychic spying story.
>
> Funny you should bring Andrija up. Harry Smith and I were
> working together with him on some meteorological/PK related
> stuff, back in the 70s < among other things >. And I can
> recall visiting Masters and Houston [ 'Varieties of
> Psychedelic Experience' ] out at their old digs in Pomona, NY.
>
> Embroilment is a good word for it, I suppose - seemed a lot
> like the heavily networked 'Salon' atmosphere of an earlier
> era, to me. That certainly was the case out on the West
> coast, with the community surrounding Esalen.
>
> Hope you reconsider the offlist tack - we were pretty
> eclectic last go-round on SASM, as I recall. Jack Parsons
> was a welcome topic; why not Puharich & Co.?
>
> Cors in Manu Domine,
>
>
> ~ Khem Caigan
> <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>
>


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"Optimus Prime is heading out to the Middle East with his guard unit  
on Wednesday to provide fire protection for airfields under combat."
WKYC-TV News, Ohio, USA. 23.03.03
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Mark Pilkington : [log in to unmask]
http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk