In 1974 the magic and the meaning of the 60's were still fresh in our minds and hearts. That year we launched OPEN (Education) EXCHANGE with the express purpose of inspiring positive social change, as well as to create an institution which would generate income for teachers, therapists, artists, and consultants, many of whom had been hit hard by a war economy and the first "energy crisis." Well, it seems like everything old is new again. We're still dedicated to our ongoing mission, and OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE carries on!

In celebration of our 30th Anniversary, we'd like to share with you highlights from some of the most lively and controversial articles and interviews we've ever published. You'll also find longer versions of many of these posted on this site.

Consider this a living time capsule. Some of these passages will seem prophetic, while others may come off dated, almost quaint. Which are which? That's up to you to decide.
Did we forget to quote from one of your favorites? Is there somebody you'd like us to interview in a future issue? Write OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, 1442A Walnut #51 Berkeley CA 94709. Or email us at openexchange@earthlink.net. As always, we value your comments and feedback, without which there would be no OPEN EXCHANGE...

—Bart Brodsky & Janet Geis
Publishers, OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE


Oracles From The 1960's: Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder & Allen Cohen

Many of us who came of age during the 1960's will always cherish "Camelot," "Woodstock," and the "Age of Aquarius" as defining moments in our lives. In the Bay Area, the psychedelic 60's was a time of hope and naiveté, when any stranger would become your new best friend, when residents shared their homes with runaways, when drugs were offered as sacrament, when all sex seemed safe, and when long hair was a political statement. San Francisco became a magnet for tens of thousands of alienated young people looking for paradise, or at least a place to "be" and breathe free. The challenge was how to keep the good times rolling: go out and change the world, or look inward and change yourself?

On a night in February, 1967, leaders of the psychedelic underground held a summit to discuss "the whole problem of whether to drop out or take over." They included Zen popularizer Alan Watts, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, LSD guru Timothy Leary, and mystic poet Gary Snyder. Their meeting was conducted on Watts' houseboat in Sausalito and recorded by Allen Cohen, one of the organizers of the "Summer of Love" and publisher of The San Francisco Oracle, the legendary Haight-Ashbury psychedelic newspaper. The Oracle was reprinted in an elegant hard-bound compilation by Regent Press, longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister, currently offering publishing classes in our Writing category. This classic passage is from an excerpt reprinted in OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE's April-June 1991 edition:

TIMOTHY LEARY: Mass movements make no sense to me, and I want no part of mass movements. I think this is the error that the leftist activists are making.... I think they should be sanctified, drop out, find their own center, turn on, and above all, avoid mass movements, mass leadership, mass followers. I see there is a difference, a completely incompatible difference, between the leftist activist movement and the psychedelic religious movement.

ALLEN GINSBERG: Of course, that's the same premise [that leftist activists] lay down, that there is an irreconcilable split. Only, their stereotype of the psychedelic movement is that it's just sort of the opposite.

GARY SNYDER: I think that you have to look at this historically, and there's no doubt that the historical roots of the revolutionary movements and the historical roots of this spiritual movement are identical. This is something that... arrives from a utopian and essentially religious drive.

ALAN WATTS; Well, it goes back to the seventeenth century and the movements in Flemish and German mysticism... the Diggers, and eventually the Quakers. This was the source. It was, in a way, a secularization of mysticism. In other words, the mystical doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God, for the simple reason that they ARE God. They're all God's incarnations. When that doctrine is secularized it becomes a parody: that all men are equally inferior. And therefore may be evil-treated by the bureaucrats and the police, with no manners.

LEARY: ...I agree with [Gary] that the basic unit is tribal. What I envision is thousands of small groups throughout the United States and Western Europe, and eventually the world, as dropping out... You have to drop out in a group. You drop out in a small tribal group.

SNYDER: Well, you drop out one-by-one but... you can join the sub-culture....

WATTS: I think you should say a word or two about... how to get by economically. This is the nitty-gritty. Where's the bread going to come from if everybody drops out?....

It was over all too soon. In 1968 Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, hope turned to despair, and the "gentle people" left the scene. After the Oracle ceased publishing, Allen Cohen dropped out to live in a commune for seven years before dropping back in as poet and childcare educator. Yet he still waxed fondly about the ideals and the legacy of the 60's:

ALLEN COHEN: People were very involved with the transcendental experience as well as affecting the government through the political movement. People were taking LSD and going on peace marches.... The ecology movement, Gaia, to some degree the women's movement, and probably gay liberation as well, had its roots here. People saw themselves as divinely all right, divinely equal. [However,] we did not know how to formalize or institutionalize the insights that we had discovered. We weren't very good at forming political parties. We were anti-institutional, anti-consumerism, anti-materialism....

The psychedelic movement may have opened the doors of perception, but we had to "get real" to walk through them. When OPEN EXCHANGE interviewed Timothy Leary for our April-June 1990 edition, we asked if it weren't now time to put aside drugs, live more naturally and organically. After all, back-to-the-land drop-outs had inspired a burgeoning interest in healthy living. Leary was unrepentant and even defiant in his reply:

LEARY: That's an understandable, but deplorable cop-out. People that talk about "natural," [but] they drive cars instead of walking. They use glasses instead of going around myopic. The brain that's evolved over 2 billion years needs neurotransmitter chemicals, just the way the lungs need air.... The 21st century is going to be the century of the brain, and the brain can only be navigated with the help of "brain vitamins," for memory, for acceleration, for different forms of sensual enhancement. You've got to face that fact. It's the taboo. If we have bad drugs, let's make better drugs....

Ram Dass: From Psychedelic Researcher to Holy Man

In OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE's October-December 2001 issue we asked Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, another 60's survivor, about his own changes, growing older, and suffering a stroke. Despite their similar beginnings, he and Leary have walked quite different paths. Ram Dass's own opinions about drugs are much more nuanced:

OPEN EXCHANGE: In the 60's, you and Leary and Huxley and Ginsberg [and others] set out to explode the myths of materialist culture and were incredibly successful in getting media coverage—and scorn—as "bad boys." Did the emphasis on psychedelics get in the way of the spiritual message? Would you have done anything different?

RAM DASS: (long pause) I think it unfolded as is should. I think it was the avatar of the 60's.

OPEN EXCHANGE: You write in Still Here, "Even senility can be an opportunity to strengthen the soul." And you offer several poignant stories of soul communication with people, such as your aunt, who is senile, and others on their death beds. You say, "Soul awareness is so much bigger than mental awareness. Once you have it, it's yours forever." Can you add anything more?

RAM DASS: That means that we have a part of us that does not go through the experience of dying.

OPEN EXCHANGE: You mentioned that when we let the dying self-medicate for pain, that they tend to use fewer painkillers than the doctors tend to give. People don't necessarily want to overmedicate because they want to experience the moment. Please talk about the tradeoff.

RAM DASS: It's a constant battle for a person. Painkillers and consciousness. You want to get rid of the pain, and then you want to end up with your consciousness clear. And the painkillers that fully work kill your consciousness.

OPEN EXCHANGE: You also mention that it's natural to feel depression as we grow older. And it can be part of looking inward. Do you feel that, perhaps, psychiatry overmedicates with antidepressants such as Prozac?

RAM DASS: I'll tell you, the friends I've had that have used Prozac and associated drugs have paid in the consciousness realm....

OPEN EXCHANGE: As I was reading in your book about what happens physically when you die, I rebelled. My ego wants to stay around. If the technology were possible for you to upload your mind into a computer, or an android, or the intergalactic internet, would you do it?

RAM DASS: No.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Absolutely not?

RAM DASS: Absolutely not! This model I've got here—in this incarnation—it's a limited model and the next time will be advanced....

Altered States of Consciousness with Stanislav Grof, MD

Stanislav Grof is a pioneer in the development of transpersonal psychology, currently listed in OPEN EXCHANGE's Seminars category. Grof, once an LSD researcher in the 60's, developed Holotropic Breathwork as a non-chemical method of achieving altered states once LSD became illegal. Holotropic Breathwork utilizes chants, breathing techniques, music, and other techniques to induce non-ordinary states of mind, out-of-body experiences, and cosmic consciousness. From an article first published in OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, January-February 1994:

In our everyday lives, most of us think of the world in which we live as being made up of highly individualized physical bodies—some animate, others inanimate—each possessing its own fixed and absolute boundaries. All of our senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—seem to tell us that we are, at least physically, separate from all we survey. There is a difference between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and the rest of the universe that seems to indicate that we are each sovereign, autonomous, and singular. However, consciousness research of the past few years has begun to show us that our physical boundaries may be much more illusory than real. Like the proverbial mirage of a cool, bubbling spring seen by the thirsty desert traveler, the boundaries we perceive between ourselves and the rest of the universe may best be understood as products of our minds.

In altered states of consciousness, transpersonal experiences such as these can be very profound, vivid, and graphic, lasting for only seconds or for hours. It is possible, for example, to become all the mothers of the world who have lost their children to wars, all the soldiers who ever died on battlefields, or all of human history's fugitives and outcasts. Although it may be difficult to imagine for a person who has never had these experiences, one can have under these circumstances an absolutely convincing feeling of becoming all those individuals at the same time. One becomes a single consciousness that contains hundreds or even millions of individuals.

Visionary experiences of this kind have been described again and again in sacred scriptures and the mystical literature of all ages. However, such experiences are not the exclusive privilege of the great figures of religious history—nor are they, as skeptics sometimes allege, the fanciful inventions of scheming priesthoods seeking ways to manipulate gullible crowds. One of the most surprising revelations of modern consciousness research has been the discovery that under certain circumstances, such as extraordinary states of mind, such visionary experiences can become available to virtually every one of us. They are afforded us by the transpersonal potentials of human consciousness....

Ecotopia with Ernest Callenbach

Imagine having to work only four hours a day to produce all the high quality goods and services you will ever need. Imagine beautiful, handmade products designed to last, not to be continually replaced and tossed away. Imagine a culture that celebrates art and community rather than material acquisition. Imagine solar power, community housing, ample public transportation, and no more commute hassles. Beyond Woodstock, more visionary than Star Trek, this is Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia. From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, May-June 1994:

OPEN EXCHANGE: The possibility of capitalism's becoming a force for creative change is the focus of Paul Hawken's book, The Ecology of Commerce. Hawken seems to be saying that you can be a capitalist, serve the bottom line and serve the environment. Is this possible or is this hopelessly naive?

ERNEST CALLENBACH: You could say that it better be true, because for better or worse, we live in a capitalist country, and a capitalist epoch, for that matter. If we don't learn how to make capitalism environmentally sustainable, our goose is cooked. We may go on like this for another fifty years or so, but sooner or later we'll suffer some kind of collapse. Short of total revolution, which I am not holding my breath for, we'll have to make it possible for people to make money out of ecological reform, which is why a lot of what Paul Hawken says makes perfect sense. If we can't get business to do things right ecologically, who else is going to do it?

OPEN EXCHANGE: How many people can the planet support at a European standard of consumption? Many radical environmentalists say only about one billion. (In OPEN EXCHANGE, July-September 1990, biologist and population control advocate Paul Ehrlich told us maybe only half a billion.)

CALLENBACH: Well, what you have at present is a situation where one billion of the persons on the planet at this moment are living in a more or less European manner—the Europeans, the North Americans, and the Japanese. They do something like four fifths of the damage done to the planet ecologically. The remaining population is to a very large extent people who live on the land in a state of desperate poverty in a step above—perhaps we should say below—sustainability. They're poor enough not to have access to energy sources that would enable them to do really substantial damage. So, even though there's probably no country that you can't call overpopulated—that's destroying its forests, it's seacoasts if it has any, its riverbanks if it has any, and is becoming steadily less and less sustainable agriculturally because of damage to the soil's productivity—the worst population problem is in the United States, probably followed then by Europe. European populations have, in some cases, actually dropped. I don't know whether it is possible in any reliable scientific way to say what a reasonable carrying capacity of a country or of a state like California would be. All I can say is that most of the people who have looked into these matters, starting with Paul Ehrlich, are convinced that the United States is the most overpopulated country in the world, because our consumption impacts are so much greater proportionately.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Sustainability, then, is going to require an absolutely fundamental revisioning and restructuring.

CALLENBACH: I think so. You have to realize that as far as people are concerned, less is better....

Dr. Helen Caldicott's Nuclear Nightmare

If Ecotopia is the dream, nuclear winter is the nightmare. Dr. Helen Caldicott argues passionately that America's continuing military arms buildup—particularly the willingness of Bush neo-conservatives to use tactical nuclear weapons in the wake of 9/11—far from securing peace, is actually destabilizing global relations to the brink of Armageddon. The world's leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement, Dr. Caldicott is the founder of the Nobel Prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility, and herself a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. From OPEN EXCHANGE's interview in July-September 2002:

OPEN EXCHANGE: Most of us know of the dangers of "nuclear winter." What are the health risks of using the smaller, tactical nuclear arms such as the charmingly named "bunker busters," proposed for use against bin Laden types?

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: That's about half the size of the Hiroshima bomb, which killed 120,000 people, many of whom were vaporized, and many of whom were dreadfully burned.... You could blow up a city... people would die of vaporization, and they would die of horrendous burns. People would be turned into missiles, traveling at 100 miles an hour. The blast and the heat would cause ruptured lungs, ruptured membranes, ruptured eyeballs. Depending on where fallout landed, you would get acute radiation sickness, within days develop alopecia with your hair dropping out, bleeding, severe nausea, diarrhea, severe headaches, and you die within days of acute radiation sickness. Now, if you're not exposed to as high a level as that, but you inhale or ingest radioactive isotopes from the fallout and they concentrate in the food chain by orders of magnitude, the food would be radioactive for hundreds if not thousands of years. People start developing leukemia five to ten years later, in very large numbers. And then solid cancers of breast, bowel, lung, many organs, thyroid, will appear 15 years later, and from thereon for the rest of time according to how long the isotopes survive.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Can you give us a brief summary of how arms dealers such as Lockheed Martin have been able to profit, and how you see they are manipulating this global crisis?

DR. CALDICOTT: Thirty-two people in [George W. Bush's] administration come from Lockheed Martin. Numerous others come from the Heritage Foundation, which is just really an advertising arm of Lockheed Martin, which pushes for Star Wars, for nuclear weapons, for nuclear superiority, for domination of space, for the militarization of space. The Heritage Foundation is ubiquitous in the media. Every time we turn on the TV, there's a spokesperson for them. They orchestrate the legislation in Congress. They have provided all the policy for the Bush administration, as they did for Reagan.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Since 9/11, Bush has declared a state of never-ending war—

DR. CALDICOTT: That's right.

OPEN EXCHANGE: —and a compliant Congress has never even issued a formal declaration.

DR. CALDICOTT: Oh, it's unbelievable!

OPEN EXCHANGE: And yet, Bush's popularity remains high. How do you account for this?

DR. CALDICOTT: I don't believe it. I think the polls are inaccurate. I have spoken now to hundreds of thousands of people in this country, via the media and face to face in big halls, and I haven't found one person who's dissented from what I've said. Not one! And people scream from the back of the hall, "How do we get rid of Bush?" I think there's a deep and profound subliminal concern that people have, and it's increasing now. It's so easy to mobilize a country using patriotism, you know. Hitler did it....

Robert Redford On Energy Security & Arctic Wildlife

Robert Redford, actor, director, and environmental activist, was concerned that the 9/11 attacks would be used by industrialists to justify oil drilling in protected wilderness. Watch for this topic to resurface in 2005. From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE's January-February 2002 edition:

A handful of determined U.S. senators, encouraged by the White House, are arguing that national security requires the Senate to rush a pro-oil energy bill into law. They have vowed to hold up normal Senate business and attach the bill to every piece of legislation that comes to the Senate floor. So far they have failed in what The Boston Globe is calling "oil opportunism." But with President Bush, himself, now calling for rushed passage of this disastrous bill, intense pressure is building on Senate leaders to succumb to the emotions of the moment. Using our national tragedy as an opportunity to advance the narrow interests of the oil lobby would not be in the best interest of the public. This bill, already passed by the House, would not only open the Arctic Refuge to oil rigs, it would also pave the way for energy companies to exploit and destroy pristine areas of Greater Yellowstone and other gems of our natural heritage. As important, it would do nothing to address energy security.

With no energy crisis to scare us with, the administration and pro-oil senators are now promoting their "Drill the Arctic" plan under the guise of national security and energy independence. Don't buy it. It would take ten years to bring Arctic oil to market, and when it arrives it would never equal more than two percent—a mere drop in the bucket—of all the oil we consume each year... As The Atlanta Constitution put it: "Burning through our tiny oil supply faster will not make our country more secure." I'd go further: increasing our dependence on oil, whether that oil comes from the Persian Gulf or the Arctic Refuge, practically guarantees national insecurity. And we know that it will bring more habitat destruction, more oil spills, more air pollution, and more global warming. The public health implications will be devastating.

If our nation wants to declare energy independence, then we have no choice but to reduce our appetite for oil. There's no other way....

In this climate of national trauma and war, it is up to us—the people—to ensure that reason prevails and our natural heritage survives intact. Those who would sell out this natural heritage—this spiritual heritage—would destroy a wellspring of American strength. What's worse, their rush to exploit the wildness that feeds our souls won't do a thing to solve our energy problems.

After reading my letter I hope you'll take action. Go to www.savebiogems.org. And please forward this message to your family and friends....

John Bradshaw on Family & Healthy Secrets

John Bradshaw's pioneering work on family dynamics has changed the course of psychotherapy and the self-help movement. As a therapist and trainer, John has popularized concepts such as the "inner child" and made them generally accessible. Moreover, Bradshaw personifies the best qualities of the self-help movement, warm, emotive, and with great integrity. From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, March-April 1996:

OPEN EXCHANGE: John, you say some family secrets are healthy. Please explain.

JOHN BRADSHAW: Generational secrets can be healthy. Some things may not be appropriate for mom and dad to be sharing with kids. There's also mom and dad's private life, that they need to have. Then, the kids need secrets, too. Teenagers usually have secrets that they don't share with their parents.

OPEN EXCHANGE: You would give kids a lot of leeway?

BRADSHAW: Yes. It's what we would call individual secrets. You need an area of privacy, where you can just be with you. It's like developing film. You need a darkroom.

OPEN EXCHANGE: And that's how the "healthy self" is developed?

BRADSHAW: The healthy self is developed by having enough space in order to build boundaries. Children don't have any boundaries when they are born. So, one of the most important areas of privacy is parents' maintaining good generational boundaries. That is, not sucking kids into their marriage or their own personal life. And kids being taught that they have a space, and that it's their space, and nobody's going to violate it.

OPEN EXCHANGE: But we've been taught that secrets are bad...

BRADSHAW: There's been a kind of mania in the recovery movement that, "You're as sick as your secrets." I've said it myself, but I'm taking that back. Not all secrets are sick. What happens is that when you get your space violated, then you start using protective secrets, because you don't have any space. The ancients always considered birth, death, the sacred prayer, to be private matters, not something to be made public. Once you can't be private in these matters, then you have to develop secrecy in order to protect yourself.... And that's why we have so many dangerous secrets, like the secret rituals in eating disorders, anorexia, fasting. A lot of that is around boundary violation, no allowance for privacy, or what I call "good secrets."

Survive The Holidays with Dr. Carla Perez

Carla Perez, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice and current OPEN EXCHANGE lister (see p. 00). For eight years Dr. Perez hosted a radio call-in show on KGO and then on KSRO. From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, November/December 1994:

The holidays should be a time of joy and celebration —a chance to renew old friendships and make new relationships; to savor traditions from childhood and add on new meaningful ones; to assess the past year and plan for the next. But for too many people, 'tis the season for frantic rushing, overindulgences, and loneliness —peppered with guilt, depression, and extra poundage.

Don't despair! You CAN enjoy this time of year and have the kind of holidays you want. Here are some suggestions:

1) Get clear about your priorities. What is important to you? Bringing out old holiday decorations? Getting together with special loved ones? Seeing or hearing from friends you're out of touch with the rest of the year? Caroling, skiing, going away to the country?

If you find you are caught up in social events where you feel frenzied, it's important to be more selective. Ask yourself if it is fun or duty? There may be visits that clearly lead to predictable unpleasantness. Are they necessary?

Be honest with yourself about financial resources. Give gifts of affection and tradition that don't lead to New Year debts.

You can't do it all. Don't rush to accomplish the impossible. Do what absolutely needs doing and let go of the rest. Some cards can remain unwritten. Not every kind of cookie has to be baked.

2) Don't forget to take care of yourself. Balance other peoples needs with time alone to relax, refuel, and reflect on the spirit of the holidays. When you feel overwhelmed, just say "No" or ask for support. Accept sadness and other feelings that may arise —these are normal. Remember, being alone does not mean that you are a failure. If loved ones live far away, treat yourself to a phone call or the time to write a long card.

If you feel markedly depressed or immobilized, seek professional help. This is not a sign of weakness, but an opportunity to start to feel better.

3) If overindulging is a problem, carefully plan ahead before you enter any "mine fields". Think through exactly what you want to eat or drink. Be aware when you feel tired, overextended, angry or tense —these are especially difficult times. But be realistic and don't go into a tailspin for slipping with your plans. The holidays are not the best time to lose weight.

If you are in recovery for alcohol, you know what is right for you. Don't play games —one drink can spiral you into a whole tragic pattern again. You've come too far for that. Celebrate by taking good care of yourself in non-alcoholic ways.

4) Find healthy means to drain your tension. Get out of the house, walk, go to a movie, exercise, call a friend. Don't target loved ones with your frustrations. The holidays of today will become part of your family's history and the bedrock of your children's memories. Enjoy the time together.

5) Create your own traditions, mixing treasured ones from the past with the potentials of the present. Join others in surrogate families if yours is far away. Volunteer your time to help those who are less fortunate than you. Pause to savor the preciousness of life. This is the time of the year to be kind to one another and close and vulnerable to those we love.

John Robbins' Diet For A New America

John Robbins, one-time heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream conglomerate, laid out the scientific, social, economic, and spiritual reasons for going vegan in his groundbreaking book, Diet For A New America. Here is an excerpt from OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE's October-December 1990 issue:

Few of us are aware that the act of eating can be a powerful statement of commitment to our own well-being, and at the very same time to the creation of a healthier habitat....

When I declined to be a top cog in the Great American food Machine, and turned down the opportunity to live the American Dream, it was because I knew there was a deeper dream. I knew that with all the reasons that each of us has to despair and become cynical, there still beats in our common heart our deepest prayer for a better life and a more loving world.

Geneen Roth says "Carry Chocolate"

Famed weight loss expert Geneen Roth, who frequently publicizes workshops through OPEN EXCHANGE, extols the virtues of a favorite vice. From When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair and excerpted in OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, March-April 1998:

If you don't like chocolate, please don't feel as if you need to develop a passion for it now. But if the existence—not to mention the taste —of chocolate is one of the ways you know that ecstasy is available on a daily basis, I offer the following wisdom from years of chocolate education and appreciation.

First, carry your favorite chocolate with you at all times. Don't depend on restaurants or other people's definitions of good chocolate. I have been shocked and dismayed at what even my best friends consider good chocolate. Devil's food cake with marshmallow filling and gooey icing. Milk chocolate with raisins and nuts. Treats with names like the Seven Dwarfs or Santa's Helpers. Hi-Hos. Ring-Dings. Yodels. If you want to make sure that you get the kind of chocolate you prefer, slip it in your pocket, your purse, your eyeglass case. Don't leave home without it.

Second, don't be ashamed to eat it in public; you never know where it might lead. A few months ago, a television producer asked to interview me for a show he was developing. We met for dinner, and at the end of our meal, I whipped out my purse, pulled out the bar of bittersweet chocolate, broke off a square, and offered him one. His mouth, which had been hanging open since the chocolate first appeared, closed in time to say yes, he would like a piece. We shared a silent moment of ecstasy as the chocolate melted on our tongues, then I put the bar back into my purse, and we proceeded with the meeting. A week later, he called and told me he would like me to appear on his show. "I liked you before you took out the chocolate," he said, "but that clinched it. Anyone who speaks about weight loss, eats chocolate every day, and stays thin knows something other people deserve to know...."

Andrew Weil, MD, on Eating For Health
A conversation with ANDREW WEIL, MD

Dr. Andrew Weil is a leader in the field of integrative medicine, a new kind of medicine that is based on a model of health, not disease. Integrative medicine trains doctors to listen to patients; to value nutritional and other lifestyle influences on health and illness; to offer treatments in addition to drugs and surgery; and to understand the innate potential of the human organism for self-repair and healing. From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, October-December 2000:

OPEN EXCHANGE: Can we really eat the foods we like and still eat well? What advice would you give to those who dine out frequently?

DR. ANDREW WEIL: Yes we can. One simple suggestion for dining out is to ask waiters not to bring bread and butter until the main course is served (or not at all). Splitting main courses is also a good idea on occasion, since restaurant portions are often much too large.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Is there a safe and effective way to lose weight?

DR. WEIL: Absolutely. For one thing it is essential to reduce consumption of the wrong kinds of fats and the wrong kinds of carbohydrates while increasing physical activity. The simple strategy of cutting out most foods made with white flour and sugar, fast foods and snack foods will do it for most people. But it is also very important to maintain a high intake of a variety of fruits and vegetables, the right kinds of fats (monosaturated oils and omega 3s), and low-glycemic carbohydrates.

OPEN EXCHANGE: What are some dietary tips you would give to those suffering from low energy?

DR. WEIL: I would advise them to break addictive cycles to caffeine (especially coffee), to avoid eating too much protein (between 10 and 20 percent of total calories is about right) and to reduce consumption of high-glycemic-index carbohydrate foods, especially most bread and sugary foods.

Michael Phillips on Labeling GM Foods

In 1995 the major media hadn't yet heard about the controversy over genetically modified foods, but OPEN EXCHANGE readers were already well informed. Michael Phillips, author of Honest Business and The Seven Laws of Money, helped make the labeling of GM foods an important public policy issue:

It is no longer up to us to decide whether to eat gene-altered food. The FDA, which controls these matters, announced in April 1994 that no labeling is required on gene-spliced food for sale to consumers. No notification is required at all. Gene-spliced foods, in the US, are now indistinguishable from all other foods in the fresh food cases and in cans....

The FDA, Monsanto, and the leaders of the biotechnology industry say that gene-splicing presents no risk because it is the same as breeding.

However, the three largest organizations in America that have historically been concerned about consumer health issues publicly demanded that gene-spliced foods be labeled. All three organizations believe that gene-spliced food presents sufficient risk to consumers that they should be informed when eating gene-spliced food. The organizations in favor of labeling are Consumers Union, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. These organizations are on the consumers' side....

And the fight for labeling continues.

Dr. Elson Haas' 5 Keys To Good Health

What if you could summarize the keys to good health in under 300 words? Dr. Haas has! Elson M. Haas, MD, heads a multi-disciplinary staff of caring physicians and health care experts at the Preventive Medical Center of Marin in San Rafael. (longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister in our Health & Healing category). Dr. Haas is also the author of six popular health books, including The Staying Healthy Shopper's Guide and Vitamins for Dummies. From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, January-February 2000:

How we live is the key to long-term health, quality aging, and great vitality.

1) Diet—what and how you eat, relax and chew your food. Eat a wholesome foods diet and avoid chemicals and junk, avoiding habits/ abuses of SNACCS-sugar, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and chemicals.

2) Exercise—stretching and working our body regularly to keep it flexible and strong. For balance, incorporate aerobic activity, weight training, and stretching to create greater vitality, relaxation, and well-being.

3) Sleep—adequate rest and sleep (and dream time) for each of us is crucial to recharging our batteries, healing many problems, keeping our moods balanced and staying healthy

4) Stress Management—learning to deal with life's ups and downs is essential to good health. Find the right ways and people to express your feelings safely.

5) Attitude—keeping a positive outlook so that we treat ourselves and others with the life-supporting respect and care we deserve.

Wavy Gravy's Tooth or Consequences

Wavy Gravy says, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood!" Wavy Gravy, Woodstock alumnus, funster, and peace activist, says that when removes his rainbow colored bridge and reveals six lonely stumps kids never forget to brush again! Wavy's Camp Winnarainbow is featured at least once a year in OPEN EXCHANGE. This from May-June 2002:

I often refer to myself as a temple of accumulated error.

As a teenaged beatnik, I gargled with Hoffman's black cherry soda and brushed my teeth with a Snicker's bar. Needless to say, I gnawed my way through the sixties with only six teeth left in my head....

Each tooth had its own terrible tale to tell. By the time we founded Camp Winnarainbow I had the rap down to a science. At the end of our camp orientation session, I would ask the stagehands to bring down all the stage lights, leaving us in total darkness. Then I would call for a tiny pin spot to illuminate only my mouth. The same mouth that is still busy telling my tawdry tale of toothy terror. This is followed up by actual example. That's when I remove the rainbow bridge and reveal my gaping gums and six slimy stumps.

The sound of the children at the sight of my lonesome molars has not varied by a decibel in the last fifteen years.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiioooooooooooooouuuuu!"

To which I reply, "Brush 'em if you got 'em."

Then up come the house lights and off go the campers in quest of their Crest and their floss. I get dozens of letters each year from bewildered parents:

Dear Mr. Gravy,

I don't know what you did to our little Billy but he has been home only a month and he has already worn out three brand new toothbrushes....

And it lasts, this teaching. Ten, fifteen years down the line. In fact, all the way into adulthood they are still brushing away. This is the temple of accumulated error in action. In the last fifteen years I'm sure I have reached over five thousand children personally—by word of mouth...

Anything is possible if we would only share our errors.

Malidoma Somé: Reclaiming The Indigenous Soul

West African shaman Malidoma Somé wrote for OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE in July-September 2000 about returning to tribal wisdom in a manner reminiscent of, but more focused than, the 60's back-to-the-land movement:

There is a growing interest in the "old ways" of traditional cultures. This interest reflects a deep longing to connect meaningfully with one another through ritual, community and the sacred; experiences that are often all too shallow in our culture, or completely absent in many cases. At root, the value that these ancient cultures offer is one of inclusion, belonging to a sacred cosmos. It has become clear that many of the troubles we face in this culture stem from a feeling that we do not belong...

We cannot simply mimic another culture, cannot simply adopt their patterns of ritual to find our answers. We must create the new forms in order to heal the tears in the tissue of our land. We must become indigenous ourselves, come to know and love this place and learn its stories, moods, and myths. We must come to learn the rhythm of the rivers, hills, fox and salmon. We must gather together all that has been made not sacred. This is the challenge of the new millennium.

A Conversation with Matthew Fox

Father Matthew Fox is a former Dominican Priest with a progressive world view dubbed "Creation Spirituality." Creation Spirituality strives to incorporate the views of artists and native peoples, social transformers and scientists, psychologists, ecologists, and seekers of all religious backgrounds, to discover a new, relevant cosmology. From our conversation published in the July-September 1992 edition of OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE:

OPEN EXCHANGE: Is there the concept of original sin in Creation Spirituality?

MATTHEW FOX: We don't deny original sin, but my point is that it should not be emphasized. Sin is anthropocentric, because humans invented sin. The whole idea that we do come into the world as blessings—all creatures do—as a unique expression of the image of God-land this has to be paid attention to.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Creation Spirituality seems to be inclusive rather than exclusive. You don't seem to be saying that one religious path is superior.

FOX: That's true. The entire wisdom tradition is universalist or inclusive. Wisdom is wisdom, and it doesn't have a particular label on it. Once we start relating to the sacredness of Creation, it is no longer mere sectarian, and again, anthropocentric, division-making.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Then why is important for you to remain a Catholic?

FOX: I think that traditions —roots— are very useful and important....

Within about a year after this interview Matthew Fox left the Catholic church in order to practice Creation Spirituality more freely.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ (NLP) with Richard Bandler

Provocative, brilliant, and controversial, Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ creator Richard Bandler could grab your hopes and dreams, pull them out of your head and make them dance before your eyes. NLP has become one of the most popular techniques for effective communication in business and for personal growth. This is from OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE's July-September 1995 edition:

The advent of NLP™ was the study of how people use their minds to do things. People could do it in a deep trance and some people could do it in the waking state. There are, for example, people called civil engineers who hallucinate for a living. They see a road where there isn't one and measure it!

The most important thing, to me, is that you get people to change their beliefs in the beginning. That is the whole game. That's why they come to you. When people come into my office, the first thing I do is change their beliefs about what they're capable of. Even suicidals believe that they want to breathe for the next few minutes. Suicidals will say, "Well, I don't care about living." Answer, "Then hold your breath forever." There is a point where people gasp for air. Something inside them says, "Breathe!"

The Federal Food and Drug Administration has done one nice thing. They have tested every single drug in the United States against placebos. That means that we know more about placebos than anything. I decided to put out a product called "Placebo" because, as a graduate student, I had to find all of the studies that had been conducted using aspirin for headaches versus placebos. I discovered that 7 out of 8 times, the placebo will work as well as aspirin. I wanted to include a booklet that showed all the research and would say, "7 out of 8 times it works as well as aspirin. Take 9, just to be sure."

The Federal Food and Drug Administration decided that I should not put this product on the market, even though they were sugar tablets. They said it would only work if people were deceived. In other words, if you looked at it and said, "There's nothing in there," it wouldn't cure your headache. They actually worked quite well. People would say, "I took nine and it was gone." It isn't deceit that makes it work. It's belief.
Neuro-Linguistic Programmers™ build beliefs that are not true, but functional. I want to start by building some of those....

Shakti Gawain's Transformation

Shakti Gawain is a pioneering force in the world consciousness movement. Since skyrocketing to prominence with the bestselling Creative Visualizations, Shakti's books have sold well over three million copies worldwide. OPEN EXCHANGE sponsored an exclusive Bay Area workshop with Shakti Gawain which was featured in our October-December 1995 issue, in which we also excerpted from her most recent book, The Path of Transformation:

It seems that what's keeping us from living our new philosophies is our old emotional patterns. For example, we may have had moments of spiritual clarity or breakthrough in which we really felt that there is a higher power taking care of us. We may understand that idea intellectually and be committed to living our lives accordingly, trusting our inner guidance to show us what we kneed to know. Yet we may repeatedly find ourselves wrestling with feelings of fear and terror, unable to let go of our old ways of controlling our lives.

This is a perfectly natural part of the process. Just because we've experienced something at the spiritual level, and we now understand it mentally, we haven't necessarily integrated it at the emotional level. To heal and transform ourselves at the emotional level of our being demands a whole different focus, requiring time, patience, and compassion for ourselves. And it usually requires a lot of help from other people as well.

Steven Halpern, New Age Composer

The prestigious music industry magazine, Keyboard, proclaimed Steven Halpern "the first and definitive New Age keyboard artist." In OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE's July-August 1996 issue we interviewed Halpern in conjunction with a workshop we sponsored:

OPEN EXCHANGE: Please talk about what's come to be known, for want of a better term, as "new age" music, and your contribution to it. After all, you are widely credited as a modern founder of new age music and its first "superstar."

STEVEN HALPERN: The field that I helped create has become a catchall umbrella for any kind of music that was nonvocal and other than rap, disco, heavy metal, or classical. Unfortunately, that's meant that a lot of music that shouldn't ever have been called "new age" became called "new age," and that's caused a lot of confusion. At the very worst, there are two main genres, authentic new age music, which is more meditative and healing, with a spiritual intent, a musical analog to the Celestine Prophecy. This is in contrast to the music that Yani or John Tesh play... confusing everybody and making it very difficult for the musicians interested in creating healing or uplifting music. Music with a beat or which sounds like pop music always takes precedence over music that's more subtle. And it's a great challenge and frustration. It's not saying something bad about this music, but it's inappropriate if you try to use it for relaxation.

OPEN EXCHANGE: I think I know what you mean. Your music is not overtly like East Indian music or Gregorian chants, but there's a certain spiritual aspect...

HALPERN: Right! I invite your readers to close their eyes, and take a deep breath, and listen to some of this music with headphones, and they'll get a sense of how much more there is to this quality of music using the subtle dimensions of sound....

Robert Anton Wilson on Post-modernism

In May-June 1996 OPEN EXCHANGE sponsored an evening with the legendary Robert Anton Wilson, futurist, raconteur, and author of several books, including Cosmic Trigger Volume III, from which the following was excerpted. Think Orson Welles meets the X-Files:

To post-modernists, all art constitutes fake, or mask, in the Aristotelian sense of an imitation, or counterfeit of something else, and in a new non-Aristotelian sense we will explore. The post-modernists go beyond even the Feminists and the Multi-Culturalists, by casting relativistic doubts, not only on official Canons but on all alleged "eternal truths"-artistic, religious, philosophical, scientific, or whatever.

Worse yet, some of the Experts have identified me as a postmodernist. For instance, Post-Modern Fiction: a Bio-Bibliographical Guide by Larry McCaffrey includes me as a leading post-modern novelist, "in the tradition" of Pynchon, Burroughs, and Vonnegut. I have to recognize some truth in this accusation, since Pynchon, Burroughs, and Vonnegut certainly lead the list of My Favorite Contemporary Writers, and have therefore undoubtedly influenced me. (James Joyce and Orson Welles, my favorite artists of this whole century, look suspiciously like premature post-modernists.) Sociologist Alfonso Montuori also includes me among the post-modernists in his Evolutionary Competence, although he says I have less gloom and pessimism than other post-modern novelists, a distinction that I feel glad somebody has noticed. Despite that, to the extent that post-modern means "post-dogmatic," I do shamefacedly belong with this unsavory crowd. Only to the extent that post-modern has come to mean a new dogma do I part company from them....

Loyd Auerbach versus Bob Steiner: The Great ESP Debate

Do some people possess extrasensory powers? Are psychic abilities real or illusion? Have you ever been troubled by ghosts, prophetic dreams, or an 'out of body' experience? Rather than blindly accepting or ridiculing the paranormal, OPEN EXCHANGE set out to shed light on this controversy. In our March-April 1995 issue OPEN EXCHANGE hosted an inquiry for truth-seekers, The Great ESP Debate, with parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach and skeptic Bob Steiner. Here are some highlights:

LOYD AUERBACH: As parapsychologists have learned over the decades, the incidence of reported ESP experiences is fairly evenly distributed across the population, making these experiences far from unusual or extraordinary in the course of human experience....

Robert Morris of Edinburgh University has used the phrase "communication anomalies" to describe these experiences, and Keith Harary and Darlene Moore of San Francisco's Institute for Advanced Psychology coined the phrase "extended perception" or "extended human abilities" to cover the process by which the mind somehow brings in information through space (and possibly time).

Has ESP been proven a real quality of human beings? Does good evidence exist for extended perception? Where is the physical root for ESP?

These are three different questions, and you will get very different answers depending on who you ask.

Acceptance of the existence of psi, which is a form of perception, has been held up for physical proof. How could it work, given what we know about the brain and mind and the physics of the Universe? The answer is: we don't know, yet. On the other hand, we also don't know much, from a physical standpoint, about how the mind works....

ROBERT STEINER: The burden of proof rests on the one making the claim.... It is not enough for the proponents of ESP to say that there are "anomalies." Or that "science cannot explain everything." Or that "there is something going on out there." Or that human beings do not use the full capacity of our brain power." Or that "there are a lot of unexplained experiences in life."

Even granting the correctness of all but one of the above, which I do grant, that does not prove the existence of ESP. (The oft-heard statement that "there is something going on out there" is too vague to even address whether it is correct.) Show us your evidence!

ESP does not work in the following four places:

• at the racetrack
  
• at the gaming tables in the casinos
• in the stock market
• in the scientific laboratory.

One must wonder why it never works in those important places....

Deepak Chopra On Mind Over Matter

In OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE's April-June 1991 issue we conducted an extensive interview with Dr. Deepak Chopra, one of the foremost proponents of body-mind medicine. He was equally charming and disarming of skeptics:

OPEN EXCHANGE: The editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association says that he recognizes no link between mind and body in medical treatment.

DEEPAK CHOPRA: You should ask him how he wiggles his toes.

Healing Through Prayer with Larry Dossey, MD

Larry Dossey, former MASH doctor turned transformative healer, discussed the healing power of prayer in OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, July-September and October-December 2002. It turns out that God doesn't discriminate on the basis of religion:

OPEN EXCHANGE: One study that showed that some belief in a higher power—no matter what the religion or faith—led to a speedier recovery from illness.

DR. LARRY DOSSEY: That's right.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Does that say something about religious fundamentalism and cosmic consciousness?

DR. DOSSEY: I think this is one of the most important contributions this whole field has made. Prayer studies, studies in distant healing, show clearly that religious affiliation really isn't that crucial. No religion has cornered the market on any of this. These studies show that spirituality is universal. It doesn't shake out in terms of specific religions. All this points toward the need for religious tolerance. That's a crucial message, particularly at this time in history. Our world could use a lot more religious tolerance....

OPEN EXCHANGE: Many of us have felt a lot of anger and fear and depression as a result of the September 11 events. You'd been a MASH doctor in Vietnam. You saw the brutality of war and inhumanity first hand. From that experience, what lessons can you share to help us all cope? We're literally at war now, and there's a great feeling of division out there.

DR. DOSSEY: Consciousness, empathic, loving intentions, can literally—and I mean literally—change the state of the physical world. So, this gives us an option other than war. We can always use our thoughts and intentions to try to change things. It's important to recognize this, because we are hard-wired toward a lot of aggressiveness. It's our nature to be aggressive. But recognizing that there are other options, we can use our consciousness to try to change....

George Leonard on Happiness

Find something you love to do and practice! That's the advice of George Leonard, who had in 1994 discovered his own love was aikido. Former vice-president of Esalen Institute and LOOK Editorial Manager, Leonard is author of several transformative books, including Education and Ecstasy, and Mastery, from which the following passage was excerpted (OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, May-June 1994):

When I was a boy, my father would let me go to his office with him on Saturday mornings. I don't think he had to go. He was simply drawn there; it was his place of practice. He was in the fire insurance business, and while he went through his mail, he would let me wander through the office, free to play with the marvelous mechanical contrivances of those days—the stately upright typewriters, the hand-operated adding machines, the staplers and paper punches, and the old dictaphone on which I could record a thin facsimile of my voice....

I remember wondering even then, when I was not more than ten years old, if I would even have such a power of concentration or take such pleasure in my work. Certainly not at school, certainly not during my scattered, abortive attempts to do homework. My father's colleagues later told me that he was among the best in his field. Still, the public recognition he might have wished for never materialized, nor did the fame. But recognition is often unsatisfying and fame is like seawater for the thirsty. Love of your work, willingness to stay with it even in the absence of extrinsic reward, is good food and good drink.

Money & Self- Esteem with Suze Orman

Financial expert Suze Orman offered us "The Courage To Be Rich" in OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, March-April 2000:

OPEN EXCHANGE: You take a unique approach to financial planning. Your books help people to articulate their own priorities—they're not just dry recipes. You write, "The less self-esteem you have, the more debt you create."

SUZE ORMAN: The reason we spend more than we have is that we feel that we are less than we truly are. The lower your self-esteem, if you can imagine a teeter-totter, the more credit card debt you usually have. And it's not until you hit rock bottom, and your credit card debt is so high, that you say, "I'm not going to go any lower or I'm going to break."

OPEN EXCHANGE: Does that include having the courage to drive an older car while you're paying off your credit card debt? Not needing the new car for your self-esteem?

ORMAN: That's right. Not needing the new car, the new clothes, the fancy house, the fancy jewelry, not needing to go out to fancy restaurants all the time, not needing to have a Starbucks coffee every day. Also, not needing to go out to lunch at work with everybody else, but having the courage to say, "I value who I am, and I value money over things. I'm going to honor who I am, and I'm going to get my money in order first, and then I'm going to do all the things that I want." But it's not until you raise your self-esteem that your debt will go away and stay away forever.

OPEN EXCHANGE: There are couples that will have lived together all their lives and raised a family and not have talked about money. Why do you think that in this culture it's almost easier to have sexual intimacy than it is to have financial intimacy?

ORMAN: Because money is the last frontier. Money is a topic that touches all races, all religions, all sexes, all ages, all tax brackets. It's a universal language that truly has been held up to us in society as a thing that determines whether we are successful, worthy, whether we have contributed something to life or not. It's held up as a measure of everything. And our greatest fear in life is that maybe we aren't as great as we were meant to be.

OPEN EXCHANGE: When did you find the courage to be more successful?

ORMAN: I'll never forget when I was a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery for seven years in Berkeley, and how afraid I was to do anything other than just be a waitress. I knew that world so well. I knew the customers. I knew the route to work. I knew what to wear. I knew what to expect, and it was comforting to me.... We're afraid to go for more, because we might fail....

President Michael Toms?

Michael and Justine Toms' nationally syndicated radio series, New Dimensions, has been described as "Bill Moyers on radio." We'd often wondered what it would be like to interview Michael Toms, who is renowned for making his radio guests comfortable and eliciting pearls of wisdom. Not surprisingly, he turned out to be a gem! From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, March-April 2000:

OPEN EXCHANGE: Your latest book is called True Work. If you were president, what would you do to encourage more "True Work"?

MICHAEL TOMS: Look at all the work that needs to be done, like repairing our infrastructure—roads, bridges, schools, and the like. I would reduce the defense budget by 50% or more—it is kind of misnamed, because it's a "making war" budget—then I would create full employment repairing the infrastructure. In the 1930's the government created the WPA and hired writers, artists, and poets of all kinds. On Market Street in San Francisco there are still murals painted during the WPA days. I would resurrect something like that to emphasize the creativity in our culture that really isn't recognized now. If I were president I'd look at redirecting priorities.

OPEN EXCHANGE: Subsidizing art is where it's at! Let us know when you're on the ballot! (laughs) Do you have a final message for our readers?

TOMS: Whatever you're able to do as an individual, do it. It doesn't matter how seemingly small. It makes a difference to the whole. It's not that you "create your own reality," because you really can't control everything. But you do create your own internal reality that interacts with the rest of the world.

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Bart Brodsky & Janet Geis, Publishers