Memoir 2

It Was About Spirituality, Not Drugs, Man

The hidden history of conservative Orange County is that it gave birth to a hyper-hedonistic cycle, fueled by economic boom. I remember buying my first tarot deck in La Jolla, Ca., near the Self-Realization Fellowship surfing outpost, "Swamis." But years before that I spent my formative years with the notorious Brotherhood of Eternal Love, surviving initiation ordeals at The Church in Anaheim before the move to Laguna, the infamous "Dodge City" where anything went including Tim Leary.  When I do the math, it turns out I was there at the inception, 1966.

Months after the Season, the great room at The Church was eerily decorated by an Xmas tree decorated with cigarette packages hung upsidedown from the ceiling by a noose...or, hey, was that a hallucination? Naw, don't think so. Then, there was the night some dork tried to commit suicide by downing, of all things in that setting, a whole bottle of Bayer aspirin. What a bummer to make some guy heave while you're high. Proximate sexual activity is too common to more than mention. The sexual revolution was in full swing.

Dude, Spare Me the Trip Reports

I remember the foggy drives through Laguna Canyon, survivable only intuitive second-sight. Because I had relatives there, I was already familiar with the twisting roads. Maybe there would be a Leary sighting. The twist in BEL's philosophy was that they smuggled hash to pay to make more acid they virtually gave away. They believed their panacea would change the world. Or, at least, that was the story. First they got their legs wet, smuggling pot from Mexico in rainbow surfboards, then they went to Afghanistan for hash.

BEL's stained-glass shopfront pleasure palace cum headshop, Mystic Arts World, became a hippie Mecca that stalled traffic on Hwy. 101. You never saw so many beads in your life. Tim Leary declared his candidacy for California Governor from there in 1969. Being young and naive at the time, I had no idea we were partying with what would be called "the hippie Mafia" by Rolling Stone magazine. That is, until my cousin married one of them.

The Original Mystic Arts World was the first Organic Spiritual Center, offering vegetarian health foods and herbs, incense, art, jewelry, beads, a mystic book store, secret stash rooms, and Holy Sacraments with a private Meditation Temple for members of the BEL.

Hey, Dude, Where's My Acid?

The Brotherhood became a secret society, also chronicled as The Lords of Acid.
Lords of Acid - How the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Became OCs Hippie Mafia ...

In years to follow, BEL paid for the Weather Underground to bust their hero Tim Leary out of the Lompoc, California prison, then to rescue him from the Black Panthers in Algeria. Some suggest Leary himself was a CIA spy or at least a backpocket agent.
 How the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Is Connected to the Weather ... ... .
Lords of Acid - How the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Became OCs Hippie Mafia ...
(Riebling), http://home.dti.net/lawserv/leary.html

WORLDVIEW WARFARE: Eternal Sunshine of the CIA

In the 1950s and '60s, the CIA engaged in an extensive program of human experimentation, using drugs, psychological, and other means, in search of techniques to control human behavior for counterintelligence and covert action purposes.  According to Bowart, the CIA was the world's largest consumer of Sandoz LSD; that they'd worked with the Bureau of Narcotics, the NIMH, LEAA and other agencies to covertly give LSD to unwitting persons in "real life settings."

Once they were done with unwitting individuals, CIA let the LSD genie out of the bottle into the general population with their own choice of High Priest, who they had already initiated in their trial by fire.  Was “the Pope of Dope” a “tool” of the cryptocracy?

Bowart reports finding stronger evidence of Leary/CIA links: While doing research for my book, Operation Mind Control (originally published in 1978), I'd come across a CIA document with Leary's name on it. The CIA memo directed agents to contact Leary and company, who were then operating an organization called International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF). The memo asked its agents to discover if any agency personnel were taking acid with this group. The CIA wanted to determine what IFIF really knew about what was then billed as "the most powerful drug known to man," LSD, a drug which the agency was experimenting with in an attempt to create mind controlled zombies.

Another, earlier similar CIA document I found ordered agents to contact Aldous Huxley for the same reason. There were no follow-up documents to indicate whether the CIA had, or had not, made contact in either instance. Still, other documents indicated that Leary had received money channeled by the CIA through various government agencies. The files showed that, in all, there were eight government grants paid to Leary from 1953 to 1958, most of them paid through the National Institute of Mental Health, now known to have "fronted" for the CIA in the MKULTRA program. (Bowart)

When Bowart asked, "Do you think CIA people were involved in your group in the sixties?" He reports, without hesitating Leary said, "Of course they were. I would say that eighty percent of my movements, eighty percent of the decisions I made were suggested to me by CIA people.” Leary admitted to Bowart that even in the 60s he knew he was being wittingly used by intelligence agencies.  He claimed from 1962 forward he operated as an intelligence agent aware of the world struggle for the control of minds – of consciousness.  He wanted to be on the winning side.

"What are you doing for the CIA?" Bowart asked, disbelieving everything he said. "I'm raising the intelligence of an elite... a very elite group of Americans," he said. "So I think the future of freedom depends on a very small group of people who are smart enough to defend that liberty..." “…nobody ever recruited me. People came and advised me to do this or that. I didn't know that I was being advised by the CIA. I assume now, that I was being advised by the CIA..."

Then he back-pedaled, again declaring that CIA sponsored his and all other personality assessment research, including that used to assess those for CIA employment and other intelligence agencies.  They also supported J.B. Rhine’s ESP experiments at Duke University.  He was relatively clueless about other LSD researchers, such as Walter Pankhe and Stanislav Grof.

The whole question is muddied by the possibility Leary was trying to make money as a writer on MK Ultra, and wanted to increase his journalistic credibility.  Many thought he was just lying, a habit for which his best friends give him a mixed review. Others contend he himself was a victim of chemical and electronic mind control in prison, designed to break and “turn” him.  Did he turn state’s evidence for a “get out of jail, free card?”  FBI records indicate it is so. Either way, wittingly or unwittingly, truth or lie, the “king of the hippies” was a pawn in CIA’s Great Game of global manipulation.  “Why not indeed?”  Isn’t the REAL question just WHO is directing the Skull and Bones “retail outlet,” CIA?

Drugs rule, or he who controls the drugs rules and controls by means of drugs and the enormous cash slush funds they generate. Destruction of the real economy and the replacement of development with looting on a global scale is already in an advanced stage throughout the world.

In 1969 Ronald Stark appeared at the Brotherhood Ranch. Stark became the Brotherhoods chemist, producing an estimated 20kg of LSD between 1969 and 1971. He also subsequently became its banker, channelling money through a bank which had originally been set up by the CIA, as a front for covert narcotics and money laundering operations. Stark was a mysterious figure, with worldwide contacts, he claimed to know spies and was suspected of being involved with the CIA (and the project later to be revealed as MK-ULTRA). In 1971 he shut down his European LSD manufacturing operation, having claimed to have been "tipped off".

I doubt any of us realized we were part of possibly the biggest CIA experiment ever unleashed on an unwitting public, but later revelations proved it so. Congress exposed it. LSD experiments and unwitting guinea pigs were major parts of the CIA dark ops known as MK ULTRA, a mind control program. The CIA released LSD on an unsuspecting public through the agenda devised by Tavistock Institute, the "Aquarian Conspiracy" from SRI and select co-evolving projects. Ultimately, CIA deemed LSD useless as a truth serum and abandoned that avenue of research, but the genie was out of the bottle and dropped onto the sugar cube. The cultural engineering of the 60's was underway.

The connection was notorious Captain Al Hubbard the American superspy and uranium entrepreneur. He was the first Johnny Appleseed of LSD, turning on thousands of people, including scientists, politicians, intelligence officials, diplomats, church figures, and housewives. Aldous Huxley got his acid from "Captain Trips" in 1955.  Later, Leary would also acquire his experimental doses through CIA back channels.

Hubbard had an angelic vision telling him that something important to the future of mankind would soon be coming. When he read about LSD the next year, he immediately sought and acquired LSD, which he tried for himself in 1951. Although he had no medical training, during the Fifties Hubbard worked at the Hollywood Hospital with Ross McLean, with psychiatrists Abram Hoffer and Dr. Humphry Osmond, with Myron Stolaroff at the International Federation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, and with Willis Harman at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) running psychedelic sessions with LSD.

At various times over the next twenty years, Hubbard also reportedly worked for the Canadian Special Services, the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. It is also rumored that he was involved with the CIA's MK-ULTRA project. How his government positions interacted with his work with LSD is unknown.

Hubbard is reputed to have introduced more than 6,000 people to LSD, including scientists, politicians, intelligence officials, diplomats, and church figures. He became known as the original "Captain Trips", traveling about with a leather case containing pharmaceutically pure LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin.

I became aware of this backstory in my later relationship with the journal, Psychedelic Monographs & Essays, the first serious journal to recount the early history of dissemination and psychedelic culture. No one was talking about a "hippie mafia" at the time, at least, not to me. It was a spiritual crusade.

Later I asked Tim Leary how do you "turn it off," but he was no help on that. Once I tapped my psychedelic wellspring it became a gusher -- an infinity of visionary imagery which continues to flow and demands its own creative emergence. My question to the answer of drugs was, "How do you do this without drugs." Many found that answer in meditation. The drug became irrelevant. Years later, another friend would fill me in on what went on in Leary's Harvard years with the Pink Power Pills, http://ionamiller2008.iwarp.com/whats_new_24.html

LSD: Weapon or Sacrament?
Counterculture vs. Counterintelligence

In forming counterculture, the whole self disengages from cultural currents, the electronic environment and corpo-political propaganda and Agit Prop. What happens when an entire generation questions social norms? This ‘spiritual’ quest might be alienating if it wasn’t something shared with most of one’s generation. It became the American psychedelic underground, and many subculture lifestyles followed it.

A drug culture that began as a narcissistic dissociation from the world devolved into a polydrug abusing culture of self-medication by the early 70s.The CIA bait-and switch tactic, starting with LSD, created the 1970s cocaine fad and made liberalism synonymous with depravity.Any hope of controlling economies or cultures or unfolding events is doomed to suboptimize the results and yield only nasty unintended consequences.

The subversively indoctrinated counterculture failed to realize that in adopting the hedonistic ‘spiritual’ drug, they were inadvertently “sleeping with the enemy,” the CIA. The therapeutic promise of the drug was lost on the conservative government and research stopped cold.

Nevertheless, many of the wold’s greatest minds were inspired by psychedelics. For example, Francis Crick was on 50mcg. of LSD when he came up with the double-helix structure of DNA. Others include Stephen Gould, Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Dr. Kary Mullis and the notorious Timothy Leary.

Pychedelics gave rise to the Human Potential movement, “Californian” ideology, mind spas like Esalen, and the so-called Aquarian Conspiracy which has blossomed into New Age thought.All have a root in CIA experiments in extraordinary human potential, parapsychology, and creativity. As with many alchemical panaceas, the substance is both a cure is a poison – a dream to some, a nightmare to others.

Acid Cult: Weapon or Sacrament?

CIA’s favorite stepchild was LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide), developed at Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland.CIA was their biggest customer because thy thought they could weaponize it. Later, acid was manufactured for the government by Eli Lilly.Lilly has been featured as one of the most unethical of all drug companies by the Wall Street Journal.Daddy Bush has run both CIA and Lilly during his career.

In 1953, the CIA asked Eli Lilly to make them up a synthesized batch of LSD, which they patented (US Patent for Lysergic Acid Amides, Serial No. 473,443, issued February 28, 1956) and promoted heavily.

In 1955, Aldous Huxley (Britain’s “Timothy Leary,” who wrote the 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World) had his first LSD trip and published Heaven and Hell. He had written The Doors of Perception in 1954 detailing his experiences with mescaline. He contributed to the debate on “Paradise-engineering,” and issues of universal happiness, biotechnology, post-genomic medicine, peak experiences and designer drugs.Hedonism and the state-sanctioned sugarcoating the Four Horsemen of Pain, Disease, Unhappiness, and Death. Consumption of mass produced goods and beliefs.

Huxley's conception of a real utopia, was modeled on his experiences of mescaline and LSD. But until we get the biological underpinnings of our emotional well-being securely encoded genetically, then psychedelia is mostly off-limits for the purposes of paradise-engineering. Certainly, its intellectual significance cannot be exaggerated; but unfortunately, neither can its ineffable weirdness and the unpredictability of its agents. Thus mescaline, and certainly LSD and its congeners, are not fail-safe euphoriants. The possibility of nightmarish bad trips and total emotional Armageddon is latent in the way our brains are constructed under a regime of selfish-DNA. http://www.huxley.net/

Former State Department officer John Marks in The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control, The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (1979)—along with the Washington Post (1985) and the New York Times (1988)—reported an amazing story about the CIA and psychiatry.

A lead player was psychiatrist D. Ewen Cameron, president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1953. Cameron was curious to discover more powerful ways to break down patient resistance. Using electroshock, LSD, and sensory deprivation, he was able to produce severe delirium. Patients often lost their sense of identity, forgetting their own names and even how to eat.

The CIA, eager to learn more about Cameron’s brainwashing techniques, funded him under a project code-named MKULTRA. According to Marks, Cameron was part of a small army of the CIA’s LSD-experimenting psychiatrists. Where did the CIA get its LSD? Marks reports that the CIA had been previously supplied by the Swiss pharmaceutical corporation Sandoz, but was uncomfortable relying on a foreign company and so, in 1953, the CIA asked Eli Lilly to make them up a batch of LSD, which Lilly subsequently donated to the CIA. http://zmagsite.zmag.org/May2004/levinepr0504.html

Need To Know

Buckminster Fuller pointed out that throughout history the smartest people were directed into specialties that kept them from getting the “Big Picture” so kings and the elite remained unthreatened by them in their power.  The church did much the same.  They began losing control when the Freemasons sowed Enlightenment thought.  Academia still forms and directs our thinking processes and what kind of opportunities are open to us.

Those whose imaginations range into the areas of suppressed science quickly find out it is neither supported nor tolerated.  Funding and careers are at stake, and in some cases lives.  Are there some things we should not know?  Dangerous subjects? Forbidden subjects?

In these days thick with conspiracy theories, it isn’t hard to imagine yet another one.  But perhaps the most useful approach is to take a look backward to find the taproot of forces manipulating our society today.  Are sinister forces shaping our moral, educational, political, economic, and cultural lives? 

Is the fruit of that poisoned tree coming to fruition? The answer is a hearty, “Yes.”  In fact, insiders say that no pop culture phenomenon since the 50’s is an accident.  Once TV entered virtually every home, some mind control experiments came to a rather abrupt halt; they weren’t needed.  Mass mind control from the cradle to the grave had been accomplished.  The era of Madison Avenue, stylish fads in possessions and beliefs, had begun.  Recent political propaganda, spin doctoring, and agit-prop have become painfully obvious even to the uninitiated.

But the antecedents of programmed consumerism go back much further to the time of Freud and fomenting political forces in Great Britain.  The mother of all propaganda machines can be found in The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London and its forerunner Tavistock Clinic or Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, which has tremendously influenced both left and rightwing thinking and put itself in the service of the “racket of war.”

A great game is being played on us unawares, and we are pawns in that game.  Call it “Global Architectronics.”  Public opinion cannot only be manipulated, it can be created --a perception not a reality. But, who or what would want to shape and control public opinion?  We can ask ourselves like Parcival in the Grail Castle, “Who do these things serve?” and/or follow the modern investigative imperative to “Follow the Money.”

Synthetic Religion

Since civilization began, monarchs and their militaries have sought to control their own populations and those who threatened them.  Elitists with overarching ambitions have existed in all eras.  One of the most effective means of social control predates civilization, arising in the superstitious world of neolithic period. 

By healing, birth and death rites, and oracles shamans gained a stranglehold on the minds of their followers with magical medicine and mysterious incantations.  They told the people what to expect in the future and what fearsome and mysterious forces were operating out of view in nature. Their rites controlled the food supply, the weather, and tribal beliefs.  Myths were imposed on fresh minds.

Drugs were also a staple in the medicine kit, both to kill pain and to provide pleasure and communion in tribal celebrations.  These mind expanding drugs revealed a separate reality, populated by fabulous and fearsome creatures of the imagination.  After these close encounters, naturally, their shamans claimed to placate the demonic and serve the greater good.

Shared beliefs bound groups together in common cause with a groupthink worldview.  They “belonged.”  But shamanism and sorcery are centered truly around illusion and power, not spirituality.  It is an attempt to define the reality – to impose a pre-scientific definition of reality.

Shamanism finds its modern counterpart in psychology/psychiatry but also in the cultural fad of the New Age movement, a nostalgic, if self-absorbed, spirituality.  And the founding of Tavistock is rooted in the careers and theories of many of the most imminent mind doctors of the last century: Freud, Jung, Laing, Bateson, and more.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

• HELP ME (Basic Survival)
• TRIBAL We (Collective Survival
• GRATIFY Me (Immediate Wants)
• RIGHTEOUS We (Stable Authority)
• COMPETETIVE Me (Material Success)
• HOLISTIC Us (Global Harmony)
• INTERDEPENDENT Me (Sustainable World)
• SPIRITUAL We (Collective Renewal)

Krotona - Esoterics, a Drug-Free Alternative to Altering Consciousness
but another Social Engineering Project

In 1968 I underwent another paradigm shift "into the mystic." Esoterics offered a holistic drug-free alternative to altering consciousness. It was the first answer to my question: "How do you do it without drugs?" Meditation was the comprehensive answer, often combined with types of magic. The third drug-free alternative is experiential therapy, either with or without a navigational guide. I followed all these paths developing them in conjunction with one another, learning the mysteries of Eastern and Western traditions. Later, this would be recontextualized in my Jungian studies and practice.

I was exposed to the mothership of esoteric memes -- Theosophy, as full immersion experience. I landed in Ojai, California, an artists colony, Theosophical center and home of Krotona, which began as a Utopian oasis in Hollywood. Krotona put a premium on Forbidden Knowledge and extraordinary human potential. It was the esoteric vanguard of "Be All You Can Be," living on as many planes as you can imagine and stabilize. It was essentially a path of self-initiation, even more encouraged by Krishnamurti and his offshoot Foundation.

Let's Play A Game -- GLOBAL ARCHITECTRONICS

Krotona was like Virtual Reality training before VR, developing not only conceptual but experiential self-knowledge on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. I grokked the model and never really abandoned it. It came from the syncretism of ancient eras and sustained the best of the past with an eye toward an emergent future -- dubbed the Aquarian Age. It encourage self-reliant spirituality without religious strictures. It was a sort of Jedi warrior training of higher self development. Some of the most useful information came from seeing where others had stalled out in the process and why, and figuring out how to overcome those challenges and adversities.

This theosophical center with its huge library of metaphysics was a virtual Castalia for the impressionable mind. Castaglia was home of the Muses and the abstract realm of the intelligentsia in Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi (aka "The Glass Bead Game"). Hesse's books were favorites of the sixties and early-seventies turned-on generation, along with those of J.R.R. Tolkien and Carlos Castaneda. Of all these works, the austere Glass Bead Game was the least approachable, yet keenly sought, as it had about it the scent of surpassing wisdom.

It is complex but briefly, there is a game, played with glass beads. Its subject matter is the entire sweep of human civilization. In order to even begin to play it, one must have already become an absolute master of at least one entire branch of human culture, with its many sciences and arts. The game seems to be played by simply stringing beads on a thread. But of course, it isn't so simple, as each bead represents something quite huge about human experience. Putting it together in a good way was tantamount to synthesizing an entire civilization. Who achieves the highest is named Magister Ludi - The Master of the Game.

Turbo-charging the Energy Body or Body of Light

The bead game is played in the 23rd century by members of that society's intellectual elite. The players seem to be extremely intellectual, to a fault. That is why much of the book seems so austere and difficult. And yet, Joseph Knecht, the one who achieves mastery in the course of the book, gradually transcends himself and, at the end, becomes a glowing being who no longer even speaks, but whose radiant presence is sought out by all the others. How did this happen? That is the mystery of the book, never revealed or even discussed, but left for the reader to ponder.

So, how does one set out to become a potentiated HOMO LUMEN? That is the question. My answer to that one became Magick which became my vocation. Then I wondered if that was crazy, and my answer was, no -- look to Jungian Psychology and transpersonal psychologies, which validate such experiences while not literalizing them. For a firm foundation, build on the personality psychologies of Gestalt and Transactional Analysis, and hypnotherapy. Beyond that, pick a spiritual Path and work it diligently with devotion, practice and compassionate service. Learn the distinction between mind and its contents. Become mindful of primordial awareness. Enjoy the inner journey as a natural extension of embodied life. Embody that spirituality -- physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Since its founding in 1967, the Krotona School of Theosophy has been helping students deepen their understanding of theosophy, the ancient wisdom, in its many forms, and has encouraged them to live a spiritually oriented life. The school emphasizes "transformative education" which focuses on spiritual renewal. Such studies lead students to orient themselves to eternal truths in a changing world. The school, an integral part of the Krotona Institute, supports the work of The Theosophical Society and its three objects, which are concerned with: 1) The unity of all people; 2) The study of comparative religion, philosophy and science; and 3) The investigation of unexplained laws of nature and our latent powers. School programs reflect the peace and special presence that make Krotona the spiritual center it is.

The theosophical Krotona was named after the school founded in Sicily by Pythagoras.  Krotona's mission was to educate the whole, full person. Pythagorus invented the Western musical scale and the principle of harmony. But his notion of harmony wasn't confined to music: it underscored education. Krotona aimed at developing rich harmony of body, spirit and mind. His notion of culture included intellectual culture, creativity culture, and physical culture.

Krotona had esoteric classes for everything, just like you find everywhere now, but then it was rare to non-existent. The whole town was like living in a cult, so even the public library was full of wonderful philosophy books - things very rare in those days, including the natural food movement.

It was around that time the Krishnamurti Foundation was established for the "Un-guru." I was lucky enough to see his Oak Grove talks, and had many ‘wise old woman’ mentors who directed my studies and goals, shortcutting my process of shopping the ‘spiritual supermarket’. They also introduced me to a deeper appreciation of art and science, with an eye toward the esoteric and leading edge. Today many embrace this sort of fusion in their worldview.

Those inter-related mystical paths showed me a holistic worldview and that one person could work to make a difference in the world. The "unguru" Krishnamurti was an exemplar role model of human potential. He was a World Citizen and World Teacher, long before the web made that a possibility for the masses -- a realization of Tielhard de Chardin's noosphere. In the 90s, the net became a new Utopia which many imagined would solve the fundamental problems of humanity through communication and education. Cyberspace was an electronic astral plane with a group soul of its own that opened our collective Third Eye and exposed much formerly forbidden knowledge.

Through Theosophy, and the excellent library and teachers there, I learned about various mystic arts and how they were used to damp the chatter of the mind. I was immersed in an alternative worldview far older than our Great Society before I became ingrained with consumer culture. I learned astrology from a former Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church. I learned more than she thought she was teaching since she loved her daily Port. She would get drunk and rave about being “possessed by Koothomi” and ask me to slap her in the face.So, before the vogue for channelling, I learned “don’t go THERE”! But she was a terrific astrologer, named Marion…with many cats.

Of all of the occult arts, magick seemed to be the most intriguing because it had the most depth. Qabala seemed a hobby one could neither exhaust nor conquer. I'm not through with it yet and it isn't letting loose of me. My study ranged far and deep, and of course Crowley was a big part of that. My first real magick book was Regardie’s TREE OF LIFE. I really got into it. Realizing this was not exactly the "norm," I began investigating Jungian psychology, also, to keep a reality check on myself.

Later, I learned transpersonal and personality psychologies doing hypnotherapy and dreamhealing with Dr. Krippner. By the early 70's, I was an avid Jungian.I began writing to crystallize my thoughts on the interface between mysticism and depth psychology. This eventually became THE HOLISTIC QABALA, whose outline came through in one of those blissfully flowing experiences where it all comes together. I also included basics of the psychological/esoteric crossover material in The Modern Alchemist. A continuing interest of mine is the relationship of psyche and matter…that interface where nothing becomes something, or psyche “matters”.

KROTONA BACKSTORY:

In 1875, as industrial America rose and avarice trounced charity, mystic Helena Blavatsky and fellow occultists in New York established the Theosophical Society. Its rituals were a healing blend of clairvoyance, science and Freemasonry, dedicated to charitable works and brotherly love. Twenty-five years later, at Theosophy's international headquarters in Adyar, a town in southern India, activist Annie Besant formed a sect that promoted meditation as a unifying force for human good. Albert P. Warrington, a lawyer in Virginia, dedicated his life to the Adyar branch and became its American leader in 1912.

California, with its cheap land for private paradises, was home to more utopian colonies than any other state. Warrington picked up 11 acres west of Beachwood Canyon and north of Franklin Avenue, below where the Hollywood sign stands today, to create an Adyar settlement. He called it Krotona after the Greek school founded by Pythagoras, who applied musical theory to harmonize the body, mind and spirit.

Proving that faith can move mountains, or at least truck loads of dirt, the Krotona colony was up by 1919. It was a veritable Vegas CityCenter-style oasis for the faithful, conceived in an unrealized plan by Pasadena architects Arthur S. and Alfred Heineman, with buildings by San Diego's Mead & Requa, Harold Dunn, Elmer C. Andrus and amateur designer and theosophist Marie R. Hotchener. It included the Krotona Court for educational programs; the Moorish-style Grand Temple of the Rosy Cross for ritual performance; the curious Science Building for experiments to verify theosophical mysteries; and bungalows and villas of the true believers, who included New Yorker Grace Shaw Duff.

Duff came to her characteristically Victorian eccentricity with star credentials as the daughter of author and entertainer Henry Wheeler Shaw, known as Josh Billings. After Mark Twain, he was America's most renowned humorist, credited for popularizing "a squeaky wheel gets the grease" and "the one thing money can't buy is the wag of dog's tail," a homily in Disney's "Lady and the Tramp." Duff wrote too, along serious, theosophical lines, and she republished 18th century tracts on early Christian mystics.

Duff's house was the Ternary, designed by Arthur Heineman on land acquired in 1914 adjacent to Warrington's original purchase. Its three wings around a garden court were in a modern Moorish style that blended California Spanish traditions with eastern motifs, just as Theosophy synthesized Asian and western beliefs. Its name, meaning three, reflected Theosophy's way to an enlightened world: Build a community without discrimination; study religion, philosophy and science; explore the inexplicable.

Fundamental to utopian colonies was living with nature. The Ternary was on a landscaped plateau just below Krotona's Italian gardens. From a stadium in this terraced Saranath, an audience watched as the Buddha came to life in theatrical performance that used Duff's house as a mystical set.

The hills were alive with prayer and faith until L.A. sprawl crowded Warrington's idyllic retreat. In 1924, he moved his community to Ojai, where the Krotona School of Theosophy continues today. In Hollywood, original Krotona buildings remain, altered for mundane, contemporary life. The Ternary is an apartment house, and the Italian gardens are subdivided.

Oscar Wilde, no stranger to misery, wrote: "A map of the modern world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing." Living now in our Distopia, with global wars, churches in schism, fractious politics and investment bankers doing God's work, it's hard to imagine a 21st century Utopia. But -- all it will take is faith in a better way. http://www.latimes.com/la-hm-lostla6-2010feb06,0,5265456.story