The Brotherhood of Eternal Love Stewart Tendler and Davaid May The Brotherhood of Eternal Self-Interest CHAPTER NINETEEN . Officer Neil Purcell had tried and failed to bust the Brotherhood of Eternal Love ever since it first moved to Laguna Beach. He challenged criminals in the Royal Palace and the Afghan Police. ", "Why is Brenice Lee Smith Still Behind Bars, Awaiting Trial? The government had been building a case against Tim Scully's partner in the Windsor lab, Nick Sand, since late 1971. In jail, Lynd was upset at the way the Brotherhood seemed to be crashing down. Called a hippie mafia by police, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love came to symbolize the rise of LSD, the growth of the psychedelic movement, and the heady, optimistic, revolutionary days of the 1960s. The organization's method of operation, the bureau said, was as follows: A group of members of the brotherhood would combine funds, which they advanced to Mr. Andrist to make arrange ments. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love emerged from the hippie culture of 60s California but their ambitions were global. A prominent advocate for the use of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, Huxley was a founding member of a pioneering Harvard project led by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. We were totally spiritual, religious people, said an original Brotherhood member, Robert Stubby Tierney. The issues he portrays in Afghanistan are still confronting us today. In the documentary Orange Sunshine, director William A. Kirkley tells the story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love through recreations of Orange County and Laguna Beach of the 1960s and 1970s that look like old home movies. Deciding that the outlaw bikers were too dangerous to do . Question: After moving west to California in the late 60s, you became connected with a group called the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Timothy Learys philosophy of mind expansion through psychedelic drugs made him a messiah of the 1960s counterculture (Credit: Alamy). Sixteen major brotherhood figures were arrested, and over $40,000 in cash was seized, along with a total arrest of 53 individuals. When Griggs became disillusioned with Lagunas growing reputation as a hub of hippiedom and wanted to start anew in open spaces, the Brotherhood purchased property below Mount San Jacinto near Idyllwild in the summer of 1968. Their founder, John Griggs, was high on heroin when he robbed a Hollywood producer at gunpoint but after taking LSD for the first time, he renounced violence, apologised and returned the stolen goods. On August 5, 1972, state and federal officials conducted a series of raids on Brotherhood properties in multiple states. Scully was not arrested at that time. Then, read all about the trippy history of peyote, the mysterious Navajo hallucinogen. When we started taking psychedelics, it changed the whole dynamic of everything, Randall said. Leary himself has been a fugitive in Switzerland since 1970. Everybody loved him, she said. They began distributing doses of acid that came in orange, giving them their signature product, Orange Sunshine. The film is a distinctly hippie creation (Lets make loveYou cant make love love is!), but it was not well-received: one critic described the film as a ludicrous farrago of pseudo-mystical acid babble devoid of sincerity the best thing that can be said aboutRainbow Bridgeis that, after seventy-one minutes, it finishes. A man ar rested in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 26 had 500 of the Or ange Sunshine tablets. Some core members managed to escape and avoid capture for several years but eventually nearly dozens of members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love were arrested and convicted of various drug-related offenses. Mystic Arts was a Bohemian boutique that became the unofficial headquarters of Lagunas hippies. Then you would see the same person in a three-piece suit under a different name paying cash to a Porsche car dealer.. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love started as a pseudo-religious commune of psychedelic-loving hippies. After two years at Berkeley, Scully took a leave of absence in 1964 because his services as an electronic design consultant were in high demand. Kirkley had to prove his sincerity. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, founded by John Griggs and Michael Randall, was established as a tax-exempt religious entity, with LSD as its sacrament. The Brotherhood began to distribute often for free their own brand of LSD called Orange Sunshine, with funds raised from the smuggling of Afghan hashish, which they brought directly from Kabul and Kandahar, via Karachi, Istanbul, Frankfurt and London. The one-time Harvard psychology lecturer wrote about his involvement with the Brotherhood in his book, Flashbacks, an Autobiography of Timothy Leary.. Students demand better access to care. But their entheogenic empire effectively ended on August 5, 1972, when the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs executed Operation BEL . Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. The group would then read from a psychedelic prayer book that Otto called a guidebook for drug experimentation. The vehicle, supplied with a new, false registration, would he shipped to a United States port not known to have major narcoties problems. The trippy, mind-altering story of the Brotherhood is chronicled in the newly-released documentary Orange Sunshine, directed and produced by filmmaker William Kirkley, now available on iTunes. . By contrast, Leary believed he was a modern messiah, describing himself as "the wisest man of the 20th Century". It was 49 years ago today that they finally made their move. It will be commemorated as a season of celebration, but it was triggered by a protest event: the Human Be-Inat Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in January 1967, organised in opposition to the prohibition of LSD. You'll Never Run Out of Things to Watch with These 10 Streaming Bundles, The Best True Crime Documentaries to Stream Now, Meet the Talented Emerging Artists You Won't Want to Miss This Spring, The Cast of 'Only Murders in the Building': Everything to Know, The Cast of 'Yellowjackets': Everything to Know, Bindi Irwin and Chandler Powell's Relationship Timeline, Health and Wellness Products We're Loving Right Now, Grammys 2023: See the Complete List of Winners on Music's Biggest Night, Find the Best Online Therapy Services for Your Particular Needs, The Best Original Series on Netflix to Stream Now. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. He has retired from his career with Autodesk as an AutoCAD dealer (1983-1987), consultant (1987-2000) and senior software developer (2000-2005) and is currently researching a book on the underground history of LSD. It was a whole movement that changed things and the Brotherhood was a big part of it. According to Michael Randall, a formative member of the Brotherhood, the plan was to drive down the price of LSD through mass production to distribute so much Orange Sunshine that it would become virtually free. According to Learys book, Griggs took the drug in the presence of his wife and three children. The Brotherhood was dubbed the "Hippie Mafia" by the police. Learys participation increased the prominence of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, allowing them access to hippie-inclined celebrities and rock and roll bands. When Griggs stole the LSD in 1966, he and Lynd were members of the Street Sweepers, an Anaheim car gang that was rumored to be into petty crime. He Loves Bagels: Florida Man Arrested After Feeding Wild Alligator, U.S. Congress Passes Bill To Investigate Whether The Pentagon Weaponized Ticks And Other Insects For Bio-Warfare, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. Many of his cohorts ended up in prison, but Michael, Carol and their kids spent the next 12 years on the run before he was finally arrested in 1984 and sent to prison for five years. They made their own clothes, built their own houses, even delivered their own babies. The Brotherhood was a way to tell a different, more underground, story of the place. The Brotherhood sold and gave away for free their very own LSD. WITH THE DRUG CULTURE on the rise in the United States, Griggs and the Street Sweepers were turned on to a new scene. We were so upset about Vietnam. The Brotherhood featured in the 1972 film Rainbow Bridge, intended as a rejoinder to the dark side of the hippie lifestyle shown in Easy Rider (Credit: Antahkarana Productions). A week later, Glen Lynd testified in 1973 before the Orange County Grand Jury, Griggs experimented with the LSD, threw away his gun and was running around hollering, This is it. Thats how it all began.. It didn't . Although he did not know much about lysergic acid diethylamide, Griggs did like the results of his experimentation, according to Lynds testimony. Three were seized on the island of Maui in Hawaii and three at Grants Pass in Oregon, the bureau said. Island is a utopian counterpoint to Huxleys dystopian novel Brave New World. There in the Orange County foothills, they began practicing under a Zen yogi and joined the spiritual search that was sweeping Americas youth. He was so genuine.. Initially, the Brotherhoods aim had been to drop out of society and start anew on an island paradise. By his own account, Purcell searched the vehicle and found two kilos of marijuana and hashish strewn about the cabin. ,,'work~snithu1d mingled with.studeritrad-" Hotel Baglioni they arrested a suspect iti'tfiUffiC'aled with ItaliafLspYchiefsdinkedto ; ~,icalsi' <'.. .,.~:t:t. ..possession of' 4,600 . State and federal governments argued that the psychedelic drug, also known as acid, threatened the fabric of US life, and they were right LSD made neither good consumers nor loyal citizens in a time of war. (He was) a very dynamic guy. Dubbed the Hippie Mafia, they distributed and later produced a potent, popular form of LSD known as Orange Sunshine taken by everyone from the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix to Steve Jobs in an effort to create a psychedelic revolution.. We werent gangsters, says Michael. Leary was charged with possession of marijuana, LSD and hashish. Early in the Brotherhoods existence, John Griggs had traveled to Learys estate in New York to discuss psychedelics with him. A $300-million (minimum) gondola to Dodger Stadium? In "Orange Sunshine," filmmaker William A. Kirkley tells the story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love through re-creations of Laguna Beach in the '60s and '70s. The group's mission was to turn the world on to the benefits of LSD. [2] He was featured in the documentary The Sunshine Makers. These days, the Randalls get an I-told-you-so chuckle every time they hear about another scientific study involving psychedelics, such as LSD, which is now being researched for its potential to relieve everything from clinical depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder to anxiety in cancer patients and depression in hospice patients. Frequently, a car would he purchased in the United States, fitted with hidden com partments and shipped to Af ghanistan accompanied by a member of the smuggling team. Tim Scully worked there as Owsley's apprentice. They were John Charles Gale, who was arrested in San Diego County, and lames Leroy Crittendon, who was arrested in Mariposa County. Robert "Tim" Scully (born August 27, 1944) is an American computer engineer, best known in the psychedelic underground for his work in the production of LSD from 1966 to 1969, for which he was indicted in 1973 and convicted in 1974. The year before publication, Huxleys home in Los Angeles had been destroyed in a fire that left him, in his own words, a man without possessions and without a past. In 1966, John Griggs was a member of an Anaheim, California gang known as the Street Sweepers when he robbed a Hollywood producer at gunpoint, taking his LSD stash. California Department of JusticeA wanted poster for the members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. The members thought that mind-expanding drugs were the answer to the countrys ills, says Jimmy Otto, a record-store owner in Laguna who was a friend of Brotherhood members and who once participated in the groups ritualized method of taking LSD. He was central to the 1960s counterculture as a writer and psychologist and popularized the catchphrase, Turn on, tune in, drop out. Leary became part of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love circle, though he brought scrutiny to the group from authorities that other members didn't like. They were experimenting with other drugs when they switched to LSD. The famous LSD manufacturers known to us dealers as "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love" or simply the BROTHERHOOD, using the chemical knowledge of Stanely Owsley, got off their LDS bust(s) this way, as warrants for LSD could not be used to prosecute ALD-52, which is what Orange Barrel was. We werent organized crime. Street-level drug dealers appeared, getting acid from Brotherhood members and claiming to be a part of the group, though they werent tied to its spiritual aspect. Sent to Kabul to take on the criminals was Federal Narcotics Agent, Terrence Burke. Island had inspired Leary and Alpert to launch theZihuatanejo Project, a psychedelic training centre under the umbrella of their International Federation for Internal Freedom. I think a certain number of people were embarrassed by it. In 1969 Scully formed his own corporation, Aquarius Electronics, and he was president and sole designer from 1971-1976. More members were arrested in 1994 and 1996, and the last of them in 2009; . In the beginning it was really strong, and later the coke would make everyone paranoid.. Griggs would trip with his friends and eventually Griggs Randall joined in. Kirkley includes in Orange Sunshine an interview with Neil Purcell, the retired Laguna Beach police chief who in 1968 arrested Leary. The group scouted out locations in Hawaii and Micronesia they even spoke with the King of Tonga. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Working undercover, often without backup, Burke dismantled smuggling operations in Afghanistan and India. Griggs ingested his loot, and, by one account, soon threw away his gun and was running around hollering, This is it. In the book, a shipwrecked journalist finds himself on the fictional Polynesian island of Pala, a utopia enhanced by psychedelics. Harmony with Nature Peace On Earth. The Be-In featured poetry from Allen Ginsberg and music from Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead, and inspired a series of imitation events (Love-In, Bed-In). In order to finance the procurement and production of LSD, they concocted a number of schemes to smuggle in large quantities of marijuana from Mexico and hashish from Afghanistan. Randall reckons the group distributed upwards of 130 million doses of Orange Sunshine before federal drug agents finally busted the Brotherhood in 1972. It was an audacious global smuggling operation, with drugs stashed in musical instruments, in a VW camper van, and, in quintessentially Californian style, inside hollowed-out surfboards. Once arrested, it was rumored that he cooperated with the FBI to mitigate his prison sentence. Operation BEL, as they called it, was a multi-state, multi-agency operation that executed warrants in Hawaii, Oregon, and Californiaresulting in 57 arrests and the seizure of nearly $2 million in cash and around $8 million in drugs (including three tons of solid hashish, over 30 gallons of hashish oil, 104 grams of peyote, 1.5 million doses of LSD, and 3,500 grams of crystal acid). And so the Brotherhood of Eternal Love like most of the fun-loving happenings of the 1960s remains a fond memory. The Brotherhoods religious inspirations were diverse, from the I Ching to Learys Psychedelic Prayers, and strongly favoured the eastern concepts practiced by the islanders of Huxleys Pala. Purcell arrested Leary, who was convicted of marijuana possession and on January 21, 1970, was sentenced to 10 years in prison plus another 10 years added on for a prior arrest in 1965. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/08/06/archives/joint-force-raids-coast-drug-cult-57-seized-in-a-group-linked-to.html. the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Fifty years ago, in a psychedelic haze of tie-dye and patchouli oil, an estimated 100,000 hippies, flower children and countless other free spirits descended upon San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during the Summer of Love. [4] They produced and distributed drugs in hopes of starting a "psychedelic revolution" in the United States. He also had a particular talent for smuggling and selling drugs. They had the tiger by the tail. The Brothers and their wives occupied a run-down farmhouse encircled by seven tepees at the arid base of the San Jacinto moun- . 1146 Soquel Ave The Brotherhood moved to Laguna Beach in 1967 to set up its acid-making operation. Owsley got off for only Tax Evasion! And I said OK, now were talking.. It was to be found in the final novel, Island, of the grand philosopher of psychedelics, Aldous Huxley. We were a Brotherhood, a family beyond family. Timothy Leary was a clinical psychologist and a former Harvard University professor who, by the mid-1960s, had become an evangelist for the use of psychedelic drugs. When he approached the vehicle, he recognized Leary as the driver. When he decided to make his documentary, he found he needed a lot of persistence. John E. Ingersoll, director of The Bureau of Narcotics, issued a statement after the raids in which he said that they would help to close the doors on one of the largest illicit drug traf ficking businesses in this coun try. Nicholas Sand (born Nicholas Francis Hiskey; May 10, 1941 - April 24, 2017) was a cult figure known in the psychedelic community for his work as a clandestine chemist from 1966 to 1996 for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. In the novel Island, a character experiences a good death after taking psychedelics, just as Huxley did. Timothy Leary, the Brotherhood of Eternal Loves most famous member, on a lecture tour. The Riverside County coroners office listed the death as accidental. There was also a disturbing amount of busted Brotherhood folks turning snitch after they were arrested. In the meantime, Leary had moved in with the Brotherhood. In 1981, he was busted with over $7 million worth of cocaine. I couldnt believe that something that interesting happened in such a conservative place, Kirkley said. ", "Distant Karma Catches Up With the Brotherhood's Brenice Lee Smith OC Weekly", "Mike Hynson, Co-Star of 'The Endless Summer,' Resurfaces With Tales of the Brotherhood", "WATCH: When Laguna Beach Was the LSD Capital of the Universe", "Retracing the Steps of Psychedelic Outlaws on an LSD Mission From God", "Film flashes back to the days when Laguna Beach was an LSD mecca", "Filmmaker Turns Lens Toward '60s Surfer Smugglers of Orange County", "Matt Costa scored new LSD documentary 'Orange Sunshine' (listen to "Call My Name"), touring with the film", "Acid Rain Isn't Always What You Think It Is", "Review Orange Sunshine by Nicholas Schou", "Suspected LSD Ring Leader Nabbed After 4 Decades", "Lords of Acid: How the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Became OCs Hippie Mafia", Bill Ayers 2008 presidential election controversy, Bombings of the Office of California Prisons, Bombing of the New York Department of Corrections, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Brotherhood_of_Eternal_Love&oldid=1143099734, Articles with dead external links from October 2020, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, Articles lacking reliable references from October 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 5 March 2023, at 23:00. Dr. Dennis Bogdan/Wikimedia CommonsTimothy Leary, the Brotherhood of Eternal Loves most famous member, on a lecture tour. It takes place on a fictional island called Pala, named after a town near Mount Palomar in southern California, where Huxleys friend Edwin Hubble watched the skies and where members of the Brotherhood took acid. On Oct. 26, 1966, the brother hood became a legal corpora tion in California, with taxex empt status, because of its re ligious nature. Santa Cruz CA. On the set of Orange Sunshine, a documentary about a group of hippies from Orange County who sought spiritual enlightenment through the use of LSD. . Thus, by the time they arrived in Laguna Beach in early 1967, they were experienced drug users. 100,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of Monterey Purple were made in Denver for the Monterey Pop Festival. In Laguna Beach, the group opened a psychedelic emporium called Mystic Arts World, in which all the corners were rounded, as stipulated by the Book of Tao. Betrayal of the spirit: my life behind the headlines of the Hare Krishna By Nori Jean Muster, drove them overland to Kandahar, Afghanistan, fiberglass surfboards which they manufactured. In Orange Sunshine, filmmaker William A. Kirkley tells the story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love through re-creations of Laguna Beach in the 60s and 70s. Many of its key members, including Griggs, moved to Idyllwild Canyon, leaving the bulk of the organizations Laguna Beach operations in the hands of John Gale. John Griggs and his daughter, Wendy, at the group's ranch in Idyllwild. The Brotherhood's most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group's nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. The yearlong investigation has indicated, the bureau said, that the sect had been smug gling nearly 1,000 pounds of hashish into the United States each month. From those indictments came Lynds revealing testimony and eventual convictions on conspiracy and drug charges for 50% to 60% of those indicted, according to Ed Freeman, an Orange County assistant district attorney and the prosecutor in the Brotherhood case. I remember this one beautiful, magnificent day, Michael, 74, tells PEOPLE. Everybody thought they were his best friend. When I started working on it, nobody wanted to talk to me, Kirkley said. The deterioration of the group began in earnest in the summer of 1969 when Griggs died of an overdose of psilocin, a synthetic drug he was taking for the first time. In the beginning, the Brotherhood envisioned setting up their own society on a remote island, la the characters in LSD advocate Aldous Huxleys final novel, Island. In his final annual address to Congress in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson denounced drug distribution, saying The time has come to stop the sale ofslaveryto the young. The Brotherhood responded by redoubling their commitment, and expanded their operations to produce 10kg of LSD approximately 100 million doses. Richard Alpert, who renamed himself Ram Dass (servant of God) after meeting his guru in India, was wary of the groups ambition: They were rebellious and wanted to use psychedelics to challenge the government. Bettmann/Getty ImagesTimothy Leary at a press conference in 1968, announcing that his group will join forces with the Black Power Organization. We were living in teepees and driving old pickup trucks., One of Orange Sunshines fans was Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who described his sojourns with the drug to his biographer Waltar Isaacson as a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. John Gale joined the Brotherhood of Eternal Love relatively early in its existence. And Michael Randall, along with his wife, Carol, was smack dab in the middle of it all, giving away LSD which had become illegal in the state months earlier to anyone who wanted it, convinced that the drug would usher in a spiritual awakening on the planet. This transformation is not as strange as it may seem: a research experiment in 1962 by Learys Harvard Psilocybin Project suggested that recidivism rates could be cut drastically by treating prisoners with psychedelics. Get up to speed with our Essential California newsletter, sent six days a week. Some Brothers loyally keep the faith with one another to this day. The Brotherhoods primary goal was to be able to distribute LSD to as many people as possible for as little money as they could manage. The rugged routes to Kabul teemed with worldwide youth in search of cheap drugs and enlightenment. His first experience with LSD came after he and his friends robbed a Hollywood movie producer at gunpoint, relieving him of his drugs. The Members of the Beach Boys: Where Are They Now? Owsley Stanley, who made LSD into tablet form for the acid tests of writer Ken Kesey, described the Brotherhood as loose cannons on a ship of fools. Ashbrook describes a very different way of air travel at the time, with far less security and scrutiny than today. Members of the Brotherhood scattered. The brotherhood is an off shoot of the drugoriented reli gious cult known as The League of Spiritual Discovery, or LSD, which was created by Leary. Leary would spend a . It reinforced my sense of what was important creating great things instead of making money.. Tim Scully and Nick Sand produced, by the summer of 1969, over 3.6 million tablets (300 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed "Orange Sunshine", named after the LSD that The Brotherhood of Eternal Love distributed.