Tuesday Brunch: The Epstein Telepathy Tapes
Why did Epstein care about fringe New Age research?
Observing the undignified spectacle of transpersonal researchers and spiritual gurus pitching a convicted paedophile for funding, the question I ask myself is this - not ‘what does it say about them?’ but ‘what does it say about him?’
Why was Jeffrey Epstein - this trans-global lizard king connected to everyone from Putin to Barak, from Noam Chomsky to Bill Gates - spending so much time and money on fringe New Age research? Why bother?? What draws ultra-high-net-worth people to psychedelics, telepathy, the occult, the human potential movement and all the rest of it? That’s what we’ll discuss in Founders Club this Saturday…
Welcome to Tuesday Brunch, a smorgasbord of links related to psychedelic and ecstatic integration. First bit is free, the rest is just for paid subscribers.
Compass got blocked by someone in the White House
The big news in psychedelics-land is a scoop from STAT News that Compass Pathways, a psilocybin drug company nearing FDA approval, filed for a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher - which is a controversial new program introduced by FDA director Marty Makary to expedite approval of certain drugs - and was vetoed by the White House.
According to Stat News:
Trump administration officials vetoed the Food and Drug Administration’s plan to fast-track the review of a psychedelic treatment for severe depression, STAT has learned, highlighting possible internal discord between senior leadership and the Make America Healthy Again movement.
The National Priority Voucher program is controversial within the FDA and within the drug industry, because its legality is not clear and it seems to open the door to political interference and therefore corruption (ie drug companies bribing officials to make sure their drug gets approved). STAT News also reported on an emergency meeting between Makary and FDA staff over their concerns about the program.
15 companies got approved for the voucher program, including a ketamine company, but Compass got removed from the list at the last moment by someone at the White House (chief-of-staff Susie Wiles?) Someone at the White House is nervous that any signs of special favours to psychedelic companies could cost the White House politically, especially if something goes wrong. I’m surprised, frankly - Trump personally intervened to get J&J’s ketamine spray Spravato approved, after all.
It may be a good thing, long-term, that Compass got no special favours. Psychedelic treatments don’t need favours, the evidence appears good enough on its own to justify FDA approval. The market expects Compass to be approved possibly in the third quarter, and several other psychedelic companies to follow. Here is the CEO of AbbieVie, one of the biggest pharma companies in the world, on a recent earnings call talking about how the success of ketamine spray Spravato has opened the door for other psychedelic treatments.
There’s another free online peer support group for post-psychedelic difficulties this Sunday at 12 Eastern time. Email me if you want to attend. Details here.
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Founding subscribers will get an email invite to Founders Club this Saturday at 5pm UK / noon Eastern, where we’ll discuss Epstein’s support for various New Age and transpersonal initiatives, in the company of leading psychedelic journalist Mattha Busby.
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Jeffery Martin and transpersonal sleaze
Back in 2019, I spoke at a Scientific and Medical Network (SMN) conference in London called Mystics and Scientists, organized by head of the SMN Peter Fenwick, a venerable NDE researcher who alas is now revealed to have been desperately trying to get funding from Jeffrey Epstein, after he’d been convicted for paedophilia.
One of the speakers at that conference was an American called Jeffery Martin. He claimed to have rock-solid evidence about how a small subsection of the population (whom he called ‘The Finders’) had achieved enlightenment and ‘fundamental well-being’, and he knew the shortest and most scientific way to get there. He looked like an 80s hi-fi salesman with his pony-tail, and I had the very strong hunch that he was selling spiritual vaporware, but old man Fenwick thought this guy was the fucking Dalai Lama.
I was so convinced this guy was a bullshit artist, I read his book The Finders, in which he shared his ground-breaking research on the fast-track to enlightenment. It spoke of this incredible body of ‘academic research’ he’d built up, but I couldn’t see mention of many peer-reviewed studies, not much science at all. The book said if we wanted more data, you should go to his website - www.nonsymbolic.org. So I did. There were a lot of talks at consciousness conferences and appearances on consciousness podcasts, but peer-reviewed academic articles? I counted about five from the last 20 years.
Now a 2017 email has turned up from Jeffery Martin to Jeffrey Epstein, seeking funding. $10 million, in fact, to be Epstein’s personal spiritual advisor. Plus some ‘legal-age slave girls’. The email is an absolute work of art.
