International Federation for Internal Freedom — Statement of Purpose

During the last 4000 years a basic spiritual issue has been debated by those on the one hand who believe in the absolute validity of current religious and scientific models (realists) and those who see these conventional models as flimsy game artifacts (sometimes useful, more often stifling) imposed on the evolving processes of life. The latter (called mystics, visionaries, nominalists, existentialists) are more concerned with man's evolving spiritual potentialities than with his material or intellectual achievements.

Our conclusions are these:

1. There is a dawning suspicion (based on considerable evidence) that the politics of the nervous system are such that man uses only a fragment (perhaps less than one percent) of his available brain capacity.
2. Certain psychophysiological processes (censoring, altering, discriminating, selecting, evaluating) are responsible for the restricted use of the brain capacity.
3. Indole substances (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin) seem to inhibit or alter these restricting mental processes so that dramatic expansion of consciousness is triggered off.
4. Our data demonstrate that set and setting account for the specific content of awareness.
5. Expanded awareness, by definition, extends beyond the limits of the verbal and conceptual. Expanded awareness, therefore, cannot come through verbal education, but rather via physical or psychological means. Expanded consciousness also extends far beyond the cultural and ego names in which men are enmeshed.
6. It follows that the utilization of expanded consciousness (i.e. the unused ninety-nine percent of the brain capacity) is virtually impossible unless we are ready to expand our ego and cultural games and to develop an appropriate language.

We are aware that cultural structures (however libertarian their purpose) inevitably produce roles, rules, rituals, values, words and strategies which end in external control of internal freedom. This is the danger we seek to avoid. This paradoxical tension we accept. The challenge is to develop a cultural game which strives towards non-game or meta-game. We have selected a name for this group: International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF).