Hazy History; of Surfers & The Brotherhood of Eternal Love

[Cerebralfluid]

Also i would like to point out to anyone trying to take credit for any work done by other people, that the point of all of this was to spread spiritual enlightenment and to destroy the ego of the masses, not inflate them. The brotherhood was not ever and will not ever be involved with cocaine

 

[window]

Thanks for the reply Fluid,
i wondered why Padilla and Ackerly's were dropped from the documentary, starting to find out now.
I've read that there was a lot of mistakes/untruths in the two books written about the brotherhood and even Nick Schou has admitted this but he found out after his book had been published.
Does your grandfather have any plans to write a book? That would be great.

 

[Cerebralfluid]

Im not sure whether he has ever thought to write a book, i know that people would be interested to hear the story. The core members have been hesitant to share the story because of obvious reasons, in fact, when kirkely first approached the brotherhood they wanted nothing to do with the documentary, however, over time, as the lies started to build up, the real big players started to come forward. There is a wealth of information to be had and i feel that there are more lies published in the media on the matter than truths, because of this fact the core members felt they had to tell the real story, especially considering how much credit and intellectual property was stolen by the aformentioned liars. Im not at liberty quite yet to say what is in the works, but trust me, you will hear the whole story soon.

Peace, Fluid

Ps, if you have any questions about history feel free to ask, if i haven't heard the story, i can ask about it

 

[window]

Many thanks Fluid, I flicked through the chapter in Schou's book about the Aafje and your right, your grandfather did indeed buy the boat and put together the 'scam'.
So Padilla and others were just recruited to pick up he pot and sail her to Maui?
You can sense there is some tension between your grandfather and Padilla in the book, he claims to have strangled your grandfather during a row about his wife and kids not being brought to Hawaii?
Padilla also claims to have been present when CM came up with the name for Boel and was one of the founding members involved in the early sessions with john and others, so I am surprised that he is not considered a real brother, but now I'm beginning to see things a bit differently.
That pic I posted was a Xmas card from the brothers, one of thousands that were apparently dropped from a plane that flew over the 1970 happening at Laguna but recently I've heard that they were just handed out, do you know the real story? The cards came with a tab of sunshine.
Peace and Om

 

[Cerebralfluid]

I seem to remember them being handed out but i will ask again to confirm. Im certain padilla was not present during the naming of the brotherhood. Also would like to point out that sunshine was not on blotter, it was sold in little orange tablets

 

[Cerebralfluid]

Theres an interview with my grandfather in surfline about how the whole thing got started and who came up with the name and such

 

[window]

I've read that interview, it was good.
Yeah, sorry I should of wrote tablet, I knew that, doh.
I personally would love to see a book from your grandfather, I mean, he and Rick Bevan were the first American's to bring high quality Afghan hash to the states, quite an achievement seeing as they were only in their twenties and had never travelled to Afghanistan before.
http://www.theoaktreereview.com/skip.html
Check out this link (if it works) sounds legit.

 

[Cerebralfluid]

You are indeed correct. Here is a card dropped from the planes with a hit of sunshine

 

[anurag]

Thanks all, a great read. I well remember the Orange Sunshine. First had it in Iowa in 1968. Whoa! There was a particular type of weed we could get then, that we called Purple. It put you in a mystical trance. There was a word before Purple that was foreign. We as country bumpkins dropped the first word and simply called the weed Purple. It smelled of flowers and perfume.

 

[yesum]

Zacatecas purple?

 

[window]

Sad to hear of the brotherhood/orange sunshine chemist Nick Sand passed away recently. Together with Tim Scully they made a hell of a lot of acid, which was then distributed by the brotherhood.
I thought this thread needed a pic of Nick, so here he is enjoying himself at perhaps some psychedelic gathering and I believe he is wearing a brotherhood amulet?

 

[anurag]

I've often wondered. One fact is we could only get it in three places.One was this older Jewish dude iand the other two were Black bars, one in Boston, and one in Worcester, Mass.

 

[Wolfshadoe]

Tagging for later read..Thanks..<ws>>
Edit:
I'm pretty sure my good friend { cluade Duboc}..A Frenchman,, told me some stories about boel in a jail cell here in florida in 95..Told me how they
{claude} Not boel,but he knew some of them..Ask your Granfather if knows claude.{that would be crazy huh?}.. brought a 100 tons of hash at one time into Canada in the 70s..I find this very interesting..
<ws>

 

[BakedBandit]

Sure does seem like the world could use a dose about now. Seriously, I think it would be a better place if all minds were opened.

 

[Jellyfish]

The world would definitely be a better place if I could get my hands on some shrooms.

 

[beta]

Orange Sunshine
[YOUTUBEIF]yx7Q1-tvBEQ[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[~star~crash~]

only from an old time trusted source & i got some L tucked away for a rainy day

 

[bigtacofarmer]

I like checking every few weeks to make sure mine are just as amazing as I remember.

 

[The Joker1]

Very interesting thread. I like that at least one guy met Kalu Rinpoche and found the path that really allows one to know the mind, with no need for psychedelics , independently resting in minds natural wonderfulness. Did the cops let him go after being arrested in SF?

I wonder what the quality of life was for the rest of them.

 

[The Joker1]

Case Closed on Hippie Mafia Smugglers Thu Dec 03, 2009

By Nick Schou

The strange case of the so-called “Hippie Mafia,” the longest, most surreal saga in the annals of American counterculture, is finally over.

On November 20, Brenice Lee Smith, the last remaining fugitive from the legendary band of outlaws known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, pleaded guilty to a single charge of smuggling hashish from Afghanistan to Orange County. In return, the Orange County District Attorney's office, which had originally charged Smith with smuggling hash in 1972, dropped all other charges against him. After having spent the previous two months behind bars, Smith left jail a free man early the next morning. He has now returned to his wife and daughter in Nepal, where he has spent the past 30 years.

In an interview shortly after being released, Smith said he returned to California after four decades on the run to be interviewed by a documentary crew making a film about Buddhism. He claimed he spent six years in isolation during his time at a monastery in Darjeeling, India, alongside his guru, the Lama Kalu Rinpoche. Smith's tenure at the monastery ended in the mid-1980s thanks to civil strife at the hands of ethnic Nepalese who were demanding an independent “Gurkaland” state.

Denying that he's had anything to do with drugs since the early 1970s, Smith says that he instead has dedicated his life to constant prayer. “I practice my religion day and night, all the time,” he said. “I sleep very little, maybe three or four hours a day and other than that I sit and pray for the benefit of the world and the people who live in it and my own karma that follows me like a shadow in everything I do. What goes around comes around.”

For his part, Deputy District Attorney Jim Hicks, whose father Cecil Hicks presided over the original Brotherhood conspiracy case, confirmed in an interview outside the courtroom that the Hippie Mafia case is now closed. “That's it,” he said. “We've concluded it.” Hicks added that he had been prepared to go to trial with testimony by former Brotherhood member Travis Ashbrook, who was recently released from prison for growing marijuana, that Smith was "one of the original 13 members of the Brotherhood." According to Hicks, Ashbrook had spoken voluntarily about Smith's involvement with hash smuggling, but had stated that this involvement was minimal.

Reached by telephone at his house near San Diego, however, Ashbrook expressed amazement that Hicks had claimed he'd agreed to testify. "Absolutely not," he said. "I can't believe they said that. There is no way I would have taken the stand. They asked me about Brennie and all I said was that Brennie didn't do anything in the Brotherhood, he wasn't any kind of kingpin and how come you haven't let him out of jail yet?"

"It's clear he wasn't the biggest player," Hicks said of Smith. "If anyone was, it was probably Ashbrook. What he said helped us determine a plea that would adequately describe his conduct and that's what we have."

The Brotherhood was formed in Modjeska Canyon, California in 1966 by a group of mostly high school friends from Anaheim, including Ashbrook and Smith. Many of them were street thugs or heroin addicts but who after dropping acid, found a new sense of spiritual purpose, adopted Eastern religious teachings, became vegetarians, and swore themselves off violence. At the behest of the group's leader, John Griggs, they befriended Timothy Leary with the aim of transforming the world into a peaceful utopia by promoting consciousness-expanding drug experimentation through LSD, including their famous homemade acid, Orange Sunshine.

To finance that goal – becoming America's biggest acid distribution network in the late 1960s and early 1970s – the Brotherhood also became the nation's largest hashish smuggling ring, with a direct pipeline between Kandahar, Afghanistan and Laguna Beach. By the time police finally cracked down on the Brotherhood in 1972, the group was in disarray, a downward spiral that began when Griggs perished of an overdose of synthetic psilocybin in August 1969, an event that Smith witnessed. He says that Griggs immediately realized he'd taken too much and retreated to his teepee with instructions that he not be taken to the hospital, no matter what happened. “He knew he was going to leave his body that night,” Smith says. “He went into convulsions and we put him in the car and by the time he got to the hospital they pronounced him dead.”

Although law enforcement declared victory over the Brotherhood in August 1972 when the largest drug raid in California's history at the time took place, new evidence reveals the group continued to smuggle hashish from Afghanistan for several more years. One of the arrest warrants used to jail Smith when he was arrested at the airport in San Francisco pertained to a smuggling case from 1979, just weeks before the Soviet invasion. Grand jury transcripts from that case show that several Brotherhood members, including Smith, were charged with shipping hashish from the Kandahar-based Tokhi brothers – who had been supplying the Brotherhood since 1967 – after a load was captured by police in the Bay Area. The government's main witness in the case, however, testified that Smith had played virtually no role in that operation, however, other than flying to Kabul, Afghanistan to “build a tennis court” and “visit his goofy guru,” an apparent reference to Rinpoche.

Smith refused to answer any questions about that case or the charges against him, or to talk in detail about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. “It's all in the past,” he said. “It was not about drugs or LSD or anything like that. We wanted people to be happy and free and not like what society conditioned you to want to be. Basically we loved everyone and wanted everyone to find love and happiness. We wanted to change the world in five years but in five years it changed us. It was an illusion.”

Nick Schou is the author of the [link|http://www.amazon.com/Orange-Sunshine-Brotherhood-Eternal-Spread/dp/0312...|forthcoming book] "Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love and Acid to the World." To read Schou's previous coverage of the Brotherhood, visit [link|http://www.ocweekly.com/|www.ocweekly.com]