The Lost Spirit of Woodstock

They came from all over. Young people with a dream. With a vision about life that was powerful and had an impact. They came in cars and jeeps and re-fitted school buses.

And they kept coming. Way beyond expectations. The film documenting the extraordinary event won an Academy Award, and was classified "culturally significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress.

500,000 young people pushing an agenda of brotherhood and no more war lived for three days in peace and harmony.

So where did all that peace and love go? Today on Healing Through Consciousness, The Lost Spirit of Woodstock.

Well, I'm a product of the '60s. Although too young at 15 to really understand the complete significance of the Woodstock event, and, frankly, too isolated living in Victoria, Canada from the bigger elements of the period, like the anti-war movement, I was indelibly touched by that time.

First of all, the music was incredible, from the Beatles and Rolling Stones to Dylan and Mitchell to Hendrix and Joplin, we could go on and on about the legacy and relevance of that music. Certainly no period in popular music has been more important in terms of reflecting the values and cultural beliefs of its time. And because the music treated values that were a little bigger than the typical musical fare, it was a key element in the movement of consciousness that was welling up at the time.

But like all things in history, what was going on in the '60s was not always noticed at the time. Remember the old saying - "If you remember the '60s you weren't really there," which was a reference to the turned on drug stupor many people were in at the time. And while it would be easy to dismiss the '60s on that basis, there can be no denying that something was happening there. Although we could also agree that what that was, wasn't exactly clear.

But maybe as Joni Mitchell said, we had been "caught in the devil's bargain and had to get back to the garden." Whatever it was, the dream vanished before our very eyes. All that peace and love and dreams for a better, more peaceful, fairer society. For a number of reasons, which we'll explore today on Healing Through Consciousness.

And it all vanished fast, didn't it? By the time the '70s was brought to a close, wanting a better society had morphed into wanting a better car and more lucrative retirement plan.

The '80s and Reaganomics brought the idea that making money the easiest way possible was what it was all about. "Greed is good," intoned Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, and we took that to heart.

Dr. Norberto Keppe's work is the first I have encountered that seeks to re-kindle those beautiful values from the '60s, along with the exalted ideas behind the American Constitution, the Illuminism of the French Revolution, the doctrines of the Resolution on Human Rights.

Analytical Trilogy is a science that considers all that as being our natural birthright as human beings - a birthright we have discarded and even trampled on because of our human and societal corruption. This is beautiful stuff that is addressed in Keppe's work, and you may find as I have when diving into his vast and expansive publications that the long sought dream of a just and beautiful society suddenly become possible.

Let's explore all that today with Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco and my colleague and friend, Susan Berkley.

Click here to listen to this episode.