Summary: Claire Rae Randall holds an Honors Degree in Philosophy and Psychology from Leeds University, with a Graduate Diploma in Art Therapy. She has worked in psychiatry, mental health, and personal development, taught Psychology and Further Education. Claire is the author of “Waking the Monkey!: Becoming the Hundredth Monkey.” Claire begins by describing her lifelong interest in the esoteric and her background with experimenting in consciousness and Sheldrake morphic fields in The Hundredth Monkey camps. She explains how through her work she discovered the embeddedness of cultural Marxism in the New Age movement, and what led her to challenge these politically correct, leftist ideals. We discuss enlightenment and the Aquarian Age movement’s blindness to the psychopathic nature of conforming to a collective belief system that is subverted under the guise of peace, love and optimism. Then, Claire talks about the emergence of the 1960s counter culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, when Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead reigned, and social experiments with LSD bounced back to create a movement rooted in self-reliance and community. We consider how this era has led to our current age of hyper individualism juxtaposed by tyrannical collectivism. We also look at our present-day issues with boundaries, which Claire proposes can be understood by looking at the simple biological and psychological principles of Systems Theory. Claire addresses the evolution of her own spirituality and how the works of JRR Tolkien inspired her to find a deeper understanding of the mythic and historical cultural roots of her own landscape in Leeds. Then, we delve into neurolinguistic programming in politics and the idea of the 100th monkey externalization of a coalescing archetype. Our discussion closes with thoughts on defining a personal sense of identity through rites of passages.
