The brotherhood of eternal love was a group in the 1960'ies counterculture
that wanted to spread Peace, Love and self-realization.
The group went from a small violent street gang and transformed into
a spiritual group of hippie-like characters that wanted to turn on the world with the help of LSD.
They managed to be the world's largest distributor of LSD for a while, producing up to 120 million doses, as
well as producing one of the world's purest LSD known as Orange Sunshine.

John Griggs

Johnny was a visionary and leader figure that kept everyone together.
In high school at the young age of 17 Johnny feel in love with a calmer girl named Carol.
The young couple fell in love and spent several years together.
After highschool Johnny lived a life of crime, being part of several street gangs.
Using violence to rob and cause harm to people.
Johnny wanted to try all kinds of drugs and he consumed all the substances he could get his hands on.
He had heard about this new drug called LSD(which was legal at the time), but due to his lack of money.
He was not able to buy it, so he gathered some of his violent friends and robbed a wealthy doctor at his home in Hollywood that
had an entire fridge filled with LSD.
When Johnny took the LSD for the first time he was filled with love and he released he had to run home to his
girlfriend carol and tell her that he loves her.
Johnny ran and ran, and finally arrived home with his eyes wide open and large expanded pupils, he hugged and kissed Carol and told her that
he loves her.

Johnny decided to give up the violence and started to invite everyone in his social circle of surfers and violent gang members to
embrace the spirituality of LSD and the values of Peace, Love and Enlightenment.
He actually went back to the doctor and apologized.
The group put the violence behind and started to focus on spreading the new message as well as selling cannabis and LSD.
Several people, including Johnny, quit their regular day job to focus fully on the cause.

A handful of people took a flight to Germany and bought a van with the intention of driving it to Nepal to buy cheap
hash, that they could sell and distribute in the US. On the way to Nepal, they picked up two hitchhikers a man and his girlfriend who
smoked pot. They smoked pot with the couple and told them they were headed to Nepal to acquire hashish.

The couple told them to head for Afghanistan instead and so they did.

Shortly after arriving in Afghanistan, a guy came up to them asking if they wanted to buy cannabis, cocaine or other drugs.
They told him that they wanted to buy large quantities of hashish and was able to get a great kilo price.
They bought 50 kilos and drove back with it to Germany where they packed it in various instruments and took it on the plane with
them back to the US.
They used their contact in Afghanistan continuously during the years to buy cheap hashish and distribute it.
Buying it where it's cheap to produce and distribute it to an audience who are willing to pay more.
Much like any other business.

Johnny went deeper and deeper into the self-realization enlightenment and spent most of his free time in the mountains with his friends
taking LSD and exploring spirituality.
His girlfriend Carol on the other hand was not so open to drugs. As Johnny's enlightenment became stronger he managed to convince Carol to try.
One morning he put a dose of LSD inside her orange juice.
Carol drank the juice and a new world opened up for Carol, she could see clearly.
All her materialistic desires disappeared and she no longer wanted the American dream with the picket fences.
Johnny and Carol started to talk with their friends about buying land on the countryside together in order to
live a more harmonic and freer life away from the city and the materialistic American dream with its picket fences and a two-story house.

They wanted to take some of the earnings from the cannabis and LSD business and start a commune, a peaceful communal living on the countryside.

In 1964, Johnny traveled to new york to meet one of the thought leaders within the LSD and spiritual space, Dr. Timothy Leary.

Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary was a very outspoken psychologist researching the effect of psychadelic(/mind-opening) drugs at Harvard University
together with Dr. Richard Alpert(who we know today by the name of Ram Dass) under the research
program name the Harvard Psilocybin Project.
The project was researching the effects of psilocybin on the human brain and did several projects such as
giving inmates in a maximum-security prison psilocybin which is a natural psychadelic mostly found in various
plants and mushrooms.
The experience resulted in great success where only 25% of the participating users
would come back to prison(the normal return rate was 64% at the time).

Johnny became good friends with Timothy.
Timothy loved Johnny's idea of starting a communal living and even motivated him to go further and start a church.

In October of 1966, Johnny and some of his friends officially formed a church, The church got the name The brotherhood of eternal love. The brotherhood of eternal love, was now a registered religious organization.
10 days before the church was found, the state of California had made LSD illegal.
Was able to get around this regulation claiming to use LSD in religious ceremonies.
Much similar to how the catholic was allowed to use wine in various ceremonies or how Peyote was allowed in religious gatherings.

The church was very spiritual and took a lot of inspiration from the teachings of eastern religions
such as Taoism, Buddism, Hinduism and Indian yogis.

Carol and Johnny left their house in the suburbs and went to laguna beach, a more beautiful and
freer place for the brotherhood of eternal love to call home.
They found an abandoned church close to the beach and had 3 bigger houses living in a utopian lifestyle in a
beautiful place in the countryside, spending most of their time surfing, making their income by selling LSD and cannabis, exploring spirituality and taking LSD.
They took LSD deep into the night and watched the sunrise while reading Timothy leary's book The Psychedelic Experience.

The brotherhood experimented with self-sufficiency, growing their own veggies, making their own clothes.
The group was completely leaderless so there were no real rules on who could join at what terms as long as the member consumed psychadelics.
Johnny managed to keep the group of free spirits and professional smugglers happy under one roof.

They grow bigger and bigger both in terms of members and in terms of the LSD and Cannabis business.

The brotherhood wanted to make LSD available to everyone, which fitted good with the ongoing 1960'ies hippie culture.
The brotherhood was put together with both people that were fulltime drug smugglers and people who where only in it for spiritual reasons.
Johnny was the person that created harmony between everyone and was the glue that kept them together.

They expanded the business and went larger and larger, going international.
The brotherhood was a large family and they wanted to protect themselves, their way of living and their freedoms.
They avoided the state several times and came up with innovative ways of smuggling, one of them being faking a movie production
to hide LSD in movie equipment.
The police at the border did not want to open the boxes carrying the film because that would expose them to light.
Ruining the film, they also smuggled LSD in surfboards and other innovative ways across the border.

They dedicated a percentage of the profit to maintain a slush fund for bailing out members when they got caught.

Mystic Arts World

The brotherhood took some of the profit of the drug money and opened up a
psychadelic bookstore, vegetarian soup kitchen, art gallery and hangout space called Mystic Arts World.
The place became a hit and was sold out from day 1.

Johnny invited Timothy to come and see the result of all the work that the church has done.
A while later after Timothy was done with some psychadelic research that took place at Millbrook, He stayed at Johnny's house for a bit over a year and had a lot of fun with his friends.
They were now operating a large cannabis and LSD
operation, supplying million doses of LSD, running a bookstore, gallery, soup kitchen, providing spiritual guidance and much more.

In 1968, the band the who held a concert and out of nowhere it starts to rain, but it's not water that comes hailing down.
It's tabs of Orange Sunshine LSD, the brotherhood's own acid with the color of orange, and it's being thrown into the crowd for free.

The brotherhood where experts at fake ids which made them harder to pinpoint, they used several scams in order to obtain new ids
such as fake birth certificates and using dead people's names to obtain driving licenses and similar identity documents.
These documents were used to travel and helped smuggle hash across the border.

Mystic Arts World started to attract a lot of attention, a large number of hippies went there. Smoked weed outside and were loud which
attracted the police to look think that the church of eternal love was more than just a group of hippies being religious.

Orange sunshine

Timothy introduced the brotherhood of eternal love to the chemist Nick Sand and the engineer Tim Scully which Timothy had met earlier at Millbrook.
Sand and Scully started to produce a very pure LSD(also going under the names of LSD-25 and ALD-52 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALD-52) and according to one of DEA's chemists, it was far better then what the pharmacy produced.
Nick Sand explains how he created LSD and how he got arrested in the following talk:

At 27:17 in the video Nick explains how to make lsd.

Scully and Sand also produced bigger tabs then normal containing 300 micrograms which are 3 times the normal dose.
They colored the LSD orange and named it Orange Sunshine after the song back on the street again by the group the sunshine company.

They manufactured large quantities of LSD and needed someone to distribute the LSD for them.
The brotherhood was more than happy to reach out and help them distribute it.
The LSD quickly became popular on the street and large quantities were pushed off quickly.
Orange sunshine is until this day considered one of the best LSD's ever produced, it has been taken by
millions of people including Steve jobs, jimi hendrix, Ken Kesey, the beatles, and many more.

The brotherhood of eternal love was now closer to reaching the goal of opening the world's eyes with the power of LSD.
They now had top-of-the-line chemists producing large amounts of LSD for them.
Which would allow the brotherhood of eternal love to distribute LSD to a large consumer base for a very low cost.
They were now able to make LSD accessible for everyone that wanted it, making it cheap and easy to get.
Orange sunshine was sold for 10 cents per tab and people could be able to
buy in bulk for 5 cents per tab. Making it the cheapest substance that would get you high for 10 hours.

They even handed out LSD for free at concerts and social gatherings.

Even if they made a large amount of money dealing LSD, the brotherhood never stopped believing in its mission.
They did not get caught in materialism buying big houses or fancy cars.
The majority of them were living with just enough to get by with.

At the end of 1968 president Johnsson wanted to bust more drug smugglers.
A power-hungry police officer started to harass the brotherhood and made it his goal to clean up around laguna beach.
He was arresting every longhaired pot smoker and started to get suspicious against the brotherhood.
All the extra media attention timothy was creating promoting Orange Sunshine also didn't help.

The brotherhood made a downpayment of 50 000 USD on a larger range in Palm springs.
This became the communal living Johnny had always dreamed of.
They cooked and lived together in harmony.
Johnny and Carol together with other people from the brotherhood moved in and they were now able to focus more on their two young kids.

Timothy ran for president which got a lot of feedback from the brotherhood of eternal love's members.
A lot of questions were raised, why did Timothy want to support the corrupt state system the group wanted to
get away from. Was it all just a pr-stunt?
Timothy and Johnny's relationship started to become more and more shakey and the last straw was drawn when Timothy
brought news reporters to the brotherhoods calm, private and peaceful ranch in Palm springs.
A lot of people were angry at Timothy leary for giving them to much attention, several members didn't even want to go near
laguna beach or the ranch in palm springs any more at the fear of being watched by law enforcement.

President Nixon was so afraid of the counterculture movement that encouraged the use of LSD in order to see beyond the false image of society and make them questioning authority, do independent thinking and have self-realization. That he called Timothy the most dangerous man alive.
Which made the police start to stop him and haress him even more.

Johnny and Carol had just recently had their third child and were tired and want to rest.
They left their children to Carol's parents to take some time off and celebrated that the universe had given them
another child.
A member had recently come back from Switzerland with a special new form of psilocybin.
Johnny took a high dose and felt bad after taking it, he stood up and told
the other people at the ranch, to not take it and that he was overdosing.
He tried to sleep it off.
Carol got more worried and with the help of a friend loaded him into a car and drove him to the hospital.

Johnny's died quickly after entering the hospital.
Carol went screaming down into the hospital's floor, she had lost her best friend, teacher and lover.
His friend Michael Randall quickly got the news about Johnny's death, terrified and destroyed by the fact that one of his best friends had died.
Michael took the same psilocybin Johnny had taken, and wanted to go with him. But the psilocybin did not kill him.

John died at the very young age of 26.
But his achievements and legacy will live on forever.

We at the DoNotTax.Me editorial staff are very thankful for what John Griggs did.
A true hero who went from being a violent thug to being a beacon and advocate for Peace, Love and Spiritual awakening using LSD.

A couple of months after John's death the brotherhood was not the same, it started to drift apart and split up.
Some went north to set up a sister organization and others went to Hawaii. They bought a huge boat and filled it with
Cannabis and went to Hawaii, the goal was to continue to Afghanistan and import a large amount of hashish back to the US.
But they loved Hawaii so much that stayed. They loved the surfing culture, the horseriding, nature, and everything else Hawaii
has to offer. The legend says that it was the brotherhood of eternal love that created Hawaii's own cannabis strain
Maui Waui.
Carol didn't want to stay at the ranch without Johnny so she joined them to Hawaii.

Michael went along to Hawaii where he met a beautiful girl that he fell in love with. But he released that this person is not right for Him.
Michael released that he loved Carol.
He walked straight into Carol's house where the children were playing and told her that he loves her.
Carol was surprised but she also had feelings for him, she was planning on going to Jamaica with the kids to get away from it all.
She invited him to come.
They later got married and Carol changed from being Carol Griggs to Carol Randall and they are still happily in love.

You can hear them talk about the brotherhood here:

They are still happily married with 5 children and love each other dearly.

Timothy was later caught with 10 dollars worth of cannabis in his car and was sentenced to prison.
The brotherhood still kept strongly by not leaving a brother behind.

They raised 25 000 USD and partnered up with the organization called Weather Underground.
After coming up with a plan to break Timothy out of prison. He climbed the yard and jumped over the fences, Weather Underground
picked him up and drove him to his wife and later gave him and his wife a new set of identities.
He was smuggled to Canada and later to Algeria where he joined forces with Black Panther's leader Eldrige Cleaver.
Timothy and his wife had some problem because they did not share the same socialist ideology as the Black Panthers shared
and they later got to Switzerland, He broke up with Rosemary and fled to Afghanistan, he was later arrested by the US state
and brought back to the US.
Where he served 5 years in jail.
He was in the same prison with Charles Manson and had the cell next to him.
Timothy cut a deal with the FBI for a shorter prison sentence and become an informant.
A press conference was held and where his son Jack leary, His former research partner Richard Alpert(Ram Dass) and
close Allen Ginsberg friend told the world that Timothy Leary has decided to turn against his friends and
become a snitch.
Timothy leary went from being a Guru loved by a large number of people to turn on his friends and being hated.
Several people have speculated that Timothy Leary had some kind of Narcissistic personality disorder.
Always wanted to be in the center of attention.
He later died and had his ashes sent by a rocket and released into space.

In 1971, Nixon launched the war of drugs and want to punish users.
Back in laguna beach, the police were able to allocate more resources in order to map the brotherhood.
The FBI got involved and 46 members of the brotherhood of eternal love were facing various charges.
Several raids were done and over 8 million dollars of drugs and 2 underground LSD labs where found.

The brotherhood was split up, most of its members fled overseas, several members got away and disappeared for good.
Being experts at fake identities, the members successfully were able to fly under the radar.

Several members of the brotherhood kept selling and smuggling Cannabis and LSD, the hashish connection with Afghanistan didn't end until Soviet invaded Afghanistan in the 1990'ies.

Michael and Carol were on the run for 15 years raising their children on the road, living in various countries.
They later ran out of money and got back to the US where they were caught and Michael spent a shorter amount of time in prison.

One of the members of the brotherhood the surfer Brenice Lee Smith, fled to Nepal in 1981 and lived a peaceful life there for over 30 years.
He lived in a mountain 8000 feet up in the sky, met the love of his life, a local nepali girl who he later maried and had a child with.
Brenice followed the eastern teachings and his Guru Kalu Rinpoche.
In a later interview 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

A large chunk of the members of the brotherhood still lives by the values of Peace, Love and Enlightenment.

John Griggs will always be remembered as a hero and thanks to the science community more and more
research with a lot of positive results is being done with LSD.
Making LSD come more and more into the light. We are also seeing the trend of micro docing LSD to help open up your brain more.

Just because the brotherhood of eternal love's communal living was not successful or lasted for a longer period of time doesn't mean the
concept of establishing a sovereign community has not been done over and over again.
Several people that got enlighted in the 1960'ies went on to live in various communes such as East wind which has been running stable
since 1974 there is also several cases of a group of friends going to together and buying land together, having a legal entity owning the land
and the members building there own houses and being Self-sufficient, living a peaceful and free life.

The story of the brotherhood of eternal love is a fasciated story about a group of people that wanted to turn on the world.
And spread the values of Peace, Love and Spiritual Enlightenment.
It's a love story about Carol's life and a tale of how LSD has changed a lot of people's lives.
Johnny with his path to enlightenment, Carol's path to give up materialism and many many more lives have changed thanks to LSD.

To see it from Alan Watts and leary's point of view:

Turn on, tune in, drop out and when you are in the light of LSD
and see the message. Grab the message and opt back in to the real world
with the message.

If you decide to consume LSD we recommend the safe usage is kept
in mind. A recommended read is the book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Things to keep in mind is to be in a safe enviroment and go in with
a happy and calm mindset.

We also recommend watching the movie orange sunshine.

External links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brotherhood_of_Eternal_Love
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Wind_Community
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/380815.stm
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5119260/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.22562
Michael and Carol's wrote a book about LSD called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love: A Psychedelic Guide