Martin Ball

[Bill Cipher]

I think they're doing good work. Important work. I would just like to see them adjust their style a bit to reflect that going forward.

 

[Jees]

...How anyone could listen to his own descriptions of his "work" and not see it as cause for concern is a mystery to me.

Some people are attracted to 'concern'? Being dulled needing the next level of trigger to feel anything at all?

This whole dreadful show smells like a huge fetish for the 'particular' enthousiasts to dive in and once in that road the sky is the limit, Martin Ball offering the service. The sicker the better. Weird people in search for the even weirder provider, there is a market for even the most erratic and disgusting of practices.
It would be interesting to hear what his clients are actually signing in for. They must heard what he does, isn't it? I don't really think of those being victims, rather the demanding factor for contracting upset.

I'm trying to frame a reason why it's a niche with aficionados. If I'm right then the more alarming critics is just another free advertising for the sick cause. He might like being painted as bad as possible, him realizing Joe Normal wouldn't come anyway.

 

[Exitwound]

Followup on "Martin Ball vomiting on people"

Edit: Guy might be not as crazy as we thought

Edit2: Okay he still might be still somewhat crazy, apparently his finger shoving down throats and touching during session are clients themselves working through Martin's body to heal :? ("It wasn't me, they did it themselves!") )

 

[Jees]

Please don't buy into the excuses all too easily.

Because weird stuff happens on the other side of the globe and called normal there, don't suddenly turns it into normal at large. Why should 'out there' be the standard?

"It was needed" is the main recurring theme, so? That turns everything in unquestionable, or turns it into healing quality? It might for a lot of cases but sooner or later things go wrong.
Osho community a long time ago was all about that, let it out, no rules, no ruling, no standards. Thousands of people giving praise to that, all were so glad with such a practice, it was still very wrong going. Things got hairy and things HAD to change even by their own standards. It took MB a beat up to find out his strategy flawed, why did he not let that guy beat him to dead? It was "needed" after all, right? So he also, like the Osho community, had to deviate from the all-free-freeing-experiences dictated by the numerous shit people bring onto the board. He had to find out limits, limits he was opposed of as an ideal of healing workflow. Of course people ask him, beg him, for being a spiritual whore, people like strange things.

Good to hear he had no bodycount, good he had a chance for speaking.

 

[Tomtegubbe]

Osho community a long time ago was all about that, let it out, no rules, no ruling, no standards. Thousands of people giving praise to that, all were so glad with such a practice, it was still very wrong going. Things got hairy and things HAD to change even by their own standards. It took MB a beat up to find out his strategy flawed, why did he not let that guy beat him to dead? It was "needed" after all, right? So he also, like the Osho community, had to deviate from the all-free-freeing-experiences dictated by the numerous shit people bring onto the board. He had to find out limits, limits he was opposed of as an ideal of healing workflow. Of course people ask him, beg him, for being a spiritual whore, people like strange things.

By the way the Wild Wild Country documentary on Netflix about Osho and his community is a great watch. There was something spiritually genuine, but the ugly side of humanity began to manifest very quickly when there was so much freedom, personal power and very little rules.

Greater the power, greater the tempation to abuse it.

 

[Bill Cipher]

Not for nuthin', but he has alluded on Facebook to this being a coordinated smear attack by the DMT-Nexus, because we all hate him for having the audacity to question Terrence Mckenna.

I think he is a complete and utter fraud, and really belongs in jail for some of the things he admits to in that video. I have always had a strong aversion to his particular brand of horseshit, but his anecdote about the 79 year old woman alone is criminal in my estimation.

 

[metta-morpheus]

Not for nuthin', but he has alluded on Facebook to this being a coordinated smear attack by the DMT-Nexus, because we all hate him for having the audacity to question Terrence Mckenna..

It’s the Nexus Illuminati at it again. Those damn pineal harvesting, Martin Ball smearing nexus Illuminati!

 

[ommani]

The issue of 'boundaries' and lack thereof is central to the topic of providing trauma-informed care in a therapeutic relationship. A lack of boundaries signifies a lack of physical and emotional safety for the client, as exemplified by this situation.

 

[Jees]

Not for nuthin', but he has alluded on Facebook to this being a coordinated smear attack by the DMT-Nexus, because we all hate him for having the audacity to question Terrence Mckenna.
..

An attack for much better reasons it is, pro harm-reduction. If only for the latent harm inflicted on the psychedelic scene at large. He admits fully it does comes across firmly shocking. The last thing we all need is questionable agent display. Imho it would already make a difference if he did these things one-on-one without trumpeting.

I feel guilty of 'smear' and will aim to choose my wordings less superlative to make my same point.

 

[hug46]

I had a listen to Martin's response and i think that he does have a legitimate argument with his statement that no one that he has "treated" has made a complaint. There is an argument against this that the kinds of people he treats maybe susceptible to an authourity figure while in a highly suggestible state. Which may work for the "patient". I personally feel that any kind of healing has to come from empowering one's self but perhaps there are more ways to skin a cat.

He is adept at making his beliefs sound reasonable and maybe he believes it. He slips up a bit when he says (i am paraphrasing) "one time when i was pushing my thumbs down a ladies throat, she bit into them because that is what she needed...." Yeah... she bit his thumbs because she needed them out of her mouth. He works with directing energy and doesn't have an idea of how things will develop. So he vomits, touches sticks his thumbs in places but if a patient trys to have sex with him, he stops it. This is contradictory to the follow the energy principles that he is espousing, indicating that he has control over the situation.

The story about the lady who stopped breathing, when asked about the tongue thing, he said (again paraphrasing) "i just followed the vibe, i don't know how me putting my toungue in her mouth helped, i just did it". Spoken from a man whose facebook profile says that he makes it up as he goes along, but has managed to write 3 books about it. Another popular argument against the Martin haters is that if you haven't done 5 meo, you have no right to critique.You do not have to have done this drug to understand that his actions on a client that wasn't breathing are potentially lethal.


Yeah , he is unapologetic. I don't think that he is a predator but he is a deluded narcissist and in these kinds of situations that is dangerous. He should at least hold his hands up and admit to sometimes taking irresponsible actions. In 20 or so years time when we have hopefully moved on, history will show that the likes of Ball and Leo Gura will be seen as sad egomanics that gave psychedelics a bad name. I just feel that at our present moment in history there are plenty of people that are looking for some kind of saviour/messiah figure/

 

[Bill Cipher]

An attack for much better reasons it is, pro harm-reduction. If only for the latent harm inflicted on the psychedelic scene at large. He admits fully it does comes across firmly shocking. The last thing we all need is questionable agent display. Imho it would already make a difference if he did these things one-on-one without trumpeting.

I feel guilty of 'smear' and will aim to choose my wordings less superlative to make my same point.

You're welcome to feel guilty, but Psymposia is not the Nexus, and calling out abuses within the psychedelic world is kind of what they do.

The Nexus didn't publish the video, and all of the bizarro back and forth with Martin Ball on this forum that's happened over the years (always through a proxy, because he refused to engage directly) paints a pretty vivid picture of an out of control megalomaniac.

There is no smearing going on here. "Smearing" is the damaging of a person's reputation by false accusations or slander, so no, that doesn't apply. You know these things aren't false, because a) he said them on video, at a publicly held conference, and b) has repeated ad nauseum since the video was published that 1) yes, he did them, 2) no, he's not sorry, and 3) who are you to question his methods?

I had a listen to Martin's response and i think that he does have a legitimate argument with his statement that no one that he has "treated" has made a complaint.

Yeah, I don't buy that for a second. Martin Ball is a published author and holds a regular podcast with an awful lot of subscribers. He's carefully and purposely cultivated a public image for the past 15 years or so of some kind of all knowing sage, and he sells glimpses of the ineffable for hundreds of dollars per toke. The people who cross the country to see him and pay for this experience are already convinced this dipshit has a direct line to the infinite - a perception he's worked extremely hard to perpetuate and work to his profit.

How hard is it to imagine that people who have been groped, screamed at, probed with thumbs, french kissed and/or vomited on while in the midst of a peak experience would then compartmentalize these things while processing the drug itself? Requires a gullible dumbass for sure, but there are clearly plenty out there. My point is that the power dynamic alone in this instance makes this flagrant abuse. Add to that the fact that no one in that state is remotely capable of consent, and his own admitted lack of safety precautions for a process in which he clearly states that people may stop breathing at any time, what this all adds up to in my opinion is criminal malpractice (if one can even call what he has a "practice" to begin with). Whether or not someone comes back with perfect recall about the event (which is never going to happen) and then decides to register a complaint is completely, completely immaterial.

Also, have a think on how long it took for victims of Catholic priest molestations to come forward with their stories. How long did that actually go on do you reckon before accusations saw the light of day? And the Catholic church operates on a somewhat larger scale than Martin Ball's tie dyed trip room.

 

[hug46]

Yeah, I don't buy that for a second.

I thought you wouldn't. There are a lot of people (admittedly followers on his facebook page) who are doing the opposite of complaining and saying that he has helped them. Hell, one guy was saying that Ball vomited on him and he then vomited back on Ball and it was what was needed. Ball is saying that his workshops (or whatever the hell they are) are between consenting adults.

I am being devils advocate here, so don't jump down my throat but these points need addressing if you want to show this guy up for what he is. And saying that the people that feel that they have benefited from his actions are gullible dumbasses opens up another can of worms. Have they been tricked into thinking they have benefited but actual harm has taken place? Or can a certain amount of gullibility and open-ness benefit when it comes to snake oil?

have a think on how long it took for victims of Catholic priest molestations to come forward with their stories. How long did that actually go on do you reckon before accusations saw the light of day? And the Catholic church operates on a somewhat larger scale than Martin Ball's tie dyed trip room.

The differences being that the catholic priest thing was a cover up with abused children that are not likely to come forward until adulthood. This guy is openly sharing his abuses and is being openly called out over it.

 

[Bill Cipher]

Am I jumping down your throat? I wasn't aware I was jumping down your throat.

Have they been tricked into thinking they have benefited but actual harm has taken place? Or can a certain amount of gullibility and open-ness benefit when it comes to snake oil?

I dunno. Ask the good people of Jonestown. Oh, but you can't, because they're all dead. Maybe try the Heaven's Gate crew. Oh, wait... also dead. Maybe try Aum Shinrikyo.

Or perhaps ask the followers of Osho. Gullibility certainly helped him grease the wheels of his empire, and I believe he only attempted to murder 750 people in a bioterror attack, so no real actual harm done. In the end I believe he only successfully murdered one or two people. Yet in the face of his incompetent failure to rack up bigger numbers, lots of those boobs continue to sing his praises to this day.

The differences being that the catholic priest thing was a cover up with abused children that are not likely to come forward until adulthood. This guy is openly sharing his abuses and is being openly called out over it.

Okay, but he is currently engaged in a gaslighting campaign which is amplified by nincompoop followers. He's sharing these things as anything other than what they are (abuses), and his followers are flocking to Facebook and elsewhere to discredit any other narrative.

Would you come forward in that environment? I'm not sure that I'd be inclined to. In the first place this is illegal activity, in the second it's on the absolute fringes of any societal norms. I'm not so sure this doesn't present the perfect cover for abusers banking on the continued silence of the abused.

And this isn't to say that he himself doesn't utterly believe his own horseshit. But if so, so what, I have to ask. He doesn't require malicious intent to make him guilty of criminal abuses.

 

[Tomtegubbe]

I thought you wouldn't. There are a lot of people (admittedly followers on his facebook page) who are doing the opposite of complaining and saying that he has helped them.

Same person can genuinely help people and put them in risk of harm.

People who feel they have got help usually want to see the helping person in positive light. Creating a positive narrative can even help to shield the psyche from the potentially harmful practices. Somebody who only does harm quickly loses their clients.

This places a great responsibility on the practitioner. Codes of conduct for healthcare professionals exist for a reason. They are not because physicians or therapists are generally bad persons but because the work is very demanding and even a good persons can do harm to their patients if they don't know their limits.

Therapists use great power over their clients. If you add psychedelics to the mix, the power becomes even greater. Very few people who abuse this kind of people are intentionally evil. The situations usually arise suddenly and if you haven't thought over your ethics problems are guaranteed to arise.

 

[Bill Cipher]

I would also add that the Shimbre Ayahuasca retreat in Peru had nothing but the most glowing reviews (and a self-produced documentary lauding their work to boot) up until (and indeed after) their ayahuasquero accidentally killed a teenager and then buried his body in the jungle.

I find all of Martin Ball's online defenders to be equally clueless in this regard. Just because someone's work has helped people doesn't actually excuse them when they hurt someone else through negligence or some misplaced and dangerous God complex. The question of "Well, what about all of the people he didn't bury in the jungle?" is just the blind obeisance of idolatry.

Is that an extreme example? Sure. But it's not very hard to imagine Martin Ball killing someone in the context of what he's describing here either. Octavio Rettig has killed a number of people, and he's every bit as self-righteous and unrepentant - and in point of fact, you can hear Martin Ball defending him ridiculously here:

https://soundcloud.com/psychedelic-gaffe-machine%2Fball-on-rettig_1-mp3

And just because he hasn't groped everyone doesn't excuse those instances in which he has (by his own admission), or the extremely irresponsible lack of safety precautions he eschews.

Whether or not people come forward to complain is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether or not he is an abuser. I say he is, by his own admission, and by any reasonable standard or professional code of conduct.

 

[Spiralout]

I am only superficially familiar with Ball but a small taste is enough to know you don't need to go any deeper (it's not what I need). The first time I heard him was, what, maybe 5 years ago, and my fast drawn conclusions suggested something like what we're seeing now as being clearly plausible.

I think the whole way we're approaching this is unnecessary. What are the issues here? There's two main ones as far as I can tell and I don't see any ambiguity in them. One, the most obvious, is that Ball is doing things that are, potentially very unsafe and irresponsible at best, and very dangerous and potentially lethal at worse. He's crossing lines that should not be crossed. I don't see any reason to split hairs about this and I don't see much use arguing with someone who says other wise; if they are that entrenched in that pattern of thinking then they have some very big issues to work out and there is not a lot that can be done for that (especially online and especially in the valence of a sort of "debate"; which can tend to make people buttress their ideologies). So that's one thing. I don't particularly care to see punitive action;just that he stops what he is doing.

The other, and I think far more interesting, complex, and relevant problem is why this arose in the first place. The unique context that these drugs have currently make this sort of thing have a high probability of occurring. Again, this seems pretty obvious if you've thought about it and old enough to understand these things.

So this brings up the most salient thing: what should be done? Well, I think what can be done is already unfolding: decriminalize nature, slow progress into legitimate medical contexts, etc. I think the best thing we can do is to do whatever we can to help usher these changes in in a way that is as helpful as possible. It is only a matter of time now, so lets just do the best we can to keep things on track as they go mainstream. I personally don't have much I can offer at the moment with all the issues I have going on personally etc.

What to do about Ball? Well, I'm not sure how it can be done, but if we are concerned about this (which seems warranted) then I think we should figure out a way to get it to stop. How? I'm not sure; as I said earlier, I'm personally not very familiar at all with Ball and I've never been to any kind of shaman or even loosely formalized "group". This website, and my close friends in real life, are the only sort of psychedelic community I've been involved in. But obviously there are people here who likely aren't far away from being able to affect this guy. As a group (hippies) we tend to be quite passive and indecisive (must be the weed) but something should be done in this case. Again, I don't think anything particularly punitive is necessary; the main thing is simply that this sh** stops.

 

[hug46]

Am I jumping down your throat? I wasn't aware I was jumping down your throat.

No. You have been on pint and shooting straight thus far. But you do have form for getting antsy with devils advocate types when you inherently disagree with them, so i am pre-empting any Bill cipher anger bombs that may get dropped on me.....

I think that as the years progress i become less and less able to articulate my thoughts into written or spoken words, so i will try and put it another way...There is one camp of people that thinks Ball is an egomaniacal charlatan and his practices are dangerous, and another that thinks that he is helping people. It seems fairly obvious that he is never going to going to admit to doing wrong. Which in itself is very telling. From a harm reduction perspective how can one convince those that feel that they have been helped by his MO or is it ,as Spiralout suggests,that these people have issues that are beyond reason?

 

[Kumarajiva]

Watched the vid. Strong Osho vibes. Kind of new-age westerner osho psychedelic assisted. Taking sacred motions, gestures and expressions granted by aya and repurposing for his vile trolling. Disgraceful!

P.S.
While this dude is riding his wave of madness, its not going to last forever, and when the ride is over - karma will catch up with him and in a form of shit tsunami. Everyone eventually gotta pay.

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

I just hope his "shit tsunami" does not take down any good innocent people with him or make it easier for anti-entheogens and the MSM to further demonize and restrict entheogenic substances.

 

[Spiralout]

I highly doubt he would have any effect on taking down psychedelics. They are already being studied at Johns Hopkins etc. It is just a matter of time before the tide turns significantly.

hug46 ... I don't think people who "fall for this type of stuff" are without hope. It is difficult to be convincing through the internet though when things of this magnitude are going on (being believed in).