The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was an informal spiritual organization of psychedelic drug enthusiasts and dealers that operated in the 1960s. The group was founded in Orange County, California by John Griggs and friends. Griggs, also known as "The Farmer", was the spiritual leader of the group until his death in the summer of 1969. He was inducted into The High Times Counterculture Hall of Fame in 2011.
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The Original Bros were vegetarians. Many of them continued to practice their own version of Christianity while opening research into Paramahansa Yogananda's Self Realization Fellowship, Hinduism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and other indigenous or Eastern religions. After moving to Laguna Beach when the Modjeska Canyon Church burnt down, the group was headquartered at the Mystic Arts World stoer on [[California State Route 1|Pacific Coast Highway and the Aquarian Temple BEL 724 Waller St. in San Francisco. At that time, Laguna Beach was a common stopping point for those traveling south from Haight Ashbury (in San Francisco) to Mexico. Timothy Leary, the excommunicated Harvard psychology lecturer and devotee of free love (and noted for the phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out"), became the 'godfather' of the group.
For several years, their psychedelic activities were underwritten by selling high-quality marijuana. As business expanded, they decided to see if they could build a national distribution network. Farmer John and Chuck Scott bought a new station wagon, loaded it up with kilo bricks of marijuana and drove from Laguna Beach to the Holland Tunnel. They took almost six weeks to move the load because New York's hippie market for marijuana at the time of their arrival was small and informal. At the same time Eddy Roho, Chuck Mundal and George Dumas brought 500 lbs of Mexican Pot to the Aquarian Temple BEl in a pink Cadillac that was the biggest load to hit the city ever.
The Brotherhood sent researchers around the world to look into purchasing opportunities. Red Lebanese and black Afghan hashish were favored because of their strength, perfumes, and popularity among buyers in the USA. Other varieties of hashish were also purchased and imported in volume. At a certain point, the cash flow was more than sufficient for them to set up their own laboratory in which to manufacture LSD (LSD). It was pure, and much of it was actually made by Nick Sand.
The Brotherhood operated originally as a psychedelics distribution network throughout the United States, most notably in California where the organization received large shipments of hashish from Pakistan and Afghanistan Among the best hashish that was imported was the black Afghani Primo. With funds from their hashish smuggling, the organization produced and distributed large amounts of the legendary "Orange Sunshine" LSD. The organization was headquartered on a ranch in Garner Valley, near Idyllwild and Maui Hawaii, Members paid the Weather Underground to break Timothy Leary out of prison.[1] In 1965 BEL Bro Robert Ackerly, a fugitive was the owner of the Euphoria Art Gallery in Pasadena with Buddy Morgan, Bob Thomas and Owsley who had His first LSD lab and tested it. They planed the love ins there. Robert Ackerly became a fugitive at that time and moved to the Haight Ashbury and formed the Aquarian Temple BEL.
The organization may have been inspired by, but did not evolve from, Timothy Leary's League for Spiritual Discovery or the International Foundation for Internal Freedom. Many of its members were interested in peace and in ending the Vietnam war. A 1972 Rolling Stone article dubbed them the "Hippie Mafia."
The Brotherhood also had a small vegetarian restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway, two blocks north of Mystic Arts, named "Love Animals, Don't eat them". This restaurant operated with volunteers, with much of the food donated. Menu items did not have a price and patrons left donations for the food ordered. [The LADET restaurant was not a BEL enterprise; it was owned and operated by members of the Rainbow Family, also centered in Laguna Beach during the late 1960s. Many members of this group had friends among the Brotherhood, but they were not engaged in large-scale drug distribution. - W.A. 1 Jan 2012]
Members of the Brotherhood felt that the Vietnam War was not only illegal but that President Richard Nixon was using drug laws to imprison political opponents.
Timothy Leary had this to say about the Brotherhood: "The whole concept of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is like a bogeyman invented by the narcs. The brotherhood was about a group of individuals who took the LSD, and they practiced the religion of the worship of nature, and they'd go into the mountains. But they were not bigshots at all. None of them ever drove anything better than a VW bus. They were just kind of in it for the spiritual thrill."[2]
On August 5, 1972, dozens of group members in California, Oregon and Maui were arrested.[3] Others scattered around the world. Robert Ackerly was arrested in Santa Cruz Informed on by Tim Leary's son in law Dennis Martino and Johanna Harcort Smith.
In 1994, police arrested Russell Harrigan near Lake Tahoe, California. An Orange County judge dismissed the charges against Harrigan because of his exemplary lifestyle.[3]
In 1996, Orange Sunshine chemist Nicholas Sand was arrested in British Columbia, still making LSD, for which he spent several years in prison.[3]
On September 26, 2009, Brenice Lee Smith, a suspected member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was arrested in California, after nearly four decades on the lam. The 64-year-old Smith was taken into custody at San Francisco International Airport, after arriving from Nepal.[3] He was arrested on two, nearly 40-year-old warrants issued in Orange County, related to the sale and possession of drugs.[4] On November 20, Smith, after serving two months in jail, pleaded guilty to a single charge of smuggling hashish. Released the next morning, he immediately got back on a plane, to live with his wife and daughter in Nepal.[5]
The Brotherhood is the subject of the upcoming documentary film Orange Sunshine.
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