Gently Unsealing the Head

[Big Picture]

To set the tone, here's my brief psychedelic history:

At the age of 15, I took acid. This became a fairly regular occurrence until I was about 19. I stopped because things were becoming a bit too ... unhinged. My friends continued until several "intense" trips spoilt the party.

From then on it was mostly pot, speed, ecstasy and alcohol. This lasted roughly another 4 years. I'm now in my mid-20's.

I've practically quit drinking, and a recent re-introduction to weed proved boring, in a watching TV static kind of way.

I find myself fascinated by altered consciousness, yet I feel nervous about the prospect of trying psychedelics again. My interest in esoterica and magickal brain change has led me to Daniel's book, then ultimately this message board. After lurking for months I feel I want to come forward and ask for some advice (and hopefully spark some discussion).

At the very end of BOTH, Daniel writes: "Psychedelics provide an accelerated method for exploring what Huxley called the "far antipodes" of the mind. Meditation, lucid dreaming, or Gurdjieff's system of "self-remembering" are slower but less dangerous pathways." Now, I am attempting the latter methods (with some good results). But can anything match the searing power of psychedelics? With the daily pressures placed upon us by society, I often feel I am fighting a losing battle. After spending a day at work where everybody seems to impose their negative values/ideals on me, it can prove hard to get in touch with your essence, know what I mean?

Is it better to venture down the "dangerous pathway" and risk everything, or should I paddle a bit before I go for a swim? Does everyone here partake? Do I just want you to talk me into it?

There are many more strands to my line of enquiry. I feel the question is bigger and reaches further than I have outlined so far. Hopefully I can expand on this later.

[sidecross]

Fascination will not sustain; daniel’s book title should be sufficient to see that “Gently Unsealing the Head” is inconsistent with the risk posed by psychedelics.

Exploring the frontier comes without a guarantee.

[Halfglass]

There's always low doses. Psychedelics go to work on who you are. Forcing the self into a corner and taking away it's identity scares the hell outta some, others endure in the name of discovery. You sound unsure which mightn't be good. Low dose quiet setting--but double check your SET (mind set).

[Big Picture]

I know now that set and setting are of the utmost importance, unlike my teenage self who tripped in some very odd places (often with total strangers). Back then I had less to lose; at an age where your body and mind are in rapid change anyway, altering the contents of your head seems almost natural.

I think it comes down to the issue of control. Meditation and similar techniques provide a framework with which to explore oneself; you have more control and must become very disciplined to gain results. Psychedelics provide a quicker entry point. In the rush of the modern world I can see the appeal of this, although as pointed out in BOTH, with no traditional system(s) to rely on the Western pyschonaut can easily become lost in today’s realities.

I happened upon a TV show the other day in which a woman was undergoing liposuction to remove her wobbly gut. She laid there while a surgeon rammed a tube in her belly and sucked out pints of corned beef. This person could have stopped eating cakes and done sit-ups in the morning, but rather than commit to a (temporary) system, she wanted the end result with none of the work. This is perhaps an unfair analogy, but after hearing of many bad trips, I find myself wondering how many of us are ready to explore these new worlds without a map.

I understand that in the end, it is I who must decide on the course of action to take. I feel that by using the “less dangerous” techniques I am slowly preparing myself for new chemical experimentation. The thread on breathwork was inspiring. I suspect there are more like me who have read BOTH and are viewing this MB, who aren’t as clued up on or used to psychedelic experiences. Legal, free and straightforward practices are to be welcomed. These methods of gently unsealing the head may provide an easier means of mass change, change which is needed if we are to become “spiritual warriors” and “take responsibility for the plight of our species.”

[Halfglass]

The pace of the modern world, and all those thousands of years of belief-conditioning (which were initailly lore surrounding survival needs--which branch into self validating expressions of religion and politics) are reveiled to have no importance to the underlying being by the psychedelic. My belief is that all other means of self-exploration are still milling about near the launch pad, and are a huge wast of time for the seeker looking for direct answers to mystery. (If one can call becoming the answer--and the question at the same time, as what they'd idealized they were after, is another matter.)

[julonred]

big picture, i can understand your dilemna completely. like you, i had many experiences without much forethought, most often in a party setting, with whoever happened to be around. but one thing that was common for me was the spiritual after -effects that changed my views on everything. it has been many years since i last did anything other than m.j., and i too am slowly working up to it. i believe the right time will present itself when i am ready for it. for the time being i do some dream work, and find answers there. and more questions. through self guided meditation i have had visions equal to ones i've had with the help of the plant kingdom. it takes more work, but i think my head has been split open many times over, and its just a matter of "remembering", accessing those states of consciousness through other means. i find, that if i so choose, if i only look, open my "eyes" so to speak, i can still see what others who have never been there before can't see. what is your purpose, your motives? thats important to know. the answers arent always the ones we're looking for, thats for certain. is it for spiritual reasons, or self-analysis? i also find that the more i "see", the more i see i have to fear, and so being able to work through the fear is necessary. the fear that all we know is not the truth, the fear that in the knowing you separate yourself from most others around you... i don't believe that other means of self-exploration are a waste of time, like halfglass. i appreciate his view, and appreciate a place for all of us to voice our opinions. but theres countless ways to reach for it. just follow your instincts.

[steve]

Big Picture, like julonred, I too think I understand where you’re at with this. After a prolonged period of intense exploration of entheogen and other drug accessible doorways to higher, or anyway, other, realities, I slowly pulled back. In part it was the physical deterioration I felt my body was going through, and in part it was a realization that “I” wasn’t doing it, that somehow ‘I’ needed to get there, or part of the way there, on my own. I’m not sure where the attitude came from, maybe puritanical programming, but maybe also something more sensible. I also knew that some questions weren’t being answered that way, primarily what I am supposed to be ‘doing’ down here. after years of it, lsd, etc. just wasn’t taking me where it once had; my life, despite visions that should have inspired me for a lifetime, was feeling really meaningless and empty. drugs became slow suidide. again, maybe some wrong headed attitudes in question but thats what i felt. anyway, I did for many years pursue a drugless path, mainly working with a Gurdjieff group. only recently, and in part because of Daniel’s book, have I taken up the use of some chemical helpers to set me sailing again. and the experience has been quite different this time around, and in many ways, more rewarding.

I went into the second phase believing that, as Daniel put it, that it was an alternative way to get to the same place. Now I’m not so sure. It is complementary, but it is definitely a distinct and different operation. They really do not produce similar results but nevertheless they are connected in a way I’ll take a stab at formulating now. Very tentatively

of course, there are lots of paths, but it seems to me that most of them put an emphasis on some kind of effort, though of many different forms. I think the G stuff anyway, in the end really forces you to work on will. not will as its interpreted in the modern west, with its cowboy connotations of toughness and individuality and control, of course, because an accompanying process is the slow corrosion of a lot of what is taken for the self. in the end it’s a kind of selfless will, a will without willfulness, if you know what I mean.

Huston Smith makes the distinction between spiritual states or perceptions or experiences and the spiritual life. I don’t personally think theres a necessary hierarchy of value there, but they are different things. I think the will work allows you to descend into the turbulent waters of these states and bring more back; its like a cup you can fill to drink from and give to others when you return. the danger in this path is just sitting up on the rim of the well with your empty cup and never going back down.

or else its like a rudder you use to navigate those waters. I’ve recently been sensing we are somehow doing a service to god or whatever by going down (or up, or wherever) and looking clearly into the unhinged universe, like lenses for Its eyes. But if we are a lens for some cosmic viewer, then its important first to be transparent and then to keep the vessel steady down there. That’s where will comes in. The rudder.

A lot of the work traditions ask you to refrain from drug-taking. I’m not sure how ultimately useful this is, but there is one good reason to consider it for a while at least. In some ways the waters of those worlds wear away at the rudder, at the will, deteriorating it, as rushing water will do. So I think they want to give you some time to get a good momentum of work going. worth considering anyway.

another idea of Gurdjieff might be applicable. he says that there are four states of consciousness. the next up from this one is self-consciousness where you can know the truth about yourself, the highest, the fourth state, is objective consciousness where you can know the truth about the world. now lots of things will propel us to the fourth state (where most great religious and mystical lit is produced for instance), and we can have incredible insights about the world when there. but g says (and I’m just reporting here, though obviously I have some sympathy for this idea) that unless one has become a regular inhabitant in the third state of self-consciousness one will project all sorts of personal subjectivities into the vision of the objective world. we see through a glass darkly (but then face to face) as the bible says. the first object is to know ourselves so as not to be fooled when we have a chance for higher insights.

anyway, as julonred said, following your instincts is a good idea. not blindly, of course, but with focus and a keen eye and openness to new directions. anyway, its not an either-or question, so flexibility and attunement to the moment is important. best of luck to you.

[sidecross]

“…its like a rudder you use to navigate those waters…”

“…the first object is to know ourselves so as not to be fooled when we have a chance for higher insights…”

There is no disagreement with steve’s statement; the use of or non use of psychedelics is an issue each must answer.

I do find, however, the analogy of “rudders” and “know ourselves so as not to be fooled” as insufficient.

Psychedelics and revelation share a common theme in that both shatter a previous paradigm. Anyone clinging to a “rudder” or a belief in “to know ourselves so as not to be fooled” would resist, in my view, such a paradigm shift.

Psychedelic use requires a trust larger than a captain with hands on a rudder or the guardian of who we think we may be.

[steve]

You are right sidecross, the analogy is insufficient. I mean, what analogy wouldn’t be. But I did say “rudder”, not lifeboat; and rudder is something you use to steer, it wont save you. Anyway, the analogy does have problems, I’ll admit. Its probably better to abandon it. But for the moment I stand by the need to know oneself, and the reason is in fact to limit the effect of one’s paradigm. If you don’t know yourself, then how can you see when your limiting paradigm is intervening? I really don’t understand what you mean by that. It’s the person who doesn’t know hemself that most desperately holds on to a paradigm – and doesn’t even realize it. Blindly defends it, unconscious of hes own close-mindedness.

Anyway, I am interested to know in what you “trust”. That is a fascinating statement. Is it something in yourself, or something outside? I would love to hear you expand on that.

[sidecross]

In order to know ‘oneself” who is the one knowing? This is not meant as a semantic card trick.

The paradigm of who we think we may be is a linguistic definition whose time of duration most likely is only as old as the time of our particular birth. The “trust” I speak of is the millions of years of evolution of the hominoid form and the billions of years of life itself.

We are not as Cartesian thought would have us believe, a blank slate at birth to be defined by linguistics and custom only. Psychedelics may be the pathway to the forgotten knowledge that at one time may have been quite at hand. We may be much more than anyone has ever told us.

Alan Watts in a talk I heard mentioned how the teeth can not bite its own teeth. Learning to know ourselves solely through the vehicle of language may be as futile as is trying to bite our own teeth.

[daniel]

I am increasingly aware of the big difference between psychedelic experience on one's own and as part of a guided shamanic tradition. Without putting down self-experimentation, I now understand better why experiences within a tradition may offer a safer and more grounded (if less purely individualistic) way of exploring. I am thinking of Santo Daime, the Native American Church, or seeking out work with the growing number of shamans passing through the US. These groups have created a container for the energies that get released, shaping them in the direction of healing.

If such groups are not available (and they may find you if you open to them and start seeking), then the organic psychedelics, especially mushrooms, seem to offer the best gateway. Starting with a small dose and working up seems sensible.

Steve, I think you are right that it is very difficult perhaps impossible to get to the places psychedelics bring you without entheogens. So personally I think the risks are worth it, though of course it is an individual decision. I also think there is a real teleology in how these substances are burrowing into the modern world (Paul Stamets notes the appearance of psilocybin species in devastated areas across the country), and we can't afford to ignore the wisdom and insight of vegetable intelligence at this late, dire, perhaps even terminal stage of the present culture.

[steve]

I definitely do agree that psychedelics can lead to forgotten – or previously unknown – knowledge, and I concur that we are not a blank slate at birth. And I also know your remarks about the self are not a semantic card trick, sidecross. However, I do think they are addressing a different scale of metaphysics than I am speaking of. If you carry those implications through without relativizing the concept (and here at least you haven’t) then it seems somehow inconsistent with stringing two words together to make a statement. How can you state anything, especially with a sense of certainty, if there is no ground whatsoever – even by way of convention – for the self? . and sidecross your aphoristic rhetoric is strong, and certainly betrays no sense of self-doubt or ambiguity.

anyway, yes, you are absolutely right, but the level I’m speaking on isn’t quite so cosmic. To clarify, I am not talking about “learning to know oneself through the vehicle of language” as you say. I would distinguish the witnessing experience (of oneself) and its formulation. Its formulation is, its true, done with language, and you are right, this is restricted by the categories which structure our paradigm. But further experience itself can destroy (and then further refine) those same paradigms. Which is why cycles of paradigm destruction AND reformulation are necessary, as far as I see it. But this is really complex, and I am open to other opinions, as long as they are presented without dogmatic tones.

So, “who is the one knowing”? I tend to concur with those esoteric traditions that describe this accidental construct of self as consisting of different parts with hierarchically different levels of epistemology. There is something called the “observer” in those traditions. (in one of which at least, this needs to be created). I really don’t know much about it, but it seems to correspond to some point of pure awareness, some place where experience focuses (NOT language), where some sort of synthesis can be made. It can “get behind” other levels of perception, ‘see the seeing’, ‘feel the feeling’, in ways that other levels of perception cannot. This kind of experience is verifiable, though certainly open to other interpretations.

I emphasize that we need to relativize the conversation here, precisely because of the clumsiness of language. Both are true, but on different scales. On the huge level you seem to be addressing sidecross, I am quite sure that the observer dissolves as well. We know that psychedelics can in certain cases entirely obliterate all traces of the self. I for one am grateful for the experience, and indeed seek it out still, with or without entheogens. As Daniel says, the risks are worth it. But there are whole worlds between here and there, and I’m pretty sure that most esoteric traditions go through those other levels, not straight to the Absolute. Maybe there’s a reason for that.

[sidecross]

“…. and sidecross your aphoristic rhetoric is strong, and certainly betrays no sense of self-doubt or ambiguity…”

My experiences with psychedelics were filled with self-doubt; anyone viewing me under those conditions would never be convinced that anything good could be happening.

Richard Albert or Ram Dass compared such experiences to the abrasion of sandpaper, and that on the surface, sandpaper shows no tactile way it could smooth a surface.

I do quite agree that language and scale is at issue here, and both have much in common with the paradox of quantum mechanics and a unified field theory of everything. We may all be just pissing in the wind.

[daniel]

It seems that Islam is the religion that seeks to remove the middle levels between Self and Absolute. On Jomo's recommendation, I just read "Understanding Islam" by Frithjof Schuon, a great book. One quote:

"Islam strikes one by the unshakable character of its conviction and by the combative nature of its faith; these two complementary aspects ... are essentially derived from a consciousness of the Absolute, which on the one hand establishes inaccessibility to doubt and on the other repels error with violence."

One of the uses of psychedelics is they can give you hints of the reality of hell realms, nonhuman worlds, and bardo states. The only way to avoid an unfortunate experience in the afterlife is to act correctly here and now. I think that with correct use psychedelics may also help generate the powerful will necessary to do so. I am thinking here especially of iboga and peyote and ayahuasca used in ceremony.

5 - meo - DMT is the overwhelming experience of pure merging back into the Absolute and Infinite (the realm that dissolves you appears a bit like undulating Islamic patterns in all directions).

[steve]

Sidecross, that’s a great quote about the sandpaper. I’ve felt something similar, something like acid (sulfuric, not lsd), something with a positively corrosive force on personality (meaning lower levels of the self).

Daniel, I think that’s right about Islam removing those intermediate levels. Actually, the whole Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition does, but Islam with a particular force, perhaps because it was last in line. I get the impression they were so taken with the novelty of monotheism (kind of proud of themselves) that they just forgot everything else. Of course for mainstream Muslims, the Trinitarian Christians are just disguised polytheists, and it seems Judaism only gradually developed into a monotheistic religion (early on Jehovah seems not to regard Ba’al as imaginary, but as a flesh-and-blood (so to speak) competitor god). Of course, even Islam retained the jinn from pre-islamic arabia. But especially Sunni emphasis on monotheism has something really fierce about it. I think there may have been something political there: it was the main way they defined themselves vis-à-vis the Christians. The Dome of the Rock, a magical building and the first really significant work of Islamic art and architecture, is plastered with inscriptions to that effect. Positively picking a fight with the local Christians. Of course, organized, mainstream religion always gets its revelations mucked up with extraneous stuff.

However, in some Sufi traditions they adopted a neo-platonic cosmology of radiating worlds of creation, back up which the soul must ascend. As usual, the esoteric traditions have much more subtle things to say. At least that’s the impression I got. Gurdjieff ties into this with his Ray of Creation.

Also, the idea of a teleology of historical revelation is really intriguing. I do feel a sense of… well, I’d say “intelligent design”, but that phrase is too associated with simple minded creationism. But a feeling of coincidence, synchronicity, fate, that kind of thing, is often inescapable even in my awareness of my own personal life and this leads to a sense that it is all going somewhere.

I don’t think its from ‘bad’ to ‘good’ or anything like that; sometimes I think ‘time’ is nothing other than “god” or whatever swinging a flashlight from one end of a darkened room to another. Its all there all the time. It’s a way of slowing down creation, spreading it out, so it can be looked at little by little. Fits in with the feeling that we are all little lenses down here, differently attuned and focused, designed for ‘someone’ to look through…

[Big Picture]

...we can't afford to ignore the wisdom and insight of vegetable intelligence at this late, dire, perhaps even terminal stage of the present culture. I want to go back and pick up on this, as it's a theme I'm growing more concerned with. How does everyone feel about the state of our species right now? I find it very hard to be optimistic about any kind of substantial change happening, especially change through the use of psychedelic plants.

I understand that it is up to the individual to take action and "realise your purpose here on the planet!". But I believe that any change has to work on a mass scale. How can this be achieved? Well, writing a book certainly helps ;) .

Does anybody seriously think that the un-enlightened majority are going to make the big decision though? Or are we to sit and wait to see what 2012 brings us? Although Timothy Leary has been blasted by some for his high profile pop-image and brash statements, at least he was trying to spread the message to the most people possible. I don't think I would be here typing this if I hadn't first heard of Leary. It's like reading a book by Michael Moore. Most regular folk could pick up a book by Noam Chomsky, only to drop it due to it's impenetrability, it's density. However, a copy of Stupid White Men is a much better way to get the average citizen to start questioning what's going on. The book is everywhere. It's accessible.

I think what I'm attempting to say here is: is it ever going to be seriously possible to break open ALL the heads?

[ May 15, 2003, 06:42 PM: Message edited by: Big Picture ]

[daniel]

Hi Big Picture,

Good - even essential - questions, ones that I struggle with all of the time. Here are my current perspectives:

1. The Leary attempt at mass transformation through LSD was an abject failure, for many reasons. I don't think we can expect things to happen like that again. What seems to be crucial now is people getting their own houses in order, building their own webs of community and relations, and fully understanding the "irrational rationality" of the current system. When my friend took iboga, he asked the "spirit" how he could help to save the world, and iboga replied: "CLEAN UP YOUR ROOM!" For those of us who want to help salvage what can be salvaged, we have to have as much integrity and up-rightness as possible, with no ego inflation. Building our own communities and networks is essential. If you can deeply change one person's perspectives, especially someone near to you, you have done a lot.

2. I believe we are in a teleological process that is focused on the evolution of human consciousness. "Vegetable intelligence" in the form of ayahausca, psilocybin, etc., is part of this process, and clearly reaching into our modern world in a subtler but deeper way than it did in the '60s. This process cannot be stopped. This may sound horrible to say, but from the higher perspective, whether even billions of people were to die before humans make the necessary evolutionary leap is not so important (especially when you accept the esoteric perspective on death).

3.I am reading Jaynes' "Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." He argues that consciousness evolves through sudden mutations - this happened in roughly 1260 BC and may be about to happen again. There is a kind of stripping away of all protections and cultural buffers right now, and I think that may be a good thing. The resonance of 9-11 with the Tarot card the "Tower" is clear: The Tower card symbolizes the collapse of a structure or value system so that a new and better one can be constructed in its place. This may be happening on a mostly subterannean level at this point. So in a sense "mass transformation" may be possible, but if so it will happen in a different way than we expect.

3. Steiner insists that you can't defeat evil by fighting it or protesting it directly, which ultimately means giving it your energy. You defeat evil by building what is good and whole. This indicates the limits of even someone like Moore, who on a personal level does not sound highly evolved. It is why I keep insisting that it is important to think about the model of the Bioneers (www.bioneers.org).

[sidecross]

It may be not be even necessary “to break open all the heads”.

Many people are too chuckle headed to know whether to turn right or left without someone telling them. Many of these folks hope someone with better insight or knowledge is leading the parade.

Only recently did the U.S. press report that 70% of Americans supported the war on Iraq and believed that Iraq was involved with the happenings of 9/11. Biology has a term, Neoteny, which is the development of sexual reproduction while not reaching full adult maturity. Our species most certainly is now in this condition.

The last time a group of people made a joint decision may have been in the high Paleolithic era. Since the advent of the technology of domesticating animals and agriculture, specialization has highlighted hierarchy and dwarfed the need or desire for consensus based opinion.

What we have been living in for the last 30,000 to 15,000 years (depending on who is keeping a scorecard) is not an era where everyone is quite sure of where we are heading. Most everyone just does what the culture dictates.

The question as I see it is how many people are needed to change the paradigm. The number may be surprisingly small.

Consensus at its best is based on a degree of self-knowledge; this is not the domain of marketing or propaganda. My hope is that a critical mass needed for such a paradigm change may be very close.

H.G. Wells has written that the future is a race between education and catastrophe; I am betting on education.

[Halfglass]

Psychedelics will always be a hard sell it seems. What they are showing us (that we really don't know ourselves) IS AS REAL AND UNSETTLING TO MOST PEOPLE AS DEATH. If that statement seems extreme, we need only to ponder the towering mystery surrounding the origin of awareness, to realize that death is an inescapable part of that mystery. We all take birth for granted, feeling secure that, for now at least we have found ourselves here, alive and so turn our fear towards the possibility that our awareness might somehow be "unmade" at death. (Considering that we don't remember being "around" before we were born, we might even think of birth as the greater mystery.) So, though perhaps conveyed in some unrealized reservation of mind, psychedelics remind us of death, because the temporary unmaking of the self, for all it can reveal, is what they do. This makes them a thing to fear and that fear extends itself everywhere inside the known, to include wanting to forbid others from venturing into the experience or feeling a sense of taboo when doing them ourselves. What I have dredged up from the highwire walking I've done with these chemicals is, in a nutshell, WE ARE LOOKING FOR THAT WHICH IS LOOKING. All the pain and joy will be sucked in to the center of IT the Thing, learning from the inside out. The Wheel...THE THE. The IS. We are IT.

[ May 20, 2003, 05:39 AM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[sidecross]

“…. (Considering that we don't remember being "around" before we were born, we might even think of birth as the greater mystery.)…”

We do not even remember being born. We pop put at about nine months because an infants head is to large to stay in the womb any longer, and how many infants being born do anything but cry. We seem to be quite unhappy at the beginning and we act surprised that we may repeat that feeling at our leaving.

Halfglass has written a very precise vision of our predicament. You can not ever get anywhere if you do not start at the beginning; Halfglass commentary surely maps out where we all must begin.

[Proteus]

Yet another rich thread on this remarkable bb!

i've been reading McKenna's works lately & remember him saying in an Interview reprinted in Archaic Revival that he didn't "abuse" psychedelics. He went on to explain that he allowed time between trips to reassemble the "self" that had been scattered throughout the Infinite, integrating whatever insights he'd gathered from his last trip during that "down time." This and other remarks suggest that even McKenna--who reported himself to have plunged from the edge of Steve's "well" into Mindspace intensely and regularly for about three decades--experienced the same ambivalence that others on this thread are reporting: a mixture of fascination and dread, the chill hand of terror on the heart accompanied by a deeply felt compulsion to see farther and deeper into the paradoxical relationship between the ego-construct we call "i" and "me" and what some Buddhist's call the Absolute--the perspective on reality from which "someone" perceives that the self is laughably irrelevant to the functioning of the Totality.

As you've no doubt already noticed, Big Picture, there's a working consensus on this bb and others devoted to specific entheogens (e.g. ayahuasca.com, the shroomery, etc.) that "the path" to Truth is ultimately the individual path. That is, the only answers worth having are those that each seeker develops through personal, unmediated contact with the mystery. That's what i personally find so compelling about psychedelics and about Zen Buddhism: both offer spiritual techniques to drop the self-and-other dualism that we're normally immersed in and to observe the functioning of the Absolute without tainting it with words or cluttering our view of it with intellectual scaffolding. (Plenty of time to defile the experience with words, ideas, and philosophical speculations about what it all meant when you come down! ;-})

The BOTH community seems to embody a representative cross-section of the not inconsiderable psychedelic Underground. Some in this community aren't on some great spiritual quest, but are simply curious to rearrange and derange their perspectives on reality and see what they learn. Some pursue non-psychedelic means to find answers to the Mystery (i.e. various forms of meditation, working with teachers and within various wisdom traditions, breathing techniques, various forms of ascetic discipline, etc.) but find the esoteric conversations that the use of psychedelics so frequently raises helpful to their own thinking. Still others are on some kind of quest for Truth, but rather than relying on practices from traditional spiritual traditions are building personally relevant practices of their own. And further others combine some of the more traditional spiritual disciplines with the use of vegetable and chemical psychoactives. Some have worked with shamans and other teachers and some have not. It appears to offend the spirit of psychedelic shamanism to insist on "the path," but it also seems inconsistent with this same spirit not to be on some kind of path--or, at least, to have a relatively clear reason for approaching the Mystery through psychedelics.

Steve talks about the importance of developing a certain kind of will in order to navigate the Ocean of the Infinite, i think i'm affirming approximately the same thing when i say that if it's Truth that you're seeking some form of discipline is necessary. This needn't be something as religious as meditating, fasting, etc. If i might make so bold, Daniel's "discipline" is (or at least was until relatively recently) prodigious reading, reflection, and writing. Others, like Pita on the transformations thread, have mentioned kundalini and yogic practices. i sit zazen (which the Soto Zen tradition makes a point of distinguishing from "meditation" since it isn't focus "on" anything or an attempt to achieve some kind of mental state). Many of us on this list seem to be "New Age" in our tendencies to take useful techniques or teaching from a variety of traditions and combining them into personally meaningful ceremonies, rituals, and beliefs.

But, growing your own shrooms or Salvia or figuring out how to brew your own ayahuasca also strike me as "disciplines" that could prepare the would-be voyager for the journey. Exploring any of these organics would require research, reading, reflection, experimentation, and an intimate connection to the unique culture and properties of these naturally occuring psychedelics prior to attempting a voyage of your own.

i know many on this list don't make a distinction between manmade and naturally occuring psychedelics, but i do and do favor the vegetable entheogens--if for no other reason than the cultivation and/or preparation of these substances requires consistency, time, effort, attention to detail, experimentation, and long-term commitment to the entire project of breaking open the head. Buying ready-made trips (and this could include shrooms) obviously works for others & i don't want to start up a right/wrong debate on the issue. But, the home-grown, organic approach is a form of discipline that can be as gradual and gentle as the individual seeker would like it to be. If you can, for example, establish the firm will to succeed in the somewhat tricky process of growing your own shrooms and eventually to master these specialized cultivation techniques, you will have readied yourself to ingest the fruit of your labor and learn what they may have to teach you.

But there are many paths. In the end, there's just the seeker and Reality--and any teacher worth his or her salt will refuse to give you any "answers" or directions but will instead tell you to figure out for yourself how you can create a good and useful life out of the insights you have personally gleaned from your own contact with the Absolute. But i think Daniel's onto something important vis-a-vis functioning in consensus reality at a time in human history where disaster seems all but inevitable. No matter what else we do to "fight the power," it seems unassailable wisdom to cultivate one's own garden by seeking to weed out our own delusions, greed, and antagonisms and to thereby create a life that benefits one's mates, family, friends, and colleagues.

Nothing else in my experience, including Zen practice, more quickly or more certainly shows us where the weeds and stones in our garden are than establishing a firm intention to experience the Totality and then taking one of McKenna's "heroic doses" of aya or psilocybin. Many things, including the irresolvable questions, are clearer after that.

[RobH]

Daniel wrote: "I now understand better why experiences within a tradition may offer a safer and more grounded (if less purely individualistic) way of exploring. I am thinking of Santo Daime, the Native American Church, or seeking out work with the growing number of shamans passing through the US. These groups have created a container for the energies that get released, shaping them in the direction of healing."

This seems so important to me both as an individual who is engaged with this work and also as a member of a culture which is engaged in encountering entheogens. Having a container, a supportive collective enviroment in which to ground our psycho-physical energy and share our experiences seems fundamental in order to allow the entheogenic experience to unfold in a creative, wise and compassionate way.

Entheogens cause us to encounter such profound aspects of our personal, biological, energetic, cultural and spiritual being that without the grounding of some kind of tradition (re: collective knowledge of what arises in the experience and disciplined application of that knowledge)we can easily get caught up in own our neurotic twists and turns as well as individual or cultish self inflation/negation.

Prayers and Blessings,
Rob

[ May 23, 2003, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: RobH ]

[Halfglass]

Rob: A Lenape Indian told me "Westerners would do well to start their own religions." Do you suppose the internet, trip reports, and a few "Western" friends might be as good? Even gaining new ground in a New Shamanism?

[RobH]

Halfglass wrote: A Lenape Indian told me "Westerners would do well to start their own religions." Do you suppose the internet, trip reports, and a few "Western" friends might be as good? Even gaining new ground in a New Shamanism?

For the most part I think these things are an organic social process. In terms of religion the division between so called "Indians" and so called "Westerners" is not so clear. The Native American Church for instance is a syncretic religion of evolving indigenous and Christian ideas. In South America the interplay between the so called west and so called native people has been occurring for many centuries now. This has greatly affected indigenous culture and practices as well as that of the "west".

But more directly to your question I don't know if the Internet, trip reports, and a few Western friends might be as good unless the people involved have also developed enough skill and discipline to help navigate not only the cognitive, emotive and energetic states that arise but the social dynamics which occur in groups doing powerful spiritual work.

Such skill and discipline of course need not be borrowed from involvement with native shamanic groups. It could come from a variety of practices, traditions, institutions, group work etc. in our own culture.

Let's remember to that entheogens were being used and investigated in our culture in interesting and useful ways for a couple decades before they became discredited through the political upheavals of the 60's. And even after that a disciplined "underground" network of therapists, research and exploration continued.

There are a lot of angles to look at this of course. People "on their own" can discover the practices and forms that may work well for their particular group. And "our culture" now includes things as diverse as Buddhism, African drumming, the Santo Daime, universities, 12step groups, virtual electronic communities.... I mention this because the idea of "people on their own" in "our" culture are themselves rather complex and divergent ideas when considered.

To sum up my gut feeling and analytic thinking is that participating with and learning from people and groups who have been doing this healing work in traditions and structures with long experience is at least very helpful and, for most perhaps, essential.