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Meditation & Pop Spirituality Diminishing of Entheogens
Contents
Meditationist Anti-entheogen
Propaganda/Taboo
Legitimacy of entheogens vs.
meditation
Complicity of Western Buddhism in
prohibition persecution
Motivations of anti-entheogen
meditation proponents
60s lame fallout: evidence against
entheogen potential?
Sustained constructive debate,
entheogens
Why meditation was elevated over
entheogens
Evaluating systems of
psychospiritual development
Fight to destroy and discriminate
untruths
Fairly assessing potential of
entheogens vs. meditation
Entheogens vs. meditation: firming
up the debate
The Wish for a Warm, Fuzzy, and
True Model of Spirituality
An
entheogen magazine needs an article.
Why not go all the way over the top, as always? Why hold anything back? That whole attitude of moderation and
holding back is what lets the meditationists steamroll all over the
entheogenists in all the annoying, tepid, and cautionary special issues on
psychedelics in the spirituality magazines such as Gnosis and Tricycle.
Even the
entheogenists strive so hard for moderation, they end up working against
themselves, putting forward such tepid, cautious, self-effacing theories of
entheogens -- because the editors like to publish such self-depreciating
articles. Authors are also wary of a
bad type of "other direction" -- unserious zaniness and kookiness as
spaceships and flying saucers and ESP, avoiding the harmful-joke side of Leary
and McKenna.
I believe
in a different kind of caution -- caution in grandiose promises for how
entheogens will save the world and teach everyone to be ethical. I make a promise for entheogens that is more
extreme than other writers, yet also more bounded.
Entheogens
*won't* save the world and won't teach people to be ethical, but they do have a
far higher potential for leading to enlightenment and mystic experiencing than
meditation, drumming, hyperventilation, contemplation, or chanting, and the
latter methods should be considered "alternative" or
"augmentation" of the "main" and "normal" method,
which is entheogens.
Entheogens
are more reliable, universally effective, and intense, to the extent that we
can say that sitting meditation is practically a way of avoiding, not
attaining, religious experiencing.
*If*
entheogenists and meditationists both agree that the goal is deep mental
transformation and intense mystic experiencing, then there is no contest:
entheogens run circles around meditation and make a laughingstock of
meditation, showing it up as what it really is: a travesty of, and an avoidance
of, actual religious insight and actual religious experiencing.
Some
people are bothered because today's laws make it impossible to have this easy,
natural, classic entheogenic method of core religious experiencing and insight
-- but that is a separate, distinct problem.
My main
focus as a theorist is to set the record straight: keeping the average person
and the practical world in mind, the only way meditation can be held as
spiritually superior to entheogens is by defining spirituality in such a way as
to remove all classic, intense religious experiencing and the clear insight
that goes along with the experiencing.
Such a
move is being made now by those meditationists who know that they don't have a
chance of competing against entheogens for religious efficacy and delivering
the promised goods. The last-ditch
effort of the religionists who jealously envy and shun entheogens, proclaiming
theirs as the better and purer way, leads to gutting the religious experiencing
out from religion, leaving today's American Buddhism -- as hollow, empty, and
superficial as their parents' literalist and liberal Christianity ever
was.
These
strong statements would benefit from grounding by some actual absurd quotes from
e.g. Zig Zag Zen, Gnosis special issue on psychedelics. Charles Badiner, coeditor with Alex Gray of
the book Zig Zag Zen, did a good job of exposing the inanity of these reigning
Buddhist diminishers of entheogens.
Such Buddhist diminishers of entheogens are essentially the same as low
Christian "believers".
Many
Boomers abandoned Christianity for Buddhism, but they are like converts from
low Islam to low Christianity, not really converting, but just swapping the
skin on the same old software, going from one non-religion to a competing
non-religion, or from a degraded form of one religion to the degraded or
degenerate form of another religion.
It's all so fake, so false, so empty, that low Christianity and the low
form of Buddhism that has largely replaced it.
Boomers
were sickened of low, empty Christianity, but we ought to be so fed up with
low, empty religion of all brands.
I'm not
putting high, experiential, entheogenic religion on a pedestal -- life is as
existentially meaning-free as ever -- but all I'm asking, and it is so little
to ask, is that bona fide religious experiencing be recognized and credited,
putting an end to the domination of the foolish and absurd claim that
meditation is superior to entheogens, a claim that only appears to hold up by
portraying entheogens in the worst possible light -- the conditions of
prohibition, basically -- and portraying meditation in the best light, which
requires discarding intense mystic experiencing and deep mental transformation
as a goal and instead substituting perfectly vague pseudo-goals instead, mixed
with superficial emotionalism.
Some
example passages are needed; I'm generalizing about the spirit of what I've
read so many times, the style of the tired old refrains of Buddhist defense and
backpedalling.
Low
Christians and low Buddhists were both forced to admit that entheogens are
reported by people to cause mystic experiencing often, while meditation rarely
causes it -- such low religion of all brands then had to go to work on putting
a spin on that fact to diminish it with all their might; the writings of low
religionists reek of what they are: false apologetics and PR, *propaganda*.
Enough of
this anti-entheogen propaganda on the part of low religionists and tepid
mid-level religionists -- it doesn't have a leg to stand on, and I can't
respect any entheogen scholar who doesn't firmly treat that propaganda what it
is.
Mid-level
religionists such as quasi-official Christian mystics and American Buddhists
damn entheogens with faint praise and diminish them to death as "providing
a glimpse but nothing more" (if they repeat it enough times, they get
entheogenists to concede its truth, for a little while).
At this
point, most entheogen scholars, upon finding discovering this attitude, are
taken aback, surprised -- they don't know what to make of it. They haven't yet seen the vulgar,
self-serving, insincere, and cowardly motives for that attitude of wanting
entheogens to disappear.
Badiner's
book Zig Zag Zen did a good job of bringing out the nonsense of the
anti-entheogen meditation position in its full absurdity -- it's a good enough
book so that it was unreadable to someone who has had enough of the bunk status
quo among what feels like "official, orthodox, establishment"
Buddhism.
The
Boomers vowed they "won't get fooled again", but their switch from
bunk Christianity to bunk Buddhism shows that their new boss is really just the
same as the old boss: from literalist, low-level Jesus to literalist, low-level
Buddha; from a flattened and retarded Christianity to a flattened and retarded
Buddhism -- it's no conversion at all, just the same old mundane, placebo
religion.
Without
entheogens, these "religions" are barely worthy of the title, and to
make believe that they are more valuable and authentic than entheogens is a
terrible falsehood of the highest order, a falsehood that any entheogen
researcher with a love for truth and calling a spade a spade should call out
immediately. There is still some work
ahead to grasp in detail just how great a falsity it is to elevate meditation
above entheogens.
It's the
most absurd proposal that has been made, that one must spend time meditating
and using entheogens to believably pronounce on this subject. We are already drowning in data on this
point, that according to self reporting, entheogens very often produce
experiences and insights described as strongly mystical, while most people
report no very noteworthy experiences or insights through meditation.
And this
is the population we should care about: the masses of typical people who are
not about to spend 30 years of meditation with a hope of a fraction of a
percent chance of gaining insight or worthwhile experience. The slow path has been given a chance and
the results are in: it is a failure by any reasonable standard of measure.
How dare
the proponents of that path of failure claim that their method is superior and
more effective than entheogens, as though their method had any satisfactory
degree of efficacy at all. The best
keyword describing the typical result of trying the way of meditation is
'disappointment'. Whatever it is that
such meditation produces in the typical real-world case, it isn't deep mental
transformation, profound insight, and religious experiencing.
Fear of
genuine religious experiencing and insight causes spiritual death of the
conventional assumed self and the destruction of the foundation of its
worldmodel, so it's understandable that mid-level spiritual religionists avoid
and taboo entheogens.
But it is
time for entheogen scholars to stop being surprised at that backpedalling
attitude, to realize what's going on, and set the record straight: any
anti-entheogen religion is mid-level religion at best, and cannot rightly claim
to be more effective and legitimate than the entheogen path, which is
venerable, proven, classic, and full of great potential.
If any
mode of religion can claim to be best -- keeping in mind normal, typical people
and practical life -- entheogens have a far stronger claim to be the older,
more effective, and more legitimate method than meditation. What is the right relation of meditation and
entheogens, measured by the standard of efficacy of deep mental transformation
and profound insight and awe inspiring religious experiencing? Using meditation to augment entheogens.
Only by
denying these clearly compelling standards, and by ignoring the typical person
and the limitations of practical life, can one claim that meditation is
"more effective and has greater potential" than entheogens.
It remains
to be explained, what the various factors that motivate the meditationists to
portray meditation as superior to entheogens.
For one thing, only certain meditationist statements are published, and
only certain entheogenist statements are published. There's a conspiracy of the magazine editors to assemble special
issues that are supposedly to "cover" entheogens, but are more like
motivated by "covering over" entheogens and keeping them properly
suppressed in their place.
These
magazines are founded on the lie, the pretense that meditation is true and pure
and traditional and effective and legit and honorable, while entheogens are
innovative, heretical, dirty, ineffective, illegitimate, ineffective,
inferior. That claim is so extremely
and perfectly false, so opposite from the truth, and so obviously hollow
propaganda. Why do the publishers do
this?
Why do the
writers that are published go along with this deceitful game, in which the
meditationists pretend to believe that entheogens are inferior, and the supposed
defenders of entheogens pretend to put up a little bit of a feeble battle,
asserting that entheogens "are too" a legitimate simulation of
meditation.
It is as
though the only articles permitted are those which, in the end, prop up the
anti-entheogen status quo by admitting that entheogens are more potent than
meditation but then denying that potency is relevant to religious practice and
insight.
It is hard
to imagine such a "special issue on the psychedelic path" including
an article that speaks truth, that points out that, in practical reality, the
meditation path -- which has been given all the breaks and has reached its
potential -- is totally ineffective in comparison to the early reports of
entheogens and is likely to be blown out of the water were entheogens ever
decriminalized and given a reasonable chance, given even one percent of the
opportunity the meditation path has been given.
Meditationists
are likely motivated by the knowledge that if the story were ever told straight
and started to be accepted, the status quo view of the quasi-official Christian
mystics and the official Buddhist meditationists ("entheogens are
comparatively illegitimate, only a distorted glimpse of what our truer method
delivers") would collapse into discredit overnight.
This
status quo, which tricks even the entheogen "defenders" into
diminishing entheogens and appearing to concede the greater legitimacy and
legacy of meditation and other "acceptable mysterious esoteric
paths", has some marks of a taboo: because everyone knows so damn well
that entheogens *are* undoubtedly enlightenment in a pill, and that religion
most definitely *can* be "reduced" to chemistry, they put a taboo on
entheogens.
"You
can, indeed you must, try any path, any crazy esoteric religion, but whatever
you do, don't admit that the real effective method is entheogens." It's time for entheogen researchers to quit
playing along as pawns in this game of diminishing and taboo'ing entheogens;
it's time to call the meditationists on this and maintain firmly that the
evidence shows entheogens to be the main path, and meditation a weak derivative
-- *not* the other way around as the status quo asserts.
Entheogenists
must quit being wimps who are afraid to make any strong assertions, while
avoiding the other mistake of going off the deep end by overpromising the
potential of religious experiencing. We
must accurately account for the degree of efficacy of meditation and
entheogens, strive to account for the potentials and risks and hampering
limitations on entheogens, as well as the risks of meditation, such as failing
to gain insight or worthwhile experience after 30 years of meditation.
A common,
possibly dominant position today is to grudgingly acknowledge entheogens as a
religious path, though they maintain that drug-free religion is affirmed as
superior, purer, authentic, and traditional; my position is the opposite: I
grudgingly acknowledge drug-free religion as a religious path, though I
maintain that pure entheogenic-based religion is superior, purer, authentic,
and traditional.
Like
Mircea Eliade initially said about the Amanita-using Siberian shamans, most
scholars say entheogens are a degraded and recent degenerated religious
technique; I say the opposite, that entheogen-free religion is the degraded and
recent degenerated technique.
Entheogenists such as Ralph Metzner are lukewarm fence-straddlers such
as I must not be, who "defend" entheogens by saying they are *as*
legitimate as drug-free meditation.
Entheogenic
religious experience is *not* as legitimate as drug-free meditation, because
the latter falls short in legitimacy.
An extreme but plausible position is to simply assert that entheogenic
religious experience is more legitimate than drug-free meditation. There are five positions:
0. The clueless rationalist or rabid humanist
position -- Neither drug-free meditation nor entheogens are legitimate, because
no religious experiencing has any legitimacy; any mystic state is just
psychosis or hallucinatory. Religion
is demonic mixture of psychotic mental breakdown and an oppressive power game
of the witch doctor in collaboration with Attila the Hun to manipulate and
enslave people. This is the Ayn Rand or
rabid humanist position. This actually
forms an interesting pair with position 3, that any approach is fully
legitimate. Most such people have never
experienced the mystic state of cognition; this position usually rests on
complete inexperience. This is throwing
the baby out with the bathwater: religion is a bunch of mad lies harmful to
humanity, therefore the mystic state of cognition is a bunch of man lies
harmful to humanity.
1. The
absolutist orthodox position -- Entheogenic religious experience is not
legitimate at all. Only drug-free meditation
is legitimate.
1.1 The extremist-orthodox position -- Drug-free
meditation is fully religiously legitimate.
Entheogenic religious experiencing is almost absolutely illegitimate. Nothing is impossible, so it is
hypothetically possible to have a legitimate religious experiencing via
entheogens, but such is so exceedingly rare, this is not how religious
experiencing generally works.
Entheogens could hypothetically work on rare occasion, but this rarity
only proves the basic illegitimacy of entheogens.
2. The
pseudo-progressive orthodox position -- Entheogenic religious experience is
moderately legitimate, but less legitimate than drug-free meditation. The orthodox might consider this a
progressive view, though they very grudgingly concede that entheogens have a
little bit of legitimacy.
3. The
pseudo-progressive spiritualist position -- Entheogenic religious experience is
as legitimate as drug-free meditation; they are both fully legitimate, as is
any combination of techniques. Many
entheogen spiritualists believe this.
They consider this the most open-minded and generous position.
4. The
radical-progressive position -- Entheogenic religious experience is more
legitimate than drug-free meditation; drug-free meditation is only moderately
legitimate. I venture that it is held
by very few scholars -- perhaps Ott, Arthur, and Heinrich. You have to be highly aware of the history
of entheogenic religion to be able to even consider this position.
4.9 The extremist-progressive position --
Entheogenic religious experience is fully religiously legitimate, and drug-free
meditation is practically entirely illegitimate, with the theoretical
possibility of exceptions that are so exceedingly rare as to only prove the
point. To say that drug-free meditation
is illegitimate is not to say that it's an impossible technique of reaching
enlightenment, but only to say it's all but impossible. Drug-free religious experiencing is almost
absolutely illegitimate. Nothing is
impossible, so it is hypothetically possible to have a legitimate religious
experiencing via drug-free meditation, but such is so exceedingly rare, this is
not how religious experiencing generally works. Drug-free meditation could hypothetically work on rare occasion,
but this rarity only proves the basic illegitimacy of drug-free meditation.
5. The
absolutist entheogenist position -- All drug-free religious experience is
illegitimate, and the only legitimate religious experience is entheogenic. Anyone holding position 4 must often
consider whether this is true. The
other groups are unable to even consider it or conceive of it as a possible
position. It is not clear if anyone has
ever held this position, yet this position remains an important one to
theoretically consider; it helps to define this entire spectrum of positions.
6. The
rationalist computer-tripper position -- Loose cognition is valuable, and can
be triggered by entheogens or meditation, but religious or mystic experiencing
is not legitimate, it's just an irrational reaction of confused fantasy. This position was expressed by an
entheogen-using technologist to me online -- that loose cognition is valuable,
but religious experiencing is not legitimate.
I dismiss this as inexperience.
I maintain that if you are an entheogen-using technologist, you will
sooner or later have an experience that you qualify as "religious"
(or a synonym).
You can
combine meditation with entheogens. The
only question is the legitimacy of drug-free meditation as opposed to
entheogenic-assisted meditation, or perhaps we should say meditation-assisted
entheogen use if we hold entheogens rather than meditation to be the crucial
component of attaining the mystic cognitive state.
Holders of
position 2 are pulled by a gravitational force toward the simpler extremism of position
1. Why not just ditch all the complex
qualifiers and simply reject any religious legitimacy of entheogens?
Holders of
position 4 are pulled by a gravitational force toward the simpler extremism of
position 5. Why not just ditch all the
complex qualifiers and simply reject any religious legitimacy of drug-free
meditation?
But
rationality and evidence keeps us in the more complex middle ground, debating
positions 2, 3, and 4 -- which is to say, debating whether meditation or
entheogens is more religiously legitimate.
All the thinkers that matter hold position 2, 3, or 4. Meditation certainly has some religious
legitimacy.
Entheogens
certainly have some religious legitimacy.
Really I am most interested in the play between these positions. The most interesting thing is that most
thinkers so far have adopted either position 2 or 3: that meditation is more
legitimate than entheogens, or that they are equally legitimate.
It is
relatively radical to adopt position 4, that entheogens are actually *more
legitmate* than meditation. There is
little to be gained in advancing all the way to the extreme position 5, that
meditation has no legitimacy whatsoever -- however, position 4 inherently
flirts with position 5, and anyone holding 4 must be open to considering why 5
could or could not be true.
In a
debate exercise, anyone capable of holding 4 must also be capable of
representing position 5; I could make a reasoned argument that meditation has
no legitimacy and only entheogens have legitimacy.
When we
talk of religious legitimacy, there are two senses of the term. A technique may be "legitimate" in
that it can produce the mystic cognitive state, or "legitimate" in
that it can bring the mystic cognitive state so fully and repeatedly and
efficiently that a mind can construct full enlightenment.
My
position sometimes is 4, sometimes 4.9, depending on what goal I'm assuming; to
merely attain the mystic cognitive state, meditation does work but only on
fairly rare occasion -- to attain full enlightenment, meditation almost never
works. Meditation has a hypothetical
legitimacy; one *could* become enlightened by it, but in practice, I don't see
that happening in any significant degree; meditation is the wrong and basically
ineffective way; that it works on such rare occasions proves it has no
significant legitimacy; (drug-free) meditation is "illegitimate" in
the sense of barely working, or working despite its overall ineffective
methods.
Meditation
has only incidental, haphazard, crude, indirect legitimacy -- it can work but
only despite itself. We can talk of
degrees within position 4: if you hold that entheogens are more religiously
legitimate than drug-free meditation, the question is *how much more*?
I say that
entheogens are a thousand times more efficient than drug-free meditation, and
are thoroughly historically proven as traditional beyond antiquity, while
drug-free meditation has no pedigree and is a relatively recent degenerated
mock version of religious technique, a kind of cargo-cult religous technique
that tries to attain the mystic state by sitting because the successful
entheogen-based meditators are sitting.
When I say
that meditation is illegitimate, I am not asserting that it's impossible that
drug-free meditation could bring enlightenment -- I'm just saying that such a
technique is the wrong way and works through haphazard accident and acts to
impede enlightenment in practically all cases.
So my position is 4 infinitessimally approaching 5 but never quite
hitting 5 -- or my position is 5 qualified.
As a
method of attaining enlightenment as defined by the ideas I'm pulling together,
drug-free meditation is practically entirely illegitimate. Drug-free meditation in practice serves to
prevent rather than enable enlightenment, and in that sense it is literally the
wrong way to try to gain such enlightenment, as it prevents progress toward the
goal.
Drug-free
meditation is actually a way of *avoiding* enlightenment. The fact that enlightenment may arrive
anyway says more about the profound power of enlightenment, or the integrity of
the ideas constituting enlightenment, rather than the effectiveness of the
technique. Plants may grow where you
have spread salt, but that does not establish salt as a fertilizer.
Drug-free
meditation is basically an ineffective way of seeking enlightenment. Entheogen use is basically the effective way
of seeking enlightenment --however, rational cultivation of world-models -- a
certain kind of metaphysical philosophizing or theory-construction -- is also required
for attaining enlightenment, according to the ideas and theory I'm pulling
together.
My goal is
not to make a difference and not to persuade anyone. My goal is to precisely define a system, not to show that it is
plausible. I leave it to the future or
to others to defend the system against others.
My struggle is only against the ideas in my own head.
It is a
full task just to pull these ideas together.
And my mental constitution is that of a frontiersman, not a polished
persuader and editor. A short comic
book is the greatest and hardest task I can think of. In today's political climate, I can't be any more prominent than
that anyway. I guess I'll just keep on
like this, it is enough of a challenge.
Kurt
wrote:
>Apart
from clarifying things in your own head, I imagine you would like to have some
catalysing role in non-trivial global behaviour-modification in the
Entheogenic, Religious, Mystical & Spiritual Worlds, Academies &
Ghettoes.
>I'm
glad that you've clarified your position(s) on the Meditation V. Entheogens
angle. Obviously you have a preferred rhetorical stance that you wish to
Champion.
>But a
Champion without any credibility, or more precisely, credibility armor, isn't
going to make much headway in preaching other than to the converted.
I have no
credibility, only ideas. I'll leave it
to others to squabble and debate, like in the Jesus Mysteries group. Boring; that's not the frontier. I would rather be a controversial theorist
than engage in controversy.
Kurt
wrote:
>I am
not saying you don't have credibility, but in the politics, do you have
perceivable credibility?
I put
together ideas and leave it to other people to do whatever they want with the
ideas. That's none of my business. If they don't take to the ideas, fine. There is one area where I would like to
change things, however: drug policy reform, more or less in conjunction with my
historical analyses and theory of mystery-religions. Only when people are able to take entheogens will the world be
able to read the theory of mystic mental-model transformation I put forth.
I despise
credibility. I doubt it achieves
much. Many people have been seen as
credible, and have only contributed a lot of misguided ideas. I look out to all the people, but then
reflect solipsistically that there is really no one to convince but me. I'm only writing for myself, and it happens
that other people can eavesdrop on my private reflections and run with the
ideas, writing books that I can then selfishly read.
>Consider
you & Ken Wilbur on some podium at some New Age Conference, you are
dialoguing from some Contrapuntal positions - "Drug-Free Meditation"
Versus "Entheogenic Immediacy" for instance.
Wilber may
know a thing or two about entheogens.
His essay in the recent book Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps is the
second-most entheogen-oriented essay in the book. His main diagram out of all the diagrams in all his books is on
page 43 of his most recent book, A Theory of Everything.
In that
quadrant diagram, the item that stands out the most is the circle "also:
altered states". Underestimate
Wilber at your own peril. Do you think
he could possibly be ignorant of entheogens given *his* breadth of
reading? He has even recently praised
DanceSafe as one of the most important drug reform organizations, online:
http://members.ams.chello.nl/f.visser3/wilber/mcdermott2.html
-- "... Emanuel Sferios, founder of DanceSafe, had a meeting with CIIS
officials to discuss a join venture between CIIS and DanceSafe. DanceSafe is
the largest and most effective drug information organization in America, and
Emanuel wanted to partner with CIIS in creating a nationally recognized center
for responsible harm-reduction drug policies. This could be a model program
with a profound and far-reaching impact. Emanuel reports that CIIS was very
excited at the prospect and eagerly set up meetings..."
I build a
bridge between Wilber and direct, no-bullshit coverage of entheogens. He has written interesting points about how
peak experiences interact with a given level of psychospiritual development in
his recent books and essays.
The more I
look for points of disagreement with Wilber, the more I think he agrees with me
but is too chicken to go far enough telling things like they are. I think Wilber agrees with me but I am
better at portraying and pulling together a certain set of ideas that resides
at the most important point in his diagram -- I consider myself to be bringing
Watts' cybernetics ideas to fullness, to fill in the most important part of
Wilber's framework.
Wilber is
not wrong, so much as he is a super-broad theorist who has not focused on
entheogens quite as much as they deserve but he is moving in that
direction. But his innovation may be
past, and a new theorist is needed to position entheogens in the center
stage. Thus I consider positioning and
emphasizing ideas crucial; styling is everything.
Wilber has
the wrong styling. I have essentially
found the right styling, the right way to spin the ideas together to
short-circuit the egoic system of thinking.
Wilber does not short-circuit the egoic system of thinking.
It would
be hard to pin down a specific point of disagreement between me and Wilber --
just a different goal and style and combination of ideas, and way of positioning
them. I have been reading him
critically lately, and he is pretty hard to criticize. He is good at avoiding saying wrong
things. He doesn't say the right things
in the right way -- but neither does he say wrong things.
Kurt
wrote:
>The
audience is hostile or indifferent to your position, willing to dismiss you
without really "hearing" you, on the slightest pretext...
I am
indifferent to them, so all is fair.
Wilber has never given a millimeter to the pop masses and neither will
I. He has never done author appearances
or given lectures.
Wilber
meditates and I do not respect him for it.
He elects himself as a great representative and spokesman for the
importance of meditation, but then he falls short in his theorizing. If meditation is so great, how come such a
great theorist does it and dogmatically asserts it is necessary, but has not
come across the idea sets Watts did, about self-control cybernetics?
A thousand
people make a thousand demands of me to meet their incorrect expectations. I may take the time to refute them, but I do
not have time to waste. Waste *your*
time, but don't expect me to waste mine to please the ignorant 3-year olds out
there. I urge them to ignore me if they
need their theorists to meditate.
I have no
time for nonsense and pandering. I only
write for the enlightened. I only
preach to the choir. Let the choir
proseletize, let someone or no one else I don't have time. It is too much to expect anything from me
but my personal thinking, that other people may eavesdrop on.
Kurt
wrote:
>Such
are the frailties of the yeaners, journeyers & seekers & worse still
for those that think that they have arrived somewhere!
>You,
Saint Sisyphus, wish to make a difference.
One of my
shocking blasphemies is that enlightenment makes no difference. It is profoundly worthless. I may criticize, reject, and condemn various
notions, but I am not terribly intent upon changing how people think. I do not take it for granted, or
automatically assume, that I'm out to change the world.
Will Truth
change the world? Maybe, but maybe
not. Do people even want to know the
truth? Do they even want to take the
red pill, offered in the movie The Matrix, and wake up to a different mental
model with different pro's and con's?
"You
talk about a revolution... you better free your mind instead." It is enough of a challenge for one
philosopher, to put forth a systematic hypothesis about ego-death, much less
persuade skeptics of its truth and also improve the world.
Kurt
wrote:
>In
the context, forcing Ken baby to concede some points would be a major victory!
:-)
What
points? He should concede or admit that
drug-free meditation is *not* the key to direct realization. The problem is, we don't know what Wilber
believes, and one of his hallmarks is to evolve his ideas and leave his
static-minded audience in the dust.
We know
what Wilber has written in his most recent postings and books and online
essays, but he is very much a moving target, headed rapidly in the direction of
writing about "altered states".
What does the term "Ken Wilber's ideas" mean, or "his
position on entheogens"?
Remember
how absolutely and radically Huxley's view on entheogens changed. He wrote the most bone-headed, clueless,
misguided, propaganda-riddled worthless rot about altered states, immediately
before his Mescaline epiphany.
The old
Huxley attitudes died completely, and new Huxley attitudes were born in a new
life. So with Wilber; he will be just
another one of those "as nothing" theorists: "All my previous
theorizing was put to shame when I finally experienced fully the mystic altered
state." But would he admit
it?
I suppose
he is independently wealthy now, but in today's ongoing war, it would be
dangerous for him to admit that entheogens are the most effective enabler of
the "direct experience of the divine" he keeps talking about -- and
the meditation he kept endorsing is the wrong way, serving to actually block
the direct experience that he said it was intended to produce.
Kurt
wrote:
>Forcing
him in front of an audience, in particular. At a very deep...
I hope to
read and reply to the remainder of Kurt's posting. I am printing the thread.
>The
simple truth, is that historically,
when a person who has had a deep religious experience triggered by either
Entheogen use, or due to a practice of a severe austerities (trying to make
endogenous psychedelics to be manufactured in large quantities in the brain),
when they go to try to explain this to the people around them, people tend to
doubt their word or dispute.
One of my
main themes lately is beware, Western Buddhism is just the same old bunk
Christianity -- medium-level, liberal, nothing-more-than moralist Christianity
-- dressed up in Buddhist drag. Take off
the Eastern costume, and you find a non-mystical liberal Christian there. Have Western religionists *really* made any
progress since moving from liberal Christianity to popular Buddhism?
Everyone
is on guard against Christianity -- they ought to be on guard against its
supposed replacement, Western Buddhism.
"We
won't get fooled again... Here comes the new boss, same as the old
boss." -- The Who, with album
cover showing the band of artists zipping subsequent to saluting the spiritual
monolith. They have a question for us:
Who's next?
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=A2d27gjvrj6ic
Official
mainstream religion is guilty of a massive cover-up of the entheogenic nature,
origin, heart, and spirit of religion.
The world of magazine Buddhism says that meditation is more effective,
original, and legitimate than entheogens, but that is a lie and an untruth and
the opposite of the truth -- a falsity propped up by decapitating religion and
presenting the body as though it is the spirit.
If you haven't
read materials such as the anti-entheogenists' arguments in Zig Zag Zen, then
you need to, to judge my claims and know what has motivated this
discussion. Here is a false
self-serving teacher, Meher Baba, page 21, in the totally debatably titled
"The Spiritual View of Psychedelics". I'd say the "debased, neutered spirituality view".
http://www.erowid.org/library/books/psychedelic_monographs_6.shtml
-- "If God can be found through the medium of any drug, God is not worthy
of being God! ... No drug... can help one to attain the spiritual Goal. There is no shortcut to the Goal except
through the grace of the Perfect Master; and drugs ... give only a semblance of
'spiritual experience', a glimpse of false Reality." Spoken like a good Catholic authority.
This
Catholic authoritarian in Eastern drag continues with page after page of
intense and unrestrained disparagement of entheogens and fantastic elevation of
the professional gurus such as himself; I regret I don't have electronic text. Substitute "bishop" for
"Perfect Master", and you have a ready-made Catholic screed against
the gnostics and their sacrament.
"All
so called spiritual experiences generated by taking 'mind-changing' drugs ...
are superficial and they add enormously to one's addiction to the deceptions of
Illusion which is but the Shadow of Reality." That's the type of flat-out point-blank assertion, unfounded by
any argument.
"But
there is no drug that can promote the aspirant's progress --nor ever alleviate
the sufferings of separation from his beloved God. ... how every impossible it
is for an aspirant to realize God without the Grace of the Perfect Master, and
therefore it is of paramount importance for a genuine spiritual aspirant to
surrender himself to the Perfect Master who has Himself realized
God." You see what an embarrassing
ally this virtual Catholic authoritarian is for entheogen-diminishing
meditation proponents?
This
article has bucketfuls of such authoritarian false assertions -- falsely
belittling the potential of entheogens, and falsely elevating the efficacy of
surrender to the guru. Do you still
doubt my portrayal? Here is the nail in
the coffin of this demon in priestly dress: "...if the student world
continues to indulge in the use of LSD, half of the USA would soon become
mentally deranged! Hence, a check must
be strictly enforced and the use of these drugs be prohibited, particularly
among the rising generation..."
Meher Baba
turns out to be a shill for the prohibition-for-profit scam. He's essentially on the payroll for the
nefarious scheme of prohibition-for-profit, elbowing aside actual religious
experiencing and inserting himself as a paid middleman instead -- like the
worst of the classic priestly strategy, he sets up a scheme of artificial
scarcity of primary mystic experiencing, with a placebo substitute doled out by
the quarter teaspoonful on the installment plan.
It is up
to you -- which story rings true? You
have only your ears. I play a tune, he
plays a tune: which one is a horrible cacophony, in your own opinion, and which
one rings true harmoniously -- or is it yet some other tune?
There are
two positions I must refute: that extreme position ("real spirituality is
against entheogens; they should be illegal") and a compromised position
("entheogens are only a tenth as effective as meditation and should be put
aside for the more effective method") or the mild compromised position
("entheogens are equally effective as meditation").
Entheogens
are a hundred times as effective and relevant for truly religious goals, of
primary religious experiencing. You
might not think this argument is important -- but every entheogen respecter
ought to care about this debate. The
non-entheogen users tell me not to worry about it -- while people are being oppressed
in the name of prohibition. Should we
not consider the popular Western Buddhism magazines to be complicit in jailing
people, poisoning crops, and shooting down supposed suspects?
Does not
this type of meditation school contribute to prohibition to some degree by
adding its own scorn of entheogens, by smothering entheogens with faint
praise? Substitute religion --
mid-level religion posing as the main form of religion -- shuts out entheogens,
shuts out the potential ergonomic access to actual religious experiencing. Instead of classic intense religious
experiencing, we are given a watered-down, alcohol-free wine, placebo
"religious experiencing" in heavy quote-marks.
It feels
spiritually lofty, like a Mass, all pomp and grandeur, in its finery. We learn to talk about enjoying nondual
awareness while doing the laundry.
Doing laundry during non-dual awareness is not all that it's cracked up
to be, although the squeaking, creaking, echoing hinge of the drier can be
interesting.
Congratulations,
the Western world has converted from placebo, mid-level Christianity to
placebo, mid-level Buddhism. It's no
surprise that this only amounted, in the end, to a change of decoration in the
same old church. You can't do a deep
change of Western culture so quickly.
We "changed" from liberal Protestant belittling of
psychoactives, to mid-level Western Buddhist belittling of psychoactives -- but
it's really just the same old software underneath this change of user-interface
skins.
http://www.serendipity.li/baba/gb_art.html
-- "In the 1960s Ganesh Baba spent much of his time in Varanasi (also
known as Benares), the holiest city of North India. He was there when the first
hippies arrived, and he and they discovered that they had something in common:
they liked to smoke charas. The hippies would come down to the holy Ganges
River, sit by the burning ghats where the dead are cremated, smoke hashish and
meditate on the impermanence of worldly life. Ganesh Baba was there and liked
to talk. He discovered that they had brought with them something they called
"acid". He tried it and was very favorably impressed with its
effects. Thereafter he would often expound on the virtues of psychedelics as an
aid on the spiritual path. Many hippies first met Ganesh Baba in Varanasi, or
later in Kathmandu, and carried away with them fond memories of their talks
(usually while stoned) with this psychedelic swami."
There is
some crazy wisdom at that page -- I don't think treating initiates harshly is
ergonomic, and I advocate kindness of all kinds. I reject "crazy wisdom" as inefficient and
unnecessarily against conventional morality.
I advocate reasonable conventional morality and decent treatment of
others.
From what
I've read, Salvia is so perfect, so efffective, like taking the peak window
from a twelve hour altered state session, that it gives insights that take
years to play out. Melding into frozen
spacetime, uniting with the divine figure of your choice, returning to the hub:
primary religious experiencing on tap.
I haven't
read much on Salvia and my thinking lately tends to be universalist and
unconcerned about particular species; what is most important is entheogens in
general and the mystic altered state of loose cognitive binding. Mixed wine contained a diverse assortment of
active plants, used together as an entheogen.
The sadly missed young researcher who drowned on Ketamine wrote a book
about combinations of psychoactives.
Cannabis
seems to be a good general multiplier of other plant effects, and opium is a
great stabilizer for nausea often caused by magical plants. Exhaling salvia, you can see the breath of
God, the holy ghost, turning the zodiac.
I've set
the record straight on the status-relation between meditation and entheogens,
clearing the way to put entheogens on the pedestal of religion where they
belong, as surely as the lifting of the Eucharist during the Mass. There remains a frustrating seeming lack of
explicit literary evidence to support my principle of the constant rate of
entheogen usage across eras and locales.
Studying
the suppression of drug references in 1960s-70s Rock may provide a good model
to explain why there is so little explicit and undeniable evidence for the
central role of entheogens in religions.
If everyone who matters knows of a psychoactive lotus plant, then every
icon with a lotus counts as an explicit declaration that Hinduism is supported
by, and rests on, an entheogenic foundation.
Similarly,
if the religionists who matter recognize some Amanita halos, then to them, who
have eyes to see, it is plain as day that what makes saints holy is entheogens
-- the message is obscured to those outside, and plain as day to those
within. I should write in more detail
the many parallels between entheogen encoding in Rock and in religion -- the
same dynamics and strategies are used in both, resulting in the same permanent
controversy between the entheogen-literate and the entheogen-illiterate.
People are
almost cleanly divided regarding recognizing entheogen references, in either
field. This clean division indicates
the presence of a classic paradigm shift or pattern-locking two-state
system. Either religion is against
entheogens and has nothing to do with that, or it's caused by, and rests on a
foundation of, entheogens and has everything to do with that. Either entheogen references are rare and
isolated in Rock, or they are just about everywhere, constituting the house
religion.
Bob
Daisley of the Ozzy Osbourne Band wrote a song about this, rejecting
conventional prohibitionist religion in favor of acid rock, "'cause rock
and roll is my religion and my love - may think it's strange - you can't kill
rock and rock, I'm here to stay".
Ego death through LSD with THC was literally the house religion of Rock,
from 1965 to 1990, and much of the best rock is spiritual. But popular entheogen religion would be
better if it were more well-informed about religion, philosophy, and
psychology.
Suppression
has caused the best thinkers to avoid publishing, so that only the uneducated
entheogenists are available as popular representatives of the mind of the
entheogenic community. Political
suppression distorts and hides the fact that entheogens are associated with the
more intelligent people, and it suppresses the potential of the entheogenic
Rock religion to be integrated intelligently with world religions.
Scholarship
about the entheogenic nature and origin of religion is stifled and suppressed
by the phony, profit-driven enterprise of prohibition. The result is inferior and deeply hidden
entheogenic encoding, like the bulk of bad, ridiculous alchemy. Profit-driven suppression of genuine
entheogenic religion ends up producing what we have ended up with: junk Rock,
and junk religion, worthless and uninspired, with the distinct presence of
inspiration buried under layers of dissimulation.
In the
slightly more open drug climate of the mid-1970s, symbolically encoded acid
allusions were communicated to a certain degree. But those same lyrics and allusions, heard in the deeply
oppressive climate of the turn of the millennium, almost completely fail to
communicate the mystic-state allusions.
Only in such a foolish dark-ages climate could anyone like me have
discovered, or rather rediscovered, what was barely hidden in its own day.
Wilber
lately holds that there are 2000 variables constituting one's psychospiritual
development. His early works tended to
paint a simple picture of collective progress in psychospiritual development;
lately he is almost qualifying that.
I'm
certain that the Hellenists were far superior to his low assessment of their
"mere mythic level of development", and I don't care what everyone
says in these anti-Christian times, I know what I see when I look at the
iconography and writings of the Middle Ages: they speak from within the
mystic's garden of sacred plants, as surely as the sophisticated iconographic
language of the Central American Catholic artists. And I'd like to know what percentage of Revivalist Christians have
used sacred plants.
Again, we
can understand how the entheogenic nature of Christianity was suppressed in the
past by matching it to recent history, looking at how entheogenic Christianity
was suppressed in the aftermath of the 1960s.
By a sheer
miraculously improbable coincidence, at the same time as Boomers dropped acid
and smoked pot and turned on to Buddhism, giving the middle finger to their
parents' version of Christianity, so too did many of the Boomers become Jesus
Freaks, now euphemized as Jesus People, providing the old story, "I used
to do drugs all the time, but now I get high on Jesus", which is the same
as the post-acid, American Buddhist story.
It must be
certain that a fair number of Christian Rock musicians have had Christian
experiences of the Holy Spirit through LSD -- but we don't hear about
that. Why not? The socio-political suppression of
psychoactive drug use doesn't stop people from using entheogens, but it does
stop them from communicating their use of entheogens. Similarly, earlier Christians had compelling reasons to use
entheogens, but they have at the same time had compelling reasons not to
communicate that unambiguously.
As we have
been forced to do with acid allusions in Rock, we may have to learn to accept
that mainstream religion inherently prevents explicit, certain, and unambiguous
references to sacred psychoactive plants.
We may
have to accept in religion, as in acid allusions in Rock and in alchemy, that
the study is inherently encoded, and never explicit, so that the only way we
can receive communication from those who went before is by learning their
latin, their specialize encoded language, because they were always prevented
from speaking in the vernacular of plain English.
It is a
shame that explicit mentions of entheogenic species probably aren't forthcoming
in religion, but this doesn't stop scholars from moving forward with learning
this latin, learning the symbolic encoding system of allusions to magical,
divine plants. One Jewish legend holds
that the grape vine used to produce something like 113 psychoactive products,
but now it only produces one.
Today's
meditation religion is bullshit substitution for real, intense, direct, simple,
no-nonsense intense religious experiencing and magazines like New Age know it;
they are not transformative and do not shed insight on religious myth. The most impoverished form of religion, by
some measure, is middle-level religion -- they have removed the supernatural,
while replacing it with oversold psychologism that cannot possibly deliver on
its promise.
An
outdated theory of religious myth is that it is primitive explanation of
natural mundane phenomena. Actually,
that description fits conventional archetypal psychology well (Jung/Campbell
& pre-psychedelic Watts): Jungian psychology is a primitive, uninformed
attempt to explain religious myth, without recognizing that the myth originates
from intense entheogenic mystic experiencing.
Middle-level, Jungian mythic-psychology is unsatisfying except when
compared to Freud's low psychology.
Jungian
psychology is only halfway toward the Integral pinnacle. Just as the ordinary baptized Christian has
only experienced John the Baptist's water-baptism and has yet to experience
fire baptism by the Holy Spirit -- the baptism in Jesus' name -- so is Jungian
psychology only halfway toward the full realization of psychology. Here my thinking clashes with Ken Wilber's
way of thinking, residing in a different framework.
It is hard
work defining what's wrong or distorted in Wilber's framework. *Because* Wilber is such a good theorist, it
becomes all the more profitable to leverage him by looking for systemic flaws,
distortions, or limitations. How must
his theory be adjusted? Does it err in
making high human development overcomplicated and irrelevant, etherial and
disconnected from practical reality?
Wilber's theory is wandering lost, without a clear enough sense of what
matters more and less.
My style
of theorizing has always put different principles first. Perhaps his theory is simple and focused in
its own way, and mine is in a different way.
It is most puzzling: how can his theory be so damn good, yet totally
miss the boat on my dirt-simple, rational entheogenic model of ego death? I want to change my .sig to contain the
whole of my theory in two sentences, such a simple core that it breaks Wilber's
system. What would Wilber not agree
with?
Nutshell
Summary of the Simple Theory of Ego Death & Religion
Religion
is originally and essentially an expression of the entheogenically triggered
intense mystic altered state, in which the ultimate insight is rationally,
simply, and coherently realized, causing a network-shift of meanings and
flipping the mental worldmodel from the egoic version to the transcendent
version. The ultimate insight is
no-free-will, realized in conjunction with no-separate-self.
The ego is
largely illusory, and the ego is the imagined controller agent, so self-control
is largely illusory and must be deeply reconceived to fit with the worldmodel
of a frozen timeless block universe in which the near future, like all
spacetime, already timelessly exists.
This model is no more certain than anything, but is elegantly coherent
and its coherence is comprehended and experienced during the mystic state of loose
cognitive-association binding.
This
conception of religion is the essence of religion and enlightenment, and is
that which all religion-myth and archetypal psychology ultimately points to.
Wilber has
written only a few words about free will and entheogens. His worldview of what's most important is
quite different than the view expressed above.
An increasingly common move of the meditation promoters is to admit that
entheogens thoroughly surpass meditation in effectiveness, no contest, but then
to play a game of switching and redefining what meditation is for. Now they say that meditation isn't
importantly associated with tangible altered states -- this is a defensive move
into fog.
Now they
say that meditation is for mindfulness and lovingkindness that causes an
enduring state of ethical good behavior.
That's an invented false system of priorities, saving the patient's body
by chopping off his head. Nothing is
more New Age, in the worst sense, than inventing a religion of worshipping
nebulous haze and fog, escaping into empty, meaningless dangling pointers.
This is
the same choice as Quantum theory offers: either physics can't be comprehended
and visualized, and it's all essentially abstract; or, it can be explained
rationally and visualized, through hidden variables and nonlocality.
There are
two choices we have now: either religious practice of contemplation/meditation
is about feelgood haze and fog and dangling pointers such as 'mindfulness' and
'lovingkindness' leading to a "spiritual transformation of character"
that amounts to ongoing ethical good behavior; or it is about intense mystic
altered-state experiences, such as entheogens definitively trigger, that causes
a specific change from one specific mental worldmodel to another specific worldmodel
of self, space, time, and control.
The
American Buddhist magazines are fully committed now to promoting the conception
of Buddhist meditation as being not a method of triggering the intense mystic
altered-state experience, but rather, about lasting mindfulness and
lovingkindness. If those terms mean
anything, they should be seen as incidental to religious insight and religious
experiencing proper. Such Buddhism commits
the offense of proferring incidental and hypothetical side-effects of meditation
as though they were the main purpose.
As
entheogens are understood and respected increasingly, such an escapist New Age
Buddhism will be forced to retreat even more and concede additional territory
to entheogens, just as it has already conceded the intense mystic altered state
to entheogens. Everything significant
that non-entheogenic, mainstream Buddhist meditation can achieve, entheogens
can trigger much more effectively and reliably, no contest.
Is
realizing no-separate-self the goal?
Entheogens work extremely well for realizing no-separate-self, while
non-augmented meditation barely works at all.
More data will only confirm this more.
So then entheogen-disparaging Buddhism may say, "Well, then, the
main goal of Buddhism was never really to realize no-separate-self; the truly
important thing is attaining the ongoing state of mindfulness and
lovingkindness and ongoing good ethical conduct."
That is
already happening; there is less and less emphasis on rational realization of
metaphysical principles, and ever louder emphasis on the hazy fog of New Age
lovingkindness, emptied of rational content as well as emptied of intense
religious experiencing.
Then
Buddhism may redefine the terms, taking the position that entheogenic ego death
is nothing at all like meditation-derived ego death, and that the stopping or
speeding of thoughts in entheogenic experiencing is unrelated to the much more
desirable quietness and mindfulness of pure and natural meditation.
The
defenses against the manifest superiority of entheogens over non-augmented
meditation have become this absurd, twisting and turning and redefining the
goals and the terms, doing anything at all to erect a paradigm that shuts out
the obvious uncontested superiority of entheogens by all measures.
If
entheogens win the religion game by all measures, which they incontrovertibly
do, then such New Age Buddhists make the ultimate lame defensive move that is
every bit as bad as literalist Christianity, of redefining the goal of religion
and redefining the measures of effective religion. What will they do when entheogens prove vastly superior at
producing 'lovingkindness' and 'mindfulness' and ongoing good ethical
conduct?
It will
become embarrassingly clear, as clear as the movie Traffic which exposed the
groteque futility and misguidedness of prohibition, that such New Age Buddhism
is simply defending an a-priori, jealous bias against entheogens and is, like
official Christianity, even willing to abandon religious experiencing and
religious insight if those must be sacrificed to save face in their commitment
to denying the perfect efficacy of entheogens and the historical predominance
of influence and inspiration of entheogens in religion.
It's like
it would kill such anti-entheogenic Buddhists to admit that there is a
lightning path to religion and it is, by any reasonable measure, the best path
we have ever and always had. At that
point, we leave the explicit points of debate and begin, like Richard Double's
study of the motivations behind the free will defenders, or like Dan Russell's
book Drug War, inquiring what the real, underlying commitments are that lie
behind the intellectual arguments being put forth.
Who
benefits, in what ways, and how much, by defending the entheogen-disparaging view
of religious meditation? McKenna
proposes that conventional religion serves as an ego defense against the threat
posed by real religious experiencing.
In that case, the conventional religion of anti-entheogenic meditation
defenders is the religion of demons of darkness; that kind of Buddhism has
become regressiveness disguided as progressiveness, wolves in sheep's
clothing.
Substitute,
ersatz religion, a false gospel, milk religion falsely marketed as meat
religion. I have no reason to loathe
literalist Christianity -- it's dead as a serious contender. Not even believing Christians really believe
in such Christianity any more -- that was only a temporary, modern-era
distorted conception of Christianity, anyway.
All eras except the modern probably took Christianity to be almost
entirely symbolic, reflecting entheogenic psychological archetypal
experiences.
More and
more, it appears that the darkest of the dark ages, in the field of religion,
was the modern -- the only era to wholly lose any grasp of the essence of
religious-myth, in conjunction with losing the connection between entheogens
and religion. Modern Christianity,
which is to say literalist Christianity, had its short time but the reigning
religion of the parents to be thrown off now is anti-entheogenic American
Buddhism, which is debated in the good but too-frustrating-to-read book Zig Zag
Zen.
I haven't
seen such a perversely and determinedly warped and biased distortion of
entheogens since the Catholic theologian Zaehner. One reason I dislike electing a small handful of scholars as
representing the scholarly investigation of entheogens is that they become
targets for such distorted rebuttals and dismissals.
Huxley and
Grof and the Good Friday Experiment are treated by anti-entheogen religionists
(fearful propagandist apologists who know well how baseless their position is)
as though they are the perfect and final word on what entheogens are all about,
as though we've given the scholars a chance to investigate and write about
entheogens when we in fact have not.
This
brings us back to the distortions caused by the politics of suppression of
entheogens. If entheogens were given a
fair chance to compete against non-entheogenic religion, everyone knows as a
public secret that entheogens would totally blow away substitute religion, on
all counts, by far. Everyone knows
this, and knows like the drug war, that any tiny loss of the battle against
entheogens would be total, cataclysmic defeat.
Ego, the
defender of anti-entheogenic religion, knows full well what a futile and
unwinnable battle he faces. The
religion of the lie knows it rests on a foundation of sand and has no hope
against the entheogenic rock in any fair contest. Anti-entheogen religion, like prohibition, can only be defended
through unfair methods of lies, distortion, inconsistency, and
incoherence.
In a fair
debate, which is impossible in this political climate, with competent
defenders, entheogenic religionists would certainly win the debate against the
anti-entheogen meditation promoters, and everyone knows it, as surely as the
prohibitionists refuse to engage in refereed intellectual debate with
reformers.
That's why
the rebuttals of Huxley and the Good Friday Experiment all reek of propaganda,
deliberate and ill-willed distortion, and prior commitments and investments
rather than following Reason and evidence where it leads.
The
anti-entheogen meditation proponents have no real case and are playing a purely
defensive game to save their public prestige and avoid admitting that their
religious practice is nothing of substance, not transformative but just a
lifestyle accessory and mundane coping mechanism, certainly not a
worldview-inverting, ego-threatening Religion that deserves its capital R.
Substitute
religion, called spirituality, is the Church of Ego, and I would not call it
"narcissism" as in Wilber's definition of Boomeritis, but simply and
plainly, the egoic, unenlightened worldview falsely labelling itself as the
transcendent, enlightened worldview. I
follow the simple description of Boomeritis as Elizabeth Debold wrote in her
article "Boomeritis and Me", in the magazine What Is Enlightenment
(wie.com).
Today I
received a special issue responding to her article. The professionals, of all kinds, always profit from telling how
difficult progress to enlightenment is, not from telling how easy it is. They are inherently in the business of
selling enlightenment on the installment plan, not the short, lightning path that
makes their own expertise look mundane.
Real gurus
show genuine humility by highlighting how simple and rational the important
core of enlightenment is, and how easy it is to trigger the intense mystic
altered state. There's really little to
it, and the best gurus are the guides who deliver the most goods with the least
inflationary nonsense that would seek to blow up enlightenment into something
bigger and more alien than it is.
Professionals
define religion as something incomprehensibly difficult and laborious and rare,
something you certainly need years of professional guidance to make any
progress in. Psychedelic
psychotherapist Grof, being a true teacher in the lightning-path tradition, is
the better kind of professional, like the better part of the shaman
tradition.
You can
count on magazines like What Is Enlightenment to commit to a model in which
psychospiritual transformation is rare, laborious, never-ending, complicated,
etherial, endlessly subtle, and challenging, rather than simple and finite and
straightforwardly attainable in a short time.
>I
thought--even assumed that this awakening of society would have to happen now
thay such a powerful agent for understanding
had been unleashed in the world.
>In my
case growing up in the So Cal area and seeing many of my contemporaries,
friends etc., as well as famous rock poets, using entheogens, and exploring consciousness, during a three
year explosion of brilliance and then to see it all come crumbling down so
easily, was clearly a lesson. The 2-4%
of people gaining lasting benefit, later seemed to be a pretty accurate
appraisal. Even the rock lyrics
reverted back to mundane boredom as most of the former heroes turned into
drunken stooges for commercial enterprise and former friends became PCP,
alcohol and cocaine statistics or retreated into cultish anti-entheogen
thinking.
>I saw
a pretty widespread cross-section in my realm of things.
Data can
be interpreted into different interpretive frameworks. Entheogens appear to have expanded
consciousness for a few years, and then appear to have petered out. Supposing that this pattern or apparent or
effective pattern happened, it remains to debate why it happened and what it
means regarding the potential of entheogens.
I'm far more interested in the potential of entheogens than the
accidents of history of the late 1960s.
No matter
how much anecdotal evidence there is from the 1960s, that is just one source of
data, one scenario, and one that is completely complicated and dirtied as
trustworthy evidence by the deceit-driven drug prohibition enterprise. We really must reject *equating* the
accidents of the late 1960s with the whole of entheogen history and entheogen
potential.
In the
U.S., LSD was legally prohibited October 6, 1966. Before it was prohibited, it was apparently good and expansive of
consciousness; after it was prohibited, it was apparently bad and not expansive
of consciousness. Did LSD change? Can we let the systemic foolishness of the
people during a period of five years in the late 1960s put a permanent negative
stamp on entheogens, which have been the source of religion and higher
philosophy for a thousand thousand years?
It is
impossible to make a fair scientific conclusion about LSD and entheogens based
on the mass of anecdotal and research data collected since the mid 20th
Century. It is way to early to say that
we know the limits and potentials of the entheogens. What little we think we know since the late 60s is corrupted as
data by the darkening force of prohibition.
Most of
what is written about entheogens now, by kids online, is an embarrassment to
any claim of entheogens being enlightening and consciousness expanding -- but
why? That's the question. Entheogens were shot down before they were
given half a chance in the 1960s, and if the result was unenlightenment and
disparagement of the entheogens, what is to blame -- the lack of potential of
entheogens? Heaven forbid.
People's
actions and responses through the late 1960s and beyond may have been lame, but
it's completely a matter of debate over whether this is the fault of
psychoactives or of the culture that prohibited them. We've taken one pathetic shot at entheogens. We should not let one foolish, short era
drive us permanently to a false conclusion about the potential of entheogens.
I'm glad
[person], in the past couple postings, detailed what lies behind his original
assertion that Leary and McKenna abused or mis-used mind-altering
chemicals. I do think the accusation of
Leary and McKenna's "mis-use of entheogens" can be reasonable *if*
one defines, to [person]'s recent level of detail, what specifically is
meant. The accusation may possibly still
be wrong, but when detail is provided, an enlightening, detailed, nuanced
debate can follow.
The fact
itself of [person]'s disparagment of Leary and McKenna is not at all the
problem. Leary and McKenna can jump off
a cliff, and everyone else too. It's
not my goal to protect and praise the 20th Century entheogen fathers. The goal is an *accurate assessment* of the
concepts that have been proposed regarding mind, entheogens, and religious
experiencing.
The great
crime [person] is guilty of is not negativity or being judgmental of some
entheogen use; his significant violation is initially *being vague* in his
assertion of Leary's "abuse", and tending to think in oversimplistic
prefabricated cliched categories that don't necessarily accurately fit the
other person's debate position.
Sometimes it's hard to initially be so clear as one ought.
We must be
flexible about metaphorical use of language, and communication in general. Expressions have a degree of truth. The main problem is, people use terms as a
*brittle* shorthand. There is some
truth in "Leary abused mind-altering chemicals", but that assertion
isn't viable until more details are provided to clarify and more or less
justify what is being asserted.
[person]'s
redemption as a debater is that he works to *eventually* clarify his own
position and to have a more accurate grasp of the other person's position. Most debate is a method of clarifying the
respective positions, to find the great degree of worldview agreement, even if
the two positions remain distinct paradigms that highlight different aspects
and interpretations of the world.
Eventually,
he posts defensibly "well-written scholarship and appropriate commentary
on fallacies within the spiritual community's less than honorable notice of the
entheogenic relevance of the psychedelics".
My general
position is that entheogens are the origin of religion. It is important, not petty and missing the
point, to debate details such as whether psychedelic figureheads
"respected the indigenous roots" or "had a materialistic vacuum
as well as a spiritual portal". We
just have to be clear that the main point is "entheogens are the basis of
religion" and that the minor point is "arguably, some psychedelic
figureheads might not properly and reasonably respect indigenous entheogen
traditions".
Even if we
respect each other's map of consciousness, to gain insight we must criticize,
accuse, defend, argue, debate, analyze, investigate.
It is
possible to interpret the term "ego death" as aggression, such as the
aggression of Zeus in possessing mortal womenly souls. Spirituality is false and distorted if it
downplays the Hard Rock intensity of peak religious experiencing, death,
rebirth, Groffian spiritual emergency, Keseyian freak-out, and Hoffmanian or
Stephan __ "ego death". Leary
and Alpert wrote an entire book centered around the ego death metaphor.
The
Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead
Ralph
Metzner, Richard Alpert, Karma-Glin-Pa Bar do, Timothy Leary
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806516526
rank 39K
(very popular)
I like
Drum's comments: "Take everywhere it says LSD and replace it with Amanita
muscaria (which was the real entheogen this manual is experientially based
upon). Then you have it! Keep in mind that NONE of the world's religions tell
the whole truth, and this includes Tibetan Buddhism [and shamanism, I'd add -
mh]. All patriarchal religions have severe problems and you should know what
those problems (false dogmas) are before experimenting. The discovery that this
book is not necessarily a book for the dead but a book to map the consciousness
of those experiencing the shamanistic 'death experience' is crucial to
humanity's understanding of Tibetan Buddhism and other world religion."
[person]
has potential as a debater if he starts a debate with a more nuanced and
balanced and detailed position. But
online postings are voluntary and have no guarantee of compensation; where is
the incentive to post the best quality material you're capable of? There's no guarantee other post'ers will
work with you to develop the debate toward enlightening insight.
Leary has
always been controversial among entheogenists.
Did he give us the gift of psilocybin and LSD, or did he take them away
from us? Prohibition can't be blamed on
any one person, but Leary is the one person most associated with LSD, so all
debates about LSD and entheogen prohibitions have Leary as the center of
contention. I'm trying to think of
books or articles that critically evaluate whether Leary is responsible for
giving us psilocybin and LSD or for having them taken away.
It is not
a goal of this discussion group to have a positive mood. It's not a social group at all. It's not a positive spirituality group at
all. It's not a good vibes group at
all. It is strictly an information
group: what is ego death, how does it work, how does it connect to religious
and philosophical traditions and fields.
Spirituality
has various insights and moods. I am
intent on cracking the puzzles of the mystic-state phenomena that are most
jarring, panicking, mind-shattering, devastating, mind-blowing, and
spiritual-emergency causing. Anything
else already has enough researchers and spiritual socializers and loving
communities working on it.
Negativity
is relevant, on-topic, welcome and needed to the extent it constructively sheds
light on the egodeath experience.
Negativity
is irrelevant, off-topic, unwelcome and not needed, to the extent it
destructively fails to shed light on the egodeath experience.
There are
many discussion groups that are driven by the main goal of spiritual peace and
light and community; positive-feeling spirituality, emphasizing heart and soul
and emotion. This discussion group is a
tool specializing in mind, logic, rationality, reason, debate, specific
argument, expose, paradigm definition, and being specific.
[person]
is sometimes a slow starter in focusing and elaborating his criticisms,
starting off a debate by punching at shadows in the wrong direction. But he has shown his commitment in the long
run to clarifying and elaborating his position and more accurately grasping my
position. I highly respect sustained
improvement over time. [person] has
continued his work of sustained constructive debate after I have changed to
other subjects.
People
motivated by positive spiritual vibes are uncomfortable with sustained rational
constructive debate involving the development of complaints, accusations,
defenses, sustained constructive argument.
Some
psychedelic figureheads (possibly Kesey, Leary, McKenna, Ott) held the
libertarian position that drug "mis-use" is an empty notion. Other psychedelic figureheads (Wasson,
possibly Huxley and Huston Smith) held the traditionalist or restrictive
position that entheogens have a proper use and an improper use. [person] argues for the latter position, which
often blames the libertarian psychedelic figureheads for prohibition and
accuses them of failing to have the proper respect they ought to have for
indigenous entheogen traditions.
[person]'s
position is nothing new; it's one of the two main positions held by entheogen
scholars. Many entheogen scholars make
essentially the same accusations [person] makes. Regardless of his particular words, [person] expresses one of the
standard main positions. If you
criticize [person]'s assertions, you must realize and admit that you are
criticizing an entire *group* of entheogenists.
There is
no escape from judging, praising, and rejecting entheogen scholars. Either you do as I do and praise the
libertarian entheogenists, and reject the restrictive entheogenists' position;
or, you do as [person] does and praise the restrictive entheogenists, and
reject the libertarian entheogenists' position. We all should admit that we hold some beliefs and reject the
beliefs that are different.
Let us not
forget that Wasson's position, while cautious and elitist and restrictive,
contradicts the bare fact that he did wildly break and flaunt the restrictions
that Sabina's culture held. Sabina's
culture was secretive about entheogenic mushrooms because the Catholic
authoritarians persecuted entheogen sacrament users and commanded that only
users of the official church placebo sacrament be allowed to live.
Sabina and
Wasson both publically endorsed restricted use of entheogenic mushrooms, but
their actions contradict their official position. Her culture said "restrict", and Wasson's elite
background said "restrict", yet look at what they did together: they
set the bird free -- essentially a move pointed relatively in the libertarian
direction, moving away from their restrictive cultural traditions.
Wasson and
Sabina were effectively in cahoots, in league, to tear entheogens away from the
Catholic-enforced secrecy and hold them up in the light for all the world to
gaze upon and worship openly -- even if Wasson and Sabina made loud noises
about the need to restrict and respect and not mis-use the mushrooms.
The
20th-Century entheogen movement is not solely based on Sabina's act of handing
the mushrooms to Wasson, but that act was the most influential channel through
which official Western civilization received entheogens from the shamanic
culture, after the Catholic officials previously rejected such indigenous
entheogen active sacraments and enforced with the sword exclusively using the
official Church's placebo sacrament.
With a
fair investigation, it turns out that Wasson, Sabina, and Leary are all harder
to categorize as restrictive or libertarian than it might initially
appear. Sabina, while yammering about
mis-use, was in fact guilty of violating her culture's restriction against
giving Wasson the mushrooms. Wasson,
despite his wish to restrict mushroom use to the elite, did in fact popularize
it.
Leary,
while seeking to make entheogens universally available for all kinds of use,
did in fact adhere to a relatively serious, East-coast approach, as opposed to
Kesey's truly libertarian anything-goes conception of unqualifiedly legitimate,
or outside-legitimacy, entheogen use.
Anyone who
holds the libertarian position that all entheogen use is legit as long as no
one is harmed (see Leary's libertarian commandments about this), should accept
that they are taking a stance against those who are more restrictive about
which use is legit and which is mis-use.
Both camps can be called "judgmental" of the other: they both
actively endorse once stance and refute the other.
It's a
huge mistake, poor-quality thinking, to sweepingly reject everything about
Leary or McKenna, or to unqualifiedly praise Leary and McKenna. Critical thinking always assesses the good
and the bad of each character. No
psychedelic figurehead is entirely good or entirely bad.
Early Rush
is the single most profitable group to study for an investigation of lyrical
double-entendres in acid-oriented rock alluding to the phenomena of the mystic
altered state. This doesn't mean their
music is the best or most enjoyable.
I have
also thoroughly analyzed such encoding in other artists' lyrics, including
Beatles, Ozzy, Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Cheap
Trick, and Hendrix, and other post'ers have made valuable contributions to
confirm that such lyrical techniques are not rare, but rather are *standard*
for High Classic Rock, the authentic mystery-religion of our time and the
authentic Western contemporary shamanism of the late 20th Century.
No
metaphor or expression is entirely accurate or entirely incorrect. [person] tends to take a surprisingly rigid
view that a metaphorical expression (McKenna's "shamanism") is
*entirely* incorrect. Sophisticated and
nuanced analysis instead sees the truth and limitation of each such
expression. In grilling [person], I
seek to clarify what he's asserting, to find in what way it might be true. Now I can consider whether we can possibly
say, in [person]'s sense, that Leary "abused mind-altering
chemicals". If I disagree, I might
say that such as assertion is unfair or misguided, or lacks a foundation, or is
moralistic or restrictive, but I would *not* so much defend Leary's
"character".
What are
the main reasons meditation was elevated over entheogens after the 1960s? What are the actual motivations behind the
totally false anti-entheogen attitude promoted by many meditation proponents?
o It's insulting to human pride that a plant
is more effective than one's willed meditation technique.
o Intense mystic experiencing is inherently
frightening because destabilizing of self-control and worldmodel
o Genuine mystic experiencing is inherently
frightening, so there's a desire to redefine and invent a different kind of
mystic technique that isn't frightening, even if it isn't effective either.
o Theoretically, the mind has the potential to
produce intense mystic experiencing (loose cognition) without external
ingestion of entheogens, so the idealists run ahead to seriously attempt this,
and use the tenth of a percent success rate (after investing 30 years) to
bolster their idealist point, ignoring that what really matters to be relevant
is the needs of typical people with typical lifestyles.
o Entheogens are illegal, so are a closed
path; out of wishful thinking, people try to maintain that the alternatives are
satisfactory and even better.
o If the plant teacher works better than
meditation leaders, to protect their livelihood, the meditation leaders
demonize and delegitimize plant teachers as unwelcome professional competition.
dc
postulated these factors causing late 1960s entheogenists to repudiate
entheogens as inferior to meditation:
o Polypharmacy, excess, fame, and
psychological insecurities placed them in a very hypersuggestible and
confounded states, making them susceptible to gurus' desire for control over
followers. Pop stars projected a
wished-for omniscience onto the gurus.
Why did
these Baby Boomers wish for gurus to be omniscient and spiritual authorities? -
mh
o The social turmoil surrounding popcult
stardom made entheogens hard to handle.
o Fear because of illegal status.
o Inability to deal with popcult stress made
entheogens hard to handle.
o Pop stars were culturally influential in pop
culture-cliques in the hippie community.
o Fears and half-baked understandings as
people struggled to regain their ego.
o This generation of entheogen users got
married and had dependent babies and work considerations.
o Some usage switched to other available psychoactives
that supported or didn't threaten the ego.
o People suddenly converted to mainstream,
anti-entheogen versions of religions, and assumed religion is set against
entheogens.
o Classic Rock and popcult stars such as
George Harrision, Donovan and Richard Alpert asserted that Indian gurus are
superior to entheogen use. This
occurred due to their own personal psychological issues and their state of mind
when they went about to find their gurus.
They were in hypersuggestible states and upon meeting the gurus, they
projected upon them omniscience.
I'm
unclear on the nature of these "hypersuggestible states". That expression isn't sufficient for clearly
defining a top 10 reason for the rise of the fallacy that meditation is
superior to entheogens. -mh
o The death or incarceration of a number of
pop superstars made entheogens look unattractive and risky, both
psychologically and legally.
o There were fear issues that had developed,
possibly related to sexual issues, "devil," scares and other things that
made them afraid of entheogens.
That's
vague, "possibly related to sexual issues". I don't know what's being postulated here as a specific reason
for falsely elevating meditation above entheogens in the late 1960s. Same with the devil/scares part -- if these
are each significant reasons, they should each have a sentence defining the
proposed hypothesis. We need a sublist
of aspects of entheogens that are frightening.
Whatever
method is effective is inherently also frightening; real mysticism is frightening,
however triggered, so people hasten to try to invent the impossible: a kind of
real mysticism that isn't frightening -- the result is what fills today's
American Buddhism magazines: a neutered, defanged, docile, impotent,
domesticated mysticism which lacks danger and necessarily lacks transformation
potential at the same time. A form of
mysticism that serves only to reassure and comfort the person is incapable of
transforming the person, giving them plastic tokens of spirituality instead of
anything genuine and threatening to the mental status quo.
>The
books on Soma written by Hindus were rationalizations of myth and used
archetype-type theory, rather then understanding that Soma wasn't a myth or
psychological symbolism. Generally
followers of hese kinds of teachers, fell into literalism while turning the
deep experiences at their root, into symbolism rather then actual experience.
Archetype
theory without entheogens is blind and a dead-end, trying to apply high mythic
metaphors to the mere mundane state of consciousness grappling with ordinary
stresses of life and ordinary-state ritual and emotionalism. Soma was about the use of entheogens, and
the resulting mental phenomena, including experiences and insights.
From
http://www.shroomery.org/dbtest/test/the/default/par/11829
cache:
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:0Et_ml7yQXkJ:www.shroomery.org/dbtest/test/the/default/par/11829+mushroom+eucharist&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
______________
Which
brings me to yet another theory about the psychedelic sixties. I’m sure
everyone has one. What happened was that people got disillusioned with
psychedelics for a couple of reasons.
First,
they just burnt a person out, and spaced them out. The frequent use of
psychedelics (2-3 times a week, or even once a week) doesn’t do much for you
when you’ve got bills to pay, and children to feed, and the hippies were
growing up and getting involved in the responsibilities of family life.
Second,
the push of eastern spiritual technique and religion and eventually
neo-christianity, which took the place of drugs [why? -mh], and essentially
banned them, were considered by many the next step after psychedelics. [but why
exactly were these considered the next step? This is a report of a progression
of affinities, but not an explanation for that progression. -mh] So to use a
drug like LSD when you had a zealous commitment to kung fu, for example, was a
serious cop out.
Third, the
Vietnam war had ended. What was one fighting about, or rebelling against, or
dropping acid to change the consciousness of? The job in many peoples minds,
was done. The war had ended. Friends weren’t coming home dead or crippled
anymore.
Fourthly,
government propaganda, such as the lie about LSD and chromosome damage, and the
severe penalties for possession and distribution, gave many a good excuse, who
otherwise might have continued experimentation, to stop altogether.
It’s
annoying to hear people speak of the psychedelic movement in the same breath as
the disco fad of the late seventies, as if dropping acid was analogous to doing
‘the bump’. These are probably people who tried a major psychedelic once,
became petrified by what it revealed about themselves or existence, and decided
they would pass themselves off as an experienced user who now thinks its bad or
out of style, laughing condescendingly at those times.
It doesn’t
take a genius to realize the major impact psychedelics have had on our culture.
Just leaf through a current magazine and look at the art, or watch MTV for more
than a few minutes if you can stand it. It’s bursting with psychedelic
influence.
Just look
at computer software, video games, and the leftist media. Just look at the
leaps and bounds in technology, such as Apple Computer and the Mac, the brain
child of an acid head. Just look at the world wide web. Isn’t this an acid
vision of someone about thirty years ago that wormed its way into our everyday
culture?
The whole
world is psychedelicized, only it’s happened so slow we’ve hardly noticed it.
We think it’s just modern stuff. Look at all the emphasis on deepening
sensitivity and intimacy in relationships, women’s rights, relinquishing power
to your partner and really trying to understand them; to share yourself with
them. Isn’t this something we turned on to in the psychedelic sixties? Could
any of this have happened without a psychedelic renaissance?
Look at
our cultures obsession with space and aliens. In the psychedelic sixties,
humans saw the earth from outer space for the first time. The astronauts and
cosmonauts were stunned by its beauty. With its deep blue oceans, swirling
white clouds, and multi-colored corona’s, it was like seeing the rainbow of our
own innate beauty for the first time. It was like seeing the earth for what is
really was for the first time – a psychedelic planet.
It’s my
opinion that psychedelics, far from being passe, are only in their infancy,
barely out of the womb. In a sense it appears that the cart was put before the
horse as part of an awakening for modern culture. The psychedelic movement came
when we least expected it, like a swift kick in the butt of consciousness. This
is a psychedelic nation. We are a psychedelic America, like it or not. Now it’s
time to put the horse where it belongs, in front of a cart that’s hauling all
kinds of psychedelic transmutations.
Now the
horse of spiritual discipline comes first. The meditation, the eucharist, the
love of God and our neighbor. Do your five years of zazen and then eat some
sacred mushrooms, and then do five more years of zazen trying to figure out
what the bleep happened. Make your psychedelic of choice a quality occasion.
Make it cautious, respectful, think it through, and the chances are you’ll come
out with something sacred, a jewel of great value. Price paid.
[Why
bother delaying mushrooms by 5 years of zazen first, followed by 5 more years
of zazen as a method of "trying to figure out" the mushroom
experiences? What's up with this
supposedly required labor of "discipline"; is it even relevant? Note how the worldview promoted here seems
to backfire and contradict, in typical fashion, the author's supposed promotion
of entheogens: "Entheogens are more effective than meditation, therefore
you must do a little entheogens and 10 years of meditation." Wouldn't it be more logical to more
intertwine the two methods, or ditch the "discipline of meditation"
entirely and invest those ten years in mushroom use instead of meditation?
-mh].
______________
end of
excerpt from shroomery.org
>...enlightenment
is involved with the realization that the ego is not in control. I have been a student of Wilber, Watts and
other explorers for years. I work from
with a combination of transpersonal and Christian metaphysics, in developing
what I call a spiritual psychotherapy based upon Infinity Theory. Take a look at my new website:
http://www.spiritualpsychotherapy.net for an attempt to integrate theory and
practice. It has been an exciting and interesting project. Any feedback would be appreciated.
>Carroll
J. Wright, Ph.D.
If I spend
time evaluating such approaches, here is the critical evaluative perspective
I'd use.
It's
commonplace and standard for any system of psychospiritual development to say
what have now become platitudes such as ego is unreal or we're all one. In evaluating systems of psychospiritual
development, it's not such a simplistic matter as to say that a system is right
or wrong, good or bad, enlightened or unenlightened. Sometimes a system makes assertions which are frankly incorrect,
but even that isn't the main problem and challenge.
The
challenge is to create a clear, compressed, cogent, ergonomic, rationally
graspable systematization that can be conveyed as a determinate, bounded system
of concepts. This theory and system
should successfully map to other, less structured systems, and should explain
intense mystic experiencing, particularly via entheogens with and without
ritual context.
My general
criticism of typical contemporary systems of psychospiritual development is
that they disparage language while using it ineptly, they disparage entheogens
instead of recognizing their historical essential importance and effectiveness
as applicable tools, they don't accurately connect with religions, they are
unstructured and have vague boundaries rather than striving to have
boundaries.
What's
needed is something more in the direction of Spinoza's geometry-style reasoning
applied relevantly to religious experiencing and mystic insight regarding time,
control, self, world, and mental worldmodels.
What's needed is a new vocabulary, a new kind of theory, a new style of
thinking and explanation. Critiquing
systems of psychospiritual development is like critiquing books or Rock
albums.
Could
there be such a thing as the ideal book or the ideal Rock album, or the ideal
systematization of transcendent knowledge?
Consider critiquing books on how to play Rock guitar: they can be judged
in terms of completeness, relevance, and balance. Rock guitar playing is essentially a finite, bounded area, more
or less, and so are the basics of transcendent knowledge.
It's not
clear whether most writers think of psychospiritual development as an area that
is basically finite and bounded, but it is worth noting the new Dummies books
about Spirituality; the existence of such books implies that you can summarize
the basics of Spirituality as a definite, defined, bounded, finite, determinate
field. If such is the case, then we do
have a measuring stick by which to gauge and judge systems of psychospiritual
development.
One such
contender is Freke's encyclopedia of spirituality, which aims to comprehend the
basics, all you really need to know. It
gets high marks from me because it is organized and includes no-free-will in
addition to no-separate-self, and at least gives entheogens their due (like
some books on comparative religion in the early 70s) without the usual
"but you're still our favorite whipping boy" disparagement of them
that reigns among books and articles that pose as being informed and
progressive.
It takes a
lot to qualify as an ideal system of transcendent knowledge. Some books are strong contenders for
covering a field. The book from DK
publishing, The Family Bible, does a good job of presenting standard Bible
knowledge. The DK book The Complete
Guitarist does a good job of efficiently presenting all you need to know to
play Rock guitar, short of playing in the loose cognitive state -- it even
covers the basics of gear (electric guitars, effects, and tube amps) short of
teaching what's considered the "secret principles of the pros"
regarding alternating equalization and distortion stages. So there is no insurmountable problem
stopping people from writing an effective, structured, comprehensible primer on
a particular area, such as transcendent knowledge.
>When
I, you and/or me, become made into something and/or someone that must fight
something else in an attempt to destroy it, then I, you and/or me, become
nothing more than the continuation of the structure of religion, which taught
discrimination, fear, and destruction.
That
absolutist-styled statement is partly true, in some sense. It doesn't express the whole truth of the
situation (which is left as an imaginative exercise for the reader). It is a mistake to not resist the ediface of
lies erected by the status quo. The use
of the words "fight" and "destroy" above may say more about
the thinking of the one who wrote it, than about the goal of the debunking
activities themselves.
The
"discrimination, fear, and destruction" advocated by organized
religion is significantly different than the kind of those things advocated by
gnostics or determinist mystics. The
caution above distorts the matter, if the caution is read too broadly or
simplistically. It has some truth, but
misses much important truth.
dc wrote:
>Being
beaten "underground" by laws and injunctions, entheogenicists
throughout the ages, acquiesce to "meditation," as acceptable,
because it is still the main adjunct component of proper entheogenic use. They settle for "secret,"
teachings about entheogens.
>Just
as "feeble," as acquiescing to hyperventilation ala Grof, or other
rituals, markedly lacking in strength, is allowing entheogens to remain illegal
in countries that have "religious freedom," on the law books. This is truly feeble, because allowing this
perpetuates the acquiescence to feebleness.
>The
fact that these things are illegal, color all discussion about them in the
social reality.
That must
be constantly stated. Everything we
think we know about entheogens is heavily colored by the fact that they are
illegal. It is all but worthless and
meaningless to make statements characterizing the potential and limitations of
entheogens based on what happened between October 1966 and now. "Most people who use entheogens are
immature morons. This fact is evident
from what the entheogen newsgroup postings."
All that
we know now is one outcome that can happen under very hostile conditions: when
there are very hostile, anti-entheogen conditions, most writings about
entheogens are limited in quality and portray entheogens in a negative light,
at best damning them with faint praise as something that gives a glimpse and
awakens one to the True Path, thirty years of meditation at the feet of a guru,
with a success rate so vanishingly low, it's now denied that meditation is
supposed to have any tangible result at all.
What we
know from this era is merely what entheogens produce under basically worst-case
conditions. Just as the potential of
entheogens couldn't manifest in the psych ward atmosphere of the
"psychotomimetic" era, neither can is manifest under the atmosphere
of the "drug war". Just as
the king hears about the infant that is destined to be ruler and so seeks to
kill all the infants to get rid of the upstart, many people hear about an
effective enlightenment pill and do their best to diminish and suppress it.
The
entheogen is an enlightenment pill. The
Hellenistic era routinized religious salvation and revelation through sacred
meals of visionary plants. Entheogens
don't instantly bring enlightenment today (1966-2003) because there is no
structure, no relevant systematic theory, no effective mythic symbolic rituals,
and no legal or social permitting of these to develop. Entheogens are lame and ineffective today
because their potential has been deliberately suppressed.
This
doesn't mean that the potential of entheogens is so limited; it means that
entheogens as a tool cannot function effectively and reach their potential
under such hostile, oppressive conditions.
Part of entheogens' effectiveness includes their potential to reveal
mental dynamics that produce tribulation, fear, trembling, and judgment. People need a clear understanding of both
the tremendous potential and mental destabilizing potential of entheogens --
dangerous as driving a car.
Entheogens
are a tool and can be used well or poorly, with great, terrible, lame, or
mediocre results. Sure, mediocre
results "can" happen, but for that matter, great results
"can" happen as well. Next we
have to pull out distribution curves for entheogens and for meditation and
drumming, and ask how often, for how many practitioners, do these techniques
produce "results", and what kind of "results"?
I can
almost list out the ten worst cliches used by those who are hell-bent on doing
everything they can to diminish the potential of entheogens. Let's give entheogens a fair chance, give
people a couple hundred years to develop theory and technique, and then draw up
a distribution curve showing how many times this leads to terrible, lame,
mediocre, good, or great results, and what those "results" amount
to.
Today, the
diminishers take for granted the worst-case kind of "chance"
entheogens have been given 1966-2003, and are eager to point out the terrible
or mediocre results that "can" occur, and then presume to judge the
potential of entheogens negatively against, say, meditation, while freely
defining meditation as producing some vague or mundane ethical results that
have nothing to do with mysticism, religion, high philosophy, or
transcendence.
Meditationists
lecture continuously about "what matters is not fireworks, but lasting
results". For one thing, who is to
say what matters? It's debatable. For another, maybe what matters *is*
fireworks: the intense altered state of loose cognition may be exactly the key
important thing, so that if a technique lacks that intense altered state, the
technique *can* be called a failure and a fraud. For another thing, who is to say that "lasting results"
are what really matters, and how should we define "results"?
The
meditationists repeat like a saving mantra, "What matters is not
fireworks, but lasting results -- therefore meditation is better than entheogens". Every aspect of the cliche is very much open
to interpretation and debate in that tiresome club the meditationists use to
beat down entheogens. When measured in
terms of proven efficacy for mental transformation, the greatest potential for
meditation is as a method to augment the main, classic, proven method, which is
the entheogen "path".
I wrote:
>>Make
no mistake: the real thing is entheogens, and the feeble, generally ineffective
simulation is meditation, drumming, hyperventilation, and other "acceptable
mysterious" routes.
>>I'm
tired of entheogenists caving into that lie -- I wish they'd start asserting
that entheogens are *by far* the main method, most classic method, and most
effective method for triggering the intense mystic altered state -- and they
should insist that triggering the intense mystic altered state *is* essential,
*not* an irrelevancy as the Buddhist guru camp is increasingly maintaining.
Mark
Hoffman wrote:
>Traditionally,
for the great majority of human history, these ancillary means were made much
more interesting, and were probably discovered, by means of entheogens. Entheogen use in Buddhism is about to get
more coverage.
Ryuei
writes:
>>Psychedelics
have *not* been used in Buddhism. From the very beginning, intoxicants were
forbidden in the monastic vinaya and the fifth major precept for laypeople.
Just because a bunch of counter culture armchair Buddhists in the US and Europe
thought it was groovy to mix LSD with a bunch of palaver about psuedo Zen, that
does not mean that the genuine stream of Buddha Dharma encourages drug use let
alone condones it as some kind of shortcut to satori.
dc wrote:
>You
are very mistaken. The injunctions
against "intoxicants" did not apply to Soma and the Soma
surrogates. These were used ceremonial
by the earliest Buddhists and were also used by the authors of the Lotus
Sutra. In Japan Amanita Panteria
Mushroom was (and still is ritually used)--same in Tibet Amanita Muscaria and
other things.
>The
favored entheogenic substance was the Lotus Flower itself, mixed with other
herbs. This type of Lotus was called
the "Sun Lotus". Shakyamuni
died of an overdose of what was called "Sukkara Mandava" which was
erroneously translated as "pork" It was in fact the "Pig
Mushroom." And Rice Gruel, such as that which Gautama used to break his
fast, mixed with certain plants and dates was also a common way of ingesting
entheogenic combinations.
>The
entire religion at the time of Gautama centered around the search for the lost
knowledge of the "elixir of immortality." The most difficult thing in
trying to make people understand this is that most people have not had
sufficient or proper experience and practice -- therefore this "shocks and
surprises," and suddenly experts are there to naysay what is in fact, the
real truth about the Buddhist leaders and founders.
>All
the comments about this topic in this thread are very incorrect -- but it is a
complex issue and it is easy for me to understand why people do not understand
it. To say "They did not use it
right" is accurate. Someone said
you can "have fun" with it, but this is incorrect also. It must be taken very seriously to be
understood from the Buddhist perspective.
>Also,
Marijuana -- which many of you smoke -- although a good relaxant for many --
does not provide the kind of experiences that I am referring to and low dose
LSD without proper training and meditation will only produce minor
awakenings. Likewise high doses without
proper training and meditation can cause problems...especially in depressed,
anxious or unstable people.
>In
reality the origin of all religions comes from the use of 1. entheogenic plants
coupled with 2. correct yogic practice and 3. looking at the sky. The authors of the Lotus Sutra knew this
better then anyone, considering who they really were. That subject is very interesting, especially once it is realized
who those authors really were.
>Try as
anyone might...you cannot refute what I am saying, although I am sure some will
try, dismissing it mindlessly, or with dogma, and I am sure the same flack will
be sent my way, from these incorrigible dogmatists. The main reason it is important to study this, is because "a
buddha is always thinking about how all beings can become enlightened."
"Receptivity," is the most central point to study if one expects to
spread enlightenment.
>A
prerequisite of this receptivity is what Prof.
Charles Tart called disruptive forces and patterning forces. Without receptivity, very few will even
begin to practice. The "disruptive
force" can be a number of things and chief amonst them in the history of
religion is the use of entheogenic plants.
A shortcut
to satori is more like the true short path; the shortcut path is the path that
works best, so should be considered the normal path, with the alternative being
called "the drawn-out path that never arrives", or "the
never-arriving path", or "the path of avoidance".
THC might
be entheogenic in high doses, such as eating a substantial amount of hashish
after fasting.
dc wrote:
>Even
large-dose LSD experience after long term fasting can leave one in lower to
middle Mahayana or still in the GOD-DEVIL duality. Smoking pot during those experiences is an obstacle to Buddhist
entheogenic breakthrough.
>In my
case, in the late 60's, it was long time fasting and bi- monthly LSD that took
me beyond the kundalini style duality of GOD-- DEVIL and it was double dose STP
that made me see what Buddhism was really is all about. Buddhism is a continuum until the Middle Path
opens up. Then the Saddharma Pundarika
makes sense.
I doubt
that LSD and THC are to blame in the early non-breakthrough phase and that STP
is to be credited for breakthrough in the later phase. Were STP used in the early phase and LSD and
THC later, it would appear that THC and LSD would deserve credit. Initiation should be thought of as a series:
it is a semester course of learning, requiring repeated study, lab experience,
and tests.
If I
experienced union of psychosomatic mental body with Christ on the Cross from
Salvia after less profound and clear experiences with other visionary plants, I
would not automatically credit Salvia as superior -- instead, merely as
later. I advocate the ecumenical
philosophy; the angels as a collective lift up the soul. It's a mistake to think of THC as a simple
single thing: when combined with the flesh of the gods or with the cask of '43,
THC puts the peak on the peak, acting quite differently than THC alone.
The mind
develops over the course of experiencing, and a more experienced mind engages
with these angels more effectively later.
Meditation
has its own kind of legitimacy and was and can be combined with
entheogens. Meditation can cause the
altered state -- about 1% as reliably and easily as entheogens. Meditation is derived from entheogen
techniques. The issue is the practical
efficacy and statistical reliability of entheogens vs. meditation, and the
"goal" toward which this "efficacy" is directed.
Also
requiring debate is, what claims are made for meditation? What claims are made for entheogens? Do these methods make good on their
promises? What potential promises can
meditation make and deliver on? What
potential promises can entheogens make and deliver on? I propose that these promises must be
different. Meditation can make certain
restricted promises or claims, that it can deliver on.
Entheogens
can make certain restricted promises or claims, that it can deliver on. One of my main assertions, against so many
who write about religion and entheogens, is that entheogens can make *huge*
promises, and *can reliably deliver* on these, with strong reliability and
great ease of use, while meditation can only make much lesser promises, with
quite restricted reliability, reproducibility, tangibility, and ease of
use.
Meditation
is difficult, slow, inefficient, and has little potential; entheogens have
great potential to be reliable, fast, efficient, and easy. Meditation has potential to bring various
goods to life. But entheogens have much
greater potential to bring various goods to life.
A new
elementary point to be always included is that entheogens can be used in slight
amounts, spread out, just as one can meditate for a minute or for days. Another basic rebuttal is that although it
isn't easy to retain entheogenic insights, the old dichotomy between
"traditional religion" and entheogens is utterly false, because
traditional ancient religion was entheogenic above all.
If
entheogens are so worthless, then the religion they generated is worthless;
early Christianity for example was entheogenic Christianity, so if we diminish
entheogens, we at the same time -- despite our effort to glorify religion over
entheogens -- end up diminishing what many people assume was the best, purest,
most authentic and legitimate form of Christianity.
The whole
move of diminishing entheogens by contrasting them against traditional religion
has a backlash effect against the would-be traditionalists when it turns out
that traditional Christianity *is* entheogenic. This logic is fundamental to justifying intense scholarly research
on entheogens in religion in the Hellenistic era.
Why study
entheogens in Christianity? To demolish
the anti-entheogenists strategy of contrasting "inferior entheogens versus
superior traditional religion".
This is why it is important to find every possible trace of entheogen
use throughout Christianity and surrounding religions -- to show that the
dominant notions about "traditional religion" are a false
construction.
>>It
seems to me that the kinds of experiences facilitated by entheogens tend last
more or less as long as the "high" does.
An
elementary distinction is that between the loosecog state and the permanently
changed mental world that is characteristically produced by the sustained and
skillful use of the loosecog state.
Certainly there are two states (tight and loose cognitive binding of
mental construct associations) and two mental worldmodels (egoic and
transcendent).
The
meditationists claim that there is a lasting state of mystic cognition -- I
reject this claim as complicated, overly conjectural, wishful, and lacking in
evidence and relevance for typical people.
>>When
the afterglow wears off, we return to our "normal" (which, for most
people, in my judgment, seems to mean somewhat neurotic, robotic, unhappy and
narcoticized) way of being.
The
experienced entheogenist, in the tradition of the mystery religions, has passed
through a series of loose cognition initiations, gradually securing a changed
mental worldmodel that lasts whether the mind is in the default state of tight
cognition or in a loose cognition entheogenic session.
>>Non-drug-influenced
contemplation seems more likely to bring about a genuine shift in understanding
or perception that might permanently alter one's way of being.
That's an
assertion, a conjecture, wishful thinking.
I reject it as unfounded. It is
invented religion rather than observed and discovered religion. It's based on conflation between altered
states and the two mental worldmodels. Neither entheogens nor meditation brings a permanent change in
cognitive state -- only a change in mental worldmodel.
Anti-entheogen
meditationists all claim that meditation ought to cause a permanent altered
state of cognition in addition to a different mental worldmodel, but I know of
no evidence or reason to believe this claim about the supposed potential of
meditation, and I see motives for making grandiose claims that are never
met.
Meditationists
have various reasons or motives for wishing and claiming that unlike
entheogens, meditation leads to a permanent altered state in addition to a
changed mental worldmodel. These claims
are entirely hazy and vague, as vague as they are unsupported and merely
rumored.
I'm
dedicated to carving out a concrete, definite, summarizable, repeatable,
testable model of enlightenment, against all the religionists and theorists who
put forth vague, unclear, and wishful models -- or rather, portrayals. The meditation advocates overinflate
meditation, making grandiose claims about what we should expect from
meditation, while making all sorts of firm and definite assertions about how
feeble and limited entheogens are.
They
always pump up meditation and deflate entheogens -- even the supposed advocates
of entheogens like Huston Smith do this, seemingly instinctively, probably to
sell out and steal credibility points.
I won't sell out and buy respect from the meditation establishment by
pretending along with them that the claims for meditation have a leg to stand
on.
What are
our actual grounds for thinking that meditation has such lofty potential and
can -- practically can, for real people -- lead to a permanent altered state in
addition to a changed mental worldmodel?
There is
no evidence, there are no grounds, and there aren't even claims to have
personally achieved a permanent altered state in the sense of tangibly changed
cognitive dynamics. The only claims
people make is the vague claims that one's mood and conduct of life has been
elevated, and that one's worldmodel has changed.
There is
much less evidence than claimed, that meditation is reliable and that it is a
practical way to alter one's cognitive state as well as altering one's
worldmodel.
And there
is much more reason to believe that entheogens have a vastly higher potential
and more reliable potential than admitted, to produce fully definite results: a
tangible altered state, with whatever intensity one would like,
straightforwardly, and a permanent changed mental worldmodel -- but *not* a
claim to achieve some lasting altered state other than simply a changed mental
worldmodel.
>>Not
having met any enlightened people as far as I know, it's difficult to evaluate.
However, all the enlightened people I've read about seem to have taken this
latter path [of non-drug-influenced contemplation toward the goal of bringing
about "a shift in understanding or perception" that "permanently
alters one's way of being"].
The claim
immediately above is that non-drug-influenced meditation is a practical and
useful method of attaining a particular interim and ultimate goal. The interim goal is to permanently or
transiently (not specified) shift one's understanding or perception, and the
ultimate goal is to "permanently alter one's way of being".
We read
many such rumors, conjectures, assertions, and vague imaginings about what we
assume enlightenment ought to entail.
We assume that enlightenment ought to produce a permanent altered state
in addition to a new worldmodel.
Have you
read about people who use drug-influenced contemplation to bring about a shift
in understanding and perception, to permanently alter their way of being? Exhibit A: the entheogen-based Hellenistic
mystery religions, including Jewish and early Christian religions of that
era. Those creators of our main
religions constitute many people who used a series of drug-induced altered
states to bring about a transient (~6-hour) shift in understanding and
perception, and thereby permanently altered their way of being.
We can
pretend to have no evidence for the successful use of entheogens to achieve
permanent religious goals, but that pretense is based on strategic
blindness. *Lots* of people used drugs
to bring about a lasting regeneration of consciousness. The meditationists delude themselves if they
try to claim all those people as success stories for non-entheogenic
contemplative methods.
Given all
the people who changed their consciousness permanently, how many in fact did it
primarily through psychoactives? It is
bias, purely bias, that causes meditation proponents to claim such heavy
evidence for the efficacy of meditation, and to claim such total absence of
evidence for the efficacy of entheogens to cause permanent transformation of
consciousness.
However,
we must not be so vague as the vagueness that has allowed such errors and bias
to continue unabated. It is too vague
to talk of "transformation of consciousness", because that conflates
what Wilber calls altered states and altered traits, or what I call cognitive
binding intensity versus mental worldmodels.
Meditation proponents must be clearer about what they are claiming about
what exactly the method of meditation is capable of reliably and practically
delivering.
Meditationists
claim that meditation is a "good way" of bringing about a "shift
in understanding and perception" to lead to a "permanent alteration
in one's way of being". They as a
rule claim that entheogens are a "poor way" of bringing about a
"shift in understanding and perception" to lead to a "permanent
alteration in one's way of being".
First I
will discuss the interim claim, that meditation is better than entheogens for a
desired shift in understanding and perception, and then the second claim, that
meditation is better for a desired permanent alteration in one's way of being,
or "consciousness".
In the
face of the competitive threat of entheogens, meditation/contemplation
advocates take the only strategy open to them: they admit that for sheer
intensity of shifting one's understanding and perception, entheogens undeniably
blow meditation totally out of the water; everyone is forced to admit that
entheogens are a thousand times easier and more reliable at causing any desired
intensity, ranging from slight to great as desired, of shifting one's
understanding and perception.
How do
they strategically spin this awkward fact?
Of course, by claiming (in a manner that is the same convoluted manner
as the nonsense asserted by official religious authorities) that meditation's
"shift in understanding and perception" is, in some hazy and
ineffable way, "better" than the shift that is effortlessly and
reliably brought by the true flesh of the redeeming divinity -- I mean, by
entheogens.
They are
forced to claim that meditation is better *because* it is less effective, less
reliable, less ergonomic, less practical.
The meditation proponents argue, in convoluted and unconvincing manner,
that meditation is better than entheogens because it is more difficult and less
reliable and leads to more fleeting and mild glimpses of altered perception.
Who are
they pretending to convince? Do they
convince themselves, against this seeming threat of the awesome and fearsome
efficacy of entheogens? What are their
motives for making such an implausible, convoluted claim, that meditation is
more effective than entheogens because it is less effective?
Meditation/contemplation
advocates always claim, as their by-now standard argument, that meditation is
better than entheogens for a desired permanent alteration in one's way of
being, or "consciousness".
What sort of alteration of being and consciousness do they claim for
meditation, and what potential do they claim for entheogens?
The
standard position is: "Meditation is good for permanently altering one's
way of being and consciousness. Entheogens
are poor at permanently altering one's way of being and consciousness. Entheogens cause only an intense but
transient change in perception and understanding, not a permanent change in
being and consciousness.
Meditation/contemplation causes admittedly only a much milder change in
perception and understanding, at first, but leads to a far more permanent and
deep change in being and consciousness."
First of
all, realize and admit that *all* the quoted standard assertions are
potentially debatable. Analyze (break
apart) their system of claims and refute or evaluate them separately, and
evaluate and critique each term of the argument, particularly "permanent
change of consciousness", used as an unnecessarily vague and shifting
construct.
"Meditation
is good for permanently altering one's way of being and
consciousness." The reports don't
sound like meditation is "good" in the sense of straightforwardly and
reliably and practically delivering a significant change. And what is the nature of the "change
of consciousness" -- is it a changed mental worldmodel, or a permanent
tangibly altered state of cognitive dynamics, or both?
"Entheogens
are poor at permanently altering one's way of being and
consciousness." The
Hellenistic-era religions suggest otherwise; the foundation of Christianity,
with roots in mystery religion, is the use of entheogens to temporarily change
cognitive binding, to permanently change one's mental worldmodel.
Also, it
is too early, in contemporary research, to assume we know how well entheogens
can "permanently change consciousness", and which aspects they can
change, though there is evidence that entheogens can permanently change one's
mental worldmodel, though they cannot permanently change the "state of
consciousness" in the sense of bringing about permanent loose cognitive
binding (like a sort of healthy schizophrenic loosening of mental integration,
on tap).
In
Wilber's terms, there *is* some evidence and reason to believe that entheogens
have serious potential to bring about useful "altered states" that
can lead to permanent "altered traits" -- in my terms, transient
loose cognition, leading to permanent change of mental worldmodel (that is,
*not* a permanent altered state, but a permanent altered understanding).
"Entheogens
cause only an intense but transient change in perception and
understanding." We ought to
mention more often the potential to use entheogens mildly and far more often,
like the mixed wine of the Hellenistic era -- just as alcohol and caffeine are
integrated into life today. The model
of using entheogens intensely and rarely doesn't express the full potential of
integrating entheogens into life; rare and extreme use is just one approach to
entheogens.
Using my
terminology and conceptual categories, I agree that entheogens are great for
causing a transient change (from 10 minutes to 18 hours) in perception and
understanding as intense and as long as desired, up to a couple days. An entire series of altered state sessions
is necessary to secure understanding that lasts when the default state of
cognition (tight cognitive binding) inevitably resumes.
Meditation,
to the degree that it effects any cognitive change at all, has this exact same
property. When you meditate, ideally,
there is a temporary cognitive change, and when you stop meditating, the
default state of cognition resumes -- despite wishful claims and rumors and
rare exceptions to the contrary. Does
meditation have potential to cause a lasting altered state?
There are
no great, compelling reasons to think so, but lots of inauthentic motives for
making such claims (motives including wishful thinking and proud jealousy
toward entheogens; regret at not being able to will oneself into the altered
state as if commanding one's internal chemical system to produce DMT).
"Entheogens
are poor for causing a permanent change in being and consciousness." To judge this assertion we much first debate
the meaning of "permanent change in being and consciousness." Does it mean a permanent altered state, or a
permanent mental worldmodel?
The best
evidence with the best interpretation indicates that entheogens are excellent
and extremely efficient, after a series of sessions and studies, for causing a
permanent change of mental worldmodel, but do not cause a permanent altered
state.
"Meditation/contemplation
causes admittedly a much milder change in perception and understanding, at
first." Everyone agrees that in
terms of sheer potency for a shift into an altered state, entheogens run
circles around meditation in terms of reliability, intensity, and ease of use,
and are controllable in several aspects (when, how often, how intense).
"Meditation/contemplation
eventually leads to a far more permanent and deep change in being and
consciousness than entheogens." It
is reasonable to assume that potentially, meditation can lead to a permanent
change of mental worldmodel. It is mere
conjecture, wishful thinking, and rumor, and conflation of "altered
states" with "altered traits", to assert that meditation leads
to a permanent altered state.
Granted
those points, that entheogens and meditation can both lead to a permanently
changed mental worldmodel but not (in any significant, relevant degree) to a
permanent altered state, now we can debate about the "quality" and
"depth" of the permanent change of mental worldmodel (or maybe
"consciousness") potentially produced by meditation versus by
entheogens.
Are there
any grounds or reasons to believe that the permanent change of worldmodel or
consciousness caused by meditation is of greater quality or depth than the
permanent change of worldmodel or consciousness caused by entheogens? Break up that question.
What are
the grounds or reasons to believe that the permanent change of worldmodel or
consciousness caused by meditation is of a certain quality or depth? Meditationists hasten to inflate the grounds
or reasons to believe, in favor of meditation.
"Everyone I know about, well, every rumored person I've read about,
reports a great quality and depth of permanent change of consciousness, through
meditation, but I know of no evidence for any permanent change of consciousness
due to entheogens."
That
typical claim is vague, blindly biased, and uninformed. We mistake the endless *talk* about
permanent change, of great quality and depth, for the actuality of such change
-- we end up grasping at fog.
What are
the grounds or reasons to believe that the permanent change of worldmodel or
consciousness caused by entheogens is of a certain quality or depth? I urge people to constrain their claims for
how great of quality and depth are possible through any means. Transformation cannot be infinitely
high-quality or infinitely deep.
The change
of worldmodel or consciousness from entheogens attains to a certain definite
and specifiable quality and depth; beyond that, it's all conjecture and claims
and subjectivity that exceed the bounds of the testable and reproducible.
People
talk of going far beyond basic enlightenment, but when you sail past the point
of basic enlightenment, you enter truly speculative, conjectural, unfalsifiable
waters, where there is no way to test different systems of claims against each
other, and no way to form sure and sound agreements -- it is a realm of sea
monsters and wishful thinking, and transcendent speculations as opposed to
observations.
Based on
the grounds or reasons we have, which method has greater potential to cause
permanent change of worldmodel or consciousness, with greater quality and depth
-- entheogens, or meditation?
I maintain
that the most reasonable and justifiable position is that neither meditation
nor entheogens cause a permanent altered state (typically and practically,
relevant to a real-world population), both methods can cause a permanent change
of mental worldmodel that is ultimately of the same quality and depth, and that
entheogens are far more reliable, practical, ergonomic, controllable in
frequency and intensity, and are supported as a popular method of permanent
major mental transformation in the Hellenistic-era religions including the
Jewish and early Christian religions.
>>I
think my best bet for permanently attaining enlightenment is contemplation.
Drug trips seem like transient diversions, and the DMT and mushroom enthusiasts
I know seem, if anything, "farther away" from enlightenment than I
am.
If you say
so. That's one small dataset, and one
that is artificially reduced and wholly contaminated by drug prohibition. We ought to see what data would be available
on the potential of entheogens if serious philosophers and religionists were
not oppressed from using and writing about entheogens.
The
current situation is biased as hell in favor of giving all possible breaks to
the meditation method, and putting all possible obstacles in the way of
entheogens, to diminish and deflate the potentials of entheogens at each and
every possible opportunity.
This
current blindness on the part of the new meditation establishment, led by Ken
Wilber as much as anyone, is part of a system that is characterized by an
integrated set of four key incorrect assumptions:
o Free will assumption (assumed despite the
no-separate-self doctrine which implies no-free-will)
o Meditation/contemplation is better and more
traditional than entheogens
o Religious founding figures literally existed
(a strong liberal literalist tendency)
o Mystic insight and enlightenment and
spiritual regeneration/redemption is difficult and impossible to comprehend
Against
Ken Wilber and the current meditation establishment, I emphatically take the
opposite position on these four key issues; I maintain:
o No-free-will, as strongly as
no-separate-self. Mentally constructing
a model of the frozen timeless block universe with a single timelessly existing
future is essential for arriving quickly at the climax of the ego death
experience.
o Entheogens are better and more truly
traditional than meditation/contemplation -- more reliable, more practical,
more useful, easier, more ergonomic, more controllable, more
falsifiable/confirmable.
o As a general rule, religious founding
figures are purely mythical, merely incorporating aspects of actual
individuals; the world's most Jesus-like or Buddha-like man has many very close
contenders and does not tower uniquely over them. Against euhemerism; mythic figures are only incidentally, not
importantly, "based on" a single historical individual. There was no literal Jesus, Paul, Peter,
James, John, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother, Lazarus, Moses, Balaam, Saul,
David, and all the rest. Not one word
of the Bible is importantly literally true; all of its essential truth is as
allegory for the experiential phenomena and insights of the entheogenic intense
altered state.
o Mystic insight and enlightenment and
spiritual regeneration/redemption are actually easy to comprehend and systematically
explain; they are at core, concerned with specific, definable, summarizable
insights and systematic principles.
Religions and philosophies and mythologies are more or less distorted
expressions of this universal core set of insights. Religious enlightenment, revelation, transformation, and
regeneration are the intellectual and entheogenic comprehension of this small
and simple set of core relationships about space, time, self, will, control,
and passing through the experience of ego death control seizure, a passage
which is allegorized as being reborn outside of the deterministic spacetime
block, or passing out of slavery, or being divinely rescued and lifted up into
unity with the divine transcendent realm.
http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v04n4/04441spi.html
>from
the Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for
>Psychedelic
Studies
>MAPS
- Volume 4 Number 4 Spring 1994
>
>is
there a proper place for psychedelics in spiritual practice?
>Igor
Kungurtsev, M.D.
>
>It may
seem that nothing new can be said on this topic after Ram Dass
>and
Ralph Metzner. Yet the theme is vast and has many pros and
>contras
as reflected in one of the recent issues of "Gnosis"
>magazine.
(Winter 93, No 26.)
The
supposed pros and cons are discussed in that out of print issue, and in a
similar issue of Tricycle buddhist magazine, which is now expanded as the book:
Zig Zag
Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics
Allan
Hunt Badiner (Editor), Alex Grey (Editor), Stephen Batchelor, Huston Smith
(Preface)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811832864
That book
is practically required reading for the debate about entheogens vs.
meditation. It's a compendium of the
"arguments", such as they are -- a first stab at best; the
argumentation against entheogens is totally flimsy. The same flimsy arguments diminishing entheogens are found in
many books about mysticism. It's a
cottage industry writing about entheogens in a belittling way.
Catholic
writer Zaehner puts forth the standard diminishing views of entheogens, but
goes beyond that and takes the cake for vigorous and completely unconvincing
attempt at waving away entheogens: real mysticism is Catholic mysticism as he
defines it, and all other mysticism, meditation, entheogen mystic states, and
so on is something like lower, pantheistic, inferior mysticism. He focuses on Huxley's mescaline
sessions.
It's
common to diminish entheogens by restricting oneself to two or three
conservatively approved representatives: Huxley, Good Friday experiment,
Charles Tart, and Stan Grof. I think
that narrow choice of personalities is an avoidance mechanism: instead of
refuting the potential of entheogens, all one has to do is critique these three
people and then declare victory.
I don't
think these people and Huston Smith are the best defenders or last word and
final representative of the entheogen position. So far, entheogenists have taken a neutral, restrained, agnostic
stand, giving meditation the full benefit of the doubt and taking it on faith
that meditation is efficient, while meditationists have vigorously diminished
entheogens, striving to portray meditation in as favorable light as possible,
and striving to portray entheogens as unfavorably as possible.
That
vigorous stance has not yet been met with a vigorous counter stance from
entheogen proponents. A lot of
ridiculous, cheap, flimsy assertions have been made by the meditationists, and
the supposed entheogen defenders have just stood around scratching their head,
agnostically, allowing the continuance of the unfair bias in favor of
meditation.
The real
debate hasn't yet begun, only the first salvos, lobbed by the
meditationists. I consider the
meditationists to be the aggressors in the debate; that is, the ones who have
made the first moves -- they are the accusers, and the entheogenists ought to
be the defenders, but so far, there hasn't been a serious attempt to refute the
flimsy assertions and portrayals put forth by the meditationists.
We need to
study the potential of meditation and entheogens, and I'm sure that meditation
will have to be taken down several notches, while elevating entheogens several
notches, above meditation. Entheogens
are far better (ergonomic and statistically effective and reliable) than
meditation at delivering on certain goals -- part of the debate is to define
which goals those are. Focusing on one
set of goals may make meditation seem superior; another set, entheogens. Meditation has been way oversold, while entheogens
have been way undersold.
dc wrote:
>>Religion,
losing its origins becomes like the discarded Coke bottle, found by the
aborigines in the old film, "The Gods must be Crazy." They worship it
as a divine object, ignorantly thinking it was made by their God. Everyone to
his/her own opinion.
Polite
responses like that technically could be considered off-topic; it's not a
scholarly or theory-building response.
This discussion group is intended exactly for debating points like dc's,
not for everyone generally affirming and allowing everyone else's
opinions. The attitude of "don't
judge anyone's views" is worthless or off-topic in a scholarly or
theoretical discussion group like this one.
This
discussion group is for venturing and critiquing assertions. Avoiding disagreement is not the goal of
this group; constructive debate and discussion is. I would value detailed commentary on such postings as dc's. I seek truth about the practical potentials
of meditation and entheogens. People
glorify and idealize meditation, when much of those honors in fact belong to
entheogens instead.
I am only
about halfway toward being able to express my assertion about the true relation
between meditation and entheogens.
Overall, I maintain that entheogens are better than meditation, but this
requires a great deal of qualification: better for what goals? Better in what
ways? Meditation is not better than
entheogens, as the meditation establishment asserts. Meditation and entheogens are not equal in potential and efficacy,
as many assert.
We should
not concede or conclude their equality if such equality is false and is done
out of politeness. My goal is not
politeness, but the truth of the matter.
>Many
millions in many cultures used meditation techniques, resulting in direct
experience of cosmic mind and lasting union, without entheogens.
How many people
used entheogens (without meditation as such) to bring about direct experience
of cosmic mind and lasting union? I'm
sure this is a large number. For
example, the Hellenistic religions routinized this experience and lasting
transformation of "consciousness" (a too vague term).
How many
people used meditation (without entheogens) to bring about direct experience of
cosmic mind and lasting union? Based on
what I've read about poor success rates and high frustration, I have always
concluded that this is a small number.
Meditation only works well enough to keep rumors of its efficacy
afloat. In practice, meditation serves
as a decoy, a placebo substitute and way of avoiding mystic experiencing,
satori, or whatever you want to label it.
We'd need
to define "lasting union" -- that's the main point at issue, whether
entheogen influence is statistically able to last as long as meditation
supposedly does. Is this union merely a
changed mental worldmodel? Entheogens
are more efficient at bringing that about.
Is this union an altered state, a frank mystic state of
consciousness?
I don't
believe that meditation or entheogens bring about that sort of permanent mystic
altered state in any statistically significant way; such a "union" is
an irrelevant freak state randomly attained by some, and is of no great
import.
That shows
my goals. I am not interested in
ultra-rare freak states requiring 30 years of meditation. I'm against portraying such a goal as the
main goal and the core definition of enlightenment. There is a far more attainable and relevant kind of
enlightenment, which results in a changed mental worldmodel but not a permanent
altered state as defined by Ken Wilber or me or Charles Tart.
Sophisticates
such as Erik Davis tell me they've gone beyond elementary enlightenment like my
core theory -- but should we really care so much about that sort of ultraelite
pursuit that has proven so rarely attainable, and at such great cost? A major part of my strategy and worldview is
to bring our focus much lower, and greatly rein in the scope and definition of
basic enlightenment.
Basic
enlightenment is for everyone; it's democratic, it's actually not elite
(against the Church leaders who accused gnostics who used the esoteric
sacrament of apolytrosis of being elitist).
Basic enlightenment is a little bit elite but is practically open to
everyone: it works (when done skilfully).
Gaining
some lasting altered state from meditation is truly elite in an exclusive
sense: only a freak meditationist, one out of thousands, perhaps, brings about
a lasting altered state. For most
people, meditation is destined to only achieve a couple transient fleeting
satoris that pale next to entheogen sessions.
The debate is about the statistically better method of attaining basic
enlightenment, defined as something that everyone can attain. Meditation is statistically an inefficient
and poor method for gaining basic enlightenment, while entheogens are
statistically an efficient, ergonomic method for gaining basic enlightenment.
My
restricted and deflated definition of "basic enlightenment": Basic
enlightenment is a matter of experiencing and conceptually grasping
no-separate-self/no-free-will, resulting in a specific permanent change from
the specific egoic mental worldmodel to the specific transcendent mental
worldmodel. See my introductory article
about my theory of ego transcendence for more details about this change and
transcendent worldmodel.
Because
meditation statistically works so poorly and rarely, a defensive move is to
claim that enlightenment is exceedingly difficult and lofty and
never-ending. Why did a person meditate
fifteen years without attaining satoris -- without fulfilling their natural
drive toward climactic transformation?
Excuses are made: "satori is not really the goal; the goal is
endlessly beyond reach or plays out ineffably.
In effect,
my role is to teach people how to mystically climax, through a series of
satoris or altered states, producing a systemic transformation of mental
worldmodel, and I see charlatan teachers claiming that their method is better,
though I see that their students are all frustrated and have learned to accept
some mild feelings and mistakenly label them 'climactic transformation'.
I'm
against perpetuating these minor climaxes and piecemeal transformations of
mental worldmodel. I'm showing that
there is an easier way that is more fulfilling for our natural drive to
self-transcendence, that produces a short series of definite climaxes and leads
certainly to a specific, definable, permanent transformation of
worldmodel. Meditation is an inferior
technology, in terms of defining and delivering on its promises.
Given that
what people really want is a series of tangible climaxes and permanent
significant transformation, the better technology for producing that result and
fulfilling that need is entheogens, not meditation. I reject the notion of permanent altered state as a natural
universal human goal. The mind has a
drive to experience a series of altered states leading to a permanent
transformation of worldmodel. That's my
model of the standard transcendent drives of the mind.
On that
view of transcendent drives and innate goals, entheogens are a vastly superior
technology compared to meditation, in terms of ergonomics and statistical
reliability. Given that view of our
highest hungers, meditation generally leaves the mind hungry, frustrated, and
unfulfilled, appeasing it only temporarily through weak substitute
achievements. Entheogens are a food
that satisfies and fulfills these drives.
The notion
that one can go beyond that basic enlightenment falls outside my model of ego
transcendence; it enters inherently elite, rare, speculative realms, while I am
intent on securing the basic model for easy and relevant use by the general
populace.
I'm
against leading people astray by failing to address their certain hunger for
basic enlightenment by promising them some hazy, vastly loftier "advanced
enlightenment" such as a permanent altered state would be, as in Ken
Wilber's model. He goes chasing after
some infinitely profound spirituality, while leaving real people all hungry for
the simple, basic, and sure form of transcendence.
Which
method is more fulfilling for our "drive to self-transcendence"? Entheogens are far more effective at
fulfilling our drive to self-transcendence than meditation is. This is likely a testable assertion. Have a thousand people meditate for 3 years,
without entheogens. Have another
thousand use entheogens skillfully for 3 years, without meditation as
such. Perhaps give them meditation
books and my theory.
Then
survey them, asking about transient effects and lasting results. Use the Good Friday experiment as a
model. The result will be that
meditation statistically didn't produce many effects whether transient or
lasting, while entheogens commonly and typically led through a series of
altered states, with piecemeal and then systematic transformation of mental
worldmodel.
This would
prove that, on this model of self-transcendence and enlightenment, entheogens
are far superior to meditation as a method of bringing about self-transcendence
and enlightenment. Meditation might be
better at some "other" model of self-transcendence and enlightenment,
but from what I've seen, supporting this requires postulating an extremely
vague type of self-transcendence and enlightenment that is *held* to be very
fulfilling, but with no great evidence for that.
This is
why the debate about entheogens vs. meditation inevitably is saved for the
meditationists by committing to an abstruse, nebulous definition of the goal of
enlightenment and of the human drive to transcendence.
Meditationists
have to define the goal and drive to transcendence in a highly nebuous way, in
order to continue claiming that meditation is efficient for that goal and for
fulfilling that drive. Entheogenists
can and should define the goal and drive to transcendence in a highly specific
and definite and limited way, and are fully warranted in claiming that
entheogens are efficient for that goal and for fulfilling that drive.
Which
paradigm -- combination of goal and method -- is more sound and warranted by
the evidence? The evidence clearly
suggests that the real, normal goal and drive is for the limited, specific
enlightenment, fulfilled straightforwardly by entheogens. There is no compelling evidence suggesting
that the real, normal goal and drive is for some lofty and nebulous ineffable
type of transcendence, or that meditation is statistically efficient at
bringing about that supposed goal and fulling that supposed drive.
The
inferior conception of our drive and the method of fulfilling it has taken
over, through the meditation establishment.
The more sober, sound, grounded conception of our drive has been
obscured, though entheogens are the direct key to fulfilling that common drive
straightforwardly. People think they
want the hazy goals promised by meditation, but what they really want, first of
all, is basic enlightenment, which is addressed well by entheogens and poorly
by meditation.
Meditation
has been proven to not work very well, statistically, at any of the goals:
o Series of transient altered state episodes
o Permanently changed mental worldmodel
o Supposed permanent altered state
But
meditation has been marketed as though it is statistically efficient at
bringing about these goals.
Entheogens
only claim to be good for two things:
o Series of transient altered state episodes
o Permanently changed mental worldmodel
The latter
claim deserves to be made more strongly, because entheogens are potentially
highly efficient at bringing about that result.
Assess
these claims and whether they can deliver.
(This might amount to a second version of a previous posting.)
Meditation
claims to be efficient for providing a series of transient altered state
episodes. But evidence shows this to be
an inflated promise; such altered states are much rarer and hard to achieve
than claimed.
Meditation
claims to be efficient for providing a permanently changed mental
worldmodel. From what I've read, I
conclude that this is an ideal, but that the actual result is more hazy and
ill-formed, resulting in slight modifications to pieces of the worldmodel,
rather than a deep systematic transformation.
Meditation
claims to be efficient for providing a permanent altered state. This would amount to a lasting healthy
schizophrenic-like state, sort of a controlled schizophrenia. Or it's just a state of relaxation. This claim is so vague and poorly defined,
it is implausible that any such result is typical, common, or relevant.
Entheogens
claim to be efficient for providing a series of transient altered state
episodes. There is unanimous agreement
that they deliver on this promise.
Entheogens
claim to be efficient for providing a permanently changed mental
worldmodel. This claim is only made
infrequently and weakly, inchoately.
This claim deserves to be made more strongly, because entheogens are
potentially highly efficient at bringing about this result.
>Many
millions have testified that meditation produced in them a permanent altered
state.
I disagree
that many people reported that result through that method. Have all those people actually reported
*that* result? Would they agree that
they attained a "permanent altered state"? If so, how do they define that "altered state" -- it's
an ambiguous term in terms of character and degree.
Many
people *assume* that meditation *should* produce a permanent altered state, but
that assumption has no compelling evidence.
Many people have bad motives for assuming that meditation should lead to
a permanent altered state. No doubt,
gurus pandering to that misconception would claim that they themselves have
attained a permanent altered state.
Ken Wilber
claims some sort of permanent altered state, but I doubt that it amounts to
anything signficant or relevant and don't see that as our main, typical hunger
for transcendence. Pursuing a false
notion of what our hunger is about prevents fulfilling the true felt hunger. I don't believe the mind has a significant
innate hunger or drive to pursue a permanent altered state.
There is
reason to believe that the normal pattern and drive is through a series of
altered state sessions to a permanent changed mental worldmodel -- but not a
permanent altered state. It's common to
talk of a series of satoris leading to final full enlightenment -- which is a
changed mental worldmodel, not a permanent altered state. The current conception of satori is probably
derived from a significant but partial transformation of mental worldmodel
during the entheogenic altered state.
The best
model may be a series of altered state sessions, each one leading to a more
secure grasp of the transcendent mental worldmodel. It was standard in Hellenistic religion to undergo multiple
initiations. At some point, the mind
has a secure grasp of the transcendent mental worldmodel. Enlightenment doesn't happen all at once;
it's more like learning a language up to some standard level of competence,
just as we learn the egoic mode of thinking up to some common level of
competence.
How many
people have testified that meditation without entheogens produces a permanent
altered state? How is this altered
state to be conceived -- is it actually a changed mental worldmodel, held in
the default state of consciousness, thus by definition not an altered
state? This is where light needs to be
shed.
Paraphrased:
>When
one judges various paths to transformation and ego transcendence, this proves
that the person doesn't have any understanding of ego transcendence, and it
proves that they don't understanding anything about reality. If a person thinks of themselves as a doer,
and if they maintain the position that entheogen use is the only possible or
only practically effective method of bringing about ego transcendence, that
proves that the person is in a state of infantile delusion and will always
remain in a state of infantile delusion.
>It is
impossible for an enlightened person to maintain that the method of
transcendence they use is the only possible and only practically effective
method.
>It is
utterly unbearable when a person maintains their position in judging their
method as far better or the only practically effective method. Maintaining that position demonstrates
egotism and is a sign of infantile delusion.
There is
nothing inherently or necessarily egotistic about maintaining that one's
position is more correct than one's opponent in a debate. Egotism is wholly a matter of motives, where
one is motivated by the goal of elevating one's feeling of esteem over others,
socially. We should also acknowledge
that the quest for truth and the quest for discovering and making available a
better solution can be the main driving motivation for maintaining one's
position in a debate.
Most
people in spirituality discussion groups are entirely averse to debate. They are motivated by desire for
experiencing social harmony. They
experience debate as something entirely on the social plane, when the debate is
actually centered on the intellectual plane of researching the truth about the
world.
Everyone
who is here for social reasons might as well leave, hungry and unfulfilled
socially, because the center of this group has always been defined as
intellectual discussion and debate, not the type of socializing that constitutes
90% of typical discussion groups.
The above
characterization of my position is extremist.
On the whole, I have acknowledged that meditation has some degree of
efficiency, though I maintain that it amounts to little in comparison with
entheogens. My position is the reverse
of the current dominant paradigm which belittles entheogens relative to
meditation.
I
maintain, not motivated by self-glory but by the quest for an effective method
on behalf of the collective utility, that instead of meditation being 10 times
as good as entheogens, entheogens are 100 times as good as meditation. It is ungenerous to characterize my motives
as self-glory. The act of judging one
method -- one's own that one is developing -- as better than others, doesn't
necessarily indicate anything about one's motives for maintaining and
developing and fleshing out that position.
Maintaining
such a judgement and position also says nothing about whether one is in a state
of infantile delusion. It is fully
possible for an enlightened person to maintain a position regarding the
efficacy of one method of enlightenment over another. Religions including Buddhism are filled with debates, not just
with people saying that everyone is welcome to their own opinion.
My
position is likely part of some tradition such as Vajrayana. I'm not alone in maintaining that this
position is true, that entheogens are in fact more superior to meditation than
the meditationists' claim that meditation is somewhat superior. Do I cry and condemn the meditationists as
"egotistical" and "in a state of infantile delusion"
because they won't cave into conceding my views? Of course not.
I credit
meditationists with having reasons other than egotism and infantile delusion,
for continuing "obstinately" and "proudly" and
"egotistically" maintaining their position that entheogens are
inferior to meditation.
The above
posting persuades of nothing; it simply asserts that maintaining one position
against a competing position can only be driven by egotism. It falsely reduces all principled debate to
the level of social feelings and motivations.
That false equation of principled sustained debate with egotism and
social hostility severely restricts the value and content of typical
spirituality discussion groups, which end up self-selecting their members to
optimize for social feeling at the expense of content on the intellectual
plane.
It is a
given that a group devoted to intellectual-plane discussion and research must
drive away those who are motivated by socializing and the superficial feeling
of interpersonal concordance -- those who are always so quick to accuse
everyone else of the nebulous sin and crime of being
"egotistical". Accusing
others of being egotistical is often just a lazy cop-out from engaging in the
labor of debate and intellectual discussion and development of ideas and
understanding.
>>If
you ever want to learn more about Zen, I would highly recommend the book
"The Three Pillars of Zen". I
found this book invaluable for understanding Zen and ego transcendence.
The Three
Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment
Roshi
Philip Kapleau
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385260938
4.5
stars, 28 reviews
Rank:
9700 (fairly high)
>I am
already quite up on the subject.
I actually
found fulfilment in zen, as portrayed by Alan Watts' book Way of Zen (with
other Zen and eastern religion studies) before working on cracking the puzzle
of the Christian mystery religion.
From Oct.
1985 to Jan. 1988, I studied Zen and found fulfilment in it thanks to Watts,
despite his overly poetic explanation which should have been more
straightforward. Then it took me from
Jan. 1988 to March 2003 to find fulfillment in the Christian mystery religion,
including various Christian-shaped intense mystical experiences along the
way.
I found
Christianity much harder to grasp but also more challenging and intellectually
rewarding. Buddhism really is more
explicit, direct, and straightforward -- and thus less mysterious and
challenging; it has little "mystery-puzzle" quality. Christianity ended up being the ultimate,
extreme "mystery-puzzle". In
a way, Zen is extremely a mystery-puzzle, but in a way, it's the most extremely
straightforward -- at least, it aims to be both of these together.
Ideally I
would like to know contributors' ideas and study everyone's postings. I do read and consider people's ideas. Time is limited. I only regret that sometimes I can't understand what the points
are in some of the postings. Other of
the posts are clear and easy to understand.
I like to consider other people's ideas and grapple with them, test
them, see if they hold up or if they fall apart.
The
proposal "for warm, fuzzy and truth" seems to have some merit. In some ways, I think they are at odds;
warm/fuzzy often means untruth: either suppressing or distorting truth. Even if warmfuzzy is a good goal fully
compatible with truth, I don't think it is of central, primary relevance for
constructing a model of transcendent knowledge. I don't think warmfuzzy is the essence or heart of truth; it's
more like a tangential topic.
Perhaps I
want to exclude warmfuzzy from the core of transcendent knowledge, and place it
mainly in the periphery. I've
experienced transcendent mystical love for other individuals, but am
apprehensive about identifying that love with warmfuzzy; that
overidentification could risk losing transcendent love and having only
warmfuzzy as a false substitute. Thus I
want to invite warmfuzzy but keep it in perspective with respect to
transcendent love.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)