Thursday, October 18, 2007

Inner Journey leads Outward



Hypnagogia describes vivid dreamlike auditory, visual, or tactile sensations, which are often accompanied by sleep paralysis and experienced when falling asleep or waking up. A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams, it is often possible to exert conscious control over the dream characters and environment, as well as to perform otherwise physically impossible feats. Lucid dreams are known to be extremely real and vivid. I can attest to their power and freakishness as I just experienced my second one ever the other night after a span of 4 years since the first . What's troubling, outside the profoundly evil nature of the event, is its timing.




Open your mind to me


Aldous Huxley, mind expander extraordinaire and author of the book "Doors of Perception" shocked the world with his descriptions and experiments with Mescaline, now maligned and scheduled. My favorite band ever, the Doors, grabbed their name from this book's title helping to usher in a counterculture group substrate culminating in the free-love late 60's. What's potentially fascinating about entheogens, which is the proper name for the hallucinogenic family of alkaloids is their likely ability to 'remove' consciousness constraints. For anyone who has tried these little explanation here is needed but for those who haven't, let me attempt to make sense of it.

Atoms, and all the everything they formulate are at their very core 'informational'. They carry and carry out instructions in ordered form given from something thus far incomprehensible to physicists. The world is bombarded with information in visible and invisible forms at all times, in every location. There is so much information in fact that it would be overwhelming to try to deal with it all and thus the 'filter' comes into play. This filter allows us to function as a thinking species, able to attain food, make shelter, think, and act without having to contend with the impossible task of trying to deal with all the information. Entheogens temporarily negate this filter for the amount of time they're in your system. Suddenly, images, ideas, feelings and revelations are directly within your grasp and there's an element of 'reality' to it unlike any other you've experienced. Or can experience. It's one of the reasons the misnomer hallucinogen has been extinguished as it's just inaccurate.
Think of the experience more like being consciously asleep--where the craziness of your dreams are the sudden reality while your mind is hyper-alert, and your body completely at rest. Anyone rightly think they could function that way? How long would the human race last if we had to try to live with that amount of informational chaos?


In the development from single-celled to multi-celled organisms natural selection has rooted out the inefficient, and kept the pragmatic. Nature detests waste. It has seen fit through trial and error on a mountainous scale to adapt brilliantly with changing physical surroundings and the changing, evolving differences in all the other species simultaneously. In fact, with little scientific effort it is clear that there's not a substance, animal, plant or physical manifestation on our planet without purpose. All are inextricably linked in a giant ecological matrix of symbiotic interaction. Minus the water shipped into outer space for experiment, there is just the same amount of H20 now as there was 10,000 years ago. It may be found in different forms, concentrations and locations but it's all still here. Naturally, there's a reason. There's also a reason for entheogenic compounds. Read on.

Don't Bogart The Beetle

In cumulative study there is not any known animal or insect that does not partake in consciousness altering substances. Please reread that line. Whether it's your common housecat rolling around in cat-nip, or a herd of cattle consuming locoweed, human beings are just one more entity requiring mental or physical alteration, and it's all provided in nature. Ant colonies will kidnap a certain type of beetle that secretes liver enzymes making the entire colony 'high' from its ingestion. Frogs will stand near a 'toad stool' awaiting the flies that land on the mushroom, get high, then fall to the ground for easy amphibian dinner. Whatever the creature, some form of reality enhancer has been provided for its use in its immediate surroundings. Remember, everything here on our planet has a purpose.

With the advent of the internet we have the ability for the first time in recorded history to compile vast amounts of information, from the remotest of locations, in mere minutes. In the study of entheogens many commonalities persist despite the differences in type of alkaloids inherent within each. The American Indians revered Peyote for its communication and link with their ancestors. South American peoples lead by shamans respected and sought out Ayahuasca for the information it provided in healing and dimensional understanding. African tribes to this day still use Ibogaine (Iboga) as their conduit to the past, exposure to the present, and a quasi-crystal ball for events yet to come. Global Inhabitants historically have been drawn to Amanita Muscaria, a potent form of psychedelic mushroom religiously regarded as their direct route to divinity. While I haven't studied each continental preference, locating its form of consciousness-altering enlightenment would certainly not be difficult task. What's amazing is how heavily each society depended upon these plant elixirs to navigate their way through life. It has been only recently that we in civilized society have diverged from, and made mockery of their importance.

Pope meets Presidents

If one had a direct route, a fungal based telephone of sorts to speak with God, of what use might a church be? The spiritual component of human existence clearly has had a need for understanding the things it could not see, but felt intrinsically were just as real as the ones they could see. I view the church as a middle-man, an entity that has historically marked-up the normally cost-free communication our species has had with 'the other' for reasons oh-so human in nature. I believe an asserted effort to squelch this information, particularly its presence in the Bible, has been ongoing and relentless. The threat of individual communion outside the confines of the church, it's cash proceeds, and it's power is a threat too great to be left alone. (In an effort not turn this blog into a mini-book I'll leave these many examples for another time)

Using the American government as the example I know they too have been clearly threatened by the use of mind-expanding substances as evidenced during the 60's. Turning itself into a God-on-Earth entity providing cradle to grave control, the U.S. government realized a great movement with free-thinking citizens would stifle its efforts toward, well, what we see today. The systemic command and control of all of our lives, what we're allowed and not allowed to do, the taking by force of our earnings which equate to our modern day life's blood, and so on. Leary's Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out had to be dealt with swiftly and surely. We have seen a complete and organized assault on all entheogenic compounds with long prison sentences, controlled substances acts, and the most effective tool of all: linking once culturally worshiped substances with drugs. For accompaniment there's also the link with the war on these drugs and propaganda so far detached from reality as to borderline the preposterous. From a freedom perspective alone shouldn't someone who owns themselves be allowed to pursue their happiness in any form, so long as others are not being harmed in the process?

Although many times throughout history the Kings and Church have been at odds, in regards to the shamanic and cultural use of entheogens never before has a power brokerage of this strength been aligned toward a common goal. I think the results of this partnership are clear, dire, and in many ways will prove to be what is dooming our race to a footnote of galactic history, having lost our connection and understanding to our planet, nay, to ourselves.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The inhumane and draconian drug laws of today have no basis in the Bible. God warns about being a drunkard (or addict) but He never says "Don't drink responsibly" or "Don't use mind altering substances responsibly". I really have no idea where the government or the church came up with all of these prohibitions against drug/alcohol use. To me, the sole purpose of modern day drug laws is to oppress and control people. Period.

Anonymous said...

I wish I could share the gift of Hariet. I wish I could share all of it.

Is it possible some of us are born without a filter? And if so, could entheogens help sort out all the messages and impulses? Could they bring a balance to my life?

Anonymous said...

Could there be hope for us? The "Govenator" of Kalifornia has been quoted to a British paper that pot is not a drug. I am wondering if his next quote might be, " Cohagen, you got what you want, give da people dare weed!"