Psychedelic Enlightment?
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@JPF said
"As a former herb fancier, I can attest the fact that while it may help the beginner to open their conciousness, and to break down spiritual barriers, habitual use tends to cause apathy and burn-out. This isn't to say that marijuana is evil--indeed, every intoxicant has some sort of value--but in the end such things are more hindrance than help when used merely for their pleasurable affects."
I concur. For me it was the mind/body barrier (i.e., union vs. distinction) that was the greatest affected. All drugs [edit: within reason; i.e., huffing aerosol won't enlighten you!--think more towards the entheogens.] have positive potential for anyone (heroin's a toughy to control), so long as the person is responsible and doesn't rely on them as the sole means indefinitely. I have known people who have done a few hits of freebase cocaine (crack), who went on to discuss politics, religion, etc., with good insight. I have also known people who have done a few hits of freebase cocaine, who afterwards were crawling on their hands and knees picking up chips of paint and fuzzies, looking for another hit. It all boils down to perspective, willpower, and focus.
"By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."
- Liber O
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@seekinghga said
" I have also known people who have done a few hits of freebase cocaine, who afterwards were crawling on their hands and knees picking up chips of paint and fuzzies, looking for another hit. "
Brings back memories...thankfully I've been emancipated from all such tomfoolery.The problem with contemporary drug use is this: there is absolutely no telling as to its purity. A hit of LSD could very well contain an alarming variety of chemicals designed to imitate or "enhance" the real deal. With the synthetic drugs like ecstacy and crack the ingredients are even more alarming. I stopped taking such things recreationally for just this reason. There are more pure and wholesome ways of "getting high".
With things like psilocybin, peyote, and marijuana, there is a much lesser danger of dosing oneself with laundry detergent. The realizations afforded by these substances are often integral to the spiritual development of the prepared mind. Yet, as always, Do What Thou Wilt.
Indeed, it boils down to perspective. Many great works of literature have been written "under the influence." There is a great difference between the effect a drug has upon an intelligent, spiritually trained mind, and the effect it has upon the layman. Yet, it's also easy for the greatest of minds to get carried away. Observe the long, rambling, disconnected passages in Crowley's "autohagiography."
What it comes down to is this: does this substance enable me to realize my Will? Crowley gives a great examination of this in "Diary of a Drug Fiend," which is a must-read for any student of drug culture. Then again, one wonders if the book wansn't written to justify his own shortcomings. It's obvious that heroin and cocaine became for him a crutch, and contributed to his demise as a teacher and as a human being.
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Cannabis (Marijuana) Psychedelic Mushrooms Entheogenic Mushrooms (amanitas) Unrefined Opium Coca Leaves and arguably less so LSD and DMT are Naturally occurring Drugs that can assist or hinder the user on their path to enlightenment. Everyone is unique and will take a unique path on their quest for enlightenment. Nature is Perfect you can't improve on her. (LSD and DMT are found in such small dosages in nature their effects are minimal until extracted and concentrated)
Man made drugs such as Heroine Cocaine MDMA (ecstasy) Methamphetamine arguably Alcohol all produce pleasure but since mankind at its present stage is self-destructive they seem to only lead to destruction. (Whether a short or long path) I see no basis in these drugs assisting one in enlightenment. I do pose the question Is Alcohol created by nature and only assisted by man? If one accepts that then it can be used to assist the user.
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Nature is full of poisonous things too.
The idea that "natural" is somehow perfect is naive. That's why your alcohol question is fundamentally flawed.
Many plants have evolved to be more palatable to living things, and living things have evolved to digest plants and other living things.
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
"Nature is full of poisonous things too.
The idea that "natural" is somehow perfect is naive. That's why your alcohol question is fundamentally flawed.
Many plants have evolved to be more palatable to living things, and living things have evolved to digest plants and other living things."
Well-made point. I'm reminded of the following quote from Unintelligent Design: Why God Isn't As Smart As She Thinks She Is, by Robyn Williams:
Halitosis, farting, vaginal discharge, reflux, snoring, rheumatism, warts, smelly armpits, varicose veins, menopause, brewer’s droop . . . these are not the marks of a designer at the top of his game. They are the trademarks of a natural process giving us only as much as we need to stay alive.
Of course this is in relation to the argument about "intelligent design", but it's a good reminder in the context of this thread too. I think actually that even Crowley himself was prone to wax over-lyrical about the wonders of Nature.
Consider also, for example, re. food itself, how the physiology and biology of a substantial proportion of the population isn't even adapted to milk and milk products (them being introduced into human culture only relatively recently in evolutionary terms). Some aren't even adapted to pulses.
I actually like the phrase "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed". Yes, we are wise to go with the Nature's grain as much as possible, but that doesn't mean we have fawn over what's "natural". We are free to do as we will, we just have to be careful and respect our extant biology, and the balance of the natural world.
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@Promise said
"LSD is not naturally accurring in nature, it is man made. You're probably thinking of LSA which is a completely different drug that causes similar effects as LSD."
Quite right. And, technically speaking, most intoxicants are in the nature of poisons. They influence the mind by producing temporary shortages of one essential chemical or another, which in turn alters brain chemistry and produces the "psychedelic experience." This is, of course, a cursory description. The real process is a little more complex than that.
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You're right i am thinking of LSA... Can't nature produce the perfect poison? I fail to see how poisonous plants or plants that we have not yet found uses for are not perfect in what they are. My reasoning on alcohol is flawed and bias. I see a lot of negative effects from alcohol and I've yet to see someone ONLY benefit from alcohol with NO negative consequences, no matter how small. I can't say for all but I can say what I've seen. (anyways late night rambles usually carry their flaws)
My point which i didn't outline well is that mankind in its present evolution will not create a drug that does not have some flaws. We are imperfect beings so what we create will be imperfect. Not to say that and individual can't benefit from man made drugs. But pharmaceutical synthetic drugs are a step backwards in effectiveness than the plant they derived the pills from. (and usually have nasty side effects). Not to say that their plant counterparts do not carry side effects. Pharmaceutical companies can't make money if their products are second to nature AND people are aware of it. Anyways holistic medicine knowledge has been pretty much lost in the present day so we are pretty much stuck with western medicine until the knowledge is regained. (that or spiritual healing)
Nature is Perfect and Unchanging yet the Unchanging is Change. Every individual will take an individual path. What is perfect for 1 is not perfect for another. I do believe that you will have less negative side effects from plants created in nature than pills made in factories. But the line in between is not always clear (for me i think of alcohol) -
Albert Hoffman, pioneer of LSD research and self-proclaimed psychonaut, lived to be over 100--fit as a fiddle, I might add. The world in which we live is going to be flawed one way or another, and we all ingest some sort of "poison" on a daily basis, in the food we eat, in the air we breathe, etc.
What psychedelics have to teach us is this: Mind over Matter. This is one of the most fundamental doctrines of Magick, inherent in its most basic principles (i.e., the Pentagram.)
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I've read Mantak Chia and have to agree that internal alchemy is way ahead external.
How many stories are there that someone ingested something external and they became englighted as a permanent state? But we have a lot of stories about yogis, bhaktas, sufis, taoists etc. reaching englightement, immortality and staying in the state through internal alchemy.
But of course, external alchemy has its use and needs to be researched. Shivambu, Amrita, Mercury, Shrooms, Rasayana what not. Hallucinogens can be a kick in the ass for a spiritualy doubting beginner. -
Yes, the problem is wholly that drugs are illegal. Therefore they are seen as "transgressive" - and some people are repelled by the transgressiveness, some attracted.
That is to say, some people partly take drugs for political or criminal reasons (some would say there's no difference lol), as a two-fingered salute to the Establishment, or in the course of participation in a criminal subculture that, perforce, supplies the drugs while they are illegal; or as a general gesture of rebellion against society, the world, the parents, etc. One might say, this "attracts the wrong crowd", or perhaps just the right crowd, but for the wrong reasons.
(The Master Therion covered this in Liber Aleph - the bit about going too far in reacting against repression.)
If drugs were kinda boring, something your parents do at church, or perhaps something iconic and "special" that everybody's done at one time or another, like toboganning on a particularly snowy Christmas day, or (in ancient times, perhaps) traipsing along to the Mysteries at Eleusis, the situation would be totally different
Take, for example, MDMA. It turned from being a drug used by psychologists in controlled, somewhat po-faced circumstances, into a "party drug" that many people take to whoop it up, where part of the excitement is the transgressive element. MDMA's illegality *multiplied *its use, because the powerful, blissful feeling was associated with being a bit naughty.
Actually, on a more general level, we see the same thing happening with Western esotericism in general, historically. Independent, free-spirited and idiosyncratic pursuits and expressions of ecstasy are *outlawed *by Literalist Christianity, individual communion with the Divine is only allowed within strict institutional bounds. The result is that the independent practice of mysticism and magic gets a sort of "dark", "unholy", "evil" aura associated with it - again, attracting the wrong crowd, or the right crowd but for the wrong reasons.
It come down to this: spirituality is supposed to be a unifying, not a divisive force, and when the common man's tools for religious ecstasy are made illegal, that divides society - and sadly, that dividedness is prominent in the minds of the very people who should be getting some sense of Holy Communion from the drugs.
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I definitely got into Magick, Zen, mysticism, etc, because I experimented with psychedelics in my youth. I was a hardcore atheist already in my early teens, basically despising all religions. In my early university years, I got introduced to cannabis, LSD, mushrooms, MDMA, salvia and some other psychedelics. On the discussion boards (Usenet at the time) a person I highly respected said that a book called Zen and the Brain is really great. I found the book but I still remember being repelled by the name "Zen" on the cover, because I thought it reminds me of religions too much.
A similar thing, even stronger, happened with Magick.
Through the psychedelic experience and the community, I learned that there's at least something in these systems.
These days, I practice Magick and some other systems daily, but use psychedelics very scarcely.
On the end note, I basically went too far with the psychedelics, which took many years to recover and I'm not sure I'm all done yet.
So take care!