Tripping the Light Fantastic
Drugs and Entheogens: What's the
Difference?
The word
Entheogen
means God contained within and in some other translations it means to awaken
the divine within,
which is closer to the word Entheogenesis, describing the process of doing away
with all that which is transient and impermanent, while allowing the unchanging
aspect of our being to awaken to itself. An Entheogen is a compound that
induces a spiritual or mystical experience. There have been many kinds of
Entheogens or plant based psychoactive substances used by humans. However,
there isn't much known about these plant medicines commonly, as a result of
which humanity has long been exploited by psychological manipulation at the
hands of the powers that be. Constant repetition of lies and negative
propaganda seem to be working well on the sleeping masses, however with more
information and awareness on these subjects things are quickly changing
globally.
It is good to see great change manifesting when people join hands and come
together against this regressive oppression and tyranny that act out through
the various world governments, big greedy corporations and the Military
Industrial Complex. One of the ways to beat the system is through creating more
awareness ... by disseminating useful information, sharing knowledge ...
speaking your truth and more importantly, living it ! We came across this
brilliant source of information on various drugs and their effects on human
consciousness and thought it must be shared here ...
In 2010 I was fortunate to be a presenter on the subject of entheogens at a
fascinating conference in San Rafael, California, titled “Beyond the I… the end
of the Seeker’. The conference organizers had recruited a remarkable collection
of physicists, neuroscientists, consciousness researchers, and spiritual
teachers, all with a common interest in what turned out to be the rather hazy
subject of ‘Science and Non-Duality’. (I say that I was fortunate to present
because I was also able to attend workshops and lectures with some of my personal
heroes including the physicist/authors Peter
Russell, Amit
Goswami, NASA’s zero-point scientist Bernard Haisch, anesthesiologist
Stuart Hammerhof on his and Roger Penrose’s theory of Quantum Consciousness,
and a remarkable presentation by Nassim Haramein exclusively on his paper about
the Schwarzschild Proton). The entheogen
section of the conference — titled ‘Entheogens as a Portal’— was a panel
comprising of Rick Doblin (MAPS), Dr. Martin Ball, James Fadimann, myself and a
couple of other speakers (whose names I must confess I don’t remember) all who
received 20 minutes to speak about entheogens and (I presumed) ‘non-duality’.
Since my normal presentation (which is mostly about my theory for a quantum
nature for the transpersonal entheogenic experience that I outline in my book
‘Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad’) takes at least an
hour, and since I was considering ‘non-duality’ to be another way of describing
the ‘classical’ mystical experience of ‘transpersonal Oneness’ that occurs with
the complete dissolution of Ego and Identity (‘the loss of all opposites’), I
decided to talk about a subject that I had been thinking about more recently,
namely the correlation between the effect a ‘drug’ has on the Ego (one’s
personal sense of ‘I’) and its relative toxicity.
So for this conference, rather than
discussing my usual subject (the endogenous entheogens, DMT and 5-MeO-DMT), I
decided to consider the broad spectrum of different ‘mood-enhancing’ compounds
available, and rather than considering how each particular ‘drug’ affects our
bodies or our ‘mental well-being’ as most scientific studies would, I would
instead rank each drug on how it affected our sense of Ego, our sense of “I”.
Since the total loss of Ego and the sense of “I” is the core of the
transpersonal mystical experience (and I am an experiential-mystic at heart) I
decided that I would assign each ’drug’ its own ‘Mystical Value’, with the
‘drugs’ that can induce the transpersonal state of total loss of Ego and
Identity having the highest value (most value to an experiential mystic), while
the ‘drugs’ that reinforced or inflated the sense of the Ego would have the
lowest. After having ranked the various compounds (according to experiential
reports in literature, EROWID, etc), it was interesting to note that the scale
naturally descended by the chemical class of the compound—tryptamine,
phenethylamine, opiates, amphetamines, alcohol— and that this corresponded to a
noticeable increase in toxicity.
Here is how I ranked the various compounds, along with my personal commentary
on the effects of the compound, its toxicity, and human history.
The Oroc Mystical Value Scale
The endogenous entheogens/ Simple
tryptamines:
1. 5-Methoxy-DMT: Regularly capable of inducing a ‘classical’ mystical
experience of transpersonal oneness with complete dissolution of Ego and
Identity, even at dosages as low as 5 micrograms. Endogenous. Which means that
it is naturally produced within our own bodies and thus 100% physically
‘non-toxic’. Also present in nature in the leaf, bark, and roots of trees, and
in the venom of the Bufo Alvarius toad. 5-MeO-DMT has been used in South
America in the forms of snuffs for an estimated 3000 years. 5-MeO-DMT’s modern
use, first in the form of smoking toad venom, and then as synthesized
5-Meo-DMT, is approx 35 years old.
2. DMT (dimethyltryptamine): Capable of inducing a ‘classical’ mystical
experience of transpersonal Oneness, with complete dissolution of Ego and
Identity, mostly at high dosages, and in certain individuals. Endogenous. Found
in the leaf, seeds, bark, and roots of plants, DMT has been used in South
America as snuffs, and as the active alkaloid in ayahuasca, for more than 1500
years. These plant admixtures are regarded as sacred medicines amongst the
Amazonian cultures from which they originate. After being discovered to be
psychologically active by the Hungarian psychologist Stephan Szara in 1957, DMT
was used by IM sporadically throughout the early 1960’s (most notably by
William S Burroughs and Timothy Leary) before experiencing a brief burst of
popularity in the late 1960’s (after the underground chemist Nick Sand
discovered that the fumurate was smokable), before disappearing almost
completely by the end of the 1970’s. The writings of Terence McKenna
subsequently rekindled interest in the compound and its natural analogue
ayahuasca, which combined with the unsubstantiated theories of Dr Rick
Strassman presented in the more recent book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, has
resulted in a significant modern mythology amongst the current psychedelic
counter-culture.
The Complex
Tryptamines:
3. LSD-25.
(lysergic acid) Also a tryptamine, LSD is capable of inducing a ‘classical’
mystical experience of transpersonal Oneness, with complete dissolution of Ego
and Identity, in high dosages, and in certain individuals. Synthetic, with
close analogues found in nature. The Eleusinian mysteries—which could only be
attended once in a lifetime—were considered the high point of Greek Society and
ran for more than 2000 years, tremendously influencing Greek Philosophy and
thus Western Thought. Kykeon, the entheogen at the heart of these mysteries,
was most likely an LSD analogue produced from an ergot (grain) fungus. (The
Temple at Eleusis was dedicated to Demeter, the Goddess of Wheat). LSD-like
compounds have also been isolated from the Aztec ololiuqui (morning glory)
seeds. Lysergic Acid –LSD 25, which captured the public imagination like no
other entheogen in modern history during the late 1960’s and early 70’s– when
an estimated 75 million people tried the drug – is the synthetic counterpart of
these natural plant analogues. While the very high dosages (800+ micrograms)
recommended by Leary, Metzner, and Alpert in ‘The Varieties of the Psychedelic
Experience’ (1963) to induce a transpersonal-mystical experience ultimately
proved to be more than most people liked to handle psychologically, LSD is
physiologically one of the safest compounds known to man, since it requires the
smallest known amount (1/10,000th of a gram) to be psychologically active, and
is thus has an incredibly low toxicity to dosage. (You can ingest the same
amount of cyanide, or even plutonium, and it will pass through your body without
affecting you). Wikipedia reports a suspected fatal overdose (Kentucky, 1975)
medical literature on LSD, which involved the IV injection of a ridiculously
large amount of LSD (1/3rd of a gram … more than 3000 of today’s hits!) but
notes ’most sources report that there are no known human cases of such an
overdose’.
4. Psilocybin (4-OH-DMT). Can induce transpersonal-mystical experience in high
dosage. Naturally occurring in some 200 mushroom species. The presumed
entheogen in Terence
McKenna’s ‘Stoned Ape’ theory. The least powerful of the tryptamines,
psilocybin is of low toxicity although overdoses are reputedly possible on
synthetic psilocybin, such as in the death of John Griggs, the leader of the
notorious LSD-and-hashish cartel, The Brotherhood of Love, although none are
reported on EROWID.
Ketamine/PCP
5. Ketamine/PCP: Capable of inducing a ‘classical’ mystical experience of
transpersonal Oneness, with complete dissolution of Ego and Identity, mostly at
high dosages, and in certain individuals. The only legal PCP analogue
(estimated 5-10% the strength of PCP), Ketamine, which acts as a stimulant on
the central nervous system, requires inclusion due to its impressive record for
inducing mystical experiences in individuals (mostly by IM injection) and it
could be argued that it deserves a higher ranking than the complex tryptamines.
Since it is used as a medical anesthetic, it is considered physically very safe
and overdoses are rare. While PCP was first synthesized in 1926, with an
illegal street use that peaked in the mid-70’s, Ketamine’s illegal use as an
entheogen (and increasingly as a party drug in small doses) is a relatively
recent human development.
The
Psychedelic-Phenethylamines:
6. Mescaline: Can induce transpersonal-mystical experience in high-dosages.
Naturally occurring in various cactus species, mescaline is one of the oldest
psychedelics known to man. The San Pedro cactus cults of Northern Peru are the
longest known continuous shamanic tradition having existed for at least 3000
years, while there is evidence of peyote use in Mexico and North America dating
back 5700 years. In these cultures, the mescaline-containing cacti were
considered sacred medicine. Although very rare today, synthetic mescaline was
the main subject of Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception’, which helped
spark the 60’s psychedelic revolution. (Mescaline, Psilocybin, LSD, and DMT
would be the 4 compounds listed in the introduction to Leary, Messner, and
Alpert’s ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ in 1965.). Like most psychedelics,
mescaline is physically non-toxic and non-addictive.
7. 2-CB, 2-CI: Structurally related to mescaline, both 2-CB and 2-CI can induce
transpersonal-mystical experience in high-dosages. Synthetic phenethylamines,
these are notoriously dose-sensitive and little is known about their toxicity,
but due to the extremely low toxicity of mescaline and virtually all
psychedelics, they can be assumed to be physically non-toxic and non-addictive.
Both are creations of Alexander Shulgin (most famous for popularizing MDMA),
which rose to popularity in the LSD drought of the early 21st century caused by
the infamous Kansas Silo bust, proving once again that prohibition simply
results in diversity.
FATAL OVERDOSE LINE
The Empathagenic-Phenethylamines:
8. MDA: (Sassafras). Empathogen. The original 1960’s ‘Love Drug’. As with all
the compounds in this class, empathogens can decrease the effect of Ego by
inducing love and compassion to others, weakening the sense of ‘I’. Empathogens
also differ from psychedelic/entheogens in their acute toxicity, with deaths
caused by cardiac arrest/brain hemorrhaging at a fatality rate of approx 2 in
100,000 users, approximately the same as the more popular (though less toxic)
MDMA.
9. MDMA (Ecstasy). See MDA. Rediscovered and popularized by chemist Alexander
Shulgin in the 1980’s, MDMA held great promise for psychiatry before becoming
illegal in a wave of Federal paranoia. Currently being used in hospital trials
in Israel, the organization MAPS (Multi-disciplinary Association of Psychedelic
Sciences) wants to start clinical trials on returning soldiers with
post-traumatic stress syndrome here in the USA
Other Popular Illegal
Compounds:
10. THC (Cannabis
or ‘marijuana’). Decreases the effect of the Ego by shifting perspective,
often towards the humorous side. Relatively low toxicity, no possibility of
physical overdose. While cannabis related crimes are the number one reason for
incarceration in the USA, with over a million people in jail for its sale,
distribution, production, or possession, there has never been a single death
related to THC consumption itself.
11. Opiates/Heroin: Nullifies the Ego by negating all desire although not the
sense of “I”. Highly physically addictive with regular fatal overdoses, heroin
was involved in 213,118 Emergency Room (ED) visits in 2009. Meanwhile Oxycodon
fatalities (OxyContin is a semi-synthetic opiod pain reliever derived from opium)
have increased 66.7% over the last five years due to this pain-medicines
relatively high toxicity. (14,459 in 2007 … 82,724 people died from FDA
approved drugs in 2010.) ED visits involving nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals
(either alone or in combination with another drug) increased 98.4 percent
between 2004 and 2009, from 627,291 visits to 1,244,679. OxyContin sales
currently exceed $4 billion per year.
12. Cocaine: The ultimate ‘Me’ drug. Physically and psychologically addictive.
Highly toxic. A nervous-system stimulant, cocaine dependence (addiction) can
result in cardiovascular and brain damage. The Greed Culture of the 1980’s that
came only 15 years after the ‘Psychedelic Revolution’ can almost be epitomized
by its reverence to cocaine, the most expensive drug that does the least for
the shortest amount of time. In 2009 Cocaine and crack cocaine overdoses were
responsible for over 400 000 ED room visits in US hospitals. While the first
‘cocaine epidemic’ in the USA was in the 1880’s, cocaine has greatly grown in
popularity since the 1970’s, with the estimated U.S. cocaine market exceeding
$70 billion in street value in 2005 – a greater revenue than a corporation such
as Starbucks. The multi-billion dollar ‘War against Cocaine’ has been waged at
the military level in foreign countries since the 1980’s with no noticeable
affect on supply, while drug violence long the border of Mexico – mostly over
the cocaine and methamphetamine trade – is killing more than 5000 people a
year.
13. Methamphetamines. Physically and psychologically addictive. Highly toxic.
The highly lucrative illegal underground market of the USA’s most-popular legal
drug (Ritalin and Adderall are legal methamphetamines – the USA consumes 85% of
the world’s prescription speed.) Sometimes called ‘white-trash cocaine’,
methamphetamine abuse is reaching epidemic proportions at many levels of
American society with over 93,000 ED room visits in 2009. Crack cocaine and
methamphetamine addiction have long been associated with both forced and voluntary
prostitution in every country that they appear in, while the violence
associated with Mexican drug cartels fighting for control of a cocaine and
methamphetamine market valued in excess of 50 billion dollars is currently
responsible for over 15,000 fatalities a year.
( And finally, our Society’s chosen legal ‘inebrient’)
14. Alcohol: Considered a psychoactive depressant. Highly toxic and physically
addictive. The United States Center for Disease Control estimates that medium
to high consumption of alcohol leads to the death of approx 75,000 people a
year in the USA. While the last three compounds on this chart – Cocaine,
Methamphetamine, and Alcohol – are the only three compounds most likely to
reinforce the Ego to the point of physical violence, alcohol is the one your
most likely to do yourself physical harm on due to self-loathing. Alcohol is
the most common extenuating factor for homicides, rapes, beatings, and
suicides, not to mention vehicular fatalities. Alcohol is arguably the least
sophisticated drug in both its production and its crude inebriating effects.
The first alcoholic beverages can be traced back 9000 years to Neolithic times,
which is why I like to call it our ‘stone-age drug’. Paradoxically, (or perhaps
because of its ancient origins) alcohol it is the only 100% legal drug on this
list in the vast majority of countries around the world.
My conclusion from ranking these various compounds by their unique ‘Mystical
Value’ and comparing their relative toxicity can thus be expressed quite simply
(as):
Oroc’s Law: The more a compound
disrupts the Ego (the sense of ‘I’), the physically safer (less toxic) that
compound will be, while the more a ‘drug’ reinforces and inflates the sense of
Ego, the more physically harmful (toxic) that compound will be.
After my presentation a number of the enthusiastic audience asked me if I had
ever written anything about this ‘Mystical Value Scale’ and I had to confess
that I had not, but that some time in the future I would try to. But in all
truth, I would probably have stored it away in the back drawers of my very
messy mind had not the former ‘Chief Advisor on Drugs’ to the British
Government published a very interesting report in the respected Lancet medical
journal that was released just a month later (Nov 2010) and made world-wide
news. In this report by the ‘Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs’, every
common drug in British society was scored by a panel of social health experts
on the harm it created including mental and physical damage, addiction, crime
and costs to the economy and the community, thus basically ranking the public
health effect of the various drugs. The maximum harm score was 100 and the
minimum zero. When the results were tabulated, the most harmful drug was
alcohol (72), then heroin (55), crack-cocaine (54), methamphetamines (33),
cocaine (27), cannabis (20), ketamine (15), and MDMA (9), with LSD (7) and
magic mushrooms (5) being ranked as the least harmful substances to British
society! (Neither DMT or 5-MeO-DMT were on the list). The esteemed authors also
wrote that ‘our findings lend support to the previous work in the UK and the
Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have
little relation to the evidence of harm.’
Based on this highly scientific report, my observation about the related
toxicity of my Mystical Value scale would seem to have been validated, with
those ‘drugs’ that most eradicate the effect of the Ego being deemed (by public
health experts) the safest. Non-addictive and of low toxicity, psychedelic
‘drugs’ offer no threat to your physical health, and yet they are considered by
our Society to be extremely ‘dangerous’ and are amongst the most illegal
substances on the planet.
The word drug incidentally—which means (in this context, according to the
Webster’s dictionary) ‘a chemical substance which enhances physical or mental
well-being’— is a ridiculously misleading and almost meaningless word if you
think about it, since nearly everything we eat and drink can be considered a
drug. Nitrous oxide, a gas, is a drug. Coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate are
all drugs. Even McDonalds french-fries under this broad definition could be
considered a (highly addictive) drug. Now, as much as I love chocolate, coffee,
and even — I hate to admit it — the occasional McDonalds French-fry, I see
little purpose in comparing them in any way, shape, or form, to LSD, DMT, or
5-MeO-DMT, which are far more likely to completely change your consensual
reality then they are ‘enhance your physical or mental well-being’. But the
very use of a word/term as broad as ‘drugs’ (drug law, drug war, illegal drugs,
dangerous drugs etc’) to describe and legally regulate (DEA) such a
ridiculously broad range of compounds is in it’s self a verbal smokescreen
designed to help limit the distinctly society-changing possibilities of
psychedelic-entheogens.
If I may diverge for a moment, it is my personal opinion that the ‘first’
psychedelic revolution in the United States (1963 – Saturday 6th December 1969)
‘failed’ ultimately due to the mass influx of a variety of distinctly
non-psychedelic ‘drugs’ into the chaotic and highly exploratory youth culture
of that time. Psychedelics when used in high-dosages have proven to be safest
when used in a thoughtful and controlled ‘set-and-setting’, but as the Youth
revolution took hold many teenagers were exposed to super-powerful entheogens
like LSD-25 and STP (DOM) in what can only be described as a cavalier and
Dionysian manner. Considering the fact that an average hit of LSD in 1968
(400-500mg) was 5 times stronger than a hit of street acid (80 to 100mg) today,
and that first-timers LSD users were frequently encouraged to take two hits if
they wanted to see Tim Leary’s promised ‘white light’, with little thought to
their ‘set-and setting’, then it is easy to see how a large number of young
hippies feared acid as much as others revered it. (You still witness this same
phenomena today … many of the 20 something’s that I talk to at festivals seem
to love DMT but are terrified of LSD having already experienced a trip too long
and arduous for them … and they probably ate a quarter of what their parents
did for their first time in the 60’s!). This tendency to push all experiences
to the limit (‘the Prankster ethic’) opened the backdoor for the more seductive
and much easier rides of first heroin, and then cocaine. (Which when it was
first introduced was not thought to be addictive.)
Disregarding the potential (and well-documented role) that the CIA played in
the introduction and distribution of virtually all the illegal drugs that
became available, by failing to recognize the essential difference of
psychedelics/entheogens—that they are best used carefully in a sacred manner
with trusted guides and not wildly in recreation amongst crowds of strangers—and
then by lumping the wide-variety of compounds that followed into a singular
‘Drug Culture’ that fails to distinguish between the wide variety of
experiences that this vast family of so-called ‘drugs’ can produce, the
Alternative culture that had been inspired by psychedelics and the chance for
change, ended up settling for uppers-and-downers and the Status Quo, as heroin,
cocaine, and amphetamines became the most popular ‘illegal drugs’ of the last
thirty years of the 20th century. (And the use and abuse of legal ‘
prescription
drugs’ sky rocketed).
It is interesting now —with more than 40 years perspective— to realize the fact
that our Society’s so-called ‘Drug Culture’ has increasingly turned away from
the 60’s psychedelic ethos of the mystical destruction of the Ego (and
consequently the social structures that the Ego creates) towards a range of
compounds that actually reinforce the concept of the Ego (and thus maintain the
existing social structures that Ego has built). It could be argued that the last
thirty years of the twentieth century that came after the failed psychedelic
revolution of the 1960’s were the most egocentric years in human history, as
television and a global communication network have relentlessly promoted the
cult of the Ego as the highest human ideal to the post Vietnam generations of
techno-capitalists, with the constant accumulation of individual wealth and
power seen as a Darwinian function inherited from our hunter-gatherer days.
This obsession with the role of the Individual has resulted in 5% of the
world’s population now controlling 50% of its wealth, as multi-national
corporations controlled by a handful of families continue to strip the globe of
its resources to line the pockets of shareholders and board members in those industrialized
nations whose military are effectively the World Law, a treacherous and
seemingly unstoppable situation that is threatening life on this planet as the
military-industrial complex lurches increasingly erratically through the last
of its days. The cult of the Individual Ego has now grown so predominant, we
have a societal case of what I call ‘extinction denial’ where the fate of the
individual has become paramount, best expressed in the concept ‘You better get
yours while you can.’
A radical reassessment of the effect of capitalism and consumerism on both the
human condition and our planet is clearly required, but what can bring about a
change in a viewpoint that has been steadily being programmed into us by the
very technology whose reckless use we need to reassess? According to the Dalai
Lama ‘achieving genuine happiness may require bringing about a transformation
in your outlook, in your way of thinking, and this is not a simple matter’ and
I believe this applies to us as much as a Society as it does to each of us
individually. But what can any of us really do other than reorganize deck
chairs on the Titanic? What action can actually have a chance of bringing about
a fundamental transformation in the way Humanity perceives and values Life on
this planet?
In July of 2003 when first introduced to the super-entheogen 5-MeO-DMT, I
underwent what I now believe to be a ‘classical’ mystical experience of
transpersonal unity with the Source of Being. This event had a profound effect
upon my world-view since I found myself changed from an agnostic
scientific-rationalist to believing in the existence of a God far greater than
I could have ever imagined, all in the space of a single 40 minute drug-induced
‘trip’. The result for my subsequent search for answers on how such a radical
transformation could have occurred is contained in my book “Tryptamine Palace:
5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad.” (Park Street Press, 2009), and within
the pages of that book I make the claim that this discovery of a spiritual element
to the Universe, and the realization that God not only CAN exist but exists —as
the mystics have always insisted—as a part of you, is the most exciting
realization that a human being can make. More than eight years have now past
since I myself made that unexpected discovery, and while I still agree that is
ultimately the most exciting discovery possible, I must concede it is not
always the most practical, a dilemma that mystics have known and have suffered
for since the beginning of time. The personal discovery of God—any kind of God
or Buddha-State, for they are all streams of the same Cosmic river—can never be
‘scientifically’ proven and inevitably any entheogenic realizations or
enlightenment can only offer the same proofs as any other ‘spiritual’ system …
the sticky dual-problem of personal testimony and ‘faith’.
I have however come to realize that while entheogens can never ‘prove’ the
existence of God (rather one can only ‘experience’ God-Consciousness through
the use of them and thus form your own opinion), true-entheogens can be used as
the most powerful tools of exploration available for investigating some of the
most perplexing philosophical questions that humanity has managed to conceive,
especially those concerning the role and reality of Consciousness, and its
human-shadow, the Ego. As our Society and technology begins to progress beyond
the Newtonian-Darwinian paradigm, we are coming to scientifically realize that
nothing in the Universe exists as an individual point in space-and-time, since
the emerging quantum view of the Universe states that all things are linked and
connected thru a matrix of fields of energy that far surpass the energy of
physical matter, matter is merely the froth on the wave of reality if you like,
while our consciousness, the vehicle of this discovery, far from being an
accidental by-product of chemical reactions produced within the matter of the
brain as purported by the old paradigm, increasingly seems to be a part of an
infinite field of consciousness that both permeates, and creates, the Universe
itself. I can also personally testify that thru the use of entheogens one can
actually experience a moment outside of time and space as pure Consciousness,
with no idea or memory of who you are or where you came from, and in that
instant the realization arises of the interconnectedness of all things, that
all is truly One—the transpersonal experience as Stanislav Grof calls it—and
that this is quite possibly the most profound human experience available, a
speculation that the recorded history of all varieties of mysticism would seem
to support.
Which brings about the about the very interesting possibility—as suggested by
the psychologist Julian Jaynes in his increasingly influential book ‘The Origin
of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’—that the modern
highly-individualized human Ego that has been so venerated in the 19th and 20th
centuries may be a comparatively recent development in both human history (and
perhaps the history of the Universe), and that ‘the voice in our head’ that we
now all constantly hear, a few thousand years ago would only arise only in
times of severe crisis and danger. (And was often thought to be the voice of
the Gods). The non-denominational spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle in his modern
classic ‘A New Earth’ argues that our highly refined sense of ‘I’ has come from
the development of our technology-driven Society, since the narrowing of our
mental focus away from the transpersonal has allowed us to develop our
fantastic technology, but at the expense of disconnecting us with another
deeper layer of consciousness that we share with all other things in the
Universe. We can no longer see the woods for the trees so to speak, as we have
become prisoners of our own inflated sense of self.
As our scientists start to discover the outer realms of Quantum Consciousness,
and our psychologists and spiritual masters begin to return our attention to
the idea of a Cosmic or Absolute Consciousness that both unites and transcends
all religion, with the role that the Individual Ego plays in our Society coming
under increasingly critical scrutiny, then it would seem clear the lesson that
the careful use of entheogens can teach virtually any of us. It is a
scientifically verifiable fact that entheogenic compounds can cause a human ego
to be disrupted or even momentarily wiped away, and that when this happens, to
paraphrase the poetic words of William Blake, the doors of perception are
cleansed, and all things appear to man as they are, Infinite. Throughout the
recorded history of Humanity there has been no experience considered more
profound or more valuable then the singular realization that All is indeed One,
and now as the scientists have begun to catch up with the mystics on realizing
the simple undeniable fact that all systems are linked, and that the very idea
of the ‘sacredness of the individual’ is somewhat absurd, we now need to reform
our governments, our religions, our financial institutions, our schools, and
most importantly ourselves, to this fundamental Universal Truth.
In a world where we have been programmed by the constant sounds and flashy
moving images of our rapidly developing modern technology since we have been
born, the ancient schools of meditation and contemplation have had little
chance to reform the Ego or the society that our love of technology—the human
child of the Ego—has built for us, since we have long since forgotten that the
death of the Ego is a desirable goal. Deepak Chopra once wrote that
synchronicity is the universe showing its intention, and therefore I do not
find it strange that mescaline was first synthesized the year that Röntgen
discovered radiation, or that Albert Hofmann had a strange dream to
reinvestigate a compound that he had put on a shelf many years earlier, thereby
instigating a chain of events that would cause him to discover LSD-25’s
remarkable psychoactive qualities while the Manhattan Project was months away
from igniting the world’s first atomic bomb, arguably humanity’s most
egocentric invention. Lysergic Acid (LSD) is a remarkable 20th century
invention in the fact that it is the only entheogen that a competent chemist
can make a million hits of in an afternoon, and its mass-production qualities
(for a mass-production society) should not be under-valued, since it has been
responsible for reintroducing the mystical/shamanic concept of the
death-and-rebirth of the Ego into our Society at a time when it is most
desperately needed. An entheogenic moment outside of space of time can cause a
lifetime of egocentric programming to come tumbling down like a house of cards,
an illumination almost impossible to ignore, and it is for exactly this reason
that our Governments so fear them. If we build the foundations of the
Entheogenic Revolution —the 2nd Psychedelic Revolution— upon the basis of a
constant awareness of the influence of the Ego, and seek out a deeper
connection with the Mind of the Universe that we all share in a process of
‘liberation theology’, then we have a chance to rebuild our tribes into a true
World Family that will find a way through the troubling times to come. For if
there is one thing that is for sure, it is that none of us will make it alone.
— James Oroc
Reference :
DMT Site
From Psychedelic
Adventure @ http://www.psychedelicadventure.net/2014/07/drugs-entheogens-whats-difference.html
For more information
about drugs see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/drugs
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by 
When people
take psychedelics, like high dose mushrooms, Changa, DMT or Ayahuasca, they are
often exposed to a reality, where the rules are different than what they have
learnt, where enchantment is the norm. The un-enchanted description or
prescription is that life is a random affair – we are only meat, and that
consciousness is only meaningless matter. There is no enchantment, no magic, no
meaning, no expansive joie de vivre easily extracted from strict adherence to
this mechanical world view. For those who refuse to believe in the possibility
that there is anything else but the meat/mind are missing the point entirely –
of the nature of the expansive and immense nature of the universe, and how
human beings evolve a deeper understanding of the universe over time.
Strangely
enough, Kent believes that these beings he describes as “loopy spirits” who
dance around and “machine elves”, are all manifestations of the brain
attempting to discern form in random noise. I believe his argument is in fact
an irrational argument. Now let’s first define ‘irrational’ with the Oxford
dictionary, which states that irrationality is “not endowed with reason”. Kent
has attempted to endow the DMT experience with his version of reason, but his
reasoning comes out looking irrational and unreasonable. The enchanted world is
just the world that lies outside the territory of our known maps. In
recognising an enchanted world, you are recognising that humanity circa 2015
has not figured everything out – and to believe THAT would of course be utterly
irrational.
