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[Psychedelic
Thinking and the Dawn of Homo Cyber — continued]
My
view of psychedelic thinking
I recently heard the Governor of New
Mexico, Gary Johnson, define insanity as doing the same thing
over and over while continuing to expect different results
each time. According to that definition, it seems fair to
say that our entire species is borderline insane. The cause
of such self-destructive behavior can often be traced to our
inability to see the larger picture. Our species sometimes
acts as if it exists in the two-dimensional world of Flatland.
As you recall the story, everyone in Flatland is a two-dimensional
being. When they were visited by a three-dimensional sphere,
what the Flatlanders saw was a circle that had the ability
to change its diameter as it moved up and down within the
constraints of Flatland’s two dimensions. It wasn’t until
the Flatlanders were lifted to the higher third dimension
that they could fully comprehend the reality in which they
lived.
By altering our normal state of consciousness
and moving to the higher dimension of entheospace we see how
interconnected we are. It is this higher state of consciousness
that brings us to the clear realization that our personal
concerns are intimately entwined with the fate of the planet
and of our species. It is in this dimension, where psychedelic
thinking is considered baseline, that we will eventually uncover
the truth about our existence and our reason for being. It
is also from this higher dimension that we can begin the process
of integrating psychedelic thinking into our daily lives.
Psychedelic thinking is what brought all of us together this
weekend. As the subtitle of the conference makes clear, we
have come here to investigate further perspectives on altered
states of consciousness. In essence, we have come together
this weekend because we are explorers of consciousness, making
our way through seas of insanity, searching for new ways of
being.
The writer, Henry James, once said, “The
most profound discovery of my generation is that, by changing
one's thinking, one can change one's life.” Those words lie
at the core of psychedelic thinking, for a psychedelic thinker
is intimately aware of the unlimited power of the human mind.
As psychedelic thinkers we are not only more fully conscious
than others, we also are people of action. We are the people
who travel deep into entheospace and return with a renewed
commitment to live more sustainably and peacefully on this
planet.
A psychedelic thinker is not only a skilled
navigator of the deeper realms of consciousness, but also
someone who has decided to actively participate in the evolution
of consciousness itself. The work of a psychedelic thinker
begins by asking the hard questions that seem to be unanswerable
while in unaltered states. More importantly, psychedelic thinkers
never assume that their current answers are final. People
who believe they have uncovered the one and only answer to
the eternal mystery of life form religions. Psychedelic thinkers
have developed the ability to move beyond such earthly absolutes.
Every child born into this world arrives
as a full fledged psychedelic thinker. A rare few, like the
current Dalai Lama, never lose this perspective. For most
of us, however, the universal consciousness with which we
began life on Earth is gradually narrowed and boxed in until
our view of existence conforms to that of our parents, teachers,
friends, and family. By the time we have completed the first
few years of schooling we are no longer creatures of the cosmos.
We have become creatures of our culture, and psychedelic thinking
has faded into the dim recesses of our minds. It is extremely
difficult to break out of the mental prisons that are imposed
upon us, largely as a result of the family into which we chose
to incarnate. The reason we see so few adult psychedelic thinkers
today is that the first step in restoring our cosmic identity
is to ask a very difficult question. That question is, “Why
do you believe what you believe?” Until you are able to understand
why you believe a certain proposition, you are working in
the dark.
Have you ever noticed how young children
begin most of their sentences with the word “why?” “Why is
the sky blue? Why are we going to church? Why do I have to
go to school?” “Why, why, why” we hear until even the best
parents one day lose their patience and say, “Because I said
so, that’s why.” At that moment, the child’s cosmic world
of psychedelic thinking begins to grow smaller. Culture has
reared its ugly head, and another young human mind has learned
that the best way to get along is to go along with the herd.
Thus begins the process of applying mental filters on our
thinking until it becomes second nature to believe that all
of the answers lie outside of ourselves, and these answers,
of course, are all carefully guarded by the keepers of our
culture. Trust in personal experience eventually gives way
to trust in the culture. Had only one human culture evolved
on Earth, this survival strategy might have worked, but such
is not the case.
Today we find ourselves awash in conflicting
cultures. There are religious fundamentalist cultures that
believe they are serving a higher purpose by destroying two-thousand-year-old
works of art, which were created by believers in a competing
religion. There are survivalist cultures that hoard supplies
in preparation for Armageddon. We have spiritual cultures
that attempt to rise above the trials and tribulations of
earthly existence. And we have multinational corporate cultures
that seek to control our minds by forcing us to submit to
drug testing as a condition of employment. All of these cultures
share a common element. They place someone else’s belief above
your own personal experience.
This brings us face to face with one
of the most fundamental aspects of psychedelic thinking. Psychedelic
thinkers place their own experience above someone else’s beliefs.
I once heard someone say, “Claim no knowledge for what you
have not experienced.”(1)
What a different world this would be if we all followed that
admonition. Most of us, myself included, are happy to give
others our opinions on a wide range of issues about which
we have little personal experience. No wonder our public debates
over environmental issues are so chaotic. For example, those
who hold the reins of power in Washington today believe that
CO2 is not a pollutant. From my perspective, this
seems akin to the Reagan administration’s classifying catsup
as a vegetable. Like any state-supported fable, they both
contain elements of reality. How then are you to gain the
personal experience necessary to form an opinion about
these issues without first signing on to the beliefs of one
group of scientists over another? For those of you who are
familiar with the realm of entheospace, the answer to that
question is very simple. To gain the personal experience necessary
to come to an understanding of sound ecological practices
you only need to enter entheospace with an open mind.
Although seldom commented on in detail,
it is becoming obvious that psychedelic substances often transform
their users into more ecologically aware people. If you share
my view that by entering entheospace you also gain the ability
to enter into full Gaian awareness, this greening of psychedelic
users is understandable. Of course, I am also aware that it
is impossible to convince an oil company scientist to change
his or her opinion about global warming with information someone
discovered in entheospace. It just isn’t that simple.
My guess is that the majority of people
in this audience know what it means to be in entheospace.
If so, you will also understand what Tony Rich meant last
year at the ayahuasca conference when he said, “We do know
what we know.” Make no mistake about it, what we call altered
states of consciousness are every bit as real and substantial
as the consensus reality we are now experiencing in this auditorium.
While in deep entheospace, there is seldom any doubt about
what we know to be true, and this knowledge comes from
the deepest levels of our being. The problem psychedelic thinkers
face when returning from an altered state is how to translate
this unspeakable knowledge into words and actions that will
be understood by others. Most of us have been in these interesting
conversations where someone will say, “I can’t put words to
it, but I can assure you that for an instant I truly understood
it all.” And whenever someone in the tribe says that, we know
exactly what they are talking about. This is where
I see the first light of psychedelic thinking. It begins during
that wonderful time in deep entheospace when you absolutely
know the truth. From that first little spark can come a great
flame. Whether or not you choose to nourish that flame is
a decision that can determine your destiny. In times like
these, however, your personal destiny may be more closely
related to our species-destiny than at any other moment in
human history. In addition to everything else that is going
on right now, our culture has also begun an evolutionary transformation.
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