Messianic Ideation, Delusions of Grandeur and Psychedelics

[triskele]

Hi all,

I recently found this interesting article (at http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/forum/s...ead.php?p=7828). What do people think about this?

Messianic Ideation & Delusions of Grandeur

James Kent

Chapter 20: Psychedelic Information Theory

One of the major negative side effect of psychedelic experimentation is delusional ideation, and one of the most common pathologies associated with frequent high-dose psychedelic experimentation is persistent recurring delusions of grandeur. Delusional ideation within the psychedelic state is to be expected; but when delusional ideations cross the boundary from dream-state into waking state, this is where the trouble begins.

For instance, in the prologue to this text (Late Night Notes from the Alien Hybrid Messiah) I caught myself in the midst of a messianic delusion, a delusion so absurd in its complexity and thin in pretext that — upon sober reflection a short time later — was somewhat embarrassing and laughable. Of course, while having the delusion I was in a borderline conscious state, eyes closed in a darkened room, simply riffing off noise sparking through my own brain. Yet somehow, with no external input to speak of, I managed to convince myself that I was at the center of a massive cosmic conspiracy involving Christ, aliens, the secret government, etc. I can use this delusion to dredge facets of my own identity and perhaps learn a little about my own subconscious fears and desires, but the main point is that I quickly realized that it was all a passing delusion. When the drugs wore off the delusion did not persist. It did not stick. But the question remains: Instead of coming down, what if I had chosen to do more drugs? What if I actually convinced myself I was the messiah, and couldn't talk myself out of it even while I was sober? Where would I be now?

Well, for starters I would have persistent recurring delusions of grandeur, a messiah complex, and would need a steady supply of drugs to keep me in that delusional snap for as long as it took to deliver my prophecy and convince everyone else I was right. This is the trap many psychedelic explorers fall into: They convince themselves they are at the center of a grand cosmic conspiracy, and that the only way to resolve the crisis is to do more drugs, and to get other people to do more drugs to see how right they are. This was the logic that trapped Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Terence McKenna, and many other latter-day prophets like Zoe-7. Each one of these prophets of the psychedelic movement believed at one time or another that they were, in-fact, messiahs, but I say their messages (respectively) hold no water. Leary claimed that LSD would liberate minds and create a free society, and also believed he was a secret agent in a cosmic conspiracy of oppression and freedom. Although he had the secret order of chaos on his side, his visions ran into many real-world road-blocks and reality checks. John Lilly claimed high dose Ketamine trips in an isolation tank (or anywhere, all the time) would allow contact with ECCO, the disincarnate cosmic intelligence that communicates through synchronistic action. Lilly claims he was seeking answers and deeper truths, I claim all he came up with was gibberish and endless hours in the K-hole. Terence McKenna claimed high-dose mushroom and/or DMT trips would allow contact with aliens and discarnate entities that hold secrets about the nature of language and the universe, and could provide artifacts for mapping the end of the time in 2012 from ordered patterns in the i-ching. We are all waiting to see how 2012 comes and goes, but let's just say I'm not holding my breath here. Each one of these men carried their own messianic complexes, but beyond each of these persistent delusions was the intense need to proselytize and to tell the world about what they had discovered (drugs), and then styled themselves as pop gurus, latter-day messiahs, enlightened masters of chaos, and twentieth-century alchemical magi. Doesn't this sound just like the people with temporal lobe epilepsy who begin to hear voices and believe they are messiahs?

So how did this happen? How did the delusional trap suck them in?

The first thing to keep in mind is that persistent recurring delusions of grandeur (PRDoG) don't typically take hold after a single isolated psychedelic voyage. Though one might run up against some savory delusional, messianic, or paranoid ideation in a single trip, the content derived from a single psychedelic session is often easily forgotten, dismissed, or toyed with for a while before it simply fades away. The key patterns we are looking for when approaching persistent delusions of grandeur are 1) high dose ranges, 2) high frequency of use, 3) ingestion contexts which isolate the user from external stimulus, and 4) ingestion contexts that revolve around repetitive rituals, themes, or patterns. In the cases of Leary, Lilly, and McKenna, each seemed to follow the other's opinion that high-dose experimentation in complete sensory isolation was the way to go, all (or most) of the time, sometimes for extended periods of time, often the longer the better. Each one of these explorers claimed that they were receiving Gnostic telemetry from the psychic logos of the conscious universe (or something like that), just as prophets have mystical visions and receive supernatural wisdom from their Gods. Each of these men claimed to be rigorous thinkers, yet none of them ever stopped to consider (publicly at least) that they just might be swimming in their own BS. Each one of these psychedelic pioneers bought their own fabrications so completely — hook line and sinker — they were unable to step back and see reality in any other way. Is this because they were crazy? Did they drink too much of their own Kool-Aide? I would say the answer is yes, and that each of these men trapped themselves so thoroughly into their own delusions that there was no escaping once they were in. And the public rewarded and supported these delusions with book sales, speaking gigs, and the promise of exciting "consciousness-expanding" social movements based on their expert guidebooks and lots of high-dose psychedelic experimentation. Sounds like a win-win situation, yes? No? Maybe not?

Obviously Leary was never able to deliver on his promise of an evolved and liberated society based on the free use of LSD; Lilly was never able to discern anything from ECCO other than he needed to be doing more Ketamine in order to receive the next important transmission; and McKenna's archaic revival was hipster trend masquerading as a social movement, as devoid of meaning as the rave culture which embraced it, the DMT elves that populated their visions, and the literal nothing "Timewave Zero" that they swallowed as prophecy. I'm sorry to lay it all out like this, but like most other spiritual or political dogma, the psychedelic fairy tales offered up by these great men — upon closer inspection — bear little or no resemblance to the actual world we live in. I do not say this to "dis" them, I think they were very brave to attempt what they did: Leary being the radical, Lilly being the research wonk, McKenna being the throwback anthropologist and explorer of the arcane. Each one of these men was stepping into dangerous territory, unraveled in the entire history of the modern West. Each of these men was passionate about testing the limits of the human brain and grasping at the nature of God, the universe, and everything. I understand this. I grok this. But somewhere along each of their journeys the dogma got sticky, cast in stone, and they found themselves trapped in the very ideologies they were selling. They got pulled under, they bit off more than they could chew, they were surfing on the edge of something big, but that had no real answers, no exit strategy, no where to go. So what happened to them? They wiped out.

I think what everyone would like to know — what's missing here — is some kind of mechanistic explanation, or an analysis of the "trigger" which could turn your normal, recreational psychedelic experimentation into a trap as insidiously recursive and self-referential as persistently recurring messianic delusions of grandeur. And the culprit is, I assert to you, good old neural plasticity and brainwashing. According to the primary tenet of Hebbian neural plasticity, "Neurons that fire together wire together," which means that neurons which spend a lot of time processing the same information or remembering a lot of the same concepts at the same time, invariable begin to form hard-wired connections between themselves to solidify concepts and make "thinking" a more energy efficient task. Thus, delusions formed in a single psychedelic session are not necessarily hard-wired, and can fade in mere hours. But delusions which are solidified in successive, ritually-programmed trips can easily form lasting, hard-wired connections in long-term-memory. Couple neural plasticity with sensory isolation and the obsessive nature of psychedelic feedback in the excited cortex, and you have a model for a turbo-charged re-wiring of neural connectivity through extended psychedelic programming — otherwise known as brainwashing. Yes, brainwashing.

If you are following my discussion here, you will now realize what I am asserting is that Leary, Lilly, and McKenna all actually brainwashed (yes, brainwashed) themselves into believing their own flimsy delusions, thus convincing themselves they were onto something larger than rationality would normally allow. And not only did they spread their brain-eating delusions to the masses through the Eucharist of high-dose psychedelic drug experimentation, they sold the primary auto-brainwashing technique to the masses as well: sensory isolation.

Some might call auto-brainwashing "metaprogramming," and this is fine, but if you are metaprogramming yourself to believe a flimsy and preposterous fairy-tale without any hard evidence (other than your own drug-fueled visions) to back you up, this sounds a lot like brainwashing to me. Metaprogramming is a legitimate term for any hands-on rewiring of the neural structure, and auto-brainwashing is a good example of the "bad" or "reckless" kind of metaprogramming. In truth, psychedelics are perfect for all kinds of brainwashing, but particularly useful in the kind of brainwashing used in religion, which is generally based on the divine teachings of a single individual (or dogma) and the notion of "faith" (or the willingness to believe) that this dogma is the true word of God as passed through the prophet. Leary believed his message in a Darwinian behaviorist model: LSD + human nervous system = Enlightened Being, there was no room for error in his formula (unfortunately). Lilly cast his prophecy in the divine interpretation of random chaos, but his temple is full of relativist noise, no questions or answers there, just more babble retrieved from time spent (wasted) in the hole. And McKenna was a legitimate genius who became too enamored with his own imagination; a scholar genuinely steeped in lore, but stumped by his own inventiveness. McKenna was also unable to drop his madcap stage persona long enough to step back and admit he just might be spinning an elaborately detailed fantasy, the very same way Leary had done with LSD and Lilly with Ketamine. Weren't these people watching and listening to each other? Couldn't they see it coming for themselves?

I'm not saying that Timothy Leary was the first case of messianic psychedelic auto-brainwashing in history of mankind — their were no doubt others in our glorious entheogenic past — but he was definitely the first in Western culture to hit the media so hard with his prophetic (yet problematic) message. Leary was huge, and influenced ageneration (or two, or three) of psychedelic explorers in his wake. Leary's auto-brainwashing techniques were picked up by many, the MKULTRA crew and Charles Manson just to name a few, and were echoed for years by Terence McKenna in his own way. But the problem of auto-brainwashing is real, even if you are not intending to go that way (even more so, perhaps). I will mention that in addition to the neural plasticity aspect of psychedelic auto-brainwashing, I would not be surprised if repeated high-dose experimentation with psychedelics could lead to the kind of petit-mal seizures seen in temporal lobe epileptics, which means there might be a very real chance of brain damage in the temporal lobe that could lead to increased erratic functioning and messianic ideation over time. Again, I am talking about repeated, high dose experimentation over a period of days-to-weeks, not the casual trip here and there.

The pattern of high-dose/high-frequency use of any psychedelic or dissociative (with or without ritual dogma) is typically not good for the psyche and usually leads to a direct withdrawal from society and some hard falls into delusional territory. I speak both as one who has felt the lure of succumbing to the delusional trap, and as one who has met many who have fallen into same said trap themselves. And I can say with some confidence that stopping the drug use early-on in the process of an auto-brainwashing slide clearly allows messianic delusions to fade over time; but persistent use clearly causes the delusions to become more complex, intertwined, and solidified over time. Unfortunately I cannot tell you exactly where the "point of no return" mark is in repeated high-dose psychedelic experimentation. If I had sailed off that edge of the map this would be a totally different text altogether. But what I can tell you is this: tread very carefully when walking into alluring psychedelic waters, and always reality-check yourself on the comedown to make sure you haven't permanently dropped your rationality and stepped right over into the deep end. Because once you pass the point of no return, you are in it, full time, and are basically on your own. And from what I gather from the signposts: here there be monsters.

[incognito]

fuken awesome read!!!!!

a txt all psycho0's should be familiar with!!!

there is nothing more sickening and ugly than the god complex.

when using pure sal a regularly i was of the belief that i could manipulate and control time, and that i was on the verge of descovering the secret behind why the universe and i existed (which i had then equated to being the same thing lol) and when i did discover the secret the universe would cease to exist as we knew it!! as there would be no further purpose to life!!

man was i a dick to be around.

then one day i was buying some erb of this old lady who was silently putting up with my psychotic ramblings, well she looked me dead in the eye, and said firmly.. 'Its not all about you'. my enormously inflamed ego shattered then and there, and i have since thanked her whenever we have met...came at just the right time!!

bottom line is...ur no better(nor any worse) than anyone else...

[santiago]

this hasn't got anything to do with hunab ku and yor ex has it

[incognito]

i think its more than relevant santiago.

[ThunderIdeal]

he's probably onto something. i don't like the way he talks about mckenna though and i think some of it is erroneous.

dunno what to say, it doesn't really surprise me that some people go nuts on psychadelics, psychadelic reality IS nuts, it's a lot to comprehend from the perspective of a tool-making ape that spends most of it's time as an ape, making tools no less. maybe the three public figures mentioned did lose the plot, i don't really know their stories well enough, but isn't this really a case of the higher you walk the farther you fall, or rather, THE MORE YOU SEEK TO EXPLAIN, THE MORE INCORRECT YOU'RE LIKELY TO BE.

so this author has a grasp on consensus reality and can almost spell wookiee. what about the nature of god? is this guy REALLY any different in that he brainwashes himself into consensus reality every day, believes his own BS and then publishes it?

who in christ knows anything?

[faustus]

great read, IMHO ketamine is the worst offender.

yet john lilly is my personal hero

[ThunderIdeal]

i see the god complex a bit differently than most because i think it's true.

"why the universe and i existed (which i had then equated to being the same thing"

"bottom line is...ur no better(nor any worse) than anyone else... "

can't both of these statements make sense simultaneously? they do to me.

[immanuel]

i think these people were just dreamers, there is nothing wrong with that. if you look at society as a whole we could probably label it schizophrenic, these guys were just making their own understandings on a world that is barely understood anyway.

Edited April 19, 2010 by mardybum

[folias]

Unfortunately, I can't read James Kent, unless I have shot up some dodgy meth or something...

I said this in a talk at EB2, 6 years ago, still pretty relevant!

--

"In the human form, that manifested overall totality of being, has been known as Christ Consciousness, that of a unified understanding of one human being, cogniscent of their interconnected holographic manifestation of one being. A state of what can be termed Christ consciousness, is often brought about with the usage of large amounts of tryptamines, where the realisation of human unity and interconnectedness is tacitly realised to the case. The initial stages of this realisation are representive of an understanding of the being THE ONE, the alpha and the omega, and represent a kind of messianic, delusionary narcissism, an often necessary state of emergence into balanced conscresence. Once this state has been reconciled within an individuation human framework, it is then possible for one to learn how to BE ONE (and all). And how to activate oneself in relationship to oneself, in the many different possible aspects. The subtleties and nuances of this learning could be perceived like that of advanced mathematics, whereby those who have not studied the basis of math, do not have any real comprehension of the sums of the parts, and their overall meanings."

Julian.

[Alchemica]

Thanks for sharing - good article.

Nothing like a few months on too much paroxetine to bring out some serious delusional ideations and psychosis... Much worse than any delusional state I've been in with a psychedelic.

...anyway, off to start another religion.

[MORG]

A great read. Thanks very much for sharing it.

Shamans could well be further examples of a similar process of 'metaprogramming'. Intelligent, respected and charismatic members of their communities whose own delusions they are able to pass on to others. You could develop a theory for the birth of religions based on a similar precept.

[faustus]

Intelligent, respected and charismatic members of their communities whose own delusions they are able to pass on to others.

read into "folie a deux"

the film bug is based on this idea.

[MORG]

Just read the Wikipedia page on Folie à deux.

"It is not clear at what point a belief considered to be delusional escapes from the folie à... diagnostic category and becomes legitimate because of the number of people holding it." I love this sentence for the obvious ramifications it holds in the context of religious belief.

Interestingly, the last sentence mentions related abnormal psychology associated with ayahuasca.

Will look into "Bug" when I've got time I shouldn't be using for work

[holymountain]

great read..just quickly Mckenna always pointed out that he knew he sounded like he had a messiah complex. He always went out of his way to acknowledge that he his theories could be completley wrong. He frequenty made fun of himself and his ideas and because of that i think it's unfair to paint him as a millitant dogmatic guy with a messiah complex.

still... it's not Leary's fault that LSD was made illegal..maybe it would have created a utopian society if we had figured out how to integrate it properly.. and also i think there are parrallels between Lilly's CCCO and Mckenna's descriptions of hyperspace...

a sense of humour is whats' important and remembering that even if these visions you experience are 'real' you still have to live on earth and function along with the rest of society like a normal human being... at least until everyone catches up with you.

peace.

[santiago]

i think its more than relevant santiago.

Of course it is relevant, the only point i was making is the first poster must have really been effected by Hunab Ku and his percieved over indulgence in mushrooms and the effects that the majority of the posters cut him to shreds over.

Life is simple and for what it is worth it is an extremely interesting article which triskele posted, come on how many out there have had a moment where it all came together, the secret of life was revealed and we would be forever changed. Only to wake up the next day and realise that your a dick head, but hey it was fun whilst it lasted.

The ones that continue on probably have some sort of mental weakness or illness which does not allow them to go backwards out of the labyrinth of the brain and once they do cross the line they are forever changed. This represents only a minority of the population and the amount of time it takes a healthy brain to reverse these delusions of granduer is directly proportional to the amount of drugs consumed.

Over the years i have seen a few people do and say some strange things. One of them 15 years ago took a trip and was as unreligious as anybody could possibly be, lots of other people has the same trip as well and now are as normal as they ever were, however that single one guy still to this day believes he is being chased by spirits, can talk to god, knows every passage from the bible, is waiting for his kids to leave home before he flies of to israel to fight in the holy war but for a third faction which really is the key to the temple. Note-this guy had a serious case of mental illness in his family, grandmother and brother, but he was not diagnosed before that point.

Had another friend who took different substances and 100% thought that when John Gotti (mafia godfather) died in prison the TV was sending him messages that he was the next Godfather, he started to go around and do some very strange things and he completely changed, well to cut a long story short, he got locked up in a high security mental ward-note he had diagnosed mental illness before he indulged in substances.

What about Moses himself, if the story is correct the burning bush which he so famously was friends with was actually an acacia which he made potions from and drank. From what i have read this would have seriously fucked him up, either in a good or a bad way but more than likely a lot of those miracles which he was part of, and the messages he recieved from god were probably just drug induced delusions. Hence possible the scenario thousands of years later a third of the world worships these visions and lessons, when in fact Moses might just have been a past year version of John Lilly.

To sum up it seems that drugs and delusions stop at the door for 99% of people, but for the ones that have a history of mental illness of similar that door remains open and possibly will never shut.

[KanJe]

We're all full of shit. Someone times we like to play in each other's shit.

Thanks for that, I enjoyed reading it.

Holymountain - You pretty much summed up most of my thoughts about the txt.

There is an analogy I use which I can't remember if I stole or not.

Imagine the unconscious mind is a puzzle board and the conscious mind is the person constructing it. If you take an entheogen you shake up the board and some of the pieces become scattered.

This can allow the person to rearrange the pieces in a new way with a different perspective. Although, if 'abuse' of the substance takes place and the board is shaken up too much it's possible for the pieces to fall off the board all together.

Everyone can make there own mind of what 'abuse' is.

Sorry for the rant.

Edited May 14, 2009 by KanJe

[triskele]

this hasn't got anything to do with hunab ku and yor ex has it

Lol...well, certainly I became interested in this topic partially as a result of what happened to my ex.

As for Hunab, just to clarify: I don't know him at all, this is a completely different topic, and it is in no way meant to be related to him!

I just find the article really interesting, is all.

[Chiral]

I have read this article three times now and have a lot to say on it but I have 4 boxes of woodchips in my car that need to be gotten out and spread around my garden so I'll get back to this later but I find it a little short sighted to suggest that this article has anything to do with me...slightly offensive but meh...!!..water off a ducks back an all.

H.

[coin]

i think any suggestion that it was related to you, was simply referring to some of the topics raised in the other thread

[santiago]

Hunab in no way was i referring that the article had anything to do with you or is about you i was however questioning triskele more over the timing of the new thread in relation to some of the latter posts in your 'cant put into words thread' where she directly related yourself to her ex boyfriend who had some 'issues'. Coin hit the nail on the head last post.

Even though i dont know Hunab its pretty obvious by the information he presents and the context in which he writes about his own belief and history as explorer that nothing in this post should relate to him. Probably most of us have irrational thoughts at times, who is to say in the broader scheme of things they are irrational but history and time generally mark them as that, self induced psychosis directly relational to excess drug consumption.

But what the fuck are drugs on this planet for, surely in the broader scheme of things if there is a god and one day he created mushrooms in all his wisdom and the so called version that everything has a purpose, why did he create some with just eating qualities and others with mind warping capabilities? God must have known humans would eat them all, and if there is no god then why did evolution make it such that our dna would interact in strange ways with such things. What the hell is life all about????

[folias]

The thing is, that actually, Leary and McKenna, were quite grand and shared many liberating thoughts and theories with the world, and they have both created revolutions in thinking and practise for many, many people.

As a thinker, I believe McKenna is unparalelled in history... he is simply ahead of his time. To say he was deluded, is just gross simplification...

Unfortunately, Kent does not seem interested in liberation of any kind, but only reductionism, and the passe cynicisms of mans mental limitations.

To my mind, his words represent the most immature end of the psychedelic millieu, this kind of bastard child of a "enlightened" (in the 18th century sense of the word) point of view - typically arrogant, myopic, blinkered, stuck within its own shallow grooves and assumptions.

My "dictionary" says about the word deluded, "an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder : the delusion of being watched."

This is exactly what you are going to expect from a psychedelic visionary you would think!

The only one who doesn't fit that bill, would be on Mr James Kent, whose words are about as sexy, interesting and stimulating as... your accountant giving you lapdance.

Julian.

[Chiral]

Perhaps we should all just disregard all the work with done with psychedelics, stop doing them and forget all about ever having anything positive come from them. So there have been a few loud mouths who sprouted some wild notions about this and that and some say they looked like dickheads with their delusions of granduer...but there are loudmouths and big noters in all sub cultures...one things for sure art and music would never have been so interesting ever without psychedelics and what about the unheard of folk who go about their journeys without any of us hearing about them and they get some wonderful insight and become creative and talented writers or clothes designers...no lets just forget all that and ditch all this as its just a big load of rubbish and doesn't mean anything.

H.

[ThunderIdeal]

i'm glad this community has spoken out in support of mr mckenna, the way the article criticised him was a big turn off for me. i think the article has it's point about the potential to be taken in by a "delusion", but i also thought i made a good point about this being just as true of consensus reality as it is for 'far out' reality, but anyway...

this discussion, and others recently, really seem to bring out the black and white nature in us! has anybody else noticed? a slightly-black comment will be taken as total black, so the person with a slightly white opinion starts making total white comments, and it gets out of hand with this back and forth, i think we all need a little moderation sometimes. otherwise when somebody disagrees slightly it feels like they are saying "you are totally fucking wrong", and i'm sure people don't usually mean that.

look at this picture. LOOK AT THE FUCKING PICTURE.

[santiago]

Hence forth im going to try and change the feel from a negative to a positive and if its ok to use Hunabs idea of music and psychedelics start a post where we can start to be positive positive positive.......watch for edit and new post.

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...showtopic=21116

Edited May 14, 2009 by santiago

[folias]

I believe in being negative, because the shadow is the primary issue facing the western consciousness, and being "positive" only reinforces typical dumb repression and saying what needs to be said, and what is on one's mind is necessary if we are ever to get on with it.

Julian.