Psychedelic hybrids

[drugo]

Below is great and lucid take on the history of the psychedelic movement from Byron Bay local Gregg Lahood. The whole article can be found at http://relationalspirit.com/

According to philosopher Donald Rothberg,

psychedelic substances have played a pivotal role in

the recent renewal of spirituality in North America

and Western Europe—but this role has gone largely

unacknowledged (1993, p. 109). These substances with

extremely powerful psychotropic properties were only

discovered recently by the Western world and released

into a somewhat virginal Western psyche. They were

to spread rapidly into the seventy-million-strong Baby

Boom generation affecting music, dress-style, psychology,

and religious values at a time when the American psyche

was bogged down in a highly (one might say devoutly)

contested war in South East Asia. This unusual situation

promoted what Robert Bellah (1976) described as a

complex cultural and religious revolution (p. 78). In the

words of Beatle John Lennon:

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

You tell me that it’s evolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world....

You say you’ll change a constitution

Well, you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it’s the institution

Well, you know

You better free your mind instead

(Lennon & McCartney, 1968, as quoted in

Aldridge, 1969, p. 104)

Freeing your mind became the mantra for this inner

revolution and was an allusion to Western understandings

of Eastern religious ideas of transcendence, sacramental

drug use, and the imperative of attaining so-called higher

or cosmic consciousness (equated with peace and love as

opposed to violent revolution—for which the time was

also ripe according to the Rolling Stones (cf. Wyman &

Coleman, 1990). It was here in the fiery crucible between

1963 when America entered the war in Vietnam, and

1974 when that war ended in America’s defeat, that New

Age transpersonalism was shaped. In the protesting

counter-culture one finds a dizzying level of cosmological

hybridization, juxtaposition, intermixing, adhesion,

linkage, and the tactical blurring of boundaries between

the psychotropic drug experience with multiple conjoined

religious liberations (cf. Lahood, 2008).

What began simply enough with Aldous

Huxley’s (1954/2009) blending of mescaline with

Christianity— “all I am suggesting is that the mescalin

experience is what Catholic theologians call a ‘gratuitous

grace’” (p. 73)—would become a frenzy of religious

syncretism and hybridization. The counter-culture

would affect the transgressive reality shaping act of

fusing not two, but multiple cosmologies together and

this, I would argue, ended up as American nondualism

or, in other words, Wilber’s (1976) perennial postulate.

Robert Elwood (1973), in his classic study of magic and

the occult in modern America, confirmed that while

they drew from archaic symbols, the charismatic leaders

in the psychedelic movement described an “innovative

constellation with a life of its own” (p. 18).

James Slotkin (1956/1975) in his conversion to

the Native American Church, a religion that fused ritual

peyote eating with a blend of Aztec and Christian elements

(Burkholder, 1974) claimed, “This concept of salvation by

knowledge, to be achieved through revelation … through

Peyote … is a doctrine similar to that of early Middle

Eastern Gnosticism” (p. 100). Slotkin wrote that peyote

was a sacrament that could induce mystical awareness for

hours rather than moments. His early work was glowingly

incorporated into Huxley’s (1954) The Doors of Perception,

in which Huxley blended the mescaline experience with

the cosmological postulate dharmakaya—the void of

Tibetan Buddhism—and Christian Grace.

In 1957 Life magazine printed a 17-page

promotion of the visionary magic mushroom called by

the Aztecs teonanacatl (Flesh of the Gods) hinting that

the visions of poet William Blake would become available

to one and all. Theologian Allan Watts in his 1962 work

Joyous Cosmology, specifically related the suspension of the

subject/object dichotomy in LSD use with the immediate

awareness promoted in Zen Buddhism, considering it

commensurate with the Buddhist void (p. 91) and with

Richard Bucke’s notion of cosmic consciousness (p. 17).

Richard Bucke in 1901 had published his influential

study of comparative mysticism, Cosmic Consciousness:

38 International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Lahood

A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, in which

he held that Christ, Buddha, Plotinus, Meister Eckhart,

Muhammad, and William Blake shared the same

pinnacle of consciousness. Timothy Leary (1963) in The

Psychedelic Experience categorically equated the peak of

the drug experience to the Clear Light or the Void of

Tibetan Buddhism.

Gestalt psychologists were also involved in

psychedelic work, among them Claudio Naranjo (1973).

California had seen a gestalt boom in the ‘50s and

‘60s and the Esalen Institute became the seat of the

counter-culture’s global therapeutic project. It is widely

acknowledged that gestalt was strongly influenced by

Buddhism in the form of Zen (Clarkson, 1989, p. 12).

The ultimate goal of Zen (connected to the doctrine of

no-self) was joined with the gestalt aim of integration

of the whole personality (which again, is not really a

very Zen pursuit). Buddhist terms such as emptiness,

the fertile or pregnant void, and satori were appropriated

and blended with gestalt practice (cf. Perls, Hefferline, &

Goodman 1951, pp. 358-359; Van Dusen, 1975, p. 90).

Stanislav Grof (1998), an émigré and

psychoanalyst from Czechoslovakia and one of the cofounders

of transpersonal psychology along with Maslow,

strongly paralleled his LSD cosmology and ontology with

Kashmir Shaivism and evoked the Hindu concept of the

satchitananda (p. 117) to describe what he also called

the void, absolute consciousness, and the pregnant void.

Grof (1977) also linked his cosmology to Maslow’s peak

experience (p. 158). Maslow’s (1964) self-actualization

theory emerged in tandem with psychedelics and he made

several references to LSD and psilocybin as useful for

people who could not have a peak experience otherwise

(pp. 27, 80). In Be Here Now, a best-selling book by

Tim Leary’s collaborator and Hindu convert, Ram

Dass (1971b) claimed access to cosmic consciousness as

commensurate with the Christian idea of the kingdom

of God, the Hindu notion of satchitananda, and the

Buddhist notion of the void (p. 16).

Again, what is present in all this is a unique form

of cosmic hybridity, the almost impossible joining and

mixing together of diverse and divergent cosmological

postulates in America brought into being largely in the

American religious counter-culture. This hybridization

of various religious postulates with the drug experience

has a history that begins roughly in the late 1950s, and

this appears to be the invisible hand that shaped what

20 years later would come to be called the New Age. As

the author of Storming Heaven: LSD and the American

Dream, Jay Stevens (1987) had it:

Certainly the variety of interests that groups itself

under the rubric “the New Age” is largely an

outgrowth of the psychedelic movement, although

just as an oak is much more than the seed it springs

from, the New Age is far more complex and

impressive than anyone could have guessed back in

1967, when the hippies thought they were creating a

new world with nothing more than Love and LSD.

(p. 495)

The transpersonal movement, it is to be remembered,

sprang from that very same seed, as did religious or

spiritual feminism (Spretnak, 1982, p. xii).7

The notion of consciousness evolution was

also a familiar and positive trope in the religious

counterculture. To quote Stevens (1987) again,

we are doomed unless a way can be found to speed up

evolution, to consciously push the smart monkey to a

higher level, to renew the assault on the gods, which

was the secret purpose of all religions. But can we

consciously evolve ourselves? LSD... was the hippie

sacrament, a consciousness-expander, a tool that

would push us up the evolutionary ladder.” (p. 5)

The rhetoric of evolution is still very much a central

trope in what religious historian Wouter Hanegraaff

(1996) called “New Age perennialism” (p. 329), and

in Ken Wilber’s evolutionary ladder-of-consciousness

transpersonalism.

I wonder what cultural-religious hybrids await the future of the Aussie psychedelic scene?

Perhaps Judaism mixed with Sufism and inspired by the religious codes of Scientology, Ayahuasca shamanism, Bevis and Buthead, Muhutma Gandhi and Oprah Winfrey. No, but in all seriousness, it appears that the shamanism-indigenous and Eastern-orientalism psychedelic memes are beginning to fade from our culture, making way for new myths. So, what do you think are the next meta-narratives for our psycheledlic realities?

[Angelologist]

Below is great and lucid take on the history of the psychedelic movement from Byron Bay local Gregg Lahood. The whole article can be found at http://relationalspirit.com/

I wonder what cultural-religious hybrids await the future of the Aussie psychedelic scene?

Perhaps Judaism mixed with Sufism and inspired by the religious codes of Scientology, Ayahuasca shamanism, Bevis and Buthead, Muhutma Gandhi and Oprah Winfrey. No, but in all seriousness, it appears that the shamanism-indigenous and Eastern-orientalism psychedelic memes are beginning to fade from our culture, making way for new myths. So, what do you think are the next meta-narratives for our psycheledlic realities?

 

Dear Entheophanic,

I think that cosmological hybidity is where we are at right now and I see this as a definite maybe in terms of our religious future well beyond the pedetrianism of perennialism. But to push it further I would think that intentional hybridity is where its at i.e. the purposful blending of religious styles in a way that honors both or all parties, cultures, communities, persons embodied etc. So given that yage comes from a cultural and cosmological background (and which can't really be seperated from the 60s Western counter-culture) how will it mutate in the future - and how does capitalizm-comodification and shamanistic authoritarianism (will to power) begin to shape that culture. But further still i would imagine that when psychedelic use begins to orientate itself around liberating relationships (with whatever) then this is where it finds its apotheosis.

[drugo]

Hi Angel, thanks for the illuminating thoughts, and welcome to the forum.

I very much like the sounds of moving beyond pedestrian perennialism and the idea of intentional religious hybrids. Yet, what exactly do you mean by:

the purposful blending of religious styles in a way that honors both or all parties, cultures, communities, persons embodied etc. (emphasis added)

I like to chew Kenyan Khat leaves, though should I honour the coercive structures of female circumcision that the Kenyan Kikuyu peoples notoriously practice? Or perhaps by protesting against such practices I am honouring the females who don't want their vaginas (and orgasisms) mutilated. Is it possible to 'honour all', including those values and practices that contridict each other? Perhaps I am miss-understanding your use of 'honour' here?

................

i would imagine that when psychedelic use begins to orientate itself around liberating relationships (with whatever) then this is where it finds its apotheosis.

 

A spirituality that works to liberate relationships. This sounds timely. Especially given the plight of rampant individualism and social-disintegration in the modern world.

What do you mean by psychedelic use oriented towards liberating relationships? It sounds extremely fascinating.

[ThunderIdeal]

it appears that the shamanism-indigenous and Eastern-orientalism psychedelic memes are beginning to fade from our culture, making way for new myths. So, what do you think are the next meta-narratives for our psycheledlic realities?

 

fusion of science and spirituality

[drugo]

Hmm.. Like puting theo back in theory?

[ThunderIdeal]

i went to write a simple explanation but it isn't so straightforward. science and mysticism were not separate things until recently, so what i was going to suggest isn't so original after all, except that science has come a long way in the past few centuries. the inspiration for my comment was that my visions express very far out mystical themes but imply a lot of real science in the process, like those dimensions are not beyond the scope of science just beyond its current scope. some of the ideas laid down by science apply there and we can take those ideas there, whereas there might be glimmers of hope but the world of real science can not currently bring those dimensions into the laboratory.

[ThunderIdeal]

our resident physics guru can be quoted thus

Physics is trippy shit.

 

i think he might be right about that.

[Bretloth]

I see psychedelia moving away from more abstract concepts towards a more down to earth 'way'. The more I get into my plants and ethnobotany, the more I don't bother with religeon, philosophy and science. I'm more focused on plants, edible, medicinal, spiritual and enjoyable it doesn't matter. And those plants like us need a non toxic relatively stable enviroment with a balanced and harmonious ecosystem replenishing it. I honestly believe that the predominantly religeous banning of sacred plant use has been a large reason for the psyche of man to have gotten so disconnected from their enviroment. Lost in a sea of abstract thoughts and promises, guilt trips and mental cages. That have allowed us to destroy what is real, what is here and now, for the promise of a heaven somewhere out there, in abstract land. Entheogens and hopefully the mass proliferation of entheogens and psychedelics will in my opinion help to arrest our drifting off into the abstract dreams of the priest, philosopher, guru and scientist, snake oil salesman, charlatan, con man and schill, building sand castles on the beach, towards what's real, what you can eat, the seasons, life and death, what connects you to the universe, being apart of it in harmony. A combination of psychedelics/entheogens with self sustainability and ecology.

Edited June 5, 2011 by Bretloth

[drugo]

Hi Bretloth, great shhpeel there, I really feel your affirmation and drive for human-ecosystem harmony and ethics.

I find this part interesting and curious also:

Entheogens and hopefully the mass proliferation of entheogens and psychedelics will in my opinion help to arrest our drifting off into the abstract dreams of the priest, philosopher, guru and scientist, snake oil salesman, charlatan, con man and schill,

 

It appears to me that entheogens often cause one to 'drift off into abstract dreams', into that peculiar territory of paraperception, voices, visions, entities, myths -- a place that is perhaps indespensible -- the vectors of chaos where order finds its resource.

One of the biggest difficulties I'm seeing in the Aussie entheogenic community (and I imagine that it is not confind to Aus) is the huge and complex challange of 'grounding' and integrating the fertile and chaotic resources of order, vision, and knowing that may emerge from entheogenic journeys.

I don't think that entheogens are the answer to stopping us from 'drifting off into the abstract', in fact, it seems that entheogens often intensify the ability to reconfigure reality by offering a 'drift' of sorts. Of course, if you drift too far you might get eaten by chaos, madness and reptilian-insect nomads.

And while I agree that there are many philosophers, scientisists and priests (do you mean theurgists and mystics also?) that advocate types of 'dreams' (or realities) that are not worth crossing the road for, there are also persons working under those categories that are worth collaborating with to co-create rich religious and cultural worldviews. For example, I think that you'll find that deep-ecology, environmentalism, and certain forms of feminism can offer great resources for your ecological sentiments.

The idea of 'detraditionalisation' taken to the extreme often results in nihilism and world-annihilation -- one man takes on the world -- by claiming that all is corrupt and steeped in dogma. I prefer to co-create and collaborate with my fellow peers, negotiating what works and doesn't work for us -- inquiring into life in the here and now -- while standing on the shoulders of the giants that have come before me.

[dundee]

I wonder what cultural-religious hybrids await the future of the Aussie psychedelic scene?

 

Hybrids from the Stars

[Angelologist]

could be eh? if one experiences contact with and (angel, alien, presence, diety, spirit-scape, starman -or woman) does that person become something of the entity (a hybrid) a cosmic half-caste, do I become 'the' mushroom entity... so am i, after an encounter in with the deep psychedelic mystery, part kiwi, part scotish, part lebonese and part angel or insect nomad.

006']

Hybrids from the Stars

 

[drugo]

could be eh? if one experiences contact with and (angel, alien, presence, diety, spirit-scape, starman -or woman) does that person become something of the entity (a hybrid) a cosmic half-caste, do I become 'the' mushroom entity... so am i, after an encounter in with the deep psychedelic mystery, part kiwi, part scotish, part lebonese and part angel or insect nomad.

 

!!! cosmic mongrel-ology

[dundee]

could be eh? if one experiences contact with and (angel, alien, presence, diety, spirit-scape, starman -or woman) does that person become something of the entity (a hybrid) a cosmic half-caste, do I become 'the' mushroom entity... so am i, after an encounter in with the deep psychedelic mystery, part kiwi, part scotish, part lebonese and part angel or insect nomad.

006']

Hybrids from the Stars

 

Some say we are all connected, we are all one, every tiny piece of the puzzle contains the whole picture, if so then the angel, diety, alien is already and always has been a part of you, are we not all just Hybrids of consciousness

I think that an understanding among humanity will come when we understand our connection to the greater part of the universe beyond our earth confines, a giant global leap in thought and intent will create a new consciousness that takes us beyond any religous/cultural dogmas.

[Angelologist]

I see ...since we are all one there can be nothing new...I amnot sure if I live in that kind of psychologized universe

and in sentence two you seem to be rehashing old new age religious and cultural dogmas yourself the sort of meta dogma that runs new age thinking and to me is a form of cosmological imperialism

[dundee]

I see ...since we are all one there can be nothing new...I amnot sure if I live in that kind of psychologized universe

and in sentence two you seem to be rehashing old new age religious and cultural dogmas yourself the sort of meta dogma that runs new age thinking and to me is a form of cosmological imperialism

 

lol, what is the truth, an infinite universe has all possibilities, its a mathmatical certainty, all views, whatever you choose is real within your dimension

Its seems the "new age" concept has been around for thousands of years, alien interaction with earth, hardly seems "new age" to me

Why do I think life forms from beyond "normal" human understanding will have a direct influence on earth, because of personal experiences

Edited June 13, 2011 by dundee

[Bretloth]

Hi Bretloth, great shhpeel there, I really feel your affirmation and drive for human-ecosystem harmony and ethics.

I find this part interesting and curious also:

It appears to me that entheogens often cause one to 'drift off into abstract dreams', into that peculiar territory of paraperception, voices, visions, entities, myths -- a place that is perhaps indespensible -- the vectors of chaos where order finds its resource.

One of the biggest difficulties I'm seeing in the Aussie entheogenic community (and I imagine that it is not confind to Aus) is the huge and complex challange of 'grounding' and integrating the fertile and chaotic resources of order, vision, and knowing that may emerge from entheogenic journeys.

I don't think that entheogens are the answer to stopping us from 'drifting off into the abstract', in fact, it seems that entheogens often intensify the ability to reconfigure reality by offering a 'drift' of sorts. Of course, if you drift too far you might get eaten by chaos, madness and reptilian-insect nomads.

And while I agree that there are many philosophers, scientisists and priests (do you mean theurgists and mystics also?) that advocate types of 'dreams' (or realities) that are not worth crossing the road for, there are also persons working under those categories that are worth collaborating with to co-create rich religious and cultural worldviews. For example, I think that you'll find that deep-ecology, environmentalism, and certain forms of feminism can offer great resources for your ecological sentiments.

The idea of 'detraditionalisation' taken to the extreme often results in nihilism and world-annihilation -- one man takes on the world -- by claiming that all is corrupt and steeped in dogma. I prefer to co-create and collaborate with my fellow peers, negotiating what works and doesn't work for us -- inquiring into life in the here and now -- while standing on the shoulders of the giants that have come before me.

 

I don't see the entheogenic experience as abstract at all, quite the oppositte. I find it gnostic, a deeply personal experience. A gnostic understanding surely is more valuable to the individual than an abstract concept one must have faith to believe in.

[drugo]

I don't see the entheogenic experience as abstract at all, quite the oppositte. I find it gnostic, a deeply personal experience. A gnostic understanding surely is more valuable to the individual than an abstract concept one must have faith to believe in.

 

Convincing 'gnostic' or embodied divine experiences tend to challenge and reconfigure one's abstract understandings -- causing a 'drift' in belief. Cartesian dualism, and the alienation of thinking from the body, is a peculiar retardation of intelligence. While, yes, the body and its profound abilities are often subordinated by modern folks, there is no need to castrate, alienate and trap our

sacred ability to think from our abilities of perception, emotion and entheognosis

entheonauts love to talk about the ineffability of 'gnostic' experience -- a rather strange irony in itself. Thought may be limited (*abstract), but so is perception. Careful to not throw the baby out with the bath water.

People often bag-out 'thought' when there own thoughts are being seriously threatened -- a kind of unconscious defence.

Edited June 16, 2011 by entheophanic