read entire article @ alternet.org
& some more Multidimensional food for thought from the brilliant Contemporary Shaman Terrence McKenna:
“History is ending because the dominator culture has led the human species into a blind alley, and as the inevitable chaostrophie approaches, people look for metaphors and answers. Every time a culture gets into trouble it casts itself back into the past looking for the last sane moment it ever knew. And the last sane moment we ever knew was on the plains of Africa 15,000 years ago rocked in the cradle of the Great Horned Mushroom Goddess before history, before standing armies, before slavery and property, before warfare and phonetic alphabets and monotheism, before, before, before. And this is where the future is taking us because the secret faith of the twentieth century is not modernism, the secret faith of the twentieth century is nostalgia for the archaic, nostalgia for the paleolithic, and that gives us body piercing, abstract expressionism, surrealism, jazz, rock-n-roll and catastrophe theory. The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom dotted plains of Africa where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are. And why does this matter? It matters because it shows that the way out is back and that the future is a forward escape into the past. This is what the psychedelic experience means. Its a doorway out of history and into the wiring under the board in eternity. And I tell you this because if the community understands what it is that holds it together the community will be better able to streamline itself for flight into hyperspace because what we need is a new myth, what we need is a new true story that tells us where we're going in the universe and that true story is that the ego is a product of pathology, and when psilocybin is regularly part of the human experience the ego is suppressed and the supression of the ego means the defeat of the dominators, the materialists, the product peddlers. Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the importance of the feeling of immediate experience - and nobody can sell that to you and nobody can buy it from you, so the dominator culture is not interested in the felt presence of immediate experience, but that's what holds the community together. And as we break out of the silly myths of science, and the infantile obsessions of the marketplace what we discover through the psychedelic experience is that in the body, IN THE BODY, there are Niagras of beauty, alien beauty, alien dimensions that are part of the self, the richest part of life. I think of going to the grave without having a psychedelic experience like going to the grave without ever having sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about. The mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature. What the Archaic Revival means is shamanism, ecstacy, orgiastic sexuality, and the defeat of the three enemies of the people. And the three enemies of the people are hegemony, monogamy and monotony! And if you get them on the run you have the dominators sweating folks, because that means your getting it all reconnected, and getting it all reconnected means putting aside the idea of separateness and self-definition through thing-fetish. Getting it all connected means tapping into the Gaian mind, and the Gaian mind is what we're calling the psychedelic experience. Its an experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet. And without that experience we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies. But with that experience the compass of the self can be set, and that's the idea; figuring out how to reset the compass of the self through community, through ecstatic dance, through psychedelics, sexuality, intelligence, INTELLIGENCE. This is what we have to have to make the forward escape into hyperspace.” ~Terence McKenna
Replies
The War on Consciousness
by Graham Hancock
We are told that the "war on drugs" is being waged, on our behalf, by our governments and their armed bureaucracies and police forces, to save us from ourselves. "Potential for abuse and harm" are supposed to be the criteria by which the use of drugs is suppressed - the greater a drug's potential for abuse and harm, the greater and more vigorous the degree of suppression, and the more draconian the penalties applied against its users.
In line with this scheme drugs are typically ranked into a hierarchy, Schedule I, II and III in the US, Class A, B and C in the UK, and so on and so forth all around the world. Thus to be arrested for possession of a Schedule I or Class A drug results in heavier penalties than possession of a Schedule III or Class C drug. Generally if a drug is deemed to have some currently accepted medical use it is likely to be placed in a lower schedule than if it has none, notwithstanding the fact that it may have potential for abuse or harm. In the absence of any recognised therapeutic effects drugs that are highly addictive, such as heroin or crack cocaine, or drugs that are profoundly psychotropic, e.g. hallucinogens such as LSD, psilocybin or DMT, are almost universally placed in the highest schedules and their use attracts the heaviest penalties.
The notable exceptions to this system of ranking according to perceived "harms" are, of course, alcohol and tobacco, both highly addictive and harmful drugs - far more so than cannabis or psilocybin for example - but yet socially accepted on the grounds of long customary use and thus not placed in any schedule at all.
The failed war
When we look at the history of the "war on drugs" over approximately the last forty years it must be asked whether the criminalisation of the use of any of the prohibited substances has in any way been effective in terms of the stated goals that this "war" was supposedly mounted to achieve? Specifically, has there been a marked reduction in the use of illegal drugs over the past forty years - as one would expect with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money having been spent over such a long period on their suppression - and has there been a reduction in the harms that these drugs supposedly cause to the individual and to society?
It is unnecessary here to set down screeds of statistics, facts and figures readily available from published sources to assert that in terms of its own stated objectives the "war on drugs" has been an abject failure and a shameful and scandalous waste of public money. Indeed it is well known, and not disputed, that the very societies that attempt most vigorously to suppress illegal drugs, and in which users are subject to the most stringent penalties, have seen a vast and continuous increase in the per capita consumption of these drugs. This is tacitly admitted by the vast armed bureaucracies set up to persecute drug users in our societies which every year demand more and more public money to fund their suppressive activities; if the suppression were working one would expect their budgets to go down, not up.
Meanwhile the social harms caused by the "war on drugs" itself are manifest and everywhere evident. In the United States for example there have been more than 20 million arrests for the possession of the Schedule I drug marijuana since 1965 and 11 million since 1990. The pace of arrests is increasing year on year bringing us to the astonishing situation where, today, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 38 seconds. The result, as Rob Kampia, director of the Marijuana Policy Project, recently observed, is that marijuana arrests outnumber arrests for "all violent crimes combined," meaning police are spending inordinate amounts of time chasing nonviolent criminals. And it goes without saying that those who are arrested for the use of marijuana and other illegal drugs do suffer immense harm as a result of the punishments inflicted on them - including, but not limited to, personal trauma, loss of freedom, loss of reputation, loss of employment prospects, and serious, long-lasting financial damage.
Inventory of harm
Such matters are only the beginning of the long inventory of harm caused by the war on drugs.
Western industrial societies, and all those cultures around the globe that increasingly seek to emulate them, teach us to venerate above all else the alert, problem solving state of consciousness that is particularly appropriate to the conduct of science, business, war and logical enquiry, and to such activities as driving motor cars, operating machinery, performing surgery, doing accounts, drawing up plans, accumulating wealth, etc, etc, etc. But there are many other states of consciousness that the amazing and mysterious human brain is capable of embracing and it appears to be a natural human urge, as deep-rooted as our urges for food, sex and nurturing relationships, to seek out and explore such "altered states of consciousness." A surprisingly wide range of methods and techniques (from breathing exercises, to meditation, to fasting, to hypnosis, to rhythmic music, to extended periods of vigorous dancing, etc, etc) are available to help us to achieve this goal, but there is no doubt that the consumption of those plants and substances called "drugs" in our societies are amongst the most effective and efficient means available to mankind to explore these profoundly altered states of consciousness.
The result is that people naturally seek out drugs and the temporary alterations in consciousness that they produce. Not all people in every society will do this, perhaps not even a majority, but certainly a very substantial minority - for example the 2 million Britons who are known to take illegal drugs each month, or those 20 million people in the US who have been arrested for marijuana possession since 1965. And these of course are only the tip of the iceberg of the much larger population of American marijuana users, running into many more tens of millions, who have, by luck or care, not yet fallen foul of the law and are thus not reflected in the arrest statistics.
Needless to say, it is of course exactly the same urge to alter consciousness that also impels even larger numbers of people to use legal (and often extremely harmful) drugs such as alcohol and tobacco - which, though they may not alter consciousness as dramatically as, say, LSD or marijuana, are nevertheless undoubtedly used and sought out for the limited alterations of consciousness that they do produce.
For the hundreds of millions of people around the world whose need to experience altered states is not and cannot be satisfied by drunken oblivion or the stimulant effects of tobacco, it is therefore completely natural to turn to "drugs" - and, since the "war on drugs" means that there is no legal source of supply of these substances, the inevitable result is that those who wish to use them must resort to illegal sources of supply.
Herein lies great and enduring harm. For it is obvious, and we may all see the effects everywhere, that the illegalisation of drug use has empowered and enriched a vast and truly horrible global criminal underworld by guaranteeing that it is the only source of supply of these drugs. We have, in effect, delivered our youth - the sector within our societies that most strongly feels the need to experience altered states of consciousness - into the hands of the very worst mobsters and sleazeballs on the planet. To buy drugs, our sons and daughters have no choice but to approach and associate with violent and greedy criminals. And because the proceeds from illegal drug sales are so enormous, we are all caught up in the inevitable consequences of turf wars and murders amongst the gangs and cartels competing in this blackest of black markets.
It should be completely obvious to our governments, after more than forty years of dismal failure to suppress illegal drug use, that their policies in this area do not work and will never work. It should be completely obvious, a simple logical step, to realise that by decriminalising drug use, and making the supply of all drugs available to those adults who wish to use them through legal and properly regulated channels, we could, at a stroke, put out of business the vast criminal enterprise that presently flourishes on the supply of illegal drugs.
It ought to be obvious but somehow it is not.
Instead the powers that be continue to pursue the same harsh and cruel policies that they have been wedded to from the outset, seeking to strengthen and reinforce them rather than to replace them with something better. Indeed the only "change" that the large armed bureaucracies that enforce these policies have ever sought since the "war on drugs" began has, year on year, been to demand even more money, even more arms, and even more draconian legislative powers to break into homes, to confiscate property, and to deprive otherwise law-abiding citizens of liberty and wreck their lives. In the process we have seen our once free and upstanding societies - which used to respect individual choice and freedom of conscience above all else - slide remorselessly down the slippery slope that leads to the police state. And all this is being done in our name, with our money, by our own governments, to "save us from ourselves"!
Winners and losers
Who benefits from this colossal stupidity and systematic wickedness? And who loses? The beneficiaries are easy to spot.
First, the large and ever expanding armed bureaucracies, funded with large and ever growing sums of public money to suppress the use of drugs, have benefited enormously. Everyone who works for them, including the PR men and spin merchants who concoct the propaganda used to sell their policies to us, including their subcontractors both public and private, and including the (often privately-run) prisons stuffed to bursting point with their victims, are the beneficiaries of this catastrophic failure on the part of our governments to think laterally, generously and creatively. Whether you are a DEA agent or a prison guard you naturally have a deeply vested interest in maintaining the miserable status quo, justified by the "war on drugs", that keeps you in your job, that ensures your monthly pay checks continue to come in, and that continuously expands your budgets.
The second main category of beneficiaries are - of course! - the criminal gangs and cartels that the present misguided official policies have empowered as the sole source of drugs in our societies. Over the past forty-plus years they have earned countless billions of dollars from the sale of illegal drugs which, had they only been legal, would not have earned them a single penny.
Who are the losers? First and most directly those millions upon millions of good, non-violent people in our societies who have been jailed or otherwise punished for the possession and use of drugs. Second, virtually everyone else in our societies as well, regardless of whether or not they use illegal drugs themselves. For the quality of life of all of us has been diminished by the growth of the police state and by the murderous activities of the criminal gangs enfranchised, and kept in business, by the blind and mindless perpetuation of this failed and bankrupt "war on drugs".
So, in summary, the criminalisation of drug use has brought no positive effects, only negative ones, and it has not stopped, nor even reduced the use of dangerous and harmful drugs. On the contrary, we have been so little "saved from ourselves" by this phoney war that the use of almost all illegal drugs, far from decreasing, has dramatically increased during the past forty years.
Learning from tobacco
A contrary example, but one that is most instructive, concerns the use of tobacco in our societies.
Tobacco has never been illegal; far from that, its use was for a long time actively encouraged by clever advertising campaigns mounted by the multi-billion dollar tobacco industry. But the use of tobacco does undoubtedly lead to great harms, both for the health of the individual and the health of society at large, and facts about these harms have been widely and successfully disseminated without a single tobacco user ever being arrested or persecuted.
It is interesting in this connection to compare the success of public information campaigns about the dangers of tobacco use with the utter failure of public information campaigns about the dangers of marijuana use. The reason the anti-marijuana campaigns have failed is that millions of users know from their own direct, long-term experience that marijuana does not do them any great harm and (with reference to the most recent anti-marijuana propaganda) most definitely does not drive them mad. It may well be true that very small numbers of fragile teenagers whose mental health was already compromised have had their latent schizophrenia or other similar conditions worsened by the use of marijuana - but the vast majority of marijuana users are not at all affected in this way. Likewise efforts by government agencies to persuade us that new stronger strains of marijuana presently available on the market (e.g. "skunk") are more dangerous to our health than traditional strains of marijuana because they deliver much more of the active ingredient THC to our systems, have not persuaded anyone. Regular marijuana users presented with a stronger strain simply adjust their consumption, consuming far less of it than they would of a weaker strain in order to achieve the same effect, and feel intuitively that smoking less of any substance has got to be better for their lungs and general health than smoking more.
The consequence of this disconnect between personal experience and "facts" purveyed by official public information campaigns is that huge numbers of people no longer believe anything that our governments have to say to us about drugs. There is an increasingly widespread recognition that tainted, unreliable and tendentious information is being passed on - information that cannot be trusted. And this distrust of official sources of information is, of course, only worsened by the propagandistic character, witch hunts and scare tactics of the "war on drugs" and by the realisation that the health information purveyed in anti-drug campaigns is not underwritten by caring and nurturing official policies but instead by draconian criminal sanctions and punitive authoritarian attitudes.
Where the health hazards of tobacco use are concerned, on the other hand, since there are no criminal sanctions against tobacco users, no large armed bureaucracies to enforce them, and no special interests to serve by the dissemination of misleading information, the evidence has been accepted and believed by most rational adults freely making up their own minds, precisely as one would expect.
The result? While the use of illegal drugs has everywhere skyrocketed over the past forty years, regardless of the violent persecution of the users of these drugs, the use of tobacco, in a climate of free choice and reliable information, has plummeted to an all time low. The consumption of tobacco, once seen as a socially approved, even desirable, and, indeed, "stylish" habit has come to be regarded as a pariah activity that only idiots would indulge themselves in. Although there are, of course, still many tobacco users - because nicotine is intensely addictive - their numbers continue to fall dramatically year on year as more and more of us make the free choice to give up the habit for the sake of our health.
Is it not obvious that the "tobacco model" could be applied with equal success to all illegal drugs? In other words, is it not obvious, if our governments really wish us to stop using drugs, that immediate legalisation of adult personal use must follow, that the giant armed bureaucracies that persecute drug users must be closed down, and that the whole matter must be thrown open, in the way that tobacco-use has been thrown open, to the effects of good, reliable information and the sound commonsense of the vast majority of the population? If that happens then we can be certain that drugs that are genuinely harmful to health and wellbeing (in the way that tobacco certainly is) will fall out of favour with their users in exactly the way that tobacco has done. And if it turns out that some of these drugs are in fact not so harmful, then it should not concern us at all if some adults make the free choice to continue to use them.
Of course, even against a backdrop of legalisation and good information, some adults will make the free choice to continue to use genuinely harmful drugs as well, just as some adults today do continue to make the free choice to continue to use tobacco. But that, too, is as it should be in a truly free society. Democratic Congressman Barney Frank was spot on the truth of what a free society really means when he announced a proposal in August 2008 to end federal penalties for Americans carrying fewer than 100 grams (almost quarter of a pound), of marijuana. "The vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government's business," Frank said on Capitol Hill. "I don't think it is the government's business to tell you how to spend your leisure time."
It goes without saying that Frank's proposal is unlikely to succeed in the hysterical climate of disinformation that presently surrounds this subject, and we must ask ourselves why this should be so. Why are commonsense proposals for the legalisation of drugs never adopted, or even seriously considered by our governments? Why, on the contrary, are such proposals dogmatically opposed with even more propaganda and tainted information emanating from the big armed anti-drug bureaucracies?
That legalisation of drugs would shrink the budgets of those selfsame bureaucracies, and ultimately put them out of business, is part of the answer. But to find the real engine that perpetuates the war on drugs we need to look deeper and ask fundamental questions about the relationship between the individual and the state in modern Western democracies.
Freedom of consciousness
What is Western civilisation all about? What are its greatest achievements and highest aspirations?
It's my guess that most people's replies to these questions would touch - before all the other splendid achievements of science, literature, technology, and the economy - on the nurture and growth of freedom. Individual freedom.
This includes, but is not limited to: freedom from the unruly power of monarchs, freedom from the unwarranted intrusions of the state and its agents into our personal lives, freedom from the tyranny of the Church and its Inquisition, freedom from hunger and want, freedom from slavery and servitude, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to elect our own leaders, freedom to be homosexual - and so on and so forth.
The list of freedoms we enjoy today that were not enjoyed by our ancestors is indeed a long and impressive one. It is therefore exceedingly strange that Western civilization in the 21st century enjoys no real freedom of consciousness.
There can be no more intimate and elemental part of the individual than his or her own consciousness. At the deepest level, our consciousness is what we are - to the extent that if we are not sovereign over our own consciousness then we cannot in any meaningful sense be sovereign over anything else either. So it has to be highly significant that, far from encouraging freedom of consciousness, our societies in fact violently deny our right to sovereignty in this intensely personal area, and have effectively outlawed all states of consciousness other than those on a very narrowly-defined and officially-approved list. The war on drugs has thus unexpectedly succeeded in engineering a stark reversal of the true direction of Western history by empowering faceless bureaucratic authorities to send armed agents to break into our homes, arrest us, throw us into prison and deprive us of our income and reputation simply because we wish to explore the sometimes radical, though always temporary, alterations in our own consciousness that "drugs" facilitate.
Other than being against arbitrary rules that the state has imposed on us, personal drug use by adults is not a "crime" in any true moral or ethical sense and usually takes place in the privacy of our own homes where it cannot possibly do any harm to others. For some it is a simple lifestyle choice. For others, particularly where the hallucinogens such as LSD, psilocybin and DMT are concerned, it is a means to make contact with alternate realms and parallel dimensions, and perhaps even with the divine. For some, drugs are an aid to creativity and focused mental effort. For others they are a means to tune out for a while from everyday cares and worries. But in all cases it seems probable that the drive to alter consciousness, from which all drug use stems, has deep genetic roots.
Other adult lifestyle choices with deep genetic roots also used to be violently persecuted by our societies. A notable example is homosexuality, once punishable by death or long periods of imprisonment, which is now entirely legal between consenting adults - and fully recognised as being none of the state's business - in all Western cultures. (Although approximately thirteen US states still have "anti-sodomy" laws banning homosexuality, these statutes have rarely been enforced in recent years, and in 2003 the US Supreme Court invalidated those laws.) The legalisation of homosexuality lifted a huge burden of human misery, secretiveness, paranoia and genuine fear from our societies, and at the same time not a single one of the homophobic lobby's fire-and-brimstone predictions about the end of Western civilisation came true.
Likewise it is not so long ago that natural seers, mediums and healers who felt the calling to become "witches" were burned at the stake for "crimes" that we now look back on as harmless eccentricities at worst.
Perhaps it will be the same with drugs? Perhaps in a century or two, if we have not destroyed human civilisation by then, our descendants will look back with disgust on the barbaric laws of our time that punished a minority so harshly (with imprisonment, financial ruin, and worse) for responsibly, quietly and in the privacy of their own homes seeking alterations in their own consciousness through the use of drugs. Perhaps we will even end up looking back on the persecution of drug users with the same sense of shame and horror that we now view the persecution of homosexuals, the burning of witches and the imposition of slavery on others.
Meanwhile it's no accident that the war on drugs has been accompanied by an unprecedented expansion of governmental power into the previously inviolable inner sanctum of individual consciousness. On the contrary it seems to me that the state's urge to power has all along been the real reason for this "war" - not an honest desire on the part of the authorities to rescue society and the individual from the harms caused by drugs, but as a means to legitimise increasing bureaucratic control and intervention in almost every other area of our lives as well.
This is the way freedom is hijacked - not all at once, out in the open, but stealthily, little by little, behind closed doors, and with our own agreement. How will we be able to resist when so many of us have already willingly handed over the keys to our own consciousness to the state and accepted without protest that it is okay to be told what we may and may not do, what we may and may not explore, even what we may and may not experience, with this most precious, sapient, unique and individual part of ourselves?
If we are willing to accept that then we can be persuaded to accept anything.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/war_consciousness
( ( ( TemetNosce555 ) ) )
Plant/Human Symbiosis & the Fall of Humanity: A Talk with Tony Wright
by Trevor Smith
“I believe that the lost secret of human emergence . . . the undefined catalyst that took a very bright monkey and turned that species into a self-reflecting dreamer . . . that catalyst has to be sought in these alkaloids in the food chain that were catalyzing higher states of intellectual activity.”
~Terence McKenna
Tony Wright and Graham Gynn are authors of Left In The Dark--the book that presents Tony’s research outlining a radical re-interpretation of the current data regarding human evolution and, they contend, our recent degenerated state we call “civilization”. You can read the book for free here. Despite such a young and extreme proposal positive reactions are growing and include such minds as Dennis McKenna, Stanislav Grof, Colin Groves, Michael Winkelman and many others.
There are many mysterious anomalies about human evolution yet to be adequately explained. These include the human brains rapid expansion in size and complexity, why this accelerating expansion suddenly stalled roughly 200,000 years ago and our brains have been shrinking ever since, and why our rare glimpses of genius goes hand in hand with our species wide insanity.
The following is a discussion with Tony Wright on these anomalies and more, followed by some further information on his theory.
TS: After two decades of research and radical self-experimentation you’ve come to a synthesis between the ancient data and information coming out of modern science. Paradoxically this all seems to indicate a humongous problem, and simultaneously explains why we would be oblivious to it in the first place: we are all suffering from species wide neural retardation, and are now too deluded to even realize when faced with the mountain of evidence. Is this the general idea?
TW: Yes. It should be virtually impossible to find any supporting evidence for such a profound theory if there was no real problem with the development and structural integrity of our neural system in the first place. If there were only ancient accounts of the diagnosis, or any supporting biological data, or initial support from some of society’s sharpest minds, then it should at least ring alarm bells. That all those elements exist and in addition our collective behavior has long been thought by many to be insane indicates something really serious just doesn’t add up. If everything is fine then the theory would be a no-brainer to refute, and we should at least have no fear in thoroughly checking it out.
So during millions of years of evolution in the African tropical forest we developed a symbiosis with fruit, and your proposing that it is no coincidence the most complex tissue in the known universe evolved during a symbiosis with perhaps dozens of species of the most complex chemical factories on the planet. How did this occur?
I’m proposing that the accelerating expansion of the neo-cortex was due to a runaway feedback mechanism driven by our own hormone system in combination with the complex plant bio-chemistry provided by our diet. What has been overlooked is the profound effects of flooding our brains 24/7 for thousands of generations with this highly advanced molecular engineering formula. Fruit is essentially a womb-like developmental environment for the seeds and has very unique, highly complex hormonally active chemistry. Our early development is dictated by the transcription process whereby changes in how the DNA is read dictate the type of structures that develop. Steroids like testosterone are the key players here, but by incorporating more and more of these DNA-reading plant chemicals into our diet we basically shifted from a typical mammalian developmental environment to more of a plant developmental environment.
Along with regulating gene transcription many of these molecules increase brain activity, modulate the endocrine system including the pineal gland, inhibit mono amine oxidase (MAO inhibitors), are antioxidants and also inhibit the activity of our own hormones such as testosterone and oestrogens. Just altering the activity of these two hormones has a dramatic affect on many aspects of our development, physiology and neural structure. For example, decreasing they’re activity extends juvenility and the window for brain development by delaying the onset of sexual maturity.
All this coming together would have many interconnected affects and, being that this bio-chemistry would be present in the developmental environment it would dramatically impact what develops at this most sensitive and rapid stage of brain/endocrine system growth in the uterus.
This carried on after birth through breastfeeding, and then afterwards through directly ingesting this highly advanced molecular engineering cocktail we call fruit. Each generation would pass down a progressively modified neuro-endocrine system as a result. So after millions of years of ever more entangled co-evolution nearly all of the transcription chemicals present during our early development and on through life that were essential to our optimal design/functioning were lost and replaced by progressively worse substitutes irrelevant to our evolution . . . all the way until we reach today’s ‘junk’ food. Ironically much of this actually has the opposite effect of fruit bio-chemistry on our hormones, causing the unique process to reverse.
All of this sounds complex but at its foundation it’s just really basic engineering principles: If you change the design (transcription) and construction materials that a system or technology is built from and fueled by, then the structure and functionality of that system will inevitably change as a result. This logic is obvious when applied to any of our technologies but paradoxically we haven’t applied it to the thing involved in generating our perception, which just happens to be the most complex piece of kit we know. Our perception is directly correlated with and ‘effectively’ a product of the extremely sensitive structure and bio-chemistry of our brain and this has changed out of all recognition in a very short time. (more on this symbiosis)
Makes sense considering even the slightest alterations in the structure or chemistry of the brain can result in major changes in overall functioning, how we perceive the world, and our sense of self. The powerful effects of taking even a minut dose of a psychedelic being a perfect example of this sensitivity! What happened when we lost this symbiosis?
Even mild climate change can result in a shrinking of the forest. This would isolate and separate some symbiotic associations more easily than others but a big drying will affect even the most protected non seasonal niches. Eventually we left the forests and were separated from the highly advanced molecular engineering cocktail that we were immersed in for millions of years. The physiological structures most influenced by the symbiosis were the ones most vulnerable to exposure from the re-emerging basic mammalian hormone regime since it was these hormones that prevented their emergence in the first place. The most hormonally sensitive parts of our physiology would be the most affected; such as our reproductive system, immune system and our highly sensitive neural system, especially during its early development in the uterus.
When the symbiosis ended and the archaic steroid regime re-asserts its influence the neocortex stalls and accelerating expansion turns into contraction. The complex neural architecture begins to erode and because the left hemisphere of the brain is more sensitive to steroids this side inevitably erodes at a quicker rate. Some genetic asymmetry and specialization was the primitive norm, and now one side is inevitably reverting back to the primitive type more quickly than the other.
The orthodox view suggests each hemisphere has its own specialized capabilities and that the characteristics of the dominant left hemisphere, such as conceptual and rational thought/speech, are some of our most advanced traits. The data indicates that the development of the brain and in particular one side of the neocortex is now incomplete, and paradoxically the most retarded side has assumed control. With a loss of functioning we become less able to experience, understand and know, and with this comes fear. Fear is a powerful emotion that can mask all other mental functions and this played a part in suppressing the more baffling perceptions of the right hemisphere. When we lose any sense fear accompanies this and a growing sense of anxiety and the need for control arose as the left began actively resisting experiences it cannot categorize or understand since they are threatening to its very sense of self.
This has severely limited our perception and compromised many abilities. The evidence suggests those abilities as well as a wholly different sense of self lie dormant in the right side of our brain and is only occasionally glimpsed by a tiny minority of people. Unfortunately this also creates a paradox. The dominant side of the brain is assessing itself and so while the concept of specialist abilities appears initially to make some sense on further investigation all is not as it appears and this doesn’t hold up. I have proposed that the abilities and perception facilitated by the left side of our brain are a more primitive and greatly reduced or distorted version of what still remains locked away in the right. Instead of separate senses a unified and highly advanced system that perceives everything all at once without any problems was the norm. These glimpses of synesthesia for example (which some are actually born with) could be a relic of this unified and coherent perceptual capability now well beyond and frightening to the primitive neural architecture of the left hemisphere.
It’s interesting then that the myths of a previous golden age and humanities fall into dark times are found all over the world. Even the bible talks about our naked, forest dwelling, fruit eating past. This sort of theme is witnessed among Eskimos, Aborigines, Native Americans, Mayans and dozens of other cultures. Many also talked of a “higher self”. Do you think our ancient ancestors knew what happened? How did they go about addressing the problem? Do we still get glimpses of these right brained states of consciousness today?
When you look at the ancient myths and traditions with all this in mind it becomes blatantly obvious that they all are attempting to describe and address through various techniques essentially the same thing--although both the myths and practices have become inevitably distorted over time from their original purpose as the condition progressed. Of course our tendency today is to dismiss them all as “myths” but in reality they may be more historic account than myth, and this would be expected if the condition was progressive. I’ve proposed that the origin of these ancient practices, such as shamanism, meditation, sleep deprivation, etc, were borne out of techniques to reduce the influence of the degrading left hemisphere and/or engage the abilities of the increasingly suppressed right hemisphere. If fruit was all that was needed to turn around the negative hormonal feedback loop that developed, our ancestors would have figured this out a long time ago. These practices would make a lot of sense if the general condition exists.
Most of us today don’t escape the confines of the dominant left hemisphere except in dreams and perhaps subconscious glimpses during meditation or similar practices. More direct experiences are possible through supplementing with neuro-chemical analogues found in various psychedelic plants for example but a combination of approaches works best. Many such as prodigies, savants, etc, all display abilities characteristic of more access to the right hemisphere. Although if you were to take all of these abilities and put them together with once in a lifetime athletic feats, and shamanic states of consciousness it may still be only a glimpse of a state of being that our distant ancestors considered “normal”. While there has been a catastrophic loss the idea that we all have a fundamental problem with our neural functioning that is entirely treatable is immensely hopeful given our current situation.
read more @ http://www.realitysandwich.com/tony_wright_interview
Morpheus: Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?
Decision Time Again...
Of course there is a through-line from the ancient world to the present when it comes to Humanities enmeshment with Entheogens... a story that reaches the highest & the lowest regions of Consciousness & Esoteric Initiation. Nonetheless, most will be humbled by the central 'role' they have 'played' in the structuring of duality... & depending on how they are used, can hold the keys to Freedom... or enslavement. ~InLight555
The Sprig of Acacia: An Emblem of Our Faith in the Immortality of the Soul
by P. D. Newman
When he who was weary, plucked at a sprig of acacia, he had “evidence of things not seen."
The sprig of acacia is an important symbol in Freemasonry. For it is said allegorically that a sprig of acacia marked the head of the grave of our beloved Grand Master Hiram Abiff, leading those travel-weary Fellows of the Craft to discover the location where the three despicable ruffians had deposited his precious remains.
In addition to its presence in the Master Mason Degree, the sprig of acacia also appears in the Perfect Master Degree, is mentioned in the Elu of the Nine Degree, and is depicted on the cordon of, as well as being referenced in the Perfect Elu Degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction.2
Symbolically, the sprig of acacia is said to be emblematical of “our faith in the immortality of the soul,”3 and this on account of the fact that the acacia happens to be an evergreen, meaning that its leaves are suffered to fall neither in summer nor in winter. But, perhaps there is still yet something more to this humble yet potentsymbol.
The immortality of the soul is an inference which cannot be proven and therefore must be taken on faith. The precipice of death is understood to be one beyond which no man has ever returned. Direct knowledge; that is, Gnosis of the soul’s immortality is thus thought to be unobtainable in mankind’s present state. But, is it? What of those individuals who, after being pronounced deceased, or after being anesthetized or declared brain-dead temporarily, return to waking consciousness with colorful tales and vibrant memories of a vivid afterlife teaming with spiritual intelligences and illumination? Can those accounts be taken as evidence of the soul’s existence beyond and outside of the physical body?
Or are they to be dismissed as the products of a randomly firing and thus hallucinating brain? These are the problems which the present article will venture to explore. But first, we will take a few moments to review the significance of the acacia and its role within Freemasonry, as well as certain other ancient and modern initiatory traditions.
In the Perfect Elu Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, we learn that
“the acacia…is that genus of trees to which belong that which yields the gum arabic, the mezquite, and the locust. It is the satah or satamwood of the Hebrew writings,…used in the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple4, and there fore a Symbol of Holiness and Divine Truth.…It is…not the Symbol of Immortality alone, but of that life of innocence and purity for which the Faithful hope when they shall have been raised up to a new and spiritual existence.”5
To this, Gen. Albert Pike, 33° added in the formidable lecture he penned for the Entered Apprentice Degree that the acacia is
“the same tree which grew up around the body of Osiris. It was sacred among the Arabs, who made of it the idol Al-Uzza, which Mohammed destroyed. It is abundant as a bush in the Desert of Thur: and of it the “crown of thorns” was composed, which was set on the forehead of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a fit type of immortality on account of its tenacity of life; for it has been known, when planted as a doorpost, to take root again and shoot out budding boughs over the threshold.”6
And, in an unassuming footnote to the Master Mason Degree in his recently issued book Masonic Formulas and Rituals, Pike wrote that the
“branch of Acacia [is] in memory of the true cross, which, it is said, was made of that wood.7 This branch of Acacia took the place of the branch of myrtle, which the initiates of Memphis bore….[T]he bough of gold, which Virgil gives Eneas, wherewith to descend to the infernal regions, has the same origin.”8
The acacia has been an important symbol in many of the ancient Mystery traditions, but, as we have yet to see, in the rites of passage and shamanic ceremonies of some still extant indigenous and semi-civilized societies, the acacia serves to this day as far more than simply a powerful symbol. Like the Eucharist of the Christian Church, it is a veritable religious sacrament.
The term acacia stems from a Greek word meaning innocence 9 orfreedom from sin 10 and refers to a genus of trees and shrubs that flourish in and around certain regions of Oceania, Africa, North and South America, Asia, and even Europe. In addition to its role as a sacramental incense, many species of acacia contain in the inner bark of their roots high concentrations of the entheogenic 11 compound dimethyltryptamine, better known as DMT. In the form ofinsuffulates 12 or concoctions, plants containing DMT have a long history of use in indigenous shamanic and initiatory settings, especially those where a mystical or visionary experience is desired.13 The effect of the compound is such that it induces an experience which is so comparable to the classic NDE or near-death experience that it has come to be known appropriately as the spirit molecule. As Bro. Timothy Hogan, 32°, K.C.C.H. explains,
“some scholars have associated this acacia with what is called in Sanskrit the Akasha – or that collective consciousness that transcends any one individual, and which can be perceived during periods of deep death-like trances in meditation, or at the hour of our final departure from this physical world. In fact, there is even some evidence that early alchemists attempted to make elixirs from acacia in an effort to get into this deep state...”14
The acacia flourishes in kaolenite-rich soils; that is to say, clay. In regions where the compound is employed or administered in the form of an insuffulate, the snuff, known variously as yopo, epena, orjurema, depending on the dialect, is prepared by combining the powdered inner bark of the acacia’s roots with the calcium carbonate15-containing powder of ground bones and/or shells that have been ‘roasted’ over an extremely hot ceremonial fire, the same having been prepared solely for that purpose. This primitive yet complex process of chemical conversion – one which would have given even the most seasoned of Alchemists a run for his money – renders the inert plant material susceptible to absorption by the mucous membranes in the nasal cavity, effectively producing a markedly powerful DMT-rich insuffulate.
Conversely, in regions where the concocted or brewed form of the sacrament is preferred, it is prepared by combining it with another plant additive; one that is rich in Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor (better known as MAOI), thereby enabling it to bypass the MAO in the digestive tract which otherwise would prevent it from reaching the bloodstream and thus the brain.
When the substance is prepared in such a manner, it is called, again, depending on the dialect, ayahuasca or yagé. The indigenous peoples of the Amazon and the Caribbean are particularly reverent of the compound, administering it to pubescent boys who are passing through their native rite of passage into manhood, and the shamans themselves even employing it personally for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining their special manas or magical wisdom and power.
In the former case, the entheogen is quite literally believed to kill the child and, “after having wandered in the gray halls of Hades,”16 his spirit is resurrected, phoenix-like, in the form of a man, and he takes his place as a productive member of the social order. In the latter, the compound serves as that which enables the medicine man to take his mysterious ‘shamanic flights’ into the heavens, allowing him to commune with deity and/or the ancestral spirits of the tribe.
This all may seem unbelievable to the modern Western mind. However, for the individual suffering the effects of the compound, incontestable and conclusive proof not only of the existence of the soul, but also of the soul’s persistence even when it has been separated from its material anchor, has been provided.
For, here we have our traveller, consciously experiencing either heavenly delights or hellish terrors, depending on the karmic wages to which he is entitled, all the while being somehow seemingly outside of his physical unit. He is quite literally having what anyone might easily interpret to be an OBE or out of body experience. In the rich words of radical philosopher Terence McKenna,
“[t]he experience that engulfs one’s entire being as one slips beneath the surface of the DMT ecstasy17 feels like the penetration of a membrane. The mind and the self literally unfold before one’s eyes. There is a sense that one is made new, yet unchanged, as if one were made of gold and had just been recast in the furnace of one’s birth….Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless awe. Color and the sense of a reality-unlocking secret nearby pervade the experience. There is a sense of other times, and of one’s own infancy, and of wonder, wonder, and more wonder….Many diminutive beings are present there…One has the impression of entering into an ecology of souls that lies beyond the portals of what we naively call death….Here is a tremendum barely to be told, an epiphany beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the realm of that which is stranger than we can suppose. Here is the mystery, alive, unscathed, still as new for us as when our ancestors lived it fifteen thousand summers ago….The sense of emotional connection is terrifying and intense. The Mysteries revealed are real and if ever fully told will leave no stone upon another in the small world we have gone so ill in.”18
These claims should come as no surprise considering the fact that DMT is one of the most powerful psychoactive compounds known to science. And, unfortunately, it is a substance which was once believed by indigenous natives to induce an experience that has been subjectively interpreted time and time again as the very liberation of the immortal soul from the gross, physical body, thereby permitting it to wander freely the spiritual planes of existential reality, but has since been relegated to the list of scheduled narcotics under the Controlled Substances Act. However, in a society where there is no context for or guidance in the intelligent and traditionally sacramental use of such compounds, a reaction of the like is perfectly understandable – and some say even warranted.19
read entire article @ http://www.realitysandwich.com/acacia_emblem_soul
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
Recalibrating our Consciousness with the Gaian Mind is a crucial step to Humamities collective freedom...
the road back to our true Lionage. Here's another 'connected' piece of the Multidimensional puzzle.
~TemetNosce555
~UnityConsciousnessCalling247
Yes... brother Graham has served as an incredibly valuable source in the amplification of these arenas. His research & experience are definitely worth the time. Check out this brilliant 'Ted talk' he did recently which was actually removed from the site. Big thumbs up ;-)
( ( ( ApotheosisNow2013 ) ) )
Hi Stick.....This is certainly a good debatable post......
I suppose it is possible that these were used, but there is no way of being absolute, speculation and superstitions is very much all that can be considered. However, some of these are too similar to be mere drug induced illustrations, and they are widely spaced out that contact with ones who may have first drawn an illustration, so to been seen by another over the vast distances is unlikely.
At some point in time these ancient peoples did indeed see something that was common to all, thus depicted in/on caves walls all over the world and the illustrations are too similar to be pure chance. Drug induced trance like states and altered reality is individual, no two people would have exactly the same experience, similar patterns of behaviour may be expected and experienced initially, then it would depend on the individuals, how much was used, how often they had used it,....etc...their own physical and mental predispositions would also be factors even in those ancient times.
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