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'Ineffective' Fallacy - Diminishment by Claiming Meditation Works & Entheogens Don't
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Personality Evolution: Efficacy of
Entheogens vs. Meditation
Meditation ineffective;
entheogens/study effective
Need statistics on meditation vs.
entheogen efficacy (not excuses & spin)
Entheogens blow up ego better than
meditation
R. Masters: psychedelic drugs provide
the best access to mental processes
>>>One
method to disassociate oneself from this mask, after its usefulness has been
spent, would be to stimulate a death of the mask, usually through an intense
psychedelic episode. Stanislov Grof has
presented workable methods of using LSD in a death-rebirth cycle. DMT alkaloids, extracted from various
plants, may also be used to hasten the demise of “self.” These methods are most useful if used with a
competent guide, or at least, a guide one has trained to show the path through
veil.
>>It
is one thing to share ways of meditation or breathing as an enhancement for
life....but it is quite another thing...in suggesting the intake of psychedelic
drugs...especially for the younger generation who may be reading this...And
even though you may be sharing a way for you....it is a way, with or without a
guide, that can be harmful for the body and its inherent flow of life...
>It was
my understanding that this group was set up to "cover the cybernetic
theory of ego death and ego transcendence" among other things...I
mentioned this route as "one" solution...not the "only "
solution...
Required
reading before a discussion of ego and its transcendence can even begin:
Monumentally,
Gloriously, Divinely Big Egos
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/ontast_mogobi.cfm/xid,6703177/yid,68861267
Note:
In
passing, he uncritically assumes "Christ" as a historical figure.
He does
not mention entheogens here.
Entheogens
are the most traditional, practical, effective, fast, and reliable method of
triggering ego death and working toward ego transcendence. Entheogens are not the only way of
triggering the chemical changes. All
methods are effective insofar as they trigger chemical changes in the brain. The most effective and direct method of
triggering the requisite chemical changes in the brain is to ingest
psychoactive chemical triggers, as did the elite early Christians, Gnostics,
and other mystery-religion groups, and practically all religions in the age of
entheogens before the pharmacratic inquisition began (see Jonathan Ott's book
The Age of Entheogens).
The
authentic spiritual path is actually the entheogen path -- that's how dominant
entheogens are in effectiveness and in historical practice. Other methods are effective at providing the
mystic state of cognition only to the degree they can cause the same mental
changes as ingesting entheogens.
People who
disagree are very welcome to discuss ego transcendence and personal control,
and the ideas of Wilber and Watts, Leary, Ott, Huxley, Ralph Abraham, Robert
Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick... but I must be radically clear in elevating
entheogens to their proper place. The
flesh of Christ by which we are saved is, above all, the entheogenic
plant. Meditation is only effective
insofar as it can produce (or augment) the loose-cognition state that is most
directly and forcefully triggered by entheogens.
Spiritualists
who belittle entheogens are welcome to discuss all the ideas chartered in this
group. People need to understand my
position accurately. Entheogens are not
the only way to trigger the mystic state, which is just as well called
"the entheogenic state".
Entheogens are *by far* more effective.
Entheogens are a thousand times more effective than counselling or
meditation at delivering the goods.
Counselling
and meditation make big promises but they cannot and do not deliver -- and
their promises are often retracted by their advocates. Those spiritualists who belittle entheogens
say "Meditation is all you need... but for many people, for some reason,
it does not bring about the desired state." Entheogen advocates make bigger promises and do deliver on their
promises.
Entheogen
use is guaranteed to produce a religious experience. Any qualifiers pale beside the sureness of this assertion and the
reliability of it; exceptions prove the rule. Entheogens work, meditation does not. We can write pages of qualifiers, but that's the bottom line, as
far as statistical effectiveness of competing methods of triggering mystic
experience.
Many
people have been harmed by LSD, except the evidence for this is never
shown. We all mention "all the
many acid casualties" in passing, but the individuals are never named in a
way that constitutes firm evidence. All
science knows or dares hypothesize at this point is that entheogens *might*
trigger lasting psychotic dis-integration in people so inclined. Thanks to prohibition, this
"might" is all we know at this point.
There is a
special place in my hell for spiritualists who owe their initial awakening to
the entheogens but are on a campaign to belittle entheogens. It takes a massive amount of accumulated
ignorance to so belittle what has proven personally and historically to so
effectively deliver the goods that the proud, pure, recently drug-free
spiritualists claim to be able to deliver without drugs (of course they claim
this in a tepid and vague way that they can quickly retract).
The worst
sin of these pure drug-belittling spiritualists is that they deny the mystic
state is immediately, readily, universally available. In practice, their superficially spiritual attitude ends up
putting real, effective, reliable spiritual experience out of reach and
off-limits. Such a "pure"
spirituality is thus false spirituality and is "evil" in that it is a
substitute-spirituality that becomes an obstruction to true, effective
spirituality.
In
practice, drug-free spirituality prevents, rather than delivers, spiritual
experience. This tack I'm taking is
compatible with Wilber's assertion that almost all popular spirituality is
regressive or translative (sideways shuffling-about) rather than transformative
(upward developmental).
Almost all
popular spirituality is anti-drug, (though often inspired initially by
psychoactives) and preaches the difficulty and rarity of mystic
experiencing. Drug-belittling attitudes
are associated with asserting the inaccessbility of mystic states. Such spiritualists revere the mystic state
but present it as a rare and special state.
Entheogen advocates are the opposite: they assert the ease and great
universal accessbility of mystic states.
Which of
these two reality-tunnels sounds more appealing and plausible to you? A path that uses no chemical tool and rarely
delivers on its promise and claims that delivering the mystic state is rare and
difficult -- a path of labor and suffering and acceptance of widespread
darkness -- or a path that uses a chemical tool and normally delivers on its
promise and claims that delivering the mystic state is common and easy -- a
path of ease, enjoyment of success, and expectation of immediate widespread
enlightenment?
http://www.reformnav.org
-- rapid-navigation portal for drug policy reform sites
Norma,
I have not
responded specifically to your points; I have not restricted my comments to the
points you make. My first priority was
to criticize the common ideas of those who belittle entheogens -- you may only
hold a few of such ideas as I criticized.
Differing viewpoints are welcome though I try to criticize certain
common attitudes and sets of ideas. I
am not attributing such sets of ideas wholesale to you. I do not intend to put words in someone
else's mouth and criticize those words and then act like I have simply
addressed the person's posting.
The
greater ego would be a certain kind of transcendence of all these masks, so
that the mind does not construct a personal identity primarily in terms of any
small or large set of masks or roles, but rather with the Ground of Being which
gives rise to all actions, all thoughts, and all creatures.
A person's
mind can shift identity from any personal role or masks, to the Ground of Being
as a whole, thus gaining awareness of and identity with what we can call the
Big Ego, or what I may call the transcendent ego as opposed to the egoic ego,
which is overly limited.
>-->Required
reading before a discussion of ego and its transcendence can even begin:
>-->
>-->Monumentally,
Gloriously, Divinely Big Egos
>-->http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/ontast_mogobi.cfm/xid,6703
>-->177/yid,68861267
>-->
>-->Note:
>-->In
passing, he uncritically assumes "Christ" as a historical figure.
>-->He
does not mention entheogens here.
>Wilber's
ideas ... I wonder about the nature of his One Ego dynamics... perhaps I am not
understanding his other concepts ... or word usage
>When I
was referring to masks [in the essay at the start of this thread], I refer to
the many masks that react to situations automatically, and how one
"mask" can become a (great big?) ego...
>masks
can be created or destroyed, and that these masks can be employed as reactive
agents to engage a person in a situation (habitual?)
A main
effect of cognitive loosening agents is to disengage mental habits, through
loosening networks of cognitive associations.
>The
greater ego would then be a matrix of these masks, influenced by the
unconscious, collective unconscious, and spiritual forces
Per
Wilberian thought, the greater ego would be the matrix that produces the masks
as an author separate from them. A
transcendent mind learns to operate on masks as tools without becoming lost in
them to the point of wholly identifying with them.
I have
written here before about my concerns about marrying my theory of cybernetic
self-control and metaphysical worldmodel with the outre topic of entheogens,
particularly LSD. I explained why it
would be dishonest for me to in any way downplay entheogens or fail to grant
them the highest honors. I portray the
pairing of enlightenment and entheogens as a main meaning of divine marriage:
the two are distinct yet intimately related, forming a dyad or system.
I do not
want people who reject or downplay entheogens to think that the rest of this
cybernetic self-control theory or metaphysical worldmodel must also be
dismissed along with entheogens. I
portray entheogens as being a thousand times more efficient at producing mystic
cognition than other purported so-called "drug-free" methods. Entheogens technically not the only possible
way.
Entheogens
are not the only vehicle for the holy spirit; they are not the only trigger for
loose cognition. It is time to stop
pretending that unaided meditation works well and entheogens are a weak
simulation, when all evidence points the exact opposite direction.
I've been
fine-tuning this dogma and doctrine for a long time; it's not easy breaking
away from the propaganda to the opposite effect, after two millennia of the
Pharmacratic Inquisition that followed the Age of Entheogens (Jonathan Ott's
era-names). It takes even more than a
Luther to complete the reformation movement, which is actually The Entheogenic
Reformation.
I have
here expressed it very clearly: Entheogens are proven to be vastly more
efficient at triggering the mystic state than the so-called drug-free
methods. In practice, the latter
restrictive methods serve to prevent rather than enable mystic experience.
Being a
promoter of mystic cognition therefore *by definition* means promoting
entheogens and downplaying "drug-free" methods of mystic
experiencing. This amounts to flipping
the pseudo-progressive views upside down.
They say "entheogens are not too bad, but genuine techniques are
better." I am doing nothing any
more extreme than that pop attitude when I flip it perfectly upside-down.
Drug-free
meditation is not too bad, and a couple people may have even gained
enlightenment by such methods. But in
practice those methods are just an inefficient simulation of the real thing,
genuine and traditional mystic experiencing, which is historically established
as *entheogenic*.
Call me a
dogmatist, and entheogen proselytizer, a fanatic, a newager-hater, but I have
done nothing any worse than the put-downs of the pop "progressive"
spiritualists when they slander entheogens with such damningly faint
praise.
Entheogenists
must stop sitting on the fence, stop defending entheogens as an acceptable
simulation of genuine religious experiencing, and turn the tables back to the
natural and traditional way they were in the Age of Entheogens -- never mind
the "drug-free" guru offering his enlightenment for sale instead; the
mushroom man is the true guru whom I stand by as the trusty, original, authentic
vehicle for enlightenment.
I don't
want to focus on Norma's writings, but rather on overthrowing common sets of
attitudes and assumptions that dishonor entheogens.
Norma's
writings elsewhere indicate partial acceptance of entheogens, and the research
of them, as legitimate. Does such an
attitude dishonor entheogens by such faint praise and grudging acceptance?
Some say
that upon conception, enlightenment is present, but then it becomes forgotten
shortly after birth, hidden behind religious dogmas and power and parental
beliefs. Wilber calls that the
pre/trans fallacy. Without a highly
developed rational mind, there is no enlightenment, only pre-rational fusion of
identity.
It is
unclear how a progressive entheogenist should respond to the views of those
spiritualists who downplay or fail to honor and worship entheogens. One extreme attitude is that there are two
opposing religions: religion that denies entheogens, and religion that embraces
and loves and raises up entheogens.
There are two religions: that of darkness and that of the light. Those who say they love the light but who
reject the entheogen are actually of the darkness.
The
Christian terminology can be exactly matched into this pattern. Jesus is the mushroom. Either you love and worship him and are
saved, or you belittle, downplay, and reject him, and feel you don't need
him. Those who reject him are sinners,
though they attend a nominally "Christian" new age (anti-entheogen)
church or a fundamentalist (anti-entheogen) church or a Catholic
(anti-entheogen) church.
The one
true Christian church is the church of Jesus the Mushroom; only they are
without sin and have entered the kingdom of heaven. When we crack the code of the Bible, we discover that Jesus is
the Mushroom (that's a major theme in John Allegro's dismissive and
unconvincing book The Sacred Mushroom & The Cross).
There is
at least one truly Christian church by this measure, that defines sin as not
taking the entheogen, and defines salvation as accepting the entheogen as
savior.
Naturally,
I wonder if the discussion participants here have witnessed entheogen memory
dynamics with their own eye, but given today's conditions of ongoing war, it is
to be assumed that our knowledge is based purely on scholarly research, limited
to what can be put down on paper.
>>There
are no other ways, other than taking [entheogens] "some eight times"
and studying "perennial philosophy", or at least no other ways which
aren't inferior? If so, how did you conclude that?
Taking
entheogens some 8 times in conjunction with studying perennial philosophy is
much more effective, in terms of percentages and distribution curves, time
required, convenience, and other ergonomic factors and measures of efficacy,
for attaining a repeated series of deep experiences of timeless determinism,
which eventuates in a deep transformation from initial enculturated freewillist
thinking to a new worldmodel (of time, control, agency, and self) premised on
the axiom of no-free-will.
No other
method of inducing the mystic state and bringing about satori or mystic
regeneration of the will even *claims* to be so effective and directly
efficacious as the Hellenistic mystery religions, and related religious
initiation systems, which had routinized such initiation from freewillist
"child" thinking to no-free-will "adult" thinking. What are the contenders? I am talking about all *known* ways of
bringing about the classic nonordinary experiential state of cognition or
consciousness.
Known ways
of inducing the mystic state include entheogens, epilepsy, schizophrenia,
meditation/contemplation, starvation and flagellation, and hyperventilation --
note that all of them work by causing, one way or another, a change in brain
chemistry. What is the most ergonomic,
direct, fast, reliable, immediate, and clean way to change brain
chemistry? Ingesting external
chemicals, as were used in Hellenistic-era sacred meals.
The only
seemingly serious contender for as effective a method of inducing the mystic
altered state of consciousness as entheogens is meditation. Today's spiritual Establishment, a reaction
after and against the psychedelic religion of the 1960s, claims that meditation
is much better than entheogens, or that entheogens can only asymptotically
approach and perhaps reach the wonderful efficacy of meditation.
A large
part of how this false consensus was achieved was by censorship; selective
publishing and reward of authors.
Authors who belittled and diminished the efficacy of entheogens were
rewarded by being published and reprinted, so that at best, entheogen advocates
were cowed into a defensive position of saying merely that entheogens were a
fair approximation of the supposedly real, original, and powerful approach of
meditation.
To such
cowed and defensive entheogenists I say "don't be so feeble! grow some muscles! put up a more assertive fight in the debate, and aright this
upside-down situation!" There is a
proven reliable efficacy of entheogens at inducing religious experiencing and
an experience of determinism, and a proven relative low efficiency and
ergonomics of other techniques, as measured the only reasonable way: efficacy
distribution curves.
Run two
experiments: a year of meditation accompanied by any studies, and a year of
entheogen sessions integrated with study of esoteric philosophy, determinism,
and related fields. After a year, chart
the degree of determinism-experiencing each person has had. The distribution curve for entheogens will
blow away that for meditation.
The
evidence lies in the claims and reports of entheogen users, mystery religion
initiates, and 20th Century meditationists, which clearly report that
entheogens have a far higher incidence of inducing religious including
determinism experiences -- so much higher than for meditation, that the
entheogen-diminishing meditation advocates have had to make up excuses for the
lack of mental effect, and have had to spin like crazy to deny the relevance of
the mystic state to spirituality; in defending their position, they have
quickly and inevitably had to remove the mystic state from mystic practice,
resulting in a grotesque and pathetic travesty of spirituality or religious
practice: mysticism that has no mystic state.
For
evidence, read trip reports online and in books, and read meditation magazines
and spirituality books: the immediately clear conclusion from such abundant
evidence is that entheogens are much more efficacious in triggering the mystic
altered state than is meditation, to the point that meditation advocates
themselves concede this, and criticize entheogens as providing *too much*
mystic-state experiencing, defending and excusing the inefficacy of meditation
as "necessary mildness required for true spirituality".
The ancient
initiates would respond "We don't know you and your supposed
'spirituality'! It is certainly not
what we are about: sacred food and drink to have an immediate mystic-state
experience. Don't call yourself
spiritual, when you are no initiate; you are but inexperienced children putting
on the robe of an initiate and playing make-believe. As proof, you still believe in the Historical Jesus and freewill
moral agency."
Meditation
has an implied success rate of some 5% after the commonly cited 10-20 years of
practice, and even then the result is hazy and shows little experience of
determinism. I would peg its success
rate at more like 1% after 30 years of practice, which is practically
completely ineffective, so that meditation is a way of actually *avoiding* the
experience of no-free-will, falsely attired as a religious practice.
Just like
the WOD, there's no accountability in meditation, for its overall collossal
failure. We need stats on the efficacy
of entheogens vs. meditation to produce a clearly mystic state and profound
insight. Please help provide links
toward such stats. Problem is, stats
are easy to come by for entheogens, because they work well, but hard to come by
for meditation, because it doesn't work well at all for the classic mystic goal
(meditation only 'works well' when one completely redefines the goal,
innovating and deviating from the classic view).
Meditation
has lots of excuses, like the WOD, instead of stats indicating that the general
method has merit. Like the WOD, when
viewed critically as with business profitability accountability, meditation is
a complete and dismal failure at attaining its original marketed and trumpeted
goals. Only by redefining failure as
success and shifting its goals to make them nebulous do meditation and the WOD
maintain their flimsy illusion of being coherent and efficient methods toward a
distinct and definable outcome.
A contest
of stats between entheogens and meditation is "no contest" at all:
it's like 99% versus 1% efficacy, which has forced meditationists to squirm
like slippery snakes just like prohibitionists. Meditationists, prohibitionists, I've lost the ability to tell
one from the other: they are both based on specious distortions resulting in a
lie, opposite of truth, and hindrance to what they claim to deliver.
Stats
please, how to gather? Thanks
Statistically,
in terms of a bell curve of efficacy, entheogens have the potential to blow up
and transcend ego far more often than non-entheogenic meditation.
derinkle
wrote:
>Entheogens
create an altered state of consciousness much easier than (non-entheogenic)
meditation. Meditation requires
blocking out the conscious thought stream and patiently waiting for awareness
and discipline. The point of either
entheogens or meditation is lost if the enlightening experience or revelation
is not carried out into daily life.
That's
reductionist. It is completely
debatable whether the point of entheogens or meditation, or enlightenment or
revelation, is to have some effect on daily life. The point of enlightenment is enlightenment, and the point of
revelation is revelation. Daily life is
just daily life, and mundane ethics is just mundane ethics. Religious revelation and daily life are two
distinct realms, even if they have some relation or influence on each other.
The
purpose of the high realm of experiencing and insight is to attain high
experiencing and insight, not to polish and uphold the low realm of mundane
existence. The high and low realms are
distinct and we cannot attain the high realm if we insist on reducing its
purpose to affirming and bolstering the low realm.
Enlightenment
transcends the mundane purpose of mundane self-help for daily life, as surely
as Christianity should not be degraded by being restricted to the level of
Christian-style self-help books that clog the shelves of the bookstores. It may be true that enlightenment should
positively affect daily life, but no way can enlightenment be reduced to being
measured in terms of what it can do for mere daily life.
Shall we
say that the purpose of knowing and experiencing God is to improve our daily
life? No. Knowing God might be expected to improve daily life, but the
ultimate and main purpose of knowing God is knowing God, or experiencing and
acknowledging the transcendent as a realm of value that transcends the lower
level, even if the transcendent realm does happen to shine some transcendent
light on the mundane world.
You cannot
measure enlightenment by measuring daily life, any more than you can assess a
book's wisdom by judging its typeface or correctness of spelling.
>The
enlightenment experience has to be incorporated into one's being, not just
revealed in a time of relaxation or intensity of understanding.
It's
uselessly vague to just assert that legitimate enlightenment must be
"incorporated into one's being" or must be "carried out into
daily life". Here is a measurable
and definite quality to assess instead: the true enlightenment experience has
to be incorporated into one's mental worldmodel; the enlightened mind has
learned a particular and specific worldmodel comprising a re-conception of the
relationship between space, time, self, and control.
That is
the core of enlightenment and the sense in which enlightenment is
"retained" and "affects daily life" and "produces
results". If you want ethics, then
do ethics, but don't claim that enlightenment is measurable by the standards of
mere, mundane ethics. Enlightenment
towers infinitely higher than "be nice to people". The most deluded person can be nice to
people and still fly straight to the flames of the pit as far as their
enlightenment.
There is a
sense in which the enlightened mind learns a new system of ethics: if there is
no free will, and someone does something objectionable, the enlightened mind
knows how to "forgive" that person, in a certain sense: blame the
block universe, of which oneself and the other person are constituents, or
blame the hypothetical transcendent creator or controller of the block
universe, but the transcendent mind doesn't blame the other person as one egoic
moral agent blames another.
>The
illegal status of entheogens hinders their practical value.
Extremely
so - we must always note this, because this situation completely distorts
discussions of the potential of entheogens versus meditation.
>Suppose
that either meditation or entheogens can break through the ego illusion and
produce enlightenment.
>If
entheogens are not used in proper settings, with proper guidance, and at
reasonable frequencies, they can create an even stronger ego barrier.
The raw
fact that entheogens *can* increase egoic barrier to enlightenment -- that it
is within rather than outside the realm of possibility -- is
insignificant. The statement of the
*possibility* is a tired expression repeated by the anti-entheogen
meditationists. What matters is
statistical bell curves, not any one point on the curve.
What the
entheogen-diminishing meditationists are trying to sneakily and implicitly get
away with asserting is that entheogens usually cause an ego barrier to
enlightenment, while meditation usually reduces the ego barrier to
enlightenment -- theirs is a criticism and a claim that is untenable, biased,
unjustifiable, slanderous, mean-spirited, self-promoting, jealous, and
baseless.
Meditationists
are culturally in power, sitting in judgment pummeling entheogens, heaping upon
them a slew of unjustifiable, arbitrary condemnations, trying to train the whole
world through propagandistic repetition to repeat the same unfair moves.
Where is
the evidence that entheogens usually cause an ego-barrier to enlightenment,
while meditation reduces the ego-barrier to enlightenment? Given that entheogens haven't been given a
thousandth of the chance of meditation, all we know at this point is that
entheogens show great potential to blow up ego to transcend ego, and that
meditation usually achieves nothing of much harm or value.
Comparing
the bell curve for meditationists versus entheogenists, assuming entheogen
technique is developed at least 1% as well as meditation, and assuming no
prohibition, the bell curve for effectiveness of entheogens runs circles around
the bell curve for meditation, in terms of how many practitioners break through
the ego barrier to enlightenment.
Meditation
"can" lead to insanity, and "can" lead to great delusion,
and "can" lead to enlightenment -- same with entheogens or spinning
around in circles. "Can" is
totally worthless, by itself, in assessing efficacy; what matters is not *that*
there is a certain outcome (some unspecified percentage of the time), but
rather, the ergonomic efficacy of a technique, and the statistical spread of
the results.
Some
percentage of the time, meditation and entheogens each lead to a stronger ego
barrier -- the only question and the entire question is, what percentage of the
time? Any controllable method of
triggering the mystic state has the potential of creating a stronger ego, which
might or might not act as a barrier to breaking through into enlightenment.
Meditation
or entheogens or hyperventilation are tools and therefore can be used well or
badly. Insofar as these methods are
controllable tools, if the method is used badly, we should blame the user's competence,
not the tool. The question is, which
tool has greater potential? Entheogens
have much more danger than meditation because they have much more potency than
meditation.
Meditation
can cause egoic pride over one's control of the technique, even though
meditation is so ineffective that it is a great way of preventing the mystic
state and enlightenment.
>If a
person is able to feel so powerful and well anytime they pop a pill, they
become self-righteous because that power is at their disposal.
What
happened to that tired old weasel-word "can", as in "entheogen
users can become self-righteous"?
The above statement is false, because it is worded universally:
"Every person who is able to control a trigger of mystic experiencing
becomes self-righteous due to that power being at their disposal." If true, it would be significantly true for
any effective method, and to the extent that meditation is an effective method
for meditationists, "they become self-righteous because that power is at
their disposal."
It's
trivial to turn that kind of shallow reasoning around and make the equally
flimsy, biased, polemical argument that while entheogenists are humble because
they know they must credit plants for their salvation rather than crediting
their own efforts, meditationists are the most prideful practitioners of
mysticism, because through their own effort, they trigger the mystic state on
demand.
The
meditationists in effect have been aggressive in pointedly and emphatically
disparaging and diminishing entheogens, while working to elevate and promote
meditation as being more effective, efficient, and legitimate. The meditationists are motivated in their
anti-entheogen polemic by a combination of fear, jealousy, dishonesty, and
self-deceit.
Non-entheogenic
meditation proponents know that if the truth were admitted -- that the origin
of meditation was as a minor technique to augment entheogens -- the worldview
of the meditationists would be transformed from the status quo conception of
spiritual practice to a technique that actually works to overthrow
delusion.
If the
meditationists admitted that entheogens are essentially ideal for triggering
ego death and enlightenment, but non-entheogenic meditation prevents
enlightenment, their loss in the debate would be catastrophic, just as for the
prohibitionists to admit that cannabis is not entirely the devil's weed would
amount to a total collapse of the whole smoke-and-mirrors programme of
prohibition.
The
meditationists only have two possible options: disparage entheogens as highly
ineffective and illegitimate (with meditation elevated to a high level of
effectiveness that any child can see is a total fabrication), or else admit
that the truth is the opposite: entheogens are extremely effective for
enlightenment, and are the origin and basis of meditation, while a would-be
enlightenment method of non-entheogenic meditation is basically a complete
failure, a way of avoiding enlightenment.
The main
effect and outcome of non-entheogenic meditation is to protect and preserve the
ego delusion, same as going to church, by superficially pretending to provide a
bit of spiritual enlightenment on the endless installment plan. Pop, ersatz Buddhist meditation isn't any
better than pop Christianity, when it comes to producing transcendent
knowledge.
Placebo
Buddhism produces the same result as placebo Christianity: preservation and
protection of the deluded egoic worldmodel.
They are both the same religion: the way of darkness, leading egoic
delusion to yet more egoic delusion.
The good
thing is that now that the entheogen-disparaging meditationists have settled
upon a particular small set of bogus arguments, the entheogenists are now in a
position to systematically refute that set of arguments (even if the
meditationists determinedly ignore the rebuttal and continue chanting the same
set of flimsy, bunk arguments).
The
standard, hackneyed entheogen-disparaging arguments that are reported in the
book Zig Zag Zen are an answerable challenge that was not met adequately by the
entheogen proponents in the book.
Entheogen
researchers shouldn't cave in and support the current view that non-entheogenic
meditation is the standard by which entheogens should be measured as achieving
a mere fraction of the efficacy and legitimacy. The truth is obviously and manifestly the opposite, that
entheogens are the standard by which non-entheogenic meditation should be
measured as achieving a mere fraction of efficacy.
Also false
and harmful is the "compromise" position that entheogens and meditation
are equally effective and legitimate.
That compromising of the truth would actually leave the false status-quo
disparagement of entheogens fully in place.
Equality isn't a viable option -- it's very false, and isn't actually a
viable or effective strategic move.
>meditation's
sole, true function, is to calm the mind, promote focus and stability and
develop the skills prerequisite in preparation for, the use of Entheogens.
That's one
of three good ideas for a role for meditation:
o Training wheels for entheogens prior to
entheogenic initiation.
o Augmentation for entheogens during entheogen
sessions.
o Preparation for bodily death.
The
training role of meditation for the intense mystic altered state has a parallel
in the preparations of the initiates in Hellenistic Mystery Religions and in
Christian catechism -- the period of instructional and attitudinal training and
practice. Formal preparations are
lacking in current suppressed entheogen practice, though there is yet an
equivalent there, with warnings to generally have an attitude that is serious
and respectful of the power of entheogens, not frivolous or careless.
>Without
the eventual entheogenic experience one is just waiting for actual [bodily]
death and hoping one had prepared well.
In that sense, an entheogen experience is also preparatory, although I
think that use is only a flash in the pan, compared to the use of entheogens to
unbind makind from ignorance.
Bodily
death should be seen as a mere metaphor for the important type of death, which
is mystic ego death. When reading
myth-religion, always read "death" as first referring to mystic ego
death, and only secondly as bodily death.
Bodily death is very important *in* its respective realm, which is the
realm of mundane ethics, mundane interpersonal relationships, and mundane
life. Lower religion has its lower type
of full importance, while higher religion has its higher type of full
importance.
>IMHO,
the term entheogen is misleading. It might apply to a monistic unity experience
of ALL, Atman, as Self. However, it does not apply too well with the aware void
state of Nothingness, Shivadharshana, Anatta.
There's
much merit in the term 'psychedelic', which I translate as
"mind-revealing". Per
Jonathan Ott, the term 'psychedelic' has correct denotations but is ruined by
the grossly misleading connotations, leading to the picture of all users of
visionary plants as dressed as hippies slurping on bongs with a Jefferson
Airplane record playing on the turntable.
I prefer
to focus on characterizing the mental mechanism rather than the general result,
so I prefer the term 'cognitive loosening agents', understood within a
framework that includes the ideas of "mental constructs",
"dynamic mental construct processing", and "dynamic mental
construct association matrixes".
The term
'psychedelic' is completely unusable, so the next best term is used. Don't worry excessively about the etymology
of 'entheogen'; pay attention to the connotations and the main denotations.
>There's
no doubt that, like Christianity, original Buddhism was entheogenic.
Careful
about accidentally implying that *only* original Buddhism/Christianity was
entheogenic -- don't concede that all later Buddhism was non-entheogenic. The best, purest, most ultimate aspect of
religion was originally entheogenic *and* was later entheogenic as well; the
best of *all* religion (all eras, all locales) is the entheogenic version.
I only
concede that *most* of religion (low religion) is non-entheogenic. Useful is a "best vs. most"
distinction, which acknowledges there's judgment of quality involved, dividing
the scriptures rightly into high versus low.
Much old religion was not entheogenic.
It's a robust strategy to frame it this way.
Evidence
for continued entheogen use in Buddhism is valuable -- all eras, all locales --
in addition to in original Buddhism.
Swimming
Where Madmen Drown: Travelers' Tales from Inner Space
Robert
E. L. Masters
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1930722079
Aug.
2002
One of
these short chapters is about psychedelics.
From the last paragraph of the chapter, p. 46: "One day our society
will come to understand that psychedelic drugs provide the best access yet to
the contents and processes of the human mind."
The only
highly efficient way to enlightenment, and the most classic method of spiritual
practice, is visionary drugs combined with the study of a refined
systematization of the intellectual principles of higher knowledge. Visionary drugs are a hundred times as
efficient and ergonomic as alternative approaches such as
meditation/contemplation. For attaining
enlightenment as classically conceived, meditation works, with a hundredth of
the efficiency of visionary drugs.
A recent
strategy of the entheogen-diminishing meditation advocates is visible in the
book Zig Zag Zen: a wholesale redefinition and novel reconception of the goal
of meditation.
Because
meditation is manifestly so eclipsed in efficiency compared to visionary drugs,
meditation advocates suddenly have had to invent a new story of the purpose of
meditation: according to this new strategic lie, this fabricated revisionist
story, meditation is not interested in the mystic altered state; meditation is
purely for the elevation and sacralization of ongoing everyday life, without
any relevant involvement with the mystic altered state, and the undeniably
desirable and distinctive phenomena that have been associated with the mystic
altered state, such as nondual awareness, have nothing to do with the mystic
altered state (according to the new story).
That is
the hazy and self-contradictory position now being invented by the
entheogen-disparaging meditation proponents, who now have taken suddenly to the
assertion that the mystic altered state prevents enlightenment and is
associated with egoic delusion.
Catholic-type anti-entheogen, anti-gnosis, anti-esoteric double-talk
thus has now taken over Western popular Buddhism as well.
The blame
for this spreading lie can't rest on "Christianity" in some vague
general sense; the fault lies in some more sweeping attitude, the battle
between exoteric and esoteric religion in general. Official, weak and crippled esotericism puts forth the
deactivated, inert fruit of entheogenic mystic experiencing, and calls this the
classic esoteric tradition, but there is no actual combustion, no actual flame
-- just *talk* of combustion, flame, and mystic fire.
Books
dense with such *talk* of the holy spirit and mystic fire are not rare today,
but it is strange indeed how they talk of method without actually providing a
method, other than "contemplation" or some vague act of "inner
voyage". They don't tell any clear
*action* to do to actually go about such introspective voyaging.
They say
"the mystic goes on an introspective voyage" but they dance around
this, never stating *how* specifically and exactly the mystic proceeds and
causes and brings about this voyaging.
Similarly, the theologian states that the saved person is lifted up and
regenerated and cloaked with Christ's righteousness, but they dance around and
never say what activity the person must be engaged in, leading up to this
saving event.
The
official explanation is never forthcoming on this point of *how* one initiates
the spiritual journeying, while the classic mystic oral teaching points to the
mystic garden.
Exoteric
religion, whether labelled "Christianity" or "Buddhism",
seeks to claim the benefits of the intense mystic altered state, most
ergonomically produced by visionary plants, for itself, while distorting the
effectiveness of the plant source and even distorting the description of the
mystic altered state itself -- its duration, frequency, and relation to
workaday, mundane, profane consciousness.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)