Rites and Psychoactive Drugs

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

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JRW
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Drugs and the search for the sacred

Post by JRW »

To my way of thinking humans are always looking for a shortcut to sacred place where the mind is in an altered state. If you take the shortcut and forget it is sacred, well, then you have all sorts of problems on your head. You can't get there with recreational drug use, alcohol use, or even recreational yoga.....

Keep the sacred sacred and remember that in the journey to sacred, "more" is usually less effective.

That's the gist of my drug counseling message for today.
Yrs,
JRW

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

JRW

You may have missed the article that prompted this thread - the Practical Campbell essay from February, Mysteries Sacred and Profane, which explores the question in detail.

The article explores Campbell's thoughts, as well as the exhaustive body of research that did not exist in the sixties, and provides the context of this discussion.

Your concerns are well taken - however, entheogens, while a portal to the sacred, are by no means a "short cut," but present a demanding, daunting discipline few are able to follow.

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Post by JRW »

Bodhibliss,
Thanks for sending me the link to your article. GREAT stuff!!!!

My sentiments still hold. What ever pathway you try to get to Sacred on, you must keep it sacred and therein lies the danger. Humans are lazy and going to Sacred Space is daunting and difficult, so they want a shortcut.
Then, ff someone has no conception that taking ethenogens to experience transcendance is not the same as getting high on a psychedelic experience, they can't even talk about it intelligently but you see that over and over. It's like mixing Spaghetti with razor blades and try to talk about if it's authentically Italian or not.

I had a group of Navajo teenagers with substance abuse problems visit me this spring. I talked to them about journeys to Sacred Places since where I live is a sacred place to the Navajos. If they had some glimmer of the meaning of transcendent sacred place, they might have grasped the notion that crack cocaine or alcohol is a false path to take. I talked about the path being difficult and dangerous where it's easy to get lost, but one needs to reach down inside and feel what is going to help us and what is going to only make it harder. Keep what will help you close to you and let the other stuff go by.

Some members of the Native American Church want to use my place for a meeting. Hmmm. How would you feel about hosting a legal peyote ritual in your house? Well, its a feeling of total ambivalence for me. I don't know. I'm not opposed to it, but it's kind of not really what I want to get involved with. I told them I would trade them rent for building an adobe wall, but they weren't ready for that kind of a commitment. They seemed to be looking for free rent on sacred space. That is SOOO predictably human!!!!

Yrs,
JRW

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

Again, JRW, I like the way you think.

I used to teach Literature, English, and, occasionally (when I couldn't get out of it), a section of Pre-Algerbra in Junior High - still occasionally sub for former colleagues, which helps keep me young.

While there I operated the anti-drug/alcohol/cigarettes/gang violence program (which I half suspect was originally typecasting - the administration figured between my long hair, tie-dye shirts on Friday, and extensive bootleg Dead collection that I must know something about drugs). We were pro-active, sponsoring sidewalk art contests involving hundreds of students, bringing in the drug dog and DARE officer, showing videos, guest speakers, etc.

... but I found mini "vision quest" activities the most effective in reaching students (though funding requests had to be disguised - "field trip to Yosemite" plays a lot better than "initiation ritual").

As for hosting a legal peyote ritual in my house, interesting question (though in the now remote past I might have hosted a couple less licit, albeit relevant, rituals). I might consider it - especially if allowed to observe (I'm not sure what the rules might be in that regard), though, frankly, I'm pretty sure where I live now would be too cramped for such a ceremony.

If you do let them use your space, and haven't indulged in peyote yourself, I would make sure you ask questions to get a sense of what the process is:

What set-up is required; what needs to be done to provide for the comfort of participants; what happens when; what are the expected effects (I'm thinking in terms of preparing for possible vomiting, which can accompany peyote use); do they need flame (sage smudging, fire, smoke, etc.), and such.

It would help if you had a nice space outside they have access to (if adobe is common where you live, I imagine thunderstorms and spectacular sunsets and stars galore are not uncommon).

Trading labor for rent sounds fair to me - but I have no idea what the going rate of exchange is regarding adobe walls. Is this for one meeting, or are we talking a recurring gig? If it's for just one night, what would it cost for you to hire a contractor to build your wall? If that amount sounds in the ballpark for one night's rent, then you might want to stick to that or something similar.

On the other hand, here in California we just had twenty feet of wooden fence replaced - a simple job that took one man with the right tools half a day to do - and we could have rented a cabin in the mountains for a few days for what we paid

... so maybe the problem isn't so much in the "charging rent," but a perception that the fee is a little high - might just require negotiation

... or not.

If you do host the ceremony, do fill us in on how it goes.

mitakaye oyasin,
bodhibliss

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Post by JRW »

Bodhibliss,
I suspect that you and I are like peas from the same pod. We speak the same mother tongue.

I take in volunteers to help me all the time: 4 hours of labor buys you food and lodging for a day. We provide materials and management. Building an adobe wall is an incredible team building task and you definitely feel like you are part of the bricks and mortar of the place when you are done. The offer still stands with them, but I suspect that they will go to the wilderness instead. I also made them a monetary offer of $10/night per person but that was too high for them as well. I preferred labor over cash.

The arrangement with the Navajo kids was an adobe banco (bench) around the kiva in exchange for their room and board for two days. Kids have endless energy! Some of the kids parents wouldn't let them come here because of the ancient spirits (evil). We had a great rainstorm, their bus got stuck, they tried to hike to some of the Indian ruins anyway and got totally lost. It was such a archetypally perfect journey to Sacred Place. In the final afternoon, I took a small group of diehards and waded the storm waters to get to Crow Canyon. The persistent ones got to run barefoot through the river of their ancestral homes and see a truely sacred place. It was that mini-vision-quest you speak of. Here is a link to a page with photos of Crow Canyon petroglyphs.: http://www.neartime.com/ruins/CrowRockArt.htm

I traveled entheogenic pathways myself in the '60's and '70s. I think they do open doors to perception. BUT it is totally irreconcilable with the mundane recreational use of drugs for all intensive purposes. (sometimes what looks like recreation is spiritual, but that's another thing, isn't it? )

Do you think that Joseph Campbell was afraid of experimenting with drugs? Do you think that he thought he might get sucked into something he couldn't really handle or that wouldn't befit him professionally? Why didn't he experiment with psychoactive substances? He was a smoker, yes?

Yrs,
JRW

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Post by Hernando »

According to one Arab legend, Haydar, the Persian founder of the religious order of Sufi, came across the cannabis plant while wandering in the Persian mountains. Usually a reserved and silent man, when he returned to his monastery after eating some cannabis leaves, his disciples were amazed at how talkative and animated (full of spirit) he seemed. After cajoling Haydar into telling them what he had done to make him feel so happy, his disciples went out into the mountains and tried the cannabis for themselves. So it was, according to the legend, the Sufis came to know the pleasures of hashish. (Taken from the Introduction to A Comprehensive Guide to Cannabis Literature by Ernest Abel.)
This story is most likely a myth or a simplification but an interesting account nonetheless.
In addition, the warrior sect of the Hashashin were said to have eaten hashish before their assassinations and were given the name "Hashasin" accordingly. This notion, traditional in the West, can be inferred from Marco Polo's account of his travels, though it has been widely disputed.

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Herbal medicine

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Post by Tarxien »

Bliss 5150 wrote:

Most drug-visions shamans or "non-hallucinogen" philosophers arrive at the same place: the suburbs of Spiritus Mundi - the mediocre.
hello bliss

just read a great book called The Cosmic Serpent.
have you read it?
arrives at the same conclusions
good example is the Aborigine vs west Amazon shaman
one culture uses dreamtime and the other culture uses drugs extracted from plants to achieve the same result.
Bliss 5150 wrote:
...What I find interesting is that D.Suzuki wanted to take some LSD later in life - only to be talked out of it by its biggest proponents.
Do you have a link for that conversation...?

thanks,

Tarx

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Post by TRWolfe »

"Anyone can sweep up around the ashram for a dozen years while congratulating themselves that they are following a path to enlightenment. It takes courage to take psychedelics - real courage. Your stomach clenches, your palms grow damp, because you realize that this is real - this is going to work. Not in 12 years, not in 20 years, but in an hour! "

---Terence McKenna

This is the view that I take regarding the use of plant-based drugs.

But then again, I also agree with Alan Watts when he says:

"The psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen."

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Post by Clemsy »

MineOwn2012, welcome to the JCF Forums! I like the balance of your above post. However, I must ask why the emphasis on "plant-based drugs?"

Isn't the point the effect, not the source?

Indeed, (and I'm not promoting anything either way here, just examining) I don't think the intense nausea that often comes with organics like peyote or mushrooms is a necessary part of the experience!

Does synthetic mean flawed?
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

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Post by bodhibliss »

A penetrating insight, MineOwn2012. Your view, summed up in the juxtaposition of the Terence McKenna and Alan Watts quotes, echoes my own experience.

Like all paths to enlightenment, this one is rich in rewards, but fraught with peril for the mere dabbler - truly walking the razor's edge.

I am reminded of Ramakrishna, cited by Campbell, discussing all paths:

Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.
Namaste,
bodhibliss
Last edited by bodhibliss on Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

Clemsy wrote: I like the balance of your above post. However, I must ask why the emphasis on "plant-based drugs?"

Isn't the point the effect, not the source?

[...]Does synthetic mean flawed?
Good question, Clemsy.

I can't speak for MineOwn2012, but the term I would use is "plant-based entheogen," which pretty much covers the entire panopoly of psychedelic substances, including LSD (derived from ergot, a fungus that Campbell and Hofmann and Ruck and Shultes and others believe was the active ingredient in the barley beverage that triggered the central vision of the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece), and DMT (d-methyl tryptamine), which can be derived from reed or ribbon grass.

The term entheogen (or psychedelic) excludes other plant-based drugs, such as heroin and morphine, extracted from opium poppies, and cocaine, whose source is the relatively benign coca plant.

However, the nausea that generally accompanies the ingestion of mushrooms, peyote, morning glory seeds, datura, and such is indeed often a result of the alkaloids in the plant, rather than the psycho-active ingredients.

However, I've also experienced intense but brief nausea after ingesting LSD, mescaline, even DMT and other entheogens synthesized from plants. For me, this quickly passes without actual vomiting (unlike experiences with datura or morning glory). I suspect this "nausea" is more the discomfort "I" experience with the disintegration of ego; once I embrace the fading of ego and the loss of "me" - which, best as I can tell, feels very much like dying - the discomfort fades away

(which also leads me to believe the experience of suffering is intimately tied up with an "I" who suffers - once that ego-conscious, that Stephen I experience as me, fades away, so too does the suffering).

However, I can only speak from personal experience, which may well be individual and unique.

Bliss On,
bodhi

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Post by TRWolfe »

Clemsy wrote:MineOwn2012, welcome to the JCF Forums! I like the balance of your above post. However, I must ask why the emphasis on "plant-based drugs?"

Isn't the point the effect, not the source?

Indeed, (and I'm not promoting anything either way here, just examining) I don't think the intense nausea that often comes with organics like peyote or mushrooms is a necessary part of the experience!

Does synthetic mean flawed?
Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I completely forgot I made that post. Been meaning to post in these forums for awhile. :)

To answer your questions, my emphasis on "plant-based DRUGS" is because I really don't like any term used in its place. I don't like "psychedelic" because of its undue relation to the failed experiments of the peace-love-summer-of-love of the hippies in the 1960's. I also don't like "entheogen" because to me it's a half-hearted attempt at trying to gain some respectability. Entheogen, meaning "releasing the god within" isn't necessarily what these substances do. Anyone who's ever had a bad trip will tell you that they didn't feel like a god at all. :lol:

To me, these things are boundary dissolvers, on a personal and societal level. On a relatively high dose, one night, my boundries were so dissolved I had this incredible intuition that human-consciousness, if refined and unoppressed could choose to transport to any place in the world, at will, somehow dematerializing the body and re-materializing it when it got to the specified designation. And this is what culture and society do to consciousness, they create boundries and force the brain to literally shut down when confronted with ideas of possibilities. Think of wanting to travel to Egypt, as an example. Look at all the BS you have to go through to actually get there...

Until there is another term brought to the front, I'm still going to use "drug" or "plant-based drug". Lately, however, I've been calling these substances plant-based medicines, but this one is also hard for me because I'm not completely convinced they act as medicines. Who knows?

"Does synthetic mean flawed?"

I wouldn't say flawed, but they ARE created by humans. Whether you believe their discoveries were divinely influenced or not, these things don't have a history of usage than can even go back 100 years.

Any plant-based drug, mushrooms, ayahuasca, etc have a literal history behind them. Terence McKenna believed that all trip experiences were somehow recorded in the genetic make-up of the plant. Any trip you could possibly have has already been experienced by someone else, possibly a thousand years ago. Imagine Mayan indians having hallucinations of star freighters of 4000 AD.

Have you ever read Timothy Leary's Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead? It's a really fascinating guide of ego-loss and the attempts to merge with the great white void.

Leary writes about nausea:
In those who are heavily dependent on their ego games, and who dread giving up their control, the illuminated state endures only so long as it would take to snap a finger. In some, it lasts as long as the time taken for eating a meal.

If the subject is prepared to diagnose the symptoms of ego loss, he needs no outside help at this point. Not only should the person about to give up his ego be able to diagnose the symptoms as they come, one by one, but he should also be able to recognize the Clear Light without being set face to face with it by another person. If the person fails to recognize and accept the onset of ego loss, he may complain of strange bodily symptoms. This shows that he has not reached a liberated state. Then the guide or friend should explain the symptoms as indicating the onset of ego loss.

Here is a list of commonly reported physical sensations:

1. Bodily pressure, which the Tibetans call earth-sinking-into-water;
2. Clammy coldness, followed by feverish heat, which the Tibetans call water-sinking-into-fire;
3. Body disintegrating or blown to atoms, called fire-sinking-into-air;
4. Pressure on head and ears, which Americans call rocket-launching-into-space;
5. Tingling in extremities;
6. Feelings of body melting or flowing as if wax;
7. Nausea;
8. Trembling or shaking, beginning in pelvic regions and spreading up torso.
It's all part of the experience. I've thrown up a few times while under the influence of these things, which only allowed me to delve deeper into the experience. Not only is the onset of nausea ego related, but it's simple body chemistry as well. As bodhibliss said, these compounds have alkaloids in them as well, which can be toxic to the stomach.

Nausea can also be related to your preparation of the trip as well. I usually fasted for at least 8 hours and ingested the substances with OJ and bread.

But like my first post, I think that these things are INVALUABLE tools. If you are called to use them, then do it, but stop once you get the message, because if you don't, the entities in the substances won't be so accommodating as they once were. :)


P.S. I don't really know the rules of these boards yet, so if I have to edit any of what I said above, I'll gladly do it. :wink:

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Post by Clemsy »

Hi MineOwn2012!

Thanks for that thoughtful and interesting reply. Regardless of right, wrong or sideways, one certainly should approach such experiences in a manner that honors your attitude toward them and beliefs about them.

A thought goes a long way and the slightest mis-thought could result in a very long and... uncomfortable wait for the sun to rise and the world to return to normal, I daresay.
I think that these things are INVALUABLE tools. If you are called to use them, then do it, but stop once you get the message, because if you don't, the entities in the substances won't be so accommodating as they once were.
Very wise advice, methinks.
I don't really know the rules of these boards yet, so if I have to edit any of what I said above, I'll gladly do it
I find such a consideration a fine indication that you probably won't have to ever edit anything on our account. 8)

Cheers,
Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

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Post by joyful »

I am posting for the first time so bear with me .I recently read Pinchback's 2012 and though I am pleased a new generation is picking up the baton of myth,I was dissappointed that he made no mention of Joseph despite his presence everywhere in that book.Perhaps it is my loyalty to Joseph or to steal from the Gnostics,'the kingdom of Joseph is spread upon the earth but young men do not see it'.Any thoughts?

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