Wouter, write 100 times on the chalkboard:
Alterations of consciousness is a crucial but underestimated dimension of Western esotericism.
http://www.amsterdamhermetica.nl/research/individual-research-projects/wouter-hanegraaff-research/
“investigates the … empirical evidence for … alterations of consciousness … informed by … cognitive studies and consciousness research.”
We will be looking for you at the next psychedelic rave warehouse party.
For empirical evidence follow cognitive psychologist Benny Shanon in DMT.
You wrote:
“the concept of “Altered States of Consciousness” … was … re-conceptualized as “Alterations of Consciousness” by Imants Barušs 2003.”
We will inspect Baruss’ moves for the usual bullshit just-so story of:
Psychedelics are the new decadent way of simulating the traditional esoteric methods of alterations of consciousness such as blocking a nostril, dancing, drumming, sitting in a cave, whatever we can dream up but (our real dissimulation point and purpose is) “Anything but drugs!”
We shall go into a manic frenzy of invention of fabricated narratives of any alien psychology and any made-up “traditional method of the mystics”; the proposed methods are irrelevant and only serve as a decoy, a stage magician’s misdirection of attention, just so long as we can substitute anything and everything to pave-over the truth, which is that psilocybin is the traditional method of the mystics.
You aren’t going to recycle that fabricated just-so story that is designed to appease the Creator’s delusion enforcement automatons, are you? We are so tired of hearing that rubbish!
You wrote: “This research project focuses on the textual evidence for alterations of consciousness in contexts such as … the use of psychoactive substances for altering consciousness in esoteric and occultist contexts since the 19th century [ie BC — mh] to the present.”
“the research will also include empirical research into contemporary practices of altering consciousness in esoteric contexts, such as e.g. Channeling [like your point in your keynote speech article “Entheogenic Esotericism” that New Age channeling was actually a *cover* story for writing “while tripping on acid” — don’t contradict yourself, be consistent, tell a consistent story narrative tale -mh] and Neo-shamanism.”
“These materials will be analyzed through a multidisciplinary perspective informed by modern cognitive studies and consciousness research.”
A safer term is ‘interdisciplinary’: in practice, due to the hyper-separation of disciplines, ‘multidisciplinary’ merely means summing one cliched, limited, isolated discipline, plus the limited isolated approach of another discipline.
‘Interdisciplinary’ means having mentality from the separate isolated disciplines critique the input from within the other isolated disciplines, so it is a step closer to, instead of only differentiating approaches, also integrating approaches, breaking down the barriers that hyper-separate the disciplines.
I am a representative of entheogen scholars’ historical scholarship, especially premodern Esotericism based on Psilocybin: we don’t need more bullshit; write something that is of use to entheogen scholars for a change!
Andy Letcher in the book Shrooms (published by Prohibition Press, Inc.), annhilates all mushroom evidence by a magic trick of pretzel logic straight out of the playbook from CIA agent and bankster propagandist R. Gordon Wasson:
Observe the magic trick to exorcise the thousands of mushrooms out of the evidence base:
Thus argueth Letcher:
Entheogen scholars say that the secret basis of religion is mushrooms.
Here is a mushroom openly depicted on a church door.
Given that mushrooms were covert and this mushroom is openly depicted, therefore this mushroom must not be a mushroom.
Therefore, there is no mushroom on this door.
This one mushroom serves as a proxy for all mushrooms or rather, mysterious mushroom-shaped objects, in religious art.
So, we have no evidence for mushrooms in religious history.
QED.
Write something that is of use to entheogen scholars, for a change! Explicitly and honestly without dissimulation; stop the dissimulation, stop the pretense, stop the censorship, remove the mental shackles, stop hiding and concealing, denying and covering-over.
Stop encoding, encrypting, censoring, and mis-leading.
Instead, gather the evidence and put it forth explicitly, directly, simply, plainly, and openly, without spin, without distortion. Obey critical discourse analysis.
Your job is to reveal, not to conceal. Knock it off with the phony scholarship that serves to hide and distort.
We will subject you to critical discourse analysis, to see how you are biased and spewing forth apologetics instead of scholarship.
What’s it going to be: are you going to be just another Prohibition apologist?
Who are you trying to appease — Nixon’s war on drugs? or truth, following the evidence?
You academic scholars have let us down and disappointed us. You have betrayed us, except for your own mushroom book cover.
You have proved to be dissimulators, apologists, propagandists with zero credibility.
You need to restore our ability to respect you as an honest scholar producing sound, useful research towards comprehension of the riddle of religious mythology, as I have done.
You must understand how we are feeling now about academic scholars, who are working under the boot-heel of The System, the Establishment pseudo-scholarship, which is more apologetics than research.
We entheogen scholars are angry at The System and people going along with the system, scholars more intent on writing what their masters force them to write, than writing plain truth.
You are in the defensive position here. Prove to us that you can produce real scholarship, and not just Prohibition-compliant bullshit.
Remember what you wrote, that altered states have been neglected and *underestimated*!
Remember that you were *wrong*, you *all* were *wrong*, you were all very wrong.
That’s what you wrote yourself.
Now given the fact that you all were very wrong, which is what you yourself wrote, keep in mind that you guys don’t know what you’re talking about — so forget preconceptions!
You wrote that you guys were laboring under false preconceptions — so are you going to continue with those preconceptions?
Rather you need to be agnostic, and *start* opening your eyes and *start* investigating the evidence, without prejudice and preconceptions.
You yourself wrote that you guys *don’t* know, that you were laboring under false assumptions, blind to censorship, “naive”, blind to Prohibition’s forced whitewashing, blind to the psychedelic basis of the New Age, and that you were dead wrong and naive.
You are going to *begin* investigating now, *begin* asking the questions; so don’t start with heavy fixed preconceptions and pre-judgments about the extent:
To what extent were visionary plants used throughout our religious and cultural history in Western and global history?
That is the Michael Hoffman question. Answer it. Investigate it without pre-judgment and preconception, except loosely tentatively held.
Do not begin with the dogmatic axiom cast in stone that visionary plants are deviant and minor in our history.
We tried that tale, that axiom, and ended up in bafflement and incomprehension of those mysterious alien thinkers before us.
We failed to solve the riddle of religious mythology and metaphor analogy, as long as we were dogmatically adhering to that pre-judged, premature commitment to that axiom.
Keep that in mind: you were dead wrong; so what basis do you have for preconceptions and biases against {Psilocybin Is Western Esotericism}?
I suggest you bow down and serve the master of Evidence, not any longer bow down to impeached head archon Nixon and his phony, fraudulent, predatory war on drugs, which is Prohibition-for-Profit, which is leading all the academics by their noses, pathetic slaves spewing propaganda to serve their master, impeached President Nixon and the subservient archons he leads along in chains in his triumphal procession.
Is that you there I see in his parade of victims in chains, wearing Nixon’s mental shackles?
We entheogen scholars consider you guilty until you prove yourself to us, that you are a real scholar, not a fraud, not just another dissimulator.
— Michael the Archangel