Category: Uncategorized

Huston Smith wrote in 1964 [condensed excerpts]:

__________________

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/hsmith.htm

Do Drugs Have Religious Import?
Huston Smith, Ph.D.
CThe Journal of Philosophy, Vol LXI, No. 18, September 17, 1964


Drugs have light to throw on the history of religion, the
phenomenology of religion, and the philosophy of religion. Vegetables
and actions altered states of consciousness; these altered states are
the products of changes in brain chemistry. These states historically
tended to be connected in some way with religion. These
consciousness-changing devices have been linked with religion. They
may have actually initiated many of the religious perspectives which
continued after their psychedelic origins were forgotten.

Robert Graves, Gordon Wasson, and Alan Watts have suggested that most
religions arose from such chemically-induced theophanies. In a 1963
journal of Phi Beta Kappa, Mary Barnard wrote “Which was more likely
to happen first:

o The spontaneously generated idea of an afterlife in which the
disembodied soul, liberated from the restrictions of time and space,
experiences eternal bliss

o The accidental discovery of hallucinogenic plants that give a sense
of euphoria, dislocate the center of consciousness, and distort time
and space, making them balloon outward in greatly expanded vistas

“The latter experience might have had an explosive effect on the
largely dormant minds of men, causing them to think of things they had
never thought of before. This is direct revelation. Fifty
theo-botanists working for fifty years would make the current theories
concerning the origins of much mythology and theology as out-of-date
as pre-Copernican astronomy.”

This is an important hypothesis, which must surely engage the
attention of historians of religion for some time to come. The crux
of the historical question is: What is the extent to which drugs
generate or shape theologies, rather than merely duplicating or
simulating theologically sponsored experiences?

Phenomenology attempts a careful description of human experience.
Therefore the drugs pose the following question for the phenomenology
of religion: Do the experiences induced by drugs differ from religious
experiences reached without drugs? If they differ, how do they
differ?

Even the Bible notes that chemically induced psychic states bear some
resemblance to religious ones. Are such comparisons, paralleled in
the accounts of virtually every religion, superficial? How far can
they be pushed? Not all the way, students of religion have thus far
insisted. R. C. Zaehner has drawn the line emphatically. “The
importance of Huxley’s Doors of Perception is that the author claims
that what he experienced under the influence of mescalin is closely
comparable to a genuine mystical experience. If he is right, the
conclusions are alarming.” Zaehner thinks Huxley is not right — but
actually, Huxley is correct.

__________________


Gnosis 10th anniv. issue, p. 35
http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents37.html
Interview with Huston Smith.

He holds that there is spotty evidence for the theory that all the
religions originated from entheogens.

Gnosis 10th anniv. issue, p. 35
http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents37.html
Interview with Huston Smith.

Smoley and Kinney, editors of Gnosis journal and two book compilations
from it, asked Huston Smith essentially about the maximal entheogen
theory of religion — showing that they are to some extent aware of
the basic idea of the maximal entheogen theory of religion, the thesis
that “all religions had their start in psychedelic experiences”.


Kinney: “Some proponents of psychedelics seem to say that all
religions had their start in psychedelic experiences. Do you agree?”

The maximal entheogen theory of myth/religion/Esotericism is not
identical to the thesis that all religions had their start in
psychedelic experiences. According to the truly maximal theory, which
I have defined and emphasized to fill-in, the *ongoing* origin or
wellspring of myth and religion has always been visionary plants —
not merely the long-ago *temporal* origin.

Mount Daumal: A review of “Rene Daumal: The Life and Work of a Mystic
Guide”, by Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt
Review by Erik Davis
http://www.techgnosis.com/daumal.html —
Erik Davis wrote:
“… 36-year-old Rene Daumal died in Paris near the close of World War
II … Daumal’s first claim to fame was the precociously weird group
he formed with three teenage pals known as Le Grand Jeu. They wanted
political, psychological, and metaphysical revolution, with
pretentious rants and all (“No more free will! No more whim or
fantasy! No more pretty things!”). Anticipating the 1960s, they dived
into automatic handwriting, astral travel, sensory deprivation and
drugs. Daumal’s most notable experiments involved carbon
tetrachloride, an impressively toxic dry-cleaning solvent that
launched him into a near-death experience that eventually crystallized
into his essay “Determining Memory,” a play-by-play of druggy gnosis
worthy of William James. The chemical also probably contributed to
the TB that killed Daumal in 1944, though a lifetime of Gaulois
probably didn’t help things much.”


I would define ‘scientism’ as, a materialistic scientific view of the
world that is based in the ordinary state of consciousness and has not
integrated data from the dissociative state.


James O’Meara wrote:

>>A night of serious drinking” (http://tinyurl.com/b8lhr) contains

this passage that may have some hidden significance: a “true
scientist” has developed a method to cure the disease of “scientism”:

_______________

“So it’s a microbic disease?”

“Yes, and the microbe has been around for a long time. The protozoa
swarmed even on the tree of knowledge. ….To preserve us against this
microbe, we have but one radical remedy: the sap of the tree of
life….But how could we get hold of it? It was only after ten years
research that it came to me. The serum had really existed from time
immemorial; specialists have been making it daily, and it would be
quite possible to make industrial quantities at practically no cost at
all…”

“I thought, ‘does he mean wine?’….”

“Holy water, young man, holy water! … For the most suitable cases
we adopt the following procedure: With the first inoculation, the
Scienter concludes that the miracles of Lourdes are real. After the
second, the Holy Virgin appears to him. With the third, he recognizes
the infallibility of the Pope. By the fourth, he is going to
confession and mass. By the fifth, hope speaks within him: ‘Thou
shalt live in Paradise.’ By the sixth, charity speaks within him: ‘
Inoculate others as you yourself have been inoculated.’ By the
seventh, faith speaks within him: ‘Seek no more to understand.’ At
this point, I claim that he is cured. Unfortunately the Authorities,
who still live in the shadow of crude materialistic superstitions, are
reluctant to acknowledge the effectiveness of my cure.”

_______________

James O’Meara wrote:

>>Note the possible references to psychoactive substances and gnostic

themes: tree of life, sap, wine, holy water, made in industrial
quantities, 7 inoculations, opposition from materialistic authorities.

Issue 3
The Alchemy of Art — Arthur Versluis. (Listed because I found a
passage in a book by Versluis (not Godwin?) about his use of LSD and
his awakening from it.)


The passage might actually be in the book

The Elements of Shamanism
Nevill Drury
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1852300698/
1989

Led Zeppelin (33 1/3)
Erik Davis
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0826416586/

Condensed blurbs:

>>In this entertaining and informed homage to one of Rock’s towering

pinnacles, Erik Davis investigates the magic that surrounds this
album. Peeling the layers from each song, Davis reveals their dark
mystical roots, considering this inspired, brilliantly played rock
album as a form of occult induction.

>>Erik Davis has been writing about music, subcultures, and technology

for fifteen years. His cult book Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and
Mysticism in the Age of Information (1998), was translated into five
languages and has recently been republished with a new introduction by
Serpents Tail. He is a regular contributor to Wired, and lives in San
Francisco, where he is currently researching the history of California
counterculture.

Condensed excerpt:

>>Stripping Led Zeppelin’s famous name off the record let their Great

Work symbolically stand on its own two feet. The wordless jacket lent
the album charisma, as fans hunted for hidden meanings. This helped
create a Rock paradox: an esoteric megahit, a blockbuster arcanum.
Stripped of words, the album no longer referred to anything but
itself: a concrete talisman that drew you into its world. All our
stopgap titles are lame: Led Zeppelin IV, Untitled, Runes, Zoso, Four
Symbols… The album was nameless in a Lovecraftian fashion, a thing
from beyond, charged with mana. And yet this uncanny artifact was easy
to buy.”

This article in the new issue of Aires: Journal for the Study of
Western Esotericism may be the first published scholarly work in
alchemy that recognizes the work of Clark Heinrich to identify
visionary plants in Western Esotericism, particularly in alchemy.

The Angelical Stone of Elias Ashmole
Matthew Rogers
Source: Aries, 2005, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 61-90(30)
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
Document Type: Research article
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/arie/2005/00000005/0000000
1/art00003
PDF – 30-page article


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Per my discussion group/weblog the past year or two (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/ ), all Western Esotericism is
based on the 4 themes I’ve been combining and emphasizing, summarized
as ‘dissociation’ [theme 1], ‘determinism’ [2], ‘cybernetics’ [3], and
‘metaphor’ [4].

There’s a continuous history of Western Esotericism, even if in recent
centuries some official version of what’s called “scientific
rationalism” has apparently hogged the limelight of publicity and
people perceive Esotericism as being relatively underground — though
it’s becoming easy to poke holes in that official claim of the strong
predominance of that scientific rationalism, which has to struggle to
maintain its semblance of a clear-cut hegemony.

Each “cell” of Western Esotericism (each system, in each period, in
each location) has always been based around the combination of themes
about:
[1] The cognitive dissociative state that is best induced by
visionary plants
[2] The problem of timeless cosmic determinism and trans-rationally
transcending that determinism
[3] Autonomous self-government and the origin of one’s will
[4] Metaphors for such plants and the resulting dissociative-state
phenomena.

I am not particularly interested in alchemy — I am interested in all
forms of Western Esotericism and how this combination of 4 concerns
manifests in every form of Western Esotericism. Every article in
Gnosis magazine is really about, or ought to be explicitly about, this
combination of thematic concerns. If you look hard enough at any of
the 51 thematic issues of Gnosis magazine, this set of 4 themes is
present at the core. It has now become routine and cookbook to
identify and highlight these 4 themes throughout books about Gnosis,
mysticism, myth, and esotericism.

One connection I’m looking for, that would be convenient to bolster
the case, would be several clear, direct connections between astral
ascent mysticism [2] and visionary plants [1]. So far, I’ve only come
across some 4 hints, or sheer proximity, of these two themes.

Astral ascent mysticism is the clearest organizing frame of reference
from which to order and analyze all schemes of Western Esotericism,
which is why it would be nice to identify several direct connections
between sacred eating/drinking [1] and astral ascent mysticism [2].
Transcending cosmic determinism [2] is already an explicit theme built
into astral ascent mysticism, and ASC-based experiential metaphor [4]
is clear enough in astral ascent mysticism, including themes of
governing-agency and will [3].

I have contributed various aspects of entheogen scholarship, but the
real and ultimate contribution is not only to correct and improve each
of these 4 theories (dissociation, determinism, cybernetics, and
metaphor), but to show how the resulting combination of the resulting
corrected and improved theories fits together to provide the solution
to understanding myth-religion or transcendent knowledge.

When books such as Versluis’ _Philosophy of Magic_ talk about
“Traditional culture”, “Tradition”, and “Traditional religion”, they
are really talking about ASC-based culture as opposed to OSC-based
culture, ASC-based myth-religion/esotericism as opposed to modern-era,
which is to say OSC-based, culture/myth/religion/esotericism. Altered
state of cognition (ASC); ordinary state of cognition (OSC); that is,
the cognitive state of loose/fluid/dynamic mental association binding
vs. tight/fixed/static mental association binding.

The most effective way to induce loose cognitive binding is visionary
plants, particularly the clean entheogens such as psilocybin
mushrooms. The best way to think of Greco-Roman ‘mixed wine’, in
terms of its resulting effects, is as a psilocybin-mushroom beverage,
with variable plants being utilized to bring about the desired
resulting effect that approximates to some extent the classic
psilocybin-mushroom phenomena.

A clarifying comparison and idea is that if you switched Ken Kesey’s
Electric Kool-Aid with Greco-Roman ‘mixed wine’ (per symposium,
Passover meal, and mystery religion), neither party would notice the
difference; ‘mixed wine’ was phenomenologically identical to ‘electric
Kool-Aid’. Scholars can pretend this was due to their alien culture
and psychology (and physiology, per Freke & Gandy’s post-censoring
passage in their book The Jesus Mysteries), but phenomenologically,
it’s clear enough that for whatever reason, the experiences associated
with ‘mixed wine’ were identical to the experiences induced by
electric Kool-Aid.

Song: She’s an Illusion
Artist: Daybreak (Lyn La Salle)
http://members.aol.com/FoggVelvet/LSD3.html – “Lyn La Salle – Randee
Ram Jet (Hy Nibble 9241; later A&M 889) Duluth, MN 1967 Flip is Takin’
It Easy. This music is so classic that it might take a few listenings
to appreciate the outrageousness of the lyrics. La Salle was also in
the Duluth band Daybreak, who put out the 45 She’s An Illusion / Evil
Eyed Woman (Westchester UA-424-42749)”
MP3 track info (relevance unclear): shes_an_illusion.mp3 (don’t know
how I got this file — from Web I think, can’t find it) JFProducer
2000 Length: 3:11

Transcribed by Michael Hoffman (quick initial try)


Safe within the tangles of her flowing hair
Fingers probing secrets of her mind
Safe within the softness of the stitch in hand
Dream of golden treasures you can find

See her running slowly cross the meadow
See her in the sand forbidding yellow
She’s something else to everyone who sees her
It’s sad to know it’s just a dream you’re after

She’s an illusion
She’s an illusion
She’s an illusion of your mind

See her have the kind of love that laughs always
Hoping for the time still yet to come
See her hands her shortened skirt of shining light
Never staying long with men in once

Is she there or is she just a shadow?
Changing with the ever changing yellows
Her liquid body there before your eyes
How long before you start to realize

She’s an illusion
She’s an illusion
She’s an illusion of your mind

She’s an illusion
She’s an illusion
She’s an illusion of your mind



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The philosophy and politics (far right and far left) of German and
French mescaline circles in Europe between the two world wars.
Martin Lee
Entheogenesis Conference
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3761.html
1 hr 5 min
Date Entered: 13 Jun 2005

Martin A Lee is the Author of Acid Dreams – The Complete Social
History Of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond.

Sartre, Walter Benjamin, Jung, Lewin, Scott Thompson’s recent research
on Benjamin, Frankl’s morphine suicide, Benjamin writing on mescaline
and hashish (compared to politicized use of pot and acid in the
1960s), Benjamin: the hallucinatory power of drugs penetrates the
hallucinatory/intoxicating power of capitalism-culture
(phantasmagorical marketing) 40:00, rightist Ernst Juenger (coined the
term ‘psychonaut’ — ether, cocaine, absinthe, LSD, ), Juenger wrote a
450-page book on his drug experiences _Approaches_ in 1970 and was an
elitist who didn’t want “the masses” using visionary drugs; 1951
Hofmann and Juenger took LSD per book _LSD: My Problem Child_. Some
of Hofmann’s books were inscribed by Juenger.

Harvard refused to do as Scott Thompson prepared: gather into 1 volume
all of Walter Benjamin’s drug-related writing. So use this search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Thompson+%22walter+Benjamin%22+mescalin
e

http://www.google.com/search?q=Thompson+%22walter+Benjamin%22+hashish

http://www.egodeath.com/MaximalEntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm — Mark
Stahlman of Newmedia, Sent: October 11, 2003, To: maps-forum

http://www.maps.org/pipermail/maps_forum/1997-July/000027.html —
MAPS: FEATURE: FROM RAUSCH TO REBELLION: Walter Benjamin’s Uncompleted
Book on Hashish, By Scott Thompson

Scott J. Thompson —
Hashish in Berlin: An Introduction to Walter Benjamin’s Uncompleted
Work On Hashish
— Paper read at the Walter Benjamin Congress 1997

From ‘Rausch’ to Rebellion: Walter Benjamin’s “On Hashish and the
Aesthetic Dimensions of Prohibitionist Realism” —
An introductory essay by Scott J. Thompson
http://www.wbenjamin.org/rausch.html



The importance of drugs in literature and to literary studies
Greg
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3799.html
28 min
Date Entered: 30 Jun 2005

Beginning with Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, concentrates on the
importance of drug use in the writing of the following luminaries:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

John Keats

Thomas De Quincey

Charles Baudelaire

Fritz Hugh Ludlow

Jack Kerouac

William S. Burroughs

Allen Ginsberg

Phillip K. Dick

Hunter S. Thompson

The importance of the study of drug use in contemporary literary
studies (especially in the work of Jacques Derrida and Avital
Ronnell).

Greg was born in England and has lived in Vancouver since 1990. He
received a First Class Honors B.A. from Simon Fraser University in
1994 and a Master of Arts (English) from SFU in 2004. He is the
interested in researching the “rhetoric of drugs” and the author of
Crystal Children.



Kenneth Tupper
Entheogenesis 2 Conference
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3780.html
1 hr 0 min
Date Entered: 28 Jun 2005

>>Ayahuasca, an entheogenic tea, was until relatively recently unheard

of by most people in modern Western societies, despite a long history
of use among indigenous people of the Amazon. The “psychedelic” 1960s
saw an explosion of interest in plant-based spiritual healing tools
such as cannabis, peyote and psilocybin mushrooms. However, for a
variety of reasons, ayahuasca remained known only to a few
anthropologists and travelers to remoter regions of South America and
was not among the panoply of substances that began to be used
recreationally at that time.

>>At the end of the 20 th century, a rapid rise of interest in and use

of ayahuasca began outside its native environment. Although some
syncretistic religions had been using ayahuasca as a sacrament for a
number of decades in Brazil, by the 1990s these practices had spread
both to urban centres within Brazil and to communities beyond its
borders. At the same time, ayahuasca tourism to Amazonian regions has
started to become a significant industry, and assorted plant materials
to make home-brewed “anahuasca” mixtures have become readily available
online.



Witch Hunts and the War on Weed
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3747.html
46 min
Date Entered: 06 Jun 2005

>>As an Entheogenesis presentation, Witch hunts and the war on weed

will first compare important social, artistic, legal, and
pharmacologicalsimilarities between the medieval inquisition and
today’s drug war. The second part of the presentation will explore the
role of the Black Death as the historical incentive for the
inquisition, and then inquire into the evolution of scapegoating in
the early 20th Century.

>>The Rev. Damuzi is a writer for Cannabis Culture, co-host of Fane of

the Cosmos radio and POT-TV show, reverend of the Church of the
Universe, director of the Nelson Compassion Club.



From Witches To Crack Moms
Susan Boyd
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3776.html
58 min
Date Entered: 20 Jun 2005

>>Susan Boyd will be reading from her new book, From Witches to Crack

Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy. She will examine how drugs are a
source of peace and the current war on drug is a war on any form of
consciousness that competes with the ideology of hierarchal power.

>>Susan Boyd is a community activist working with drug user groups and

an associate professor in Studies in Policy and Practice at the
University of Victoria. She is the author of From Witches to Crack
Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy (2004) and Mothers and Illicit
Drugs: Transcending the Myths (1999).



Roman Villagrana
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3804.html
1 hr 10 min
Date Entered: 05 Jul 2005

>>Roman represents a harmonious universe portrayed by dancing beings,

galactic councils, sychromystics and other enlightened perspectives
symbolizing the ever-changing moment he calls the eternal party. Roman
loves to make art but ultimately he believes it’s a duty to his
community and our existence as a visual representation of the world we
want or have. He invites everyone to participate in a conscious
movement declaring interdependence through the act of creating it.

>>Includes an open mic session hosted by Chris Bennett and Marc Emery.

Women and the Drug Experience
Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowits
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-2484.html
Sister’s of the Extreme authors

>>About their lifetime of research following psychedelic culture and

about their business, Flashback Books, which had a booth at
entheogenesis and which offers rare, out of print books on
psychedelics and related subjects.

>>Set decorated with the art of Luke Brown, whose entheogen inspired

artwork was featured at Entheogenesis 2004

>>Renee Boje talks to Cynthia Palmer & Michael Horowitz, authors of

‘Sister’s of the Extreme: Women and the Drug Experience’.



Francis Thackeray on Shakespeare’s Pipes
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3730.html
1 hr 12 min
Date Entered: 05 Jun 2005

>>Marc Emery gives some short opening comments and introduces the

first Presenter, Prof. Francis Thackeray of the Transvaal Museum in
South Africa, who discusses his research connecting Shakespeare with
Cannabis use. Careful analysis of Shakespearean texts suggests that
William Shakespeare, a prolific wordsmith, was aware of the
stimulating properties of Cannabis sativa. Chemical analysis of
residues in clay pipes from Startford-upon-Avon and elsewhere supports
the view that Cannabis and other “compounds” were being smoked in 17th
century England, even after the Pope had declared Cannabis to be
associated with witchcraft.


_________________________

Entheogenesis 1 conference:


Psychedelics, Altered Consciousness, and Visionary Art
Jon Hanna
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-2471.html
45 min, Date Entered: 09 Feb 2004

Jon Hanna — Organizer of the Mind States Conferences and Editor of
the Enthogen Review

>>Altered consciousness resulting from the consumption of various

drugs has had a creative effect on art throughout the ages. The use of
psychedelics in current times has greatly influenced the visions
depicted by modern artists from the 1960s to today. This lecture and
slide presentation–a visual delight–will introduce and discuss works
by artists who have been inspired by their drug use. The primary focus
will be contemporary art, and the incredible twists and turns that it
has taken on the psychedelic path.

http://www.cosm.org/ – Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

CoSM Journal is for the integration of wisdom and the arts.

Click “Back Issues” for Summer 2004 – Issue 1

Click “CoSM Journal” for Winter 2005 — Issue 2

CoSM Journal, published by the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, provides a
forum for the emergence of Visionary Culture. … The work and
stories of artists, thinkers, and community builders who are dedicated
to transformative living, and committed to the integration of wisdom
and the arts … to inform, connect, and inspire this evolving global
awareness.


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>>The importance of drugs in literature and to literary studies
>>Greg

http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3799.html

>>28 min
>>Date Entered: 30 Jun 2005

>>Beginning with Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, concentrates on

the importance of drug use in the writing of the following luminaries:



Greg includes many acid-inspired Rock lyricists in the opening list.

Discusses interesting politics of entheogenists’ demonization and
attempt to distance their “approved” entheogens from demonized crystal
meth — their hypocricy and the heel of prohibition. “… Vancouver
is poised to leave the game of necessary hypocricy aobut drugs … I
understand Rick’s concern, and Doctor Holland’s concerns, and after
many years in the trenches, I have a lot of concerns myself;
nevertheless, I don’t believe that self-censorship is the way to go,
if we want to really accurately learn about drugs.”

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22crystal+children%22+greg

http://cannabisculture.com/articles/1656.html — [condensed:] The
1997 book Crystal Children continues the speed saga — it’s a
collection of tales about the intersection of electronic music and
dance culture with drugs, especially crystal methamphetamine. The
term ‘crystal’ has been used to describe illicit, powdered
methamphetamine since the early 1960’s, when Desoxyn (pharmaceutical,
legal methamphetamine, usually available in a liquid) was refined by
underground chemists to a more concentrated crystalline or glassy
compound. Smokeable speed appeared about ten years after the early
70’s, when a drug called ‘Ice’ hit the streets — a highly purified
form of crystal meth that appears in a rock form, smoked.



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http://www.egodeath.com/MaximalEntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm — My
condensed excerpts from that webpage and discussion thread, with book
and documentary links added.


Hofmann and perhaps the Stolls were already nature mystics as opposed
to simple lab-rat chemists, when they first came in contact with
psychedelics. This potentially changes the whole story.

Captain Al Hubbard had been seeing angels since he was a boy in
Kentucky, according to conversations with Willis Harman. Hubbard’s
conversion to become the Johnny Appleseed of LSD came in a vision in a
wooded clearing outside of Seattle — before he was aware of the
specifics of LSD, which had just appeared in Vancouver at Hollywood
Hospital.

In Connie Littlefield’s documentary Hofmann’s Potion, Albert Hofmann
recounts an experience as a child while hiking in the Alps — before
he became a chemist or found out anything about psychedelics. The use
of hallucinogens — certainly various mushrooms and maybe ergot
preparations — by artistic/phiosophical/mystic circles in and around
Basle and other places predated any of the LSD lab work in the 20th
century by a 100 years or more.

Nietzsche heavily used various drugs including psychedelics.
Nietzsche began his career in Basle in the 1860’s. Rudolf Steiner was
Nietzche’s librarian for awhile, so he knew about Nietzsche’s drug use
and interest. Knowledge of the religious implications of the whole
pharmacopeia was widespread in Theosophical groups by the late 1800’s.
The Cosmic Circle around Ludwig Klages (in Munich and elsewhere like
Ascona) were well versed in the use of hallucinogens — their acting
out Eleusis suggests use of ergot as well.

LSD-like chemicals didn’t come as a surprise to those who were working
at Sandoz in the 1930/40’s. There was a long history of interest in
visionary plants and extracts, which finally found its expression in
synthetic organic chemisty in the 20th century. Research would prove
that those involved, such as Hofmann and the Stolls, were not
ignorant; we should stop assuming they were ignorant of psychoactive
plant derivatives.

Scott Thompson writes about the use of mescaline by Frankfurt School
philosopher Walter Benjamin in the 1930’s:
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/2jcl/2JCL21.htm. Benjamin followed
the trail blazed by Ludwig Klages and his early 20th century Cosmic
Circle in Munich. Klages employed mescaline along with other
psychoactives in his exploration of the intoxication of cosmic
experience, starting around 1900. The Klages scene extended to Zurich
and Ascona, and is summarized in Martin Green’s book _Mountain of
Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona 1900-1920_ as well as in
Robert Norton’s book _Secret Germany_.

It would be far-fetched to presume that this early counterculture
didn’t use synthetic mescaline and was unaware of psilocybe mushrooms
and peyote. Scholars haven’t dwelt on this aspect because drug use in
modern culture was treated with discreteness; scholars have not
ignored, denied, and dismissed drug use in modern Western high
culture.

Richard Noll in his _The Aryan Christ_ described Carl Jung as having
believed he was the reincarnation of the Mithratic deity Aeon. This
was a controversial claim for Noll. Many who write on this period and
its prominent figures are reluctant to bring drugs into their writings
because they are afraid they might be attacked like Noll was.

It would be far-fetched to imagine that Jung wasn’t familiar with
mescaline and the psychedelic pharmacopeia. Harry Murray closely
emulated Jung in the U.S. (to the extent of recreating in the woods of
Massachusetts the “Bollingen” stone tower in which Jung worked and
carried out his famous “affair”) and hired Tim Leary at Harvard. He
was a top CIA personality profiler — Leary’s speciality as well.

Freud used cocaine and he hired Lou Salome (the woman who came closest
to becoming Nietzsche’s wife) as the governess for his children. The
personal overlaps between Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, Steiner, Crowley,
Klages and many others were numerous and extensive; it was a small
world.

By the late-1800/early-1900’s there was substantial interest in the
details of cult practices in antiquity, including attempts to reinact
the initiations of Eleusis, Isis, and Mithraism, and in the use of
plants by various tribes around the world. These matters were widely
known to those who were interested. There were ongoing Western
traditions that used natural psychedelics in association with mystical
religious practices. There are many reasons why modern science
uncovered much of this long before Hofmann’s discovery.

The modern-era mass interest in psychedelics happened around the Cold
War. The widespread popularization of LSD reflects the desire to use
psychedelics as a peace-bomb in the 1950/60’s. This was not the
situation in the 1800’s or early 1900’s. The private use of
psychedelics predates the synthesis of LSD and was continuous
throughout human history.

The pre-LSD history of psychedelic use can be traced in the context of
little-known groups carrying out their versions of ancient practices.
There was a thread of knowledge that was maintained from ancient times
about the psychedelic properties of ergot. Use by these groups and
individuals was never in the public record in the first place, so
there was no public record to be later deleted. This makes sense
because the word ‘occult’ means hidden, obscured from view, secret.

Now we need a clear explanation of why and how psychedelics research
was divorced from the powerful, occult historical knowledge of ancient
tribal and religious rituals using these substances.

Before the discovery of LSD, and the surge of interest and research in
psychedelics that followed in its wake, how much knowledge was there
about ancient tribal and religious rituals using these substances?
How much interest and knowledge was there about entheogens used in
Europe? Is there really any divorce that needs to be explained or
perhaps is it more likely that the future couple (tribal religious use
of psychedelics, and post-LSD psychedelics research) had not yet met?

How much knowledge was there? Especially, was any significant
knowledge of these substances maintained continuously since
pre-Christian, tribal times — even if only by a few interested
scholars, esoteric group members and assorted, ostracized heretics?
Mark Stahlman and Dan Merkur supplied some names and groups.

There doesn’t appear to be any occult connection with psychedelics in
Europe to delete from the public record because until the discovery of
LSD there was not much knowledge or interest in psychedelics in
Europe. Probably because there doesn’t seem to have been widespread
use or even distribution of any indole tryptamines, no phenethylamines
and not even widespread use of Amanita in most of Europe. The
tropanes yes, but these are different from what Dr Hoffman and
associates encountered.

Was there any continuous use among a few curious, brave, heretical
counter-culturalists, mostly hidden from public record because of the
hostile laws of state and religion?

It is similar to the way use of psilocybe receded, but did not
disappear in Mexico over the last 500 years, with unsubstantiated
whispers in academic and adventurer circles of continued, hidden
mushroom ceremonies, which were not substantiated in the west until
the years around WW II by Heim, Wasson, etc. We’ve all heard of the
folk-lore record of the magical properties of amanita in Europe and of
the repressed herbalists there who similarly the hexing herbs in
secret from the Christian witch hunters. Inquiries by scholars,
clerics at the leading edge, and esoteric groups maintained or
rediscovered knowledge of the use of ergot.

Peyote is a good case to understand how “Psychedelics” have been
artificially acculturated in the West. Researching the
anthropological, psychological, psychiatric, and pharmacological
literatures on peyote and mescaline, from 1886 up to 2003 reveals that
the cultural takeover process has been standardized as follows.

The modern Western research culture takes the plant, tears the
cultural use of the plant apart from the active agent, immediately
discards and ignores the social science field studies that report the
traditional knowledge attached to that plant, and transfers the
production of academically and politically valuable information to
biomedical and psychological lab sciences, isolates and purifies an
active agent, and treat that active agent as a brand new
cultural/scientific object.


— end of condensed discussion thread


Hofmann’s Potion
Connie Littlefield, director
http://www.nfb.ca/trouverunfilm/fichefilm.php?lg=en&id=51064&v=h
Produced by Kent Martin
Writing by Connie Littlefield
2002
56 min 35 s

Interviews with many LSD pioneers, Hofmann´s Potion is a chronicle of
the drug´s early days. Interviews, music, and cinematography. An
invitation to look at LSD ­ and our world ­with an open, compassionate
mind.


The Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900-1920
Martin Burgess Green
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0874513650/
1986

Secret Germany: Stefan George and His Circle
Robert Edward Norton
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801433541/
2002

What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal
Computer
John Markoff
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670033820/
April 21, 2005

>>Shows how almost every feature of today’s home computers, from the

graphical interface to the mouse control, can be traced to two
Stanford research facilities that were completely immersed in the
counterculture. Crackling profiles of figures like Fred Moore (a
pioneering pacifist and antiwar activist who tried to build political
bridges through his work in digital connectivity) and Doug Engelbart
(a research director who was driven by the drug-fueled vision that
digital computers could augment human memory and performance)
telescope the era and the ways its earnest idealism fueled a passion
for a computing society.

Search Inside:

lsd — 41 hits

drug — 37

psychedelic — 36

acid — 18

mushroom — 1


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Kenneth Tupper
Entheogenesis 2 Conference
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-3780.html
1 hr 0 min
Date Entered: 28 Jun 2005

The video has coverage of Bob Wallace (a founder of Microsoft) at
34:00 speculating that his use of psychedelics helped generate his
idea of ‘shareware’.

I have several of Tupper’s publications on the potential of entheogens
in education.

Klaus,

Your available relevant categories for the presumed character of the
Gospel story are:

>>1. The gospel story was meant as literal historical report

>>2. The story was meant as social/political midrashic teaching, no

mysticism/mystics involved

>>3. The story was meant as natural mystical approach of ominous

natural phenomena e.g. involving stars and drugs

>>4. The story was meant as description for existential/psychological

human experience

>>5. The story was a treatise on idealist metaphysics

That proposed GS (Gospel Story character) category system is limited
because it assumes mutually exclusive categories of social/political
midrash vs. drug-induced astral ascent mysticism. The Jesus figure
was constructed through putting a twist on stock Roman socio-political
themes (divine Caesar and Pax Romana) and *intermixing* this thematic
domain with themes from the domain of drug-induced astral ascent
mysticism. So where would ‘Michael Hoffman’ fit — your GS category
2, or 3?

Jesus as considered in the late-antique context could be said to have
been a matter of psychological/existential phenomena but not in the
sense you intend, because 20th Century ‘Psychology’ is axiomatically
based in the ordinary state of consciousness, whereas the kind of
“psychology” relevant for religion is specifically the opposite:
psychology that’s grounded in the intense altered state of
consciousness.

The Jesus figure expresses GS category 5, “idealist metaphysics”, but
again with a similar correction/objection to the usual definitions: in
the Greco-Roman context, “idealist metaphysics” means quite different
than in the modern mental scheme; it meant metaphysics emphatically
based in the intense altered state.

A problem with #3 is that it tends to commit or allow the mistake of
reversing symbol and referent; per J.Z. Smith, mystics utilized stars
to talk about mystic-state experiences; it’s not the case that they
were concerned with “natural phenomena” such as stars and erected, per
Acharya S, an encoded mystical system of meaning that ultimately means
the stars.

Use the terms ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ with caution — by 150 CE, the
predominant popular idea and goal was to leap beyond the Natural,
heimarmene-ruled realm, into the divine, magical, super-natural realm.


Regarding your placement of Wilber and Watts with Grof in category 3:

Ken Wilber has written so little about Jesus, mystery religions, and
Greco-Roman myth, it is difficult to find passages where he makes any
statements on the matter — it’s practically a giant gaping hole in
Wilber’s presumably all-encompassing system. Wilber really has
developed no theory of mystery-religion; he only has made a couple
fumbling, uninformed comments on it. Instead, he only writes a little
about Plotinus.

Wilber takes it for granted that Jesus existed, and theorizes that
Jesus attained an unusually elevated level of
existential/psychospiritual functioning for that era (and that
collectively, we have evolved in our level of psychospiritual
development since then). Ken Wilber fits your category 4; that the
events reported in the gospel passion report match as a description of
existential/psychological human experience.

Similarly, Alan Watts takes it for granted that Jesus existed, though
he does explicitly and clearly define his position (p. 55-56, _Behold
the Spirit_) on the relation between Jesus’ historicity, possible
mythic-only existence, and the mystical meaning of the purported
historical events. Your wording of category 3 is strange; I’m looking
to place Watts’ view of the gospel Jesus story into a plain “mystic
metaphor, acted out in actuality” category, but you seem to begin that
category with “mystical” but then force “mystical” to end up as
“natural phenomena involving stars”.

Actually, more to the point than whether Jesus was a mystical symbol
or a symbol for psycho-spiritual development, or a metaphysical
symbol, is the broader issue of whether we should picture the
mystical, psychological, existential, and metaphysical as grounded
mainly in the ordinary state of consciousness, or in the intense
altered state of consciousness.

Your category 3 (“natural mystical approach of ominous … phenomena
… involving stars and drugs”) is worded to better lend itself to
grounding in “phenomena” encountered in the intense altered state of
consciousness, whereas per the predominant modern-era conceptions,
your category 4 (“existential/psychological human experience”) and 5
(“treatise on idealist metaphysics”) connote being based in
“experience” that’s merely in the ordinary state of consciousness.

Entheogen scholar Clark Heinrich, noting John Allegro, explicitly
points out that Jesus might be mythic-only, in his Jesus and Amanita
chapter; however, he chooses to continue writing under the conscious
assumption that Jesus did exist.

Watts fits into category 3 easily, for both straight-up mystical
reasons and the drug phenomenology metaphor connection, but Wilber
cannot be as easily fit into category 3 as category 4. From the early
60s to early 70s, Watts used LSD numerous times and has written a book
on the subject, as well as articles and passages. Ken Wilber has
never used psychedelics (only Ecstasy), and has written practically
nothing directly on the topic of entheogens (he just theorizes about
‘altered states’ in general).

I insist on putting myself in a combination of 2 and 3; that is my
trademark position; that is my contribution, to show that the gospel
Jesus figure precisely was formed by the deliberate, skillful mixture
and combination of 2 and 3.

It is hard to predict where David Ulansey will place Jesus, in the
book _The Other Christ: The Mysteries of Mithras and the Origins of
Christianity_. After I asked him to address the mythic-only Jesus
theory, his book no longer appears forthcoming. Ulansey has appeared
in a documentary about entheogens this year. Category GS 3 seems the
most natural spot for Ulansey’s Jesus.

David Ulansey is in this new documentary about entheogens:
Entheogen: Awakening The God Within
http://www.maps.org/sys/nq.pl?id=308&fmt=none
http://www.bruceeisner.com/new_culture/2005/01/new_film_entheo.html

>>David Ulansey, Ph.D. Professor of philosophy and religion at CIIS.

Ancient Hellenic mystery religions / history and theory of shamanism.

The Other Christ: The Mysteries of Mithras and the Origins of
Christianity
David Ulansey
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195153464/
Planned: May 2005

http://www.ciis.edu/pcc/conferencearchive.html#davidulansey

http://jamesarthurfans.20fr.com/photo.html

I don’t know why the subsite is titled “James Arthur Fans” — that
gives the impression that whoever named it was trying to be a
tasteless jerk. That ambiguous impression aside, it’s good to see the
legal information, though it would be better if we could talk with
James Arthur himself about his views and see whether he says the
report is factually accurate. Maybe he has written on the general
subject of adult/child relations in cultural history. Maybe there are
other resources that would suggest his views.

According to the report, Arthur had repeated sexual relations with 3
girls, age 8, 5, and 10 years.

I continue to be pretty uninterested in sex in relation to
transcendent knowledge — or, no more interested in the relation of
sex to transcendent knowledge, than the relation of any other part of
life to transcendent knowledge.

Scholarly innovation and priority of discovery is a complex matter
because researchers influence each other, so it is a matter of degree,
of clarity, of the special angle each thinker pulls together. Anyone
who claims that Arthur didn’t contribute any single idea or
combination of ideas, or an additional valuable view on the history of
visionary plants, is choosing a difficult position to defend and
uphold. His contributions were more or less of the same magnitude of
any of the all-too-few books and articles on the history of the
religious aspects of visionary plant use.

There are too few books and articles to reject any of them as
redundant and superfluous. I only know of one book that tries to
contribute something in this area and seems to fail to contribute
anything — a rambling, hardcover book that is supposedly about ergot,
but seems to actually be about nothing in particular. It’s not
trivially easy to assess the relative merits of the available handful
of books about the religious aspects of the history of visionary plant
use. Who contributed more, which book: Merkur, Heinrich, Allegro,
Ott, Ratsch, Arthur, Hofmann, Ruck, Freke & Gandy, Graves, Wasson, or
the other few important researchers?

It would be a research project to put together even a list of
*claimed* or *possible* contributions of each researcher of entheogen
history. One way of contributing is through publicizing — not only
publicizing and propagating one’s own distinctive findings, but also,
publicizing the general awareness of historical entheogen use in
religion and culture. With his popular book and his radio
appearances, many people were exposed or re-exposed to the entheogen
theory of religion through the work of James Arthur.

Women and the Drug Experience
Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowits
http://pot.tv/archive/shows/pottvshowse-2484.html
Sister’s of the Extreme authors

>>About their lifetime of research following psychedelic culture and

about their business, Flashback Books, which had a booth at
entheogenesis and which offers rare, out of print books on
psychedelics and related subjects.

>>Set decorated with the art of Luke Brown, whose entheogen inspired

artwork was featured at Entheogenesis 2004

>>Renee Boje talks to Cynthia Palmer & Michael Horowitz, authors of

‘Sisters of the Extreme: Women and the Drug Experience’.


12:00 — the editors discovered that Louisa May Alcott, great
children’s author, under pseudonym, wrote about Majoon (hashish candy)
in shops on the U.S. East Coast 1860-1869. How psychoactive drugs
have been written out of history, but are being restored to their
role.

The editors’ library, Fitz Hugh Ludlow library will be online as
“Ludlow …” something else. Flashback Books.
http://flashbackbooks.com/

Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0451529308/


Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience,
Including Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Anais Nin, Maya
Angelou, Billie Holiday, Nina Hagen, Carrie Fisher, and Others
Cynthia Palmer (Editor), Michael Horowitz (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0892817577/
2000
Illustrated, updated

Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady: Women’s Writings on the Drug Experience
Cynthia & Horowitz, Michael Palmer (Editors)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0688013872/
1982

Moksha: Aldous Huxley’s Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the
Visionary Experience
Aldous Huxley, Michael Horowitz (Editor), Cynthia Palmer (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0892817585
1999

Someone wrote [edited]:

Uncovering the many instances of individuals’ use of drugs throughout
the history of the literary world, and the world of art in general,
and then portraying as mainstream the use of drugs through the weight
of those prominent people, may show how drugs influence expansion of
consciousness. But by no means does that, in and of itself, become
supportive for the use of drugs, or make it normal, or make drug use
integrated into society.

Given that drug usage is the norm among artists, many artists can be
pulled out randomly, such as Vincent Van Gogh who cut off his ear and
subsequently died from a self-imposed gunshot wound, and the tired,
overused, prohibition-funded, lurid MTV storyline about pop musicians’
rise, fall through drugs, then redemption. When the potential of what
drugs can do is not culturally integrated into the society that uses
them, there is little room for their survival as a means of enhancing
life.

This book is available now.

The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom Timothy Freke,
Peter Gandy
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400082781
Around July 2005

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=1400082781
Religion – Mysticism Hardcover

All Freke’s books:
http://www.campusi.com/author_Timothy_Freke.htm

In the intense peak altered state, it is common to experience flashes
of points of light, and other light phenomena, including white-light
perceptual feedback. These experiential phenomena have been
metaphorized as stars, sun, fire, flames, sparks, furnace, torches,
and light. This peak state also includes the feeling of timelessness
and motionless and embeddedness as the sphere of the fixed stars as
opposed to the moving planets.

The conjunction of the experiences of motionlessness and star-sparks
is easily metaphorically compared to the sphere of the fixed stars.
The unfurled soul or spirit in ecstasy is portrayed sometimes as a
curved cape with stars, a miniature of the sphere of fixed stars.

__________

Condensed quotes from scriptures:

Unless God shall free you from this imprisonment in the body, you can
have no admission to this place.

A soul has been supplied to them from those eternal fires which you
call constellations and stars animated with divine spirit.

They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.
They turn to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

God will raise you to the heights; he will fix you firmly in the
heavens of the stars.

Lighting the way of your star-like piety, stand in honor before God,
being firmly set in heaven.

They will live in the heights of that world. They will be like the
angels and be equal to the stars.

The ligaments joining his bones were severed — transformed by fire
into immortality, he endured the rackings.

__________

While they are studying texts with their electron microscopes,
scholars ought to learn how to read; mind your interpretive framework
and become conscious of it; know the alternative interpretive
frameworks and stop to consider and apply multiple frameworks to the
passages in question.

A perfect example of careless misinterpretation and projection of
one’s interpretive framework onto a passage is that committed by Alan
Segal in the book Life After Death, in which he quotes a passage that
talks about “when the soul leaves the body”, and the comments on that
passage saying “when you die”. But against his commentary, the
passage absolutely does not say “when you die”. Nowhere does the
passage say anything at all about dying — Segal has imported that
meaning and projected it into the text. The passage he quotes says
“when the soul leaves the body”. Not the same thing!

A common theme in Greco-Roman art is the cape flowing behind the head.
This is a portrayal of ecstasy — the soul leaving the head and
unfurling as a sail, blown by the divine wind of inspiration.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

“The ligaments joining his bones were severed — transformed by fire
into immortality, he endured the rackings.”

Body falling apart or being pulled apart or disintegrating into hands
and feet and arms is a theme from schizoid, fragmented, altered,
ecstatic cognitive state — a theme preserved in the Passion storyline
as ‘scourging’, and in myths of Osiris, Dionysus/King Pentheus, and
Kali as being torn to pieces.

Before the Enlightenment and modern era, Western culture was grounded
in the visionary-plant-induced altered cognitive state. Punitive
torture was considered and approached in a mystiform way; flaying and
scourging and dismemberment were considered in light of the mystic
schizoid experience of bodymind dis-integration.

Nunnatsunega wrote:

>>You should add this book to your book lists. It’s relevant to your

model and theory of transcendent knowledge.


The Dimensions of Paradise: The Proportions and Symbolic Numbers of
Ancient Cosmology
John Michell
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0062505874/
1988

Regarding the book LSD by Otto Snow:

How to be a top 100 reviewer: be a moron and don’t hesitate to talk
with authority but with totally off-base assumptions, about things you
know nothing about (talk about “armchair theorizing”). This is a new
low in reductionist, standing-off-to-the-side “science”, a total
travesty of the idea of “disinterested observation”. How could one
*possibly* read more than a few pages about LSD and come away with the
totally mistaken idea, which appears in none of the materials, that
LSD is purely a visual effect?

The reviewer gives a bad name to “Neuroscience” and shows how to do
Neuroscience in the worst way possible. He almost seems to have a
hidden agenda of pretending to speak for Neuroscience in order to
defame that field by attributing ridiculous approaches to it that no
one would seriously advocate.


4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Detailed discussion of the infamous drug, September 17, 2004
Reviewer: magellan

This is a detailed book on the chemistry, manufacture, and
physiological effects of LSD. It includes comments by doctors and
therapists who have used it in their practice, and information on some
of the other medical uses. For example, until I saw this book, I
wasn’t aware that it had an application in the treatment of
specialized stroke-like migraines, which is how the author first
became involved with the drug. So apparently there is at least one
legitimate medical use of the drug, if one credits the information and
statements here.

I personally never understood the fascination with LSD. All it’s
really doing is altering the chemical reactions in the lower strata
and cells of the retina, the retina being composed neuronally of the
rods and cones, amacrine cells, bipolar cells, Muller cells,
horizontal cells, and ganglion cells in more or less distinct layers,
although there is some mixing to some extent. It’s not even a retinal
ganglional effect in the lateral geniculate nucleus, the main visual
system ganglion, let alone a visual cortical effect. In other words,
it’s a pretty primitive effect that occurs “up front” at the sensory
transducer of the visual system and doesn’t affect, at least from a
perception and sensation standpoint, the advanced visual information
processing centers further down the line.

Now if there was something that actually affected the three cortical
primary visual receiving areas in the occipital lobe, or
cytoarchitectonic areas 17, 18, and 19 of Brodmann, you’d really have
something, maybe something really mind expanding and mind blowing,
instead of what you have with LSD.

And as for LSD being mind-expanding, well, it certainly is
perception-altering, but the people I knew back in the 60s who took it
certainly didn’t became any brighter or more brilliant taking it, from
what I could see. On the other hand, they seemed to think it was
something important. Still, they didn’t seem any more perceptive,
creative, insightful, or smarter to me, although they often thought
so. As someone once observed about Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of
Perception, in which he reported on his experiences, it wasn’t so much
that LSD helped him write more and better, so much as it helped him
write more about LSD.

Anyway, I apologize for waxing a little nerdy, but the neurobiology of
perception and sensation is a subject I know something about, that
having been my area of interest for my master’s and doctoral work.
Although I’ve been out of school for a while, this was the consensus
on the neurophysiological effects of LSD at the time, and perhaps
you’ll find my comments there useful.


— end of magellan’s 1-paragraph book review followed by 4 paragraphs
of misinformed nonsense


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The 6-part series Transpersonal Conversations: Founders and Leaders
became available on DVD and video on May 6, 2005.

“Wisdom Library”

Formed in 2004, Transpersonal Media is the first documentary film
company in the world to focus exclusively on films about transpersonal
psychology and the consciousness movement. To date the company has
acquired over 35 interviews with Ph. D. psychologists (all on
high-definition video) for the series: Transpersonal Conversations:
Founders and Leaders. This DVD series includes detailed interviews
with: Stanislav Grof, Christina Grof, Frances Vaughan, Charles T.
Tart, Ralph Metzner and many more.

CustomFlix TRANSPERSONAL CONVERSATIONS DVD

http://www.tpconversations.com/news.htm
http://www.tpconversations.com/
http://www.google.com/search?q=customflix+transpersonal+dvd
<http://www.google.com/search?q=CustomFlix+TRANSPERSONAL+CONVERSATIONS
+DVD >

Transpersonal Conversations is a six-part series of cinema-quality
documentary interviews with the founders and leaders of Transpersonal
Psychology, the field of psychology that scientifically studies Human
spirituality and consciousness.

The series includes never before seen interview footage with:
Dr. Stanislav Grof
Charles T. Tart, Ph. D.
Frances Vaughan, Ph. D.
Ralph Metzner, Ph. D.
James Fadiman, Ph. D.
Christina Grof

“We are very excited to be presenting these unique and intimate
interviews with the greatest theoretical minds of transpersonal
psychology,” said Transpersonal Media’s president, Kevin Page.
“Without the support of several institutions like The Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology and the Association for Transpersonal
Psychology a project of this size and scope would never have been
possible. This series is not only a labor of love for our
company…but it has historical significance for the field.”

Kevin Page
President
Transpersonal Media


So you’d like to… Grok LSD on DVD!
A guide by transpersonalfriend [I strongly suspect this is Kevin
Page], Psychedelic Filmmaker/ Consciousness Filmmaker

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/KHQMSZNSRT
EU/ref=cm_bg_dp_m_2/002-5482766-6672010 — “‘TRANSPERSONAL
CONVERSATIONS: 6-DVD Special Edition BOXED-SET!’is a six-part
documentary series of cinema-quality interviews … with the founders
of transpersonal psychology, the field of psychology that focuses on
Human spirituality and consciousness. As it turns out…many of the
founders of Transpersonal [Psychology] were also the leading
researchers of LSD and other psychedelic substances in the 1950s and
60s. That makes this set of videos a unique two-for-one experience.”


TRANSPERSONAL CONVERSATIONS is a 6-part series of in-depth,
cinema-quality documentary interviews with the founders and leaders of
Transpersonal Psychology, the field of modern science that focuses on
Human consciousness and spirituality. Interviews include:

Stanislav Grof, M. D., early psychedelic researcher and co-founder of
the transpersonal field;

Charles, T. Tart, Ph. D., major theorist in transpersonal,
consciousness research and scientific parapsychology;

Frances Vaughan, Ph. D., author of the classic: “The Inward Arc” and
former president of both the Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology
Associations;

Ralph Metzner, Ph. D., one of the classic figures in Western
consciousness research, along with Harvard professors

Timothy Leary and

Richard Alpert (AKA: Ram Dass) he wrote: “The Psychedelic Experience.”


And others.
_____________________

In late 2005, Transpersonal Media will release the documentary feature
“Science of the Soul”, about Transpersonal Psychology from its
founding in the 1960s to its current cultural influence.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The academic Establishment’s commitment to rejecting the entheogen
theory of religion


Example of religious scholarly books mentioning drugs in passing in
the preface/forward purely in order to “deal with” the subject by
demonizing and disparaging it and refusing to grant the topic the
dignity of any coverage in the body of the book.

Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret
Cults
Michael Cosmopoulos
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0415248728/
2003

A full-text search reveals that this book is 100% pure from any
coverage of: ‘drug’, ‘mushroom’, ‘opium’, … ‘wine’ has 17 hits.
Front Matter: “And yet our age experiences a surge of private cults
and religious sects, of drugs and abuse, of violence and materialism,
forcefully proving how desperately we need to regain our
spirituality.”

Were these scholars to admit and allow the enthegen theory of
religion, they know their entire industry’s paradigm would have to
immediately give way and they know that the entheogen theory would
have to become all-dominant; it’s obvious to everyone that there are
only two possible paradigms: the entheogen theory is wrong and
entheogens are of no real importance in religious history; or else,
the entheogen theory is right, and the recently predominant scholarly
paradigm (with its hazy “we can’t know, we don’t know, we can’t
understand those mysterious ancients” attitude) is worthless and bunk
and needs to be cast into the rubbish-bin in favor of the soundly
solidly entheogen-based theory of religion.

Either the entheogen hypothesis is totally wrong, or it is totally
right. Given that the academic establishment is committed to the
paradigm in which the entheogen hypothesis is not allowed, the only
books permitted into print are those which toe the Establishment line
that the enthoegen hypothesis is totally wrong and a mere minor
curiosity that has little merit and explanatory potential.

To admit that the entheogen hypothesis amounts to a complete and
compelling solution with complete explanatory potential is to reject
and go against the Establishment paradigm of “we can’t make heads or
tails out of those mysterious ancients”, and call for that predominant
paradigm-of-cluelessness to be completely dismissed and overturned.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Visionary plants are important in religion/myth/mysticism, and astral
ascent mysticism is important and key in the history of Western
religion/culture. Identifying firm connections between the two is
powerful.

The Ptolemaic cosmology, astral ascent mysticism, or mystic cosmology,
is the key to understanding much of Gnostic mythic metaphor,
Platonism, Western Esotericism, and Christian mythic metaphor. Astral
ascent mysticism is a tangible, clear model of ascending through the
planetary spheres (1st-7th) to the determinism-aware sphere (8th) of
the fixed stars, and then beyond that to reach the realm (9th) that
transcends determinism.

Visionary plants are the key to understanding much of world mysticism
including Western Esotericism. Astral ascent mysticism was induced
through ingesting visionary plants.

It is thus important to find evidence and signs of the connection
between and close association between visionary plants and astral
ascent mysticism.

In the book Plants of the Gods, 1st edition, page 86, at the start of
the section “The Hexing Herbs”, there is a woodcut showing a witch in
herbal garden with the celestial sphere overhead.

In the Hermetic writings, ‘drinking the cup of Mind’ appears in
proximity with ascent to the 8th and 9th.

The Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman
Religions
Hans-Josef Klauck
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0800635930/
2003
The author also wrote “Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity: The
World of the Acts of the Apostles” (2003)

p. 486 — In Manichaeism, “the electi are saved and enter the real of
light, … the auditores guilt … can be forgiven … their souls …
will come afresh to the world in a plant that contains light and that
will then be eaten by one of the electi … the souls … will be
changed into … the food of their elect, so that they may be purified
there and may avoid returning into a body (Augustine).”

p. 496 — anointing & ascent to the pleroma: “In the hour of death,
… the anointing gives the dying person the certainty that he will
come victoriously through the perilous ascent of the soul. He can
leave his body, relinquishing the particles of the soul in the
individual stages through which he will pass, and thus can enter into
the pleroma as a spiritual being. … the process of redemption.”

p. 110 – tear living animals to pieces; [Dionysus’] representative is
dismembered and served as food … by eating the bloody flesh they
receive the god into themselves … it fits the ecstatic trait which
is fundamental to the Dionysiac religion with its bursting of personal
limits … theophagy, ‘eating a god’ …

Compare that to the gnostic theme of eating plants that contain divine
light-sparks to ascend past the sphere of the stars and return to the
divine origin, the realm of light. -mh

p. 96 — raises the hypothesis of kykeon as fungi/opium/drug, then
dismisses it vaguely and carelessly with “the great majority of
specialist literature [argues] against … that narcotics were
involved” by footnoting Richardson p 345 and the worthless coverage in
Burkert’s book Ancient Mystery Cults. Burkert is a bad and entirely
too dominant scholar of ancient religion: his books are so worthless,
dull, and uninspired because he invents feeble, arbitrary, forced,
artificial, implausible theories in place of the entheogen theory.

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Nicholas James Richardson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0198141998/
1974
p. 345

Ancient Mystery Cults
Walter Burkert
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674033876/
1987


There is evidence of the connection between sacred eating & drinking
and astrology in Klauck’s section “Astrology”, p. 231-249: it’s an
excellent section on astrology and heimarmene, leaving the astute sage
to merely highlight every instance of plants & plant products (applied
or ingested, eating & drinking, medicine, poison, ointments) mixed
into this section:

p.236 — Mithras liturgy …. iatromathematics, … diagnosed
illnesses … therapies … the cult and the art of healing … the
festal calendar

240 — Petronius — ‘Trimalchio’s feast’ from Petronius’ Satryicon …
At the entrance to the dining room … stoppers … A round tray …
pastry … cake … lecture given by the host … grocers and
apothecaries …those who mix poison … taverns

242 — ointments; even when she lies sick in bed … iatromathematics,
the employment of astrology for medicinal purposes.

244 — doctors

245 — nocturnal sacrificial celebrations … persons who eat
forbidden foods … poisoners

246 — “I am indeed mortal … a creature of the day. Yet in my
meditation I accompany the path of the stars, as they circle the pole,
and my foot no longer touches the earth: with Zeus himself at my side,
I feed on ambrosia at the divine meal.” — epigram attributed to
Ptolemy.

Regarding that passage, Klauck writes “the reserved pride of the
astrologer who is able to free himself from earthly fetters through
the … observation of the sky, and to rise up to the divine being.”
Instead, he ought to write “through ingesting a divine meal of
ambrosia”.

The subsequent section, about Valens, focuses on predetermination,
freedom, fatalism, freeing from this servitude, gaining mastery over
fate. Klauck writes “For him, astrology is like a mystery cult into
which one must be initiated by a mystagogue before one can become an
initiate of this science.”


Most history-books that cover astral ascent mysticism and also cover
plants (less consciously) omit astral ascent mysticism from the
coverage of ancient Greek religion, and fail to treat there the
Platonism theme of ascent to the divine light. This gives the
impression that we have to wait until 150 CE to see the theme of
astral ascent mysticism.

You have to switch to a different kind of book to see coverage of
ancient Greek religion that does acknowledge the Platonism theme of
ascent to the divine light. Both there and in the later
Ptolemaic/Neoplatonic/Gnostic astral ascent mysticism, you can then
look for the presence of plants, plant products, and sacred eating &
drinking.


The research approach to discover evidence of the connection between
entheogens and astral ascent mysticism is to look for passages about
astral ascent/heimamene and highlight plant-product references; and
conversely, look for plant references first and then highlight
mentions of astral ascent/heimarmene, in the appropriate books and
magazines, such as the Astrology issue of Gnosis magazine.

>>And as for LSD being mind-expanding, well, it certainly is

perception-altering, but the people I knew back in the 60s who took it
certainly didn’t became any brighter or more brilliant taking it, from
what I could see. On the other hand, they seemed to think it was
something important. Still, they didn’t seem any more perceptive,
creative, insightful, or smarter to me, although they often thought
so.


He ought to consider that visionary plants weren’t integrated into the
culture, and by mid-60s, it was becoming career-damaging for anyone,
such as the best thinkers, to be associated with visionary plants and
substances.

>>As someone once observed about Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of

Perception, in which he reported on his experiences, it wasn’t so much
that LSD helped him write more and better, so much as it helped him
write more about LSD.

>>Anyway, I apologize for waxing a little nerdy, but the neurobiology

of perception and sensation is a subject I know something about, that
having been my area of interest for my master’s and doctoral work.


Waxing stupid, actually. Can that writer be serious? It’s less
painful to believe the writer is insincere and is playing a hoax. How
could you know about “the neurobiology of perception and sensation”,
with that being your “area of interest for” your “master’s and
doctoral work”, and how could you claim to know “the consensus on the
neurophysiological effects of LSD”, while not even knowing which
substance — mescaline, not LSD — Aldous Huxley experienced and wrote
about?

This is another exhibit of “I believe X, and I’m manifestly a moron
and a fool”, which suggests that anyone who agrees with the writer is
probably similarly foolish. Morons and idiots everywhere agree: LSD
is purely visual, and doesn’t make people more perceptive, creative,
insightful, or smart. Huxley himself wrote comparable ignorant
chowderhead tommyrot about drugs when he was an objective armchair
observer, prior to his first real first-hand observation of mescaline.

>>This is another exhibit of “I believe X, and I’m manifestly a moron

and a fool”, which suggests that anyone who agrees with the writer is
probably similarly foolish. Morons and idiots everywhere agree: LSD
is purely visual, and doesn’t make people more perceptive, creative,
insightful, or smart. Huxley himself wrote comparable ignorant
chowderhead tommyrot about drugs when he was an objective armchair
observer, prior to his first real first-hand observation of mescaline.


Norma wrote:

The word ‘smart’ doesn’t fit in well with ‘perceptive’, ‘creative’,
and ‘insightful’. ‘Perceptive’, ‘creative’, and ‘insightful’
intermingle, whereas ‘smart’ just pokes around with itself, with smart
scholars often demonstrating little insight and perception.

The ordinary realm of intelligence is not informed by experience with
the dissociative state, so it cannot truly monitor or assess the frame
of mind and then form thoughts to fittingly interpret the reported,
described experiences. The ordinary world and realm of
mundane-experience-based intelligence tries to judge that which it
does not understand. Through that judgment comes mere criticism devoid
of experience-based substantiation, because the worldmodel based only
in the ordinary state of experiencing can’t ever substantiate that
which it does not understand.

Modern scholars/researchers are typically careless and sloppy in their
framing of motives, particularly they neglect to consider the
constructive esoteric aspect of mythmaking, instead rushing to frame
what could well be esoteric metaphorical myth-construction instead as
“a con” and “conspiracy”; a colossal category error can result, like
mis-filing a fairy tale as “historical revisionist lies and forgery”.


Did Hansel and Gretel really go to the old woman’s house, or is that
claim a con, conspiracy, forgery, and false, revisionist history?

We should pause, stop, put it in reverse, go back, and reconsider:
what kind of writing is religious writing? Is it squarely a
con/conspiracy/forgery plain and simple, or can we possibly think of
some other category of writing which serves as a better fit, to
*understand* first of all what *kind* of writing a religious writing
is, and what intent and motive the writing has? What are the real,
actual concerns, motives, and meanings, of writers of religious
materials? Are the familiar conceptual categories such as “forgery”
and “Gnosticism” introducing explanatory power and clarity, or
introducing confusion, misreading, and distortion?

I recommend extensively reading about Western Esotericism, such as
Gnosis magazine, before attempting to critique and compare the
historical origins and motives of early Christianities and recent
variants. The attempt to do historical research without an adept
familiarity with the culture of Western Esotericism is bound to
produce distorted models of the concerns and motives of the
originators, and thus, is bound to produce a broken, off-base
reconstructed history.

The attempt to historically reconstruct Christian origins without a
strong grasp of Western Esotericism is bound to produce false
historical conclusions and a broken reconstruction-model, involving
misplaced confidence such as “the early Christians prove to us their
belief in Jesus’ historicity, by their willingness to be martyred” —
producing a confident view that amounts to a hall of mirrors (a
network of systemically insufficiently considered assumptions).

The hallmark of bad historical scholarship is a failure to seriously
and consciously consider, in full awareness, one’s assumptions,
including assumptions about what conceptual categories are available
for consideration. “Perhaps hypothesis B is better than A, but have
you considered the third alternative, C? Have you even stopped to
consider whether there could be a third alternative?” People tend to
get caught and frozen in the trap of binary thinking: for example, one
such unproductive perpetual standoff is the assumption that “either
religion is true, or science is true” (relying on a particular,
arbitrary conception of ‘religion’ and ‘science’).


Imperial Ruler Cult, early Christianity, and Mormonism were all
efforts to utilize themes from Western Esotericism to leverage and
legitimate social/political schemes or systems. First, Imperial Ruler
Cult sought with some success to utilize themes from ancient Western
Esotericism to leverage and legitimate the social/political scheme and
system of Imperial Pax Romana.

As a counter-movement, the various vying creators of Christianity made
a show of explicitly modifying Ruler Cult to provide a competing way
of utilizing themes from ancient Western Esotericism to leverage and
legitimate a Jewish/Christian social/political scheme and system, the
Kingdom of God.

As an equivalent founding creator of a modern-era religion, Joseph
Smith modified and formed a new variant of the Christian scheme to
provide his own way of utilizing themes from Western Esotericism to
leverage and legitimate a Mormon social/political scheme and system.
Formation of schemes that utilize themes from Western Esotericism to
leverage and legitimate a desired social/political scheme and system
are by definition socio-politically self-interested in one way or
another.

We can call it “propaganda, con, forgery, and fraud”, but to truly,
actually, and accurately understand such schemes requires recognizing
as distinct factors the thing utilized (recognizing the stock themes
and patterns from Western Esotericism) as distinct from the desired,
promoted social/political scheme and system. The objective is
twofold: have Western Esotericism (as a valuable goal and possession
in itself), and utilize Western Esotericism to attain various,
pragmatic, mundane, desired social/political configurations and
objectives.

The result is a complex/compound construction, myth-religion propping
up a social scheme, not only a “fraud” serving the single purpose of
propping up the social scheme. Those who utilized Esotericism to prop
up Imperial Pax Romana didn’t *only* care about social/political
concerns — the charge of “propaganda” fails to account for all the
main parts of the system. Those who utilized Esotericism to prop up
early Christianities didn’t *only* care about social/political
concerns — the charge of “propaganda” fails to account for all they
valued and were concerned with.

Joseph Smith utilized Esotericism to prop up his new variant of
Christian-style religion including self-interested social/political
ends, but his scheme didn’t *only* care about social/political
concerns — the charge of “propaganda” fails to account for all he
valued and was concerned with. Any talk of ‘sincerity’, ‘faking’,
‘inventing stories’, and ‘fraud’, and the goals and purposes of
religious invention, needs to take into account how the inventors of
religions valued Esotericism and didn’t *only* care about
mundane-realm social/political ends.

Purely social/political explanations of religious origins are
reductionist in that they are too woefully incomplete to afford an
adequate understanding and explanation of what goals, objectives, and
strategies were actually involved. “Rank forgery for mundane ends” is
a grossly incomplete explanation of the goals, concerns, meaning, and
motives for Christian origins.

Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber : A Historical
Survey and Chapter-By-Chapter Review of Wilber’s Major Works
Brad Reynolds
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1585423173/
Nov. 2004

The cover illustration of this book shows the tacked-on bubble “also:
altered states” in the upper left. This indicates Wilber’s lack of
integration of the topic of ‘dissociation’ (the intense,
plant-induced, mystic altered state of loose cognitive association)
into his overall theorizing.

Search ‘drug’ —

p. 318 — Altered States are nonordinary or non-normal stares of
consciousness that are always temporary, including peak experiences,
which range from “drug- induced states to near-death experiences to
meditative states,” such that “Peak experiences can occur to
individuals at almost any stage


1 page with references to ‘chemical’ in this book:

1. from Front Matter:
“… a potential “peak experience” (Maslow’s well-known psychological
term for an ultimate life experience). Wilber, however, quickly
realized that although these chemical substances may give a person an
experiential “peek” (his humorous modification of Maslow’s phrase)
into the higher states and stages …”

That page has the usual forked-tongue double-talk along the lines of
“Drugs induce the mystic state. Drugs don’t work. Esoteric study
doesn’t work. You have to have integrate the mystic state with
esoteric study.”

p. 7 — “Books … are only part of the picture; actual life
experience is what really counts, as Wilber was always quick to point
out from the very beginning of his first book and thereafter.”

A partial truth, partial bull. Wilber’s first book starts off
literally at the very beginning by censoring the lead-in from William
James, “it has often occurred to me under the influence of nitrous
oxide that” (the mind is a reducing valve/veil etc.).

[Wilber] “experimented with the plethora of new ideas and novel
techniques [in] the late 1960s and early 1970s … he generally
steered clear of psychedelics even though he was surrounded by the
radical cultural movement of those times (he did experimented, however
briefly).”

That’s uncertain or misleading. Wilber states in the CD interview
that he has used Ecstasy and that he might have experienced LSD only 1
time, if at all, and that he doesn’t know, because he just started
feeling odd after a party, in college.


“It was … claimed … if properly used, … psychoactive drugs
promised a spiritual awakening … although … chemical substances
may give … an experiential ‘peek’ … into the higher states and
stages of consciousness, the real cleansing of perception requires a
whole-body and integral lifestyle. This daily approach combines or
integrates both personal and transpersonal practice, not just
mind-blowing weekend ‘trips’ or esoteric libraries of bound books. …
a person couldn’t just drop acid or read books at lightning speeds …
to find the Holy Grail, the fabled elixir of immortality, the …
Secret Essence he … sought during … his late teens and early
twenties. Instead, … he must actually practice the methods and
techniques he was intellectually hearing and reading about from the
many teachers and spiritual masters … in unison … across the
centuries, from every culture, covering every continent.”

Wilber is quoted: “It’s a fundamental error to assume that moving into
the higher stages of spiritual development is easy — something you
can do in a weekend workshop, or by reading a book, or by taking LSD.
Only through long-term disciplines can you make these experiences
stable, permanent structures of consciousness. It’s very hard work.
The truth is that transforming oneself is a long, laborious, painful
process.”

This argumentation sets up a fallacy: LSD isn’t instant enlightenment,
therefore instead of drugs, you need to do daily drug-free sitting
meditation, optionally supplemented by books. He doesn’t even
consider or at all discuss the more sensible combination: utilizing a
series of visionary plant sessions integrated with a series of books
studied, which is the most ergonomic and straightforward approach to
basic transcendent knowledge, gained and retained.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This text file is automatically posted to the Egodeath Yahoo group every two
weeks.

The Egodeath Yahoo group is a newsletter or Weblog sent out by Michael Hoffman.


This Yahoo group covers the cybernetic theory of ego death and
ego transcendence, including:

o Nonreductionistic block-universe determinism/Fatedness, the closed
and preexisting future, tenseless time, free will as illusory, the
holographic universe, and predestination and Reformed theology.

o Cognitive science, mental construct processing, mental models,
ontological idealism, contemporary metaphysics of the continuant
self, cybernetic self-control, personal control agency, moral agency,
and self-government.

o Zen satori, short-path enlightenment, and Alan Watts;
transpersonal psychology, Ken Wilber, and integral theory.

o Entheogens and psychedelic drugs, the Eleusinian mysteries and
cracking the allegorical code of the mystery religions, mythic
metaphor and allegorical encoding, the mystic altered state, mystic
and religious experiencing, visionary states, religious rapture, and
Acid Rock mysticism.

o Loss of control, self-control seizure, cognitive instability, and
psychosis and schizophrenia.


To post on these subjects, you can join the group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeathunmoderated
and then send email to:
egodeathunmoderated@yahoogroups.com


— Michael Hoffman
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath
http://www.egodeath.com

Joseph Smith: America’s Hermetic Prophet
Lance Owens
http://gnosis.org/ahp.htm
Article in Gnosis magazine about Joseph Smith as Western Esotericist

About Mithaism from New Advent, the Catholic encylopedia:
“The chief of the fathers, a sort of pope, who always lived at Rome,
was called “Pater Patrum” or Pater Patratus.” The members below the
degree of pater called one another “brother,” and social distinctions
were forgotten in Mithraic unity. The ceremonies of initiation for
each degree must have been elaborate, but they are only vaguely known
— lustrations and bathings, branding with red-hot metal, anointing
with honey, and others. A sacred meal was celebrated of bread and
haoma juice for which in the West wine was substituted.”

A Barnes & Noble bookstore has broken out a new section from
‘Christianity’ — ‘Gnosis and Christianity’. This is substantial
because they don’t subdivide sections much in the Christianity
section. The sections are now along the lines of:

Comparative Religions
Islam
Latter Day Saints
Christianity
Gnosis and Christianity
Christian Reference
Devotional
Jewish
Buddhism


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Lost Christianity is back in print and is online. Here is the quote.

Lost Christianity: A Journey of Rediscovery to the Center of Christian
Experience
Jacob Needleman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1585422533/
Search Inside: “thousand” —

p. 36 — “an unforgettable moment … Father Vasileios … startled
… me and our interpreter by saying, “I could tell you of things a
thousand times better than your Yoga.” But he never said more, not
even when pressed by the stunned interpreter. I asked … Anthony …
about the work with the body, … the methods, the exercises … in
the Christian tradition — somewhere, in some time. Where did they
come from? Where have they gone? The whole modern world is beginning
to look for them as an indispensable element of what has been lost
from the Christian path. … Are these methods written down somewhere?
Is there a text that has not yet been rediscovered which speaks about
them in a way that could guide this new search for the practical
mysticism of the Christan Path? … He said something about the …
Christians having this work with the body, and then paused once again
… “The exercises you ask about originated … from the Fathers
observing what happened to them when they were in a state of prayer.””


—–Original Message—–
From: Michael Hoffman [mailto:mhoffman@…]
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 10:46 AM
To: Egodeath Group
Subject: [egodeath] Monk: “things a thousand times better than yoga”

Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition Richard Smoley
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1570628106
2002

Richard Smoley writes:
p. 156: “… there is a rich heritage of spiritual techniques and
practices in Christianity, though it has often been buried or hidden.
During a visit to the Greek peninsula of Mount Athos, the center of
Orthodox monasticism, Jacob Needleman had a monk say to him, “I could
tell you of things a thousand times better than your yoga.” But,
Needleman adds, “he never said more, not even when pressed by the
stunned interpreter.”(2) While we will never know what the monk had
in mind, some of the inner practices of Christianity have begun to
come to the surface again.”

2 – Lost Christianity, p. 36

Lost Christianity: A Journey of Rediscovery to the Center of Christian
Experience Jacob Needleman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852301325

Lost? Needleman and Smoley are the ones lost. The Holy Grail
containing Christ’s redeeming blood, and being his redeeming flesh, is
where it has always been, fastened to the tree in the forest. Why not
start here:

Gnosis magazine, issue #26 (Winter ’93): Psychedelics & The Path
Richard Smoley, editor
http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents26.html

>And here, the final issue:
>Gnosis magazine, issue #51 (Spring ’99): The Grail

http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents51.html

To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I Love You! Ariadne
by Claudia Crawford
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0791421503/
1994

Condensed review excerpts:

>>Crawford’s book provides a good argument against the Syphilis myth.

As Bataille said, Nietzsche’s madness is one of the most horrifying
challenges to the whole mindset of the West in this century. Scholars
fell for the trite and too-neat myth of Nietzsche the Syphilitic.
Crawford dethrones this myth and assembles many key points and quotes.
She poses a theory that he was faking madness. Against Crawford, we
have sunk far from our shaman fire-gazing ancestors who let the holy
spirit often tear off the roof of their mind and toss them into the
vast oblivion. Meher Baba’s work with the Masts is probably the key
information needed by Crawford to correct the ‘faking madness’ thesis.
This book is a step in the right direction, closer to the cliff.


—–Original Message—–
From: egodeath@yahoogroups.com [mailto:egodeath@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Michael Hoffman
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2005 7:01 PM
To: egodeath@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [egodeath] Visionary plants in modern Western high culture

http://www.egodeath.com/MaximalEntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm — My
condensed excerpts from that webpage and discussion thread, with book
and documentary links added.

…

Nietzsche heavily used various drugs including psychedelics.
Nietzsche began his career in Basle in the 1860’s. Rudolf Steiner was
Nietzche’s librarian for awhile, so he knew about Nietzsche’s drug use
and interest. Knowledge of the religious implications of the whole
pharmacopeia was widespread in Theosophical groups by the late 1800’s.
…

Now that one’s personal wishlist can be divided into multiple
wishlists, there are Listmania lists (25 items), ‘So you’d like to’
lists (50 items), and personal wishlists (unlimited items, multiple
lists).

I am subdividing my personal wishlist into 24 lists, so far, covering
some 850 books total.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/2T3HS82WX1RZ5/
These wishlist lists are valuable, though they don’t necessarily
represent my best recommendations, because these generally are books I
have not read, aside from reading excerpts and reviews at Amazon.


My Amazon book wishlists, useful for research, cover:

Apocalypticism
Astrology
Christianity
Chronology
Consciousness Studies
Entheogens
Free Will and Determinism
Gnosticism
Greco-Roman
Jewish
Magic and Witchcraft
Music
Myth and Metaphor
Otherworld
Philosophy of Science
Politics
Religion
Religious Experience
Shamanism
Western Esotericism



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

What Is Enlightenment, June-Aug 2005, page 28, ‘the passion of the
planets’, says that Richard Tarnas, author of the book The Passion of
the Western Mind, will release a new book in Nov. 2005: Cosmos and
Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. It provides an explanation
of astrology.

The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have
Shaped Our World View
Richard Tarnas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345368096
1991


http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Richard+Tarnas%22+%22Cosmos+and+Psyc
he%22


In an interview http://www.scottlondon.com/insight/scripts/tarnas.html
Tarnas said: “The title is Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New
Worldview and it’s basically the sequel to The Passion of the Western
Mind. I actually teach a course with that title at the graduate
program that I teach in San Francisco. Stan Grof and I teach the
course together. We teach in the philosophy and religion program and
there is particular part of that program that I oversee called
“Cosmology and Consciousness.” Stan, myself, Brian Swimme, Charlene
Spretnak, William Irwin Thompson, Robert McDermott, David Ulancey are
all faculty members in it.”


http://www.cpalondon.com/conferences/sky.html

Richard Tarnas (California Institute of Integral Studies)
Understanding the Modern Disenchantment of the Cosmos

>>In the lecture I would, like the conference, be moving towards the

emerging re-enchantment of the cosmos and the recognition of a
psyche-pervaded world that contemporary astrology, archetypal
psychology, and many other disciplines are pointing to. But a
reconsideration of the modern cosmological situation–historically,
epistemologically, and psychologically–might be a helpful point of
departure for the conference.

>>Richard Tarnas, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy and religionat the

California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he
founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and
Consciousness. He also serves on the faculty of the Pacifica Graduate
Institute in Santa Barbara. Formerly the director of programs at
Esalen Institute, he is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind,
a history of the Western world view from the Greek to the postmodern
that is used as a text in many universities. Cosmos and Psyche:
Intimations of a New World View, will be published by Viking in the
fall of 2005.


http://www.springpub.com/springauthors.html — “Richard Tarnas is
professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of
Integral Studies in San Francisco, and founding director of its
graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He is
also adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara,
where he teaches in the clinical and depth psychology programs.
Formerly director of programs and education at Esalen Institute, he is
the author of Prometheus the Awakener and The Passion of the Western
Mind, a history of the Western world view that has become both a
bestseller and a widely used text in universities. Its long awaited
sequel, Cosmos and Psyche, will be published in 2005.”



http://www.galaxymind.com/!!Grof-Tarnes%20%20Astro.htm
Psyche and Cosmos
Stanislav Grof & Richard Tarnas
Week of June 21-26

>>As Jung was the first modern psychologist to suggest, astrology

possesses an extraordinary capacity to illuminate the archetypal
dynamics of the human psyche. During the past twenty years of their
collaboration, beginning at Esalen in the 1970s, Richard Tarnas and
Stanislav Grof repeatedly encountered a surprisingly rich and
consistent correlation between specific planetary positions and a wide
range of psychological states. Besides providing invaluable insight
into both the timing and the archetypal character of psychotherapeutic
transformations and other significant experiences of human life, these
correlations suggested that the relationship between cosmos and psyche
is very different from that assumed in the disenchanted worldview of
conventional modern science.

>>This seminar presents both the practical applications of this

research and its larger implications, beginning with the vastly
extended map of the psyche suggested by modern consciousness research
and experiential therapies. Topics will include precise descriptions
of the correlations observed, the phenomenon of synchronicity,
instructions for calculating and evaluating one’s own transits, major
past and current planetary alignments, and coinciding archetypal
patterns in history and culture. The workshop will address the
relevance of this work to the larger depth psychology tradition
initiated by Freud and Jung, and present an overview of the evolution
of the Western mind as illuminated by this recovery of the intimate
relationship between the human being and the cosmos–“the return of
soul to the world.”

>>Though useful, prior background in astrology is not necessary.

Participants should bring a copy of their birth chart.

>>Recommended reading: the epilogue to Richard Tarnas’s The Passion of

the Western Mind, and any book by Stanislav Grof.


— end of webpage excerpts

Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View
Richard Tarnas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670032921/
Dec. 29, 2005

Condensed blurb: “reframes our understanding of the universe …
correspondence between planetary movements and the unfolding of human
history. Begins with the ancient Greeks and culminates in our own era
and its transformative potential, commenting on modern tumultuous
times from the sixties to September 11, 2001 and pointing the way
towards the future.

“In terms of planetary cycles, our present moment in history is most
comparable to the period five hundred years ago — that era of
“extraordinary turbulence and creativity,” the High Renaissance. Not
since Copernicus conceived the heliocentric theory have we face such a
mental realignment. A vast canvas of research and analysis, the
conclusions reunite religion and science and restore a transcendent
dimension to the universe.”
________

My own view per the Egodeath theory is that astrology, insofar as it
is valid, is purely metaphorical description of intense altered-state
experiential insight. Only in a restricted sense is humanity evolving
in level of consciousness. There is no significant correlation
between planets and individual personalities — to want such is
literalism and may have involved deliberate misleading away from the
higher, purely metaphorical/descriptive meaning. I systemically and
in-principle reject personality-type or OSC-based psychological
astrology and reject predictive astrology.

The personality types that are relevant are purely standard generic
mystic experiences: fear-into-trust, rescue, dependency, sense of
discovery and revelation, pride and humility, and so on.
Reincarnation and stopping it refer to a sequence of mystic-state ego
deaths finally retaining higher thinking; my theory is consistent in
systemically rejecting all literalism and embracing mystic-state
metaphor including radically transcendent thinking and a certain
restricted sense of ‘super-natural’ transcendence.

Western Esotericism books are typically weak this way; having a weak
grasp on the intercombination of {dissociation, determinism,
cybernetics, and metaphor}, they tend to combine hand-wringing,
cluelessness, literalism, vagueness, and overreliance on the past
(Tradition), as opposed to the novel, bold, authentic, self-sufficient
mystic expression seen in acid-based Rock (the authentic esoteric
tradition of the late 20th Century). Such esoteric scholars rise to
heights of sterling mediocrity, while the acid adepts / artists run
laughing in circles around the staid hand-wringing scholars, strenuous
dabblers.


This article looks worth reading, mentions Tarnas’ planed book:
http://www.rednova.com/news/science/144468/counterpoints_in_transperso
nal_theory_toward_an_astrological_resolution/
It seems to confirm my observation that Wilber is thick as a brick
regarding Western Esotericism including dissociation, determinism,
cybernetics, and metaphor, having written practically no analysis of
the subject.

However, that article, like all outsider scholarship that doesn’t
grasp dissociation, determinism, cybernetics, and metaphor, replaces a
straightforward grasp of esotericist metaphorical ASC description with
overheated, acrid, smoky gear-grinding academics — tortured off-base
analysis, and confusion about what esotericism is most essentially
concerned with.

The King’s Body: Sacred Rituals of Power in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe
Sergio Bertelli
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0271023449
2001
Condensed blurb: “From the early Middle Ages through the 17th century,
the centrality of the sovereign provided the key element in
maintaining the order of society. Societies thought of their kings as
divine. The king’s body was the ground where the sacred and the
profane, the supernatural and the natural intersected. Rituals
emphasized the divine sovereignty of the king. The death of a
sovereign led to an interregnum where the law was suspended
temporarily as the realm waited for a new ruler. Sacred rituals
surrounding birth, enthronement and death defined kingship. The
modern distinction between the political and the religious didn’t
exist.”

Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central
Europe
Gabor Klaniczay, et al
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521420180/
2002

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691017042/
Condensed blurbs: “The arcane mysteries of medieval political
theology. Traces the historical problem posed by the “King’s two
bodies”–the body politic and the body natural–back to the Middle
Ages. Places the concept in its proper setting of medieval thought
and political theory. How the early-modern Western monarchies
developed a political theology. Political theology relating to
kingship during the middle ages. Issues and developments regarding the
place of the king, the idea of law. Medieval political
thought/theology, Medieval notions of kingship. Traces the
development of this English legal theory. History of sacral kingship
in medieval Christendom. European monarchy in its sublime and
eccentric qualities.”

The King’s Two Bodies
Ernst Kantorowicz
Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler
Worship
Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007EHOEY/
1946

Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty
(Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
Carl Schmitt
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262691248/
Analysis of sovereignty with a “political theology” that claims that
all the important concepts of modern political thought are secularized
theological concepts.


Jesus figure as rebuttal to Caesar cult:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/20B96K00E
YKQL/



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Rush has released an album of late ’60s classic rock covers with a
psych-styled cover

Album: Feedback
Artist: Rush
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00028HBIY/
June 2004
Songs (orig. artist):

Summertime Blues (Blue Cheer)
Heart Full Of Soul (Yardbirds)
The Seeker (The Who)
For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
Shapes Of Things (Yardbirds)
Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
Crossroads (Robert Johnson, Eric Clapton)
Seven And Seven Is (Love)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks for the person who pointed this out. I have various
disagreements with the following, but taking it with the usual grain
of salt, it’s worth reading.


<http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Features/1996/Sept96/KenWilber.h
tm>
http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Features/1996/Sept96/KenWilber.ht
m


Q: One of the most confusing things about being a practitioner of
Asian mystical traditions is the fact that before the Enlightenment
the West had a thousand year tradition of civilization based on a
highly mystical religion, Christianity. And yet in Sex, Ecology,
Spirituality you characterize this thousand year period as one that
promised but did not deliver genuine transcendence. Why do you say
that? How could a whole civilization miss the point for so long when
it had expressions of the idea in Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum,
Neoplatonism, mystical Christianity, and so on?

Imagine if, the very day Buddha attained his enlightenment, he was
taken out and hanged precisely because of his realization. and if any
of his followers claimed to have the same realization, they were also
hanged. Speaking for myself, I would find this something of a
disincentive to practice.

But that’s exactly what happened with Jesus of Nazareth. “Why do you
stone me?” he asks at one point. “Is it for good deeds?” And the crowd
responds, “No, it is because you, being a man, make yourself out to be
God.” The individual Atman is not allowed to realize that it is one
with Brahman. “I and my Father are One”-among other complicated
factors that realization got this gentleman crucified.

The reasons for this are involved, but the fact remains: as soon as
any spiritual practitioner began to get too close to the realization
that Atman and Brahman are one-that one’s own mind is intrinsically
one with primordial Spirit-then frighteningly severe repercussions
usually followed.

Of course there were wonderful currents of Neoplatonic and other very
high teachings operating in the background (and underground) in the
West, but wherever the Church had political influence-and it dominated
the Western scene for a thousand years-if you stepped over that line
between Atman and Brahman, you were in very dangerous waters. St. John
of the Cross and his friend St. Teresa of Avila stepped over the line,
but couched their journeys in such careful and pious language they
pulled it off, barely. Meister Eckhart stepped over the line, a little
too boldly, and had his teachings officially condemned, which meant he
wouldn’t fry in hell but his words apparently would. Giordano Bruno
stepped way over the line, and was burned at the stake. This is a
typical pattern.


Q: You say the reasons are complicated, and I’m sure they are, but
could you briefly mention a few?

Well, I’ll give you one, which is perhaps the most interesting. The
early history of the Church was dominated by traveling “pneumatics,”
those in whom “spirit was alive.” Their spirituality was based largely
on direct experience, a type of Christ consciousness, we might suppose
(“Let this consciousness be in you which was in Christ Jesus”). We
might charitably say that the nirmanakaya physical body] of each
pneumatic realized the dharmakaya [absolute body] of Christ via the
sambhogakaya [body of bliss] of the transformative fire of the Holy
Ghost-not to put too fine a point on it. But they were clearly alive
to some very real, very direct experiences.

But over a several hundred year span, with the codification of the
Canon and the Apostle’s Creed, a series of necessary beliefs replaced
actual experience. The Church slowly switched from the pneumatics to
the ekklesia, the ecclesastic assembly of Christ, and the governor of
the ekklesia was the local bishop, who possessed “right dogma,” and
not the pneumatic or prophet, who might possess spirit but couldn’t be
“controlled.” The Church was no longer defined as the assembly of
realizers but as the assembly of bishops.

With Tertullian the relationship becomes almost legal, and with
Cyprian spirituality actually is bound to the legal office of the
Church. You could become a priest merely by ordination, not by
awakening. A priest was no longer holy (sanctus) if he was personally
awakened or enlightened or sanctified, but if he held the office.
Likewise, you could become “saved” not by waking up yourself, but
merely by taking the legal sacraments. As Cyprian put it, “He who does
not have the Church as Mother cannot have God as Father.”

Well, that puts a damper on it, what? Salvation now belonged to the
lawyers. And the lawyers said, basically, we will allow that one
megadude became fully one with God, but that’s it! No more of that
pure Oneness crap.


Q: But why?

This part of it was simple, raw, political power. Because, you know,
the unsettling thing about direct mystical experience is that it has a
nasty habit of going straight from Spirit to you, thus bypassing the
middleman, namely, the bishop, not to mention the middleman’s
collection plate. This is the same reason the oil companies do not
like solar power, if you get my drift.

And so, anybody who had a direct pipeline to God was thus pronounced
guilty not only of religious heresy, or the violation of the legal
codes of the Church, for which you could have your heavenly soul
eternally damned, but also of political treason, for which you could
have your earthly body separated into several sections.

For all these reasons, the summum bonum of spiritual awareness-the
supreme identity of Atman and Brahman, or ordinary mind and intrinsic
spirit-was officially taboo in the West for a thousand years, more or
less. All the wonderful currents that you mention, from Neoplatonism
to Hermeticism, were definitely present but severely marginalized, to
put it mildly. And thus the West produced an extraordinary number of
subtle-level (or sambhogakaya) mystics, who only claimed that the soul
and God can share a union; but very few causal (dharmakaya) and very
few nondual (svabhavikakaya) mystics, who went further and claimed not
just a union but a supreme identity of soul and God in pure Godhead,
just that claim got you toasted.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Smoking Materials, the Breath Kites
Christian Raetsch
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%
7Cen&u=http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3855025452/qid%3D11221785
14/sr%3D1-3/ref%3Dsr_1_11_3/028-9594626-9470146&prev=/language_tools
200 sides
February 2002
ISBN: 3855025452

Encyclopedia of the smoking materials — Offers 72 detailed
Pflanzenportraits, likewise to an illustrated part in that the plant
parts, which one smokes, is shown. Each individual smoking off is
described with its medical application, its use in rituals and its
history. It is particularly great that the author enters with the
different mistake possibilities with others smoke-openly and points
the differences out. Likewise also with the psychoaktiven plants and
their use one enters. For humans, who used up themselves smoking with
aromatic smoke-openly, it is a true find pit.


Schamanenpflanze Tobacco (2 volumes)
Christian Raetsch
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%
7Cen&u=http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3037881070/qid%3D11221785
14/sr%3D1-18/ref%3Dsr_1_11_18/028-9594626-9470146&prev=/language_tools
Kategorie(n): Cooking & Lifestyle , religion & Esoterik
700 sides – night shade publishers
November 2003
ISBN: 3037881070


Weihrauch and Copal
Christian Raetsch
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%
7Cen&u=http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3855028613/qid%3D11221785
14/sr%3D1-15/ref%3Dsr_1_11_15/028-9594626-9470146&prev=/language_tools
96 sides
October 2004
ISBN: 3855028613

Resins and aromatic woods belong to the world-wide most important
ritual smoke-openly. Since age they become ago as valuable substances
estimated and schamanisch, magically, medically and religiously uses.
One smokes at sources, wasserfaellen, at the seashore, at lakes and
rivers, at holy places, at force places, in sweating huts and baths,
in Peyotetipis, in temples and at shrines, in monasteries and in
Einsiedeleien, in churches and mosques, in government buildings and
seminar centers, even on Goa Trance parties and in Techno Discos.

In this book the most important resins and aromatic woods, which are
generally summarized as Weihrauch or Copal, in word and picture are
introduced. The book offers an entrance in the fascinating world of
the smoking materials and an overview of the most important old-lay
and again-lay smoking resins, their identification and ritual
application.

To smoke the nature of the outside can naeherbringen u lp interior
world to humans and support it on the mirror-image-ritual way. With
smoking schamanische journeys can be supported be accompanied,
Meditationen and Yoga exercises, deepened mirror-image-ritual
experiences, accomplished magic rituals, operated flavour therapy and
produced religious cult. To smoke the life can enrich, which promotes
health and the nature experience.

Short and concise descriptions of smoking plant — this new smoking
book is somewhat more, than only a small folder of the smoking plant
encyclopedia “the breath kites”. But the reader should quite
differentiate, what he needs for itself and its requirements. Who
loves short and concise descriptions, lies here perfectly correctly
and straight for smoking beginners is recommended this book much.
Since it describes 30 smoking plants and abandons many smoking
mixtures.

For me however straight this book is a completely special source,
there it over some smoking plants, e.g. the Copalharz unbelievably
well informs. Because not everything which in the smoking plant trade
as Copal is defined, may also with the smoking resin of the Mayas and
Aztecs is equated. And these small however fine differences are very
well discussed particularly in this book. Likewise rare smoking plants
are described like the Breuzinho, Palo Santo, Indian Weihrauch and the
different Styrax sorts.

Like that this book is a good addition of the more comprehensive
smoking plant encyclopedia of Christian Raetsch and for the readers,
that do not look for a good and so expensive a riser reading to simply
only recommend. The available book is arranged clear, describes
approx. 30 smoking materials and contains many “rough” prescriptions.
A well recheriertes book … already one of Raetsch: the breath kites
and another mad book to the topic: Fischer Rizzi: Message to the sky.


Rituals of the Heilens
von Franz-Theo Gottwald, Christian Ratsch
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%
7Cen&u=http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3855026998/qid%3D11221790
55/sr%3D1-27/ref%3Dsr_1_2_27/028-9594626-9470146&prev=/language_tools
2000

Nature-understand, nature realization and the Transzendentrale — The
entrance to nature and their forces we can provide in very various
way. Many however wander through only the landscapes without to see,
understand or the mental dimensions to notice. And the different
contributions of the authors set exactly here, in order to make a new
nature understanding possible.

Thus the chapters concern themselves with the topics nature, visions,
shame anise mash, nature admiration and the rituals – the art of the
Heilens. In the topic nature goes it around deeper recognizing and
also understanding, where we are with nature still one and where we
are to stand ourselves “separately in the way” and be found above all
where our roots.

With the visions report some authors of their vision experiences, in
the topic shame anise mash goes it around animal spirit and tools of
the Schamanen as well as Geomantie, in the chapter of the nature
admiration around Aphrodisiaka and the Aphroditekult as well as around
circle rituals and with the art of the Heilens point out authors, how
they integrated rituals into their medical and therapeutic practice.

The special at this book is that for each chapter different and
particularly authors different in their fields of knowledge give a
deeper entrance to its work and its experiences. Above all also the
different Herangehens and aspect are clear, to give which have
nevertheless a common origin to come i.e. to a better nature
understanding and rituals and changed consciousness conditions area.


Shamanismus, Techno & Cyberspace. Of ‘Natural’ and ‘Artificial’
Paradiesen
Christian Raetsch
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%
7Cen&u=http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3907080602/qid%3D11221785
14/sr%3D2-3/ref%3Dsr_2_11_3/028-9594626-9470146&prev=/language_tools
Kategorie(n): Religion & Esoterik
Paperback – night shade publishing house
Publication date: October 2001
ISBN: 3907080602

Christian Raetsch takes more in this booklet, once the virtual world
under observation. He regards himself here not as exponent of these
phenomena, but lights up her from Kulturanthropologi perspective and
represents connections between the “natural and artificial
paradiesen”.

Raetsch assumes, that the schamanische matrix of human consciousness,
which Techno and Cyberia created. Being based on this basis, he
compares the Shamanismus, Techno and the Cyperspace. These
connections are made narrations and studies clear on the basis
transmissions, which represents an informative source of information
at the end for the reader.


The Holy Hain
Christian Raetsch
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%
7Cen&u=http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3038002046/qid%3D11221785
14/sr%3D1-1/ref%3Dsr_1_11_1/028-9594626-9470146&prev=/language_tools
Bound expenditure – 96 sides (April 2005)

Table of contents
– Germanic shame anise mash
– the holy Hain
– holy ones of trees
– the world tree and the well of the memory
– Schamanenbaeume and sponges
– charm plants and plant charms
– shark plants
– runes and Alraunen
– rune charms
– Voelvas, Alrunas and Hildegard of being gene
– genuine ones and wrong Alraunen
– the Met of the enthusiasm
– Wotan, the Schamanengott
– Thor, its hammer and the thunder wedges
– Germanic drinking rituals
– beer and bilsenkraut
– Sumpfporst, Gagel and CO.
– Berserker, the Baerenhaeuter
– Wotan and the savage hunt
– Perchten and Perchtenpflanzen
– bear and wolf plants
– Hagazussas, witches and Zauberei
– Freia, the dear goddess
– dear charms and Aphrodisiaka
– “our Mrs. Bettstroh”
– “Neunerlei”: Herbs and woods
– Weihrauch: Germanic smoking materials
– amber: The “gold” of the holy Hains
– smoking for the rough nights
– the God dawn
– the three Nornen
– Balder and the Mistel
– the cyclic cosmos

The Germanic culture was carried by a schamanischen mythology, its
Spiritualitaet was inspired by Entheogene, by holy plants,
psychoaktives perfumes and intoxication watering place. The temple of
the Teutons was not an artificial building, it was the forest, the
holy Hain. The trees were divinities and the plants had charm
strength. The Germanic Schamanentum coined/shaped by Alrunas, the wise
seeing gutters, the Skalden inspired by Berserkern, the ritual
kriegern, the kraeuterkundigen brewing gutters and.

We have a direct entrance to the Schamanentum in the Germanic
mythology. The God Wotan is the Urschamane, the schamanistischste of
all indogermanischen Gods. Wotan is the file of the universe, the
Ekstatiker, after knowledge and realization the striving, the soul gel
pus, the gentleman of the Entheogene, the large Zauberer and
protecting krieger.

This book reported of Germanic world trees, fool sponges, charm
plants, Orakelblumen, perfumes, Rausc and rune charms htraenken. It
opens the nearly forgotten gates in the holy Hain and to its miracle
plants. Rituals, schamanische practices, the use are represented by
domestic charm plants. It offers an entrance to our heidnischen
inheritance and to our schamanischen roots.

I read some books about Germanic mythology one in addition books
sometimes supercritically to regard. This book however I can put to
everyone for this topic enthusiastically GET-roasted to the heart.
Fast turn consulting is recommended by its way of writing and pictures
for a risers and for people with the subject is already been versed
as. It each topic whether mythology or plants briefly treated without
all too deep and/or scientifically einzusteigen(was usually then much
drying works) to read all in all very well.

Of the native plant charm and schamanischen rites — Christian Raetsch
is received on our schamanische culture history and of them used
plants, i.e. that of the Teutons, thus actually over our northEuropean
roots. Books concerning shame anise mash, exotic smoking plants and
also rituals gibts zuhauf. But literature over our “schamanischen”
native plants and also rituals in addition, are very thinly sown. And
thus straight this book is a true find pit, for all, which are
interested with mythologischen history, Ethnobotanik and use of native
plants, which grow as it were directly before our entry door.

Thus with the holy trees are entered, the so-called holy Hain, the
plants of the Mrs. Holle and the Freya, the charm mushrooms and
special herbs, like the Mistel or the Johanniskraeuter. But one
reports not only of plants, but also over the Germanic customs, runes,
myths and legends in this book, itself in the Edda, to which
nordischen legend world and excessive quantities from the Roman time
find. Thus to deliver tries a picture of the Germanic Schamanentum, of
which unfortunately only little certification remained.

Above all the smoking friends become straight this book love, since a
whole chapter dedicates itself to the Germanic smoking plants and also
the consciousness-extending charm plants and it again each quantity
gives to smoking and Knasterrezepte. And who yet does not have enough,
finds innumerable resuming reading material in the sources of
literature to the plants and Teutons.

Charm plants, holy trees, rituals — “back to the roots”, so the
quintessence of the book by Christian Raetsch, to which in its book
“the holy Hain” gives a good overview of plants, trees and shame anise
tables of rituals. Its partly personal opinions quite give reason to
discuss this topic and set themselves with the total topic more near
apart.

I was of the statement Christian Raetsch “the natives am fascinated
we”, who again and again Schamanen from all world tries us close to
bring. Also the statement: “flees you not into other culture areas,
does not look not for strange religions – everything which it needs is
here”, is quite discussable.

With many illustrations, designs and quotations Christian Raetsch
naeherbringt its conception of the world a little to us. One cannot
turn the time back, one can however with its past openly and honestly
argue and from this learn, this should this book also cause.

The detailed description of most diverse plants and schamanistischer
implements draws this book out and even the somewhat belesenere buyer
or other suggestion to pull out here will surely be able. Reading of
the book made fun personal for me and even if I do not agree with all
statements in such a way find I the book nevertheless recommendable,
since one notices that itself Christian Raetsch has very much trouble
approximately and its work should receive quite praising mention. I
would like to emphasize the references to the native plant world and
to the production of native smoking mixtures therefore praising.

A good book to set itself with praise-worth tendency, more with the
own roots apart. Because only who correctly verwurzelt is, exists in
the today’s storms.

The author developed in the last decades to the first authority for
the topic shame anise mash, Hexerei and welfare plants in Germany. It
writes on high level, founded and with persuasive power. The books are
made optically really very beautiful, owing to the rich picture
collection, which Christian Raetsch can have. One experiences here
numerous ethnologische and mythologische details over the Teutons,
whom one could not read so yet anywhere. The book is suitable for
university graduates exactly the same as for interested one. Favour
becomes it all.

The notes also always make very much fun stimulating, halluzinogenen
medicines, which the author of full leaving merges into prescriptions.
To Bilsenkrautbier one experiences not only the composition and that
one it 2 – 3 months cool are, until it receives its best flavour that
it is red like all witch beer, but also that it can make and also kill
bloede depending upon dose beschwingend, geil or. This catful equal
courage in the telling attitude impresses to me, I hopes however that
not too many relatively unreife dte rodents clean-pull themselves this
reading.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The Elixir and the Stone: The Tradition of Magic and Alchemy
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0099490021/
Paperback: 454 pages
September 27, 2005

Condensed blurbs/excerpts/reviews:

Hermeticism gave more than a mere abstract or theoretical
understanding, something more than a general philosophical
orientation. It enabled seeing how certain of its own essential
principles and dynamics had been hijacked and implemented for
ultimately venal ends. In the modern world, ‘magic’ emerged as a
metaphor for certain insidious kinds of manipulation — for ‘the art
of making things happen’, in a fashion inimical to Hermeticism itself.

In modernity, domains of knowledge which had previously been puddles
now became bottomless wells or pools, wherein a researcher could sink
for a lifetime, and often drown… The Renaissance concept of
encyclopedic knowledge gave way to a plethora of specializations, each
of which became divorced and dissociated from all others. Integration
was supplanted by fragmentation and the exaltation of fragments.
Synthesis was supplanted by analysis that was so intoxicated with its
own capacity for dissection, it lost the ability to reassemble what it
had dismantled.

Since the seventeenth century, science has been contending with
philosophy, organized religion and the arts for domination over
Western civilization and society. By the middle of the twentieth
century, the battle appeared to be won; scientific rationalism and
skepticism were triumphant. Yet in the last few decades a strong and
potent counter-current has emerged. One manifestation of this has been
the occult revival.

This occult revival and the revolution in attitudes which has taken
place recently owes a profound debt to Hermeticism, a body of esoteric
teaching which flourished in Alexandria two thousand years ago and
which then went underground [disagree -mh]. The authors trace the
history of this intriguing and all-encompassing philosophy — which
has much in common with contemporary holistic thought — charting its
origin in the Egyptian mysteries, and demonstrating how it continued
to exercise enormous influence through the magicians and magi of the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Many remarkable characters feature in the narrative, including the
Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and the Elizabethan magus John Dee;
prototype of Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest, but the central
figure that emerges is Faust — one of the defining myths of Western
civilization.

A rich and ambitious book that provides an alternative history of the
intellectual world. It puts into their true context those shadowy
alchemists and magicians who have haunted the imaginations of people
for centuries. Moreover it offers a way of looking at the world that
is in one sense ‘alternative’, but in another, deeply historical.

Michael Baigent has a degree in psychology. He switched from
photojournalism to researching the Templars for a film project.
Richard Leigh has postgraduate degrees in comparative literature and a
thorough knowledge of history, philosophy, psychology, and esoterica.

A wonderful read, full of pungent insight and demonstrating an
encyclopedic knowledge of Western European history as it relates to
individual autonomy in exploring and expressing an understanding of
the sacred.

The first thirteen chapters follow the thread of the Hermetic way of
seeing the world and the most notable individuals practicing this art
over the past three millennia. It provides fresh information to
enhance our understanding of the Renaissance, the history of science,
and the history of human development.

The seven chapters of Part Two offer a damning broadside of the way
the media, and commercial and political interests work their control
over the modern mind and obstruct and obfuscate our pursuit of the
truthful and the numinous.

Blends current affairs with cosmic verities. Thoth was the god of
writing as well as magic. Per Northrup Frye, the written word
re-creates the past in the present, and gives us, not the familiar
remembered thing, but the glittering intensity of the summoned-up
hallucination.

—– end of condensed blurbs/excerpts/reviews —


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The magic of the forbidden fairy tales (Die Magie der verbotenen
Märchen)
Sergius Golowin
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3875361792/
August 2004

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.de%2Fe
xec%2Fobidos%2Ftg%2Fbrowse%2F-%2F188795%2Fref%3Dbr_cp_dp_2%2F028-75838
81-1722164&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Fl
anguage_tools
ISBN: 3875361792

Witches, gnomes and dwarves of the German fairy tale world placing in
this book their masks. The Volkskundler, legend collecting tank and
Bernese politician Sergius Golowin it presents to us as inaugurated
witnesses of the forbidden sciences of the human Unterbewusstseins.
It decodes the symbolsprache of the fairy tales and makes the secret
theories of the keltischen priests, the magic knowledge of the
nordischen Gottzauberer transparency.

Golowin shows that Mandragora [mandrake] and bilsenkraut, iron hat
[Eisenhut] and fly mushroom [Amanita] already in the days of the cave
people did their effect. That, which knew their secrets, they lent
strength and wisdom to over uebermenschliche. The ability to the
cosmic schau, the possibility, of opening for the human spirit new
“realities” is brought here as uraeltestes, although always outlawed
human knowledge in memory.

The author entmystifiziert here fairy tales and legends and makes
interesting declarations to them. Thus one experiences e.g., what
actually hides itself behind the nutshell with the evening gown in the
Aschenputtel or how it came to Kobolden. Golowin attributes everything
to different halluzinoge/poisonous plants and dedicates straight fly
mushroom, Alraune, hashish, bilsenkraut and iron hat very much area.


Links to related books include:
The intoxication drugs of the witches and their effects
The secret knowledge of the herb witches
Witch ointments and night shade plants
Which the herb witches say



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Online electronic book:

Scientific Magic
Wayland Skallagrimsson
http://www.winterscapes.com/scientific_magic/
2003
An investigation into the scientific principles underlying the
practice of magic.


I initially excerpt only the passages about visionary plants, rather
than commenting on the transcendent knowledge and metaphors for
experiential insight that are provided by the plants, because the
plants are the key and doorway into the latter. It is crucial to
discover passages in Western Esotericism about visionary plants, and
to emphatically point out that visionary plants are the key. The
initial emphasis needs to be placed on visionary plants as the key,
establishing the fundamental interpretive principle that visionary
plants should be taken for granted as lying behind all Western
Esotericism.

After that initial emphasis has been secured and established
(visionary plants as the foundation of Esotericism), then we will come
to the main emphasis: descriptions of experiential insight regarding
transcendent knowledge.

Regarding selecting the dosage intensity, it’s most effective to
moderately loosen cognitive structures, not shatter them into
scattered fragments.

— Michael Hoffman
____________

Skallagrimsson’s full abstract of his book Scientific Magic:

Recent discoveries in the fields of neurobiology and psychology have
opened up new avenues of exploration into and explanation of the
practice of magic, a field hitherto resistant to scientific analysis,
due to the highly subjective nature of its practices. I have
formulated hypotheses to explain the particular claims made by
magicians as to the effectiveness of their rituals, as well as why
such practices continue even in rational, materialistic societies
skeptical and dismissive of them. I have presented traditional magical
lore side by side with scientific explanations for that lore, as well
as analyses of relevant philosophical issues.

I have also provided a course of instruction designed to take the
student through basic initiation in the practices of magic to
proficiency in them. I have presented two traditional systems of
magical practice (runic and cabalistic), from two rather different
cultures, and compared them for the purpose of finding commonalities
that would indicate the presence of real, analysable phenomena,
divorced from simple cultural prejudices and superstitions. Hypotheses
were formed from looking at these commonalities in the light of the
results of the new neurobiological and psychological discoveries. I
used my own experiences as well as those of other practicing magicians
as a data pool.

The practice of magic is no mere superstition or escapist fantasy. It
is instead a badly misunderstood, embryonic science dealing with
reprogramming the mind and altering the state of physiology to improve
the functionality of its practitioners in highly specific and unusual
ways. Contrary to the standard views of most modern sciences, the only
differences between commonly accepted scientific understandings and
occult lore are philosophical in nature. The seeming antagonism
between the two schools of thought are rooted in a misunderstanding of
each other’s basic philosophies and languages. The practice of magic
is a real phenomenon, though poorly understood, with real benefits to
its practitioners.

— Wayland Skallagrimsson, 2003
____________

Condensed excerpts about visionary plants in the history of magic:

In addition to ritual elements, some magicians make use of certain
herbs and such substances, that are holy in nature and spiritually
powerful enough to be of aid to the magician who partakes of them in
the right way. These substances are entheogens. Where this tool is
chosen great care must be taken. Entheogens, while having a history of
centuries or millennia of use, are powerful drugs. Safe use requires
knowledge and experience, something lacking in most modern Western
cultures in general. Begin with the lowest possible dose and work up
from there, in small steps, to the most effective dose. (Which is not
always that much. Overuse of entheogens distracts and diffuses the
mind.)

Alcohol relaxes the mind and soothes the spirit, enabling better
control over magical power, and greater ease of raising and releasing
it, though if consumed in excess it inhibits any meaningful control.
Marijuana balances the spirit, and sends it soaring through the
spirit-worlds. Syrian rue is used to contact spirits, as is the
mushroom amanita muscaria. LSD can send the magician deep into the
spirit-worlds without effort, even if undesired, and so should only be
used ritually by experienced magicians.
An excellent mixture for attaining contact with the spirits is smoking
a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 mixture of marijuana, Syrian rue, and amanita.

Entheogens should be used with care. They are used to “scout ahead”,
allowing them to open the magician’s mind and spirit, to see new
vistas, new possibilities, to take the magician through the door.
Then learn to practice magic without the entheogen. Once this is done
the entheogen may again be used to go even farther.

[large jump]

Another important and basic element of unitary state ritual is the use
of entheogens. Entheogens are a certain class of psychoactive plant
that have various effects on the mind that promote the attainment of
the unitary state. In many modern Western cultures the use of most
mind-altering drugs is not only frowned upon, it is actually illegal.
While this may seem a controversial issue to some, it is nothing more
than an offshoot of the prejudices modern Western societies have for
certain types of religious and spiritual practice, and against certain
others. No credible argument has ever been advanced as to why any
society has a compelling need to prohibit individuals’ use of such
substances.

The most popular “argument” used by lawmakers in such countries is
that all drugs are inherently so addictive to everyone that if drug
use is allowed to flourish an epidemic will run through society that
will, because drugs only have negative effects on the brain,
completely destroy society by turning it into a “Land of the
Lotus-Eaters”. This idea is spurious, and laughable on the face of it.
The human race has been around some 200,000 years or so, and so have
drugs. And all of a sudden, just within this last century, we’ve
suddenly realized they are so dangerous that they will destroy
society? No one with the least bit of intellectual honesty could
possibly swallow such a ridiculous notion.

Most people don’t like drugs. After all, opening the mind up to
hidden, deep, buried subconscious influences while simultaneously
rearranging the way the mind and perceptions function into an unusual
order is not most people’s idea of fun. Most users “find their level”
with a little experimentation, which is to say, they find a level of
usage that brings them pleasure but does not interfere with necessary
daily functioning.

In the 200,000 years of unregulated drug use history our species had,
drug-users would have bred themselves out of existence were the
dangers credited to them true. Examination of the history of the
majority of drug laws reveals the true motives behind such
legislation. Sometimes they are the result of powerful
special-interest political lobbies. Such was the case with the
outlawing of marijuana. The legislation was proposed by, and the
campaigning was funded by, paper companies owning tree-made paper
processes, who feared being driven out of business by hemp farmers,
because hemp is a much more efficient and less expensive source of
paper.

The arguments they use against marijuana, since the real motivation
would be publicly unacceptable, are spurious. It affects the brain no
more than alcohol, a legal drug, does. And whereas people under the
influence of alcohol can turn violent, no one ever got stoned and went
and knocked over a convenience store. It usually produces a sense of
peace and joy, nothing ever worse than a little paranoia and confused
thinking.

Sometimes the sources of such legislation are religious groups that
feel such drugs are sinful and have convinced themselves they have a
divine mandate to force their beliefs on others. Their own frail egos,
coupled with a subconscious fear of being wrong, causes them to lash
out against anything that might cause them to doubt their own beliefs
and actions. Since they are frightened of anyone who holds different
beliefs and practices from their own, they seek to prevent them from
living their own lives in their own way.

The action of most drugs is to depress the functioning of the
conscious mind. As most people live entirely in and by the actions of
their conscious minds, this amounts to no more than simply making them
smaller, less competent versions of their normal selves. No benefit,
not because of the drugs, but because the person using them does not
have the right kind of mind to make use of them. This depressing of
the conscious mind is of great benefit, allowing them to more easily
access parts of their mind, such as the subconscious, such as deeply
buried archetypes, that normally cannot be reached because of the
interference of the conscious mind. People who approach drug use in a
ritual and deliberate context, knowing what they are doing, can get
great benefit from the drug.

There is evidence from the field of biology that says that occasional
drug use by almost all people is necessary for healthy mental
functioning. Any psychologist can tell that habit-energy is both
insidious and strong. Over years of acting the same ways in the same
circumstances, habits can become so strong that they start coloring
all one’s thinking, and can even become difficult, if not impossible,
to break free from. This is not a healthy thing.

The mind needs occasional, radical change; it needs to be forced,
every once in a while, to see things from a really different point of
view. Nearly all species of animal periodically take them.

Prohibition is simple ignorant prejudice against certain philosophies,
lifestyles, religions, and spiritual practices, as well as political
manipulation and possibly the fact that there are, in many modern
Western countries, such entrenched bureaucracies paid to eliminate
drugs, that it is against the financial interests of these governments
to allow them to be legal.

One of the most common entheogens is alcohol. Depressing the
activities of the forebrain and lowering inhibitions have uses for the
magician. Lowering the inhibitions can aid a ritual by increasing the
self-confidence of the magician and lowering the magician’s overall
stress level, as both low confidence and stress can ruin a unitary
state.

Depressing the activity of the forebrain allows for greater access to
the subconscious mind. The major drawback alcohol has as a ritual
entheogen is that it is a little too effective at shutting off the
forebrain. It can become so difficult to focus under the influence of
alcohol that the ritual is ruined. For this reason the magician must
be familiar with his or her tolerance level, and carefully balance the
dosage used during ritual to achieve maximum benefit and minimum
detriment.

Marijuana is another common one. It has the same benefits as alcohol,
and fewer drawbacks, for while marijuana does make it difficult to
focus, it does not make it as difficult as alcohol. Additionally
marijuana gives a greater sense of peace and balance, and greatly
increases the ease with which the subconscious mind associates
thoughts and emotions. For this reason it directly increases the
mind’s ability to achieve a unitary state.

The seeds of peganum harmala, also called Syrian rue, when smoked, act
as a potentiator, greatly increasing the effects of other drugs they
are taken with, though having little effect of their own. They prevent
the breakdown of serotonin and DMT in the brain (two naturally
occurring neurological chemicals), substances that seem to play a role
in having visions.

Amanita Muscaria is a mushroom with strong psychedelic properties. It
is the traditional entheogen of many shamanistic practices. It brings
hallucinations and spiritual experiences, including out-of-body
experiences. It is of benefit to the magician, as the hallucinatory
effects greatly aid in the attainment of the unitary state, as do the
greater associative powers the mushroom gives to the mind.

An excellent ritual entheogen can be made by combining marijuana,
peganum, and amanita and smoking them. The effects are highly
synergistic, and make unitary states considerably easier to attain
than would be possible for the magician using any of the ingredients
alone.

LSD is a less common entheogen but a powerful one nonetheless. A
powerful hallucinogen, it occupies sites in the brain usually occupied
by serotonin, thus preventing serotonin from working. As serotonin
regulates the speed with which the brain operates, this greatly speeds
up the rate at which the brain operates, speeding up the associative
processes of the subconscious so greatly that hallucinations result.

This makes unitary states so easy to achieve that they become
effortless. And for this reason the magician should not only be
experienced with LSD before ever using it ritually, no inexperienced
magician should ever use it ritually. It becomes very easy to form
unitary states with the wrong elements, and this can be very hazardous
to the magician, never mind obviously ruining the ritual in question.

The occult and scientific descriptions say essentially the same
things. It might be argued by some that spiritual states attained
through drug use are somehow “invalid”, but nearly all old traditions
of occult practice anywhere in the world would differ with this
opinion. As described in the occult section, they have a definite use
as a sort of “door-opener”. It is a purely philosophical matter, the
usual merely academic sort, of whether the drugs cause hallucinations
of spirits and spirit-related forces, or whether they open the mind up
to them. In either case, the mind experiences them and uses them in
achieving the unitary state.

— end of excerpts from Scientific Magic, Copyright (C) 2003 Wayland
Skallagrimsson http://www.winterscapes.com/scientific_magic/



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I created this new webpage:

Matrix of Scholars’ Views on Historical Jesus and Pauline Authenticity
http://www.egodeath.com/ScholarViewsHistJesusPaulAuth.htm



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

North Star Road: Shamanism, Witchcraft & the Otherworld Journey
Kenneth Johnson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1567183700/
Llewellyn’s World Religion and Magic Series

Condensed reviews:

A Grand Synthesis. Presents a convincing case for locating the roots
of all magical practices in the original spiritual path of shamanism.
True Wicca and other similar traditions have a legitimate claim to
extremely ancient and profound practices. Shows parallels between the
beliefs and practices in culture after culture (Mayan, Plains Indian,
Siberian, Norse, Celtic, Chinese, Tibetan, Polynesian, Hindu, Greek,
etc.) Then shows connections with more recent traditions in Germany,
Switzerland, France, Ireland, Italy, England, etc. A magnificent and
convincing synthesis. This book about common roots uses the symbol of
the World Tree as a starting point.

When a society ceases to listen to the messages of the otherworldly
dimension the results are listlessness, depression, addiction,
inhumanity, and malaise. This is the result of “loss of soul.” The
function of the shaman is to maintain the connection with the
otherworld and to reclaim lost souls.

Explores the connection between early Christianity and Shamanism:
estatic states, speaking in tongues, spirit journeys to higher realms,
helping spirits, and crucifixion on the World Tree.

Thinking Man’s Shamanism. A mix of legends, myths, and history, with
something for everyone with even the slightest interest Shamanism or
witchcraft. Includes shamanic exercises at the back of the book,
which are well thought out and easy to follow. Shows that many of the
older religions like witchcraft may have had a similar foundation.
Written in plain English with a flowing style.

— end of condensed reviews



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello Jas,

In attempt to stay ‘on-topic’ I shall clasify this reply post as
possibly having to do with

“mental construct processing, mental models
Nonreductionistic”

Jas said,> All of them ARE true , cuz you can’t tell me whats
false… but I can tell you what is false and that is something that
isn’t true

Tell me, Jas, in your humble opinion,…might what you’re saying
have anything to do with the sound of the railroad down the block
turning into music, really good music?




— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, Jas Pierce <jas_pierce@y…> wrote

>
>
> Merker wrote (paraphrased):
>
>
> >>There’s no clear distinction which can be made on a single-word

basis. As

> you increase the string being analyzed to include the adjacent

words in a

> sentence, the meaning progressively becomes more focused, with

many possible

> meanings falling away, ideally converging and crystallizing to a

single

> specific meaning. More realistically, whole sentences are often

still

> ambiguous.
>
>
> OK MISTER SMARTY PANTS and Know it ALL
>
> Why does : SeptemberEleventh=194 and TwoThousandOne=194
>
> You think way to deep and it is simple….
> But if you want me to complecate it I will
>
> Everything ADDS up… and of course I havent show you the real

good ones that I have found out….

>
> The whole purpose is to find what is linked to you….

mathematically when you see that you can begin to understand… I
have an ADVANTAGE… i have a Database and ETC….. but as time
passes I will give a blank database on the internet so that ANYONE
CAN DO IT and i will show you the true connections of the SUPER-
STRING fact embedded in the MYSTIC ALTERED STATE…..

>
> AND 2 answer
>
> >>Which of these statements is true?
> >>Physical life is imaginary.
> >>Imaginary is imaginary, and physical is physical.
> >>Physical is imaginary, and imaginary is physical.
> >>Life is Reality.
> >>Imagination is Theory.
>
>
> All of them ARE true , cuz you can’t tell me whats false… but I

can tell you what is false and that is something that isn’t true

>
>
>
>
>
> ==========================================
> The farther you dig for the truth,
> The deeper the hole to bury you in… – Jas
> ==========================================
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ———————————
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the “Signing Bonus” Sweepstakes
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>sweet miracle -> miracle of (pseudo) freewill will

The miracle is also the mind’s ability to discover no-free-will but then
transcendently re-postulate the impossible — free will, personal power — in
order to bring practical controllership stability back again. This is divine
thinking: neither naive freewill, nor denying determinism, but now, the
freewill illusion deliberately utilized; delusion now gone, illusion is
transcendently embraced and utilized. Virtual freewill has consciously become
my possession.

Arne wrote:

>>If early Christianity is so closely linked to Judaism and the Old Testament,

how come the gospels in general and John in particular are so extremely
anti-Jewish?


The goal of those bishops who were intent on hierarchy-building in the first
centuries CE was to glorify the ancient legacy of the Jewish religion and
co-opt that legacy, through tearing that legacy out of the hands of the Jews
of the first centuries CE. By assigning all negative value to the recent
Jews, those bishops were able to commandeer the ancient Jewish legacy and
effectively claim themselves as the real Jews moving forward; that is, the
real owners of the Jewish legacy moving forward.

Gnostics generally portrayed the ancient Jewish legacy negatively, but
probably merely in a mystic metaphoric sense, applying all negative value to
the ancient Jewish god and religion. The key is to separately discuss
official attitudes toward the ancient Jewish religion up to before Jesus,
versus toward the Jews at the time of Jesus and later — toward pre-Jesus Jews
and post-Jesus Jews.


— Michael Hoffman

One source of negativity that was already directed against some Jews
in some era was the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls community, who likely
used a combination of literal criticism of the Jewish theocracy
together with mystic metaphorical assignment of all negative value to
the Jewish theocracy.

The mystic, Gnostic, or esoteric Jewish community and its poetic-
religious writers criticized the official Jewish theocracy because it
was politically oppressive and these writers used that group as a
foil, assigning all metaphysical delusion to it: “Those official
priests are politically oppressive and are metaphysically deluded and
don’t provide actual primary religious experiencing.”

Generally, Gnostics used metaphorical meaning while Roman theocrats
used literalism. A more detailed analysis takes into consideration
the ways Gnostics used one combination of literalist and metaphorical
meaning, while Roman theocrats used a different combination.

Extreme negative metaphor was used by the mystic Jews, interwoven
with strong socio-political condemnation, against the official Jewish
theocracy.

That combined repudiation and condemnation of the official Jewish
theocracy by the Qumran Jewish mystics may have been a useful source
for the hierarchy-intent Roman-centered Catholic bishops in their
effort to glorify and commandeer the Jewish legacy, to prop up their
authoritarian hierarchy, while assigning all negative value to the
post-Jesus Jews and denying their legitimate ownership of the Jewish
legacy and authority.

Pagels’ book Origins of Satan discusses such value-assignment
reversals.

The Origin of Satan
Elaine Pagels
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0679731180

Once one group puts together negative screeds against another group,
someone else can simply modify the writings — standard practice in
Hellenistic writing — and alter which groups the positive and
negative qualities are assigned to. These qualities can include a
metaphysical mystical mythic meaning and a distinct but interwoven
literalist meaning.

The standard religious contrast between ‘divine wrath’ and ‘divine
compassion/mercy’ plays into this assignment of negative and positive
values.

Gnostics assigned ‘divine wrath’ to the Jehovah cosmos-creator
figure, and assigned ‘divine compassion/mercy’ to the radically
cosmos-transcendent God figure; whereas the Roman hierarchy-builders
had reason to assign both ‘divine wrath’ and ‘divine
compassion/mercy’ to the single combined Jehovah/God figure, and
assign any fully negative attributes (such as evil and delusion) to
the Satan figure.

Groups involved in value-assignment reversals included Jewish
mystics, Gnostics, Jewish theocrats, and Roman theocrats. The same
patterns may be present in the Reformation era with respect to
wrestling over which group owns Paul, and who he writes against.

Extreme negative metaphorical mystical constructs included the Qumran
conceptual play along the general lines of “We are the elect true
Jews, true Israel, beloved of God, predestined for inheriting the
promised land. You official theocratic priests are of the devil,
deluded, accursed, false Israel, blocking the way, neither going in
yourselves nor letting others enter.”

Such mystical metaphorical play, blended with literal condemnation
for socio-political oppression, was a potent tool anyone could take
and us against their own opponents, such as the Roman hierarchy-
building bishops wielded against the egalitarian, loosely networked
Gnostic version of eucharistic gatherings and against all types of
post-Jesus Jews, and against the Gnostic “heretics” who worshipped
Jesus as mystical redeemer but rejected the hierarchical ecclesiastic
structure.


Books about the essence of the early ‘churches’ being literally and
first of all, ‘eucharistic meal gatherings’:

Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine
Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries
John Zizioulas
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1885652518

>From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World

Dennis Smith
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0800634896

The Lord’s Supper
William Barclay
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0664223826


What was to be gained by demonizing the various post-Jesus Jews and
the many Gnostic “heretic” groups was control of versions of the
canon and control of versions of the Christian religion, bringing
together more like a single controllable system, even coercing the
semi-independent loosely networked eucharistic assemblies together,
resulting in a financially profitable, profitably governable
corporate universal franchisement of eucharistic assemblies, just as
a chain-store corporation takes over independent stores and small
chains of stores.

Direct religious experiencing was divisive and thus was moderated and
downplayed — even while given some lip service and controlled,
regulated spin as best they could — by the Roman-based bishops, who
were, first and foremost, intent on building their fiefdoms within a
hierarchical theocracy.


— Michael Hoffman



JesusMysteries Home Page:
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Don’t miss Peter Kirby’s, “Historical Jesus Theories”:
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Michael wrote:

>>>>Before his resurrection, Jesus stormed the gates of hell and raised up the

Old Testament saints, including Noah, Adam, and Abraham.


Merker wrote:

>>>Why should these saints be in hell in the first place ?

Michael wrote:

>>It’s an official doctrine of the Middle Ages. I can explain it

esoterically/mystically (that is, in terms of intense mystic-state
experiencing and experiential insight), but first must find more about the
doctrine — should be easy, because it’s an official doctrine.


Ephesians 4:1-16:

>>>But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s

gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he led a host of
captives, and he gave gifts to men.”


Java Fusion wrote:

>>In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended

into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is he who also ascended
far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.


In Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, the minimum number of levels is 3: naive
freewill, consciousness of determinism, and transcendence of the deterministic
cosmos. Map any “down/up” movement along that ladder; Jesus’ descent to the
saints in Hell best maps between levels 2 and 3: fatally problematic
consciousness of one’s helpless embeddedness in cosmic determinism
(self-control seizure), moving up to divine transcendent thinking (“being
given the mind of Christ which descends to rescue you and redeem you,
purchasing you back up to your metaphysical true home”).

This view maps ‘Hell’ to “deterministic self-control seizure discovery”, and
Jesus descends from the trans-deterministic realm fully outside the
deterministic cosmos, to come down to the high level where people are
undergoing self-control seizure due to stumbling onto the discovery of the
embeddedness of their thoughts in the deterministic cosmos (Metallica’s Heavy
Metal Acid Rock song “Trapped Under Ice”), lifting and fishing them up out of
that Hell-realm.


Ephesians 4:1-16 continues:

>>>And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some

evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of
ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be
children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by
the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking
the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head,
into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint
with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily
growth and upbuilds itself in love.


Where is the canonical reference to a series of visionary-plant initiations
for esoteric Protestants, comparable to Purgatory for esoteric Catholics?
There are levels of angels, possibly levels of church members in the
Protestant Bible. Paul differentiates hylics, psychics, and pneumatics, and
mentions his own ascent to the 3rd or 4th heaven, meeting Jesus who came down
to that level. There is a head vs. body distinction among the Christian
community members.

There is also the system of stations of the Cross, but that seems like a
Catholic scheme laid onto the gospels, actively picking out selected elements
of the passion story.

Test for uploading the archives. Ignore.

Test for uploading the archives. Ignore.

Hello,

I’ve spent the last two and a half months teaching myself how to create a web
site and assembling BIGDREAMPACKAGE.com. I left my job and totally
committed myself to this project. This site has music videos, mp3’s, poetry,
artwork, stories and a great links page. I needed an outlet to express that
there is an alternative to living in this existence beyond what we have become
accustomed to. Please feel free to email me with your comments, anything
you see that needs improvement or employment suggestions
Enjoy!
http://bigdreampackage.com/

LOVE and LIGHT,
Brian.

Michael.

Can you, please, respond to this passage? Point me to a post/refrence
that disputes it? It came from a discussion group
called “divisiontheory” that discusses “Afterlife Phenomena and our
Binary Soul”.

” While I remain surprised that a drug could facilitate the soul-
searching and life-review DT prescribes for soul-spirit integration
and spiritual health, it seems an unnecessarily dangerous road
towards that destination. Surely the history of the last 40 years has
impressed us all with the dangers inherent in psychoactive drugs. I
am inclined to seek hints about our proper path in the history and
practices of the earliest Christians, and I can confidently say I’ve
not heard anything about them including any sort of psychoactives in
their practices. “

Thank you.
Slava

My general proposal is that in general, all these hand-wringing queries about
searching for spirituality should quit beating around the bush and turn their
attention toward where it is already constantly being pulled anyway. What
more clear “sign from God” are they looking for, than the reappearance of
entheogens again and again throughout pop spirituality? They keep acting like
it’s uncear, yet nothing could be more obvious. So all these serious,
in-depth searches are just so much smoke and noise based on pretending that
the answer or key is difficult and unknown.

At some point it is obstinate irrationality to keep looking when you’ve
already found the solution to a search and puzzle. Entheogens fit as the
solution to the mysterious puzzle. It’s like someone reading the stack of
books about No-Historical-Jesus and then still coming back with that same old,
in-denial canard, “But this is all speculation and we can never know for
sure.”

Past a point, the claim to not know become obstinate irrationality, because
rationality was never based on knowing anything absolutely for sure; we can be
relatively sure and confident about all things we know, though *none* of them
are known “absolutely for sure”.

In the case of this seminar, the rational thing to do would be to focus
heavily on entheogens, a focus which is clearly warranted. But more likely,
the seminar will try to play the old card of putting it both ways: entheogens
are extremely interesting, but entheogens are not to get more than a bit of
emphasis — one book that is relatively innocent of this mistake, however, is
the book Rational Mysticism, which gives entheogens the fully central place
they clearly deserve.


The first paragraph in the seminar announcement lists the following:
Alan Watts
Aldous Huxley
Starhawk
Carlos Castaneda
mystical nature poet Robinson Jeffers (?)
mystical nature poet Gary Snyder (?)
Jim Jones
Heaven’s Gate
Church of Satan
Church of Scientology
The first Zen monastery and first Hindu temple in the western hemisphere
UFO cults
Esalen
The Grateful Dead
Burning Man
soul surfers (?)
Sierra club

The following, at least, are related to entheogens:
Alan Watts
Aldous Huxley
Carlos Castaneda
Church of Satan
Esalen
The Grateful Dead
Burning Man


That’s at least 7 out of 17 forms of “alternative spirituality” that are
related to entheogens — making entheogens by far the leading so-called
“eccentric alternative spirituality”.

>>the idea that California’s alternative spirituality stands as a distinct

religious tradition on its own

>>sects, cultures, and spiritual techniques

>>our core predicament: how to rediscover spirituality in a modern world

defined by technology, consumer culture, and a scientific cosmology

>>California’s maverick tradition of spiritual innovation.

>>an overview of California spirituality

>>reasons why this peculiar sensibility set down roots here on the west coast

>>the “California Tao”: nature, the body, and the evolution of consciousness

… is inseparable from California’s unique technological experience.
California … has led the way towards a postmodern culture of media,
subcultures, computer technology, aero-space, and rootless consumerism. Its
alternative spiritual movements both mirror this process and attempt to
compensate for its considerable problems.

>>He has given lectures at conferences all over the world on topics ranging

from psychedelic culture to cyberspace to postmodern spirituality


— Michael Hoffman


____________

—–Original Message—–
From: Erik Davis [mailto:erik@…]
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 1:00 PM
To: erik@…
Subject: [Erik Davis] Upcoming Bay Area seminar


People living in the Bay Area might be interested in the following seminar
that I will be leading at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San
Francisco later this winter. It is the first time I will be publicly
presenting some of the strange and marvelous fruits of my research into the
history of alternative spirituality in California, and I’m very excited about
it.


Please contact me with any questions you might have.


Erik




“The Altered State: California’s Spiritual Frontiers”
a four-week seminar by Erik Davis

Tuesday nights 7 to 9:30 pm
Feb 17, 24 March 2, March 16.
California Institute of Integral Studies
695 Minna Street
San Francisco

Alongside its body obsessions and media dreams, California is perhaps best
known for its spiritual eccentricity. For well over a century, the state has
been host to a dizzying number of exotic religions, ad-hoc cults, and all
manner of mind-and-body-altering fads and fantasies. California has been home
to spiritual mavericks like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, to popular
visionaries like Starhawk and Carlos Castaneda, to mystical nature poets like
Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, and to living nightmares like Jim Jones and
Heaven’s Gate. It cradles the Church of Satan and the Church of Scientology;
looking east, it built the first Zen monastery and first Hindu temple in the
western hemisphere. California is responsible for UFO cults and Esalen, for
the Grateful Dead and Burning Man, for soul surfers and the Sierra club. If
consciousness is truly evolving, than California has served as its American
Petri dish.


This four-week seminar, which will include slideshows, film clips, and music,
is devoted to the idea that California’s alternative spirituality stands as a
distinct religious tradition on its own-a kind of improvised and hedonistic
Hinduism, full of contradictory sects, cultures, and spiritual techniques, but
all speaking to our core predicament: how to rediscover spirituality in a
modern world defined by technology, consumer culture, and a scientific
cosmology. In the class, we will encounter unknown ancestors, sacred spots,
and secret histories buried in the cultural landscape. Such discoveries may
provide a regional sense of “rootless roots” at a time when so many of us are
feeling unmoored. Indeed, many of our contemporary concerns with deep ecology,
human transformation, body-positive spirituality, and the techno-science of
mind are rooted in California’s maverick tradition of spiritual innovation.


The first class will provide an overview of California spirituality, and
suggest some reasons why this peculiar sensibility set down roots here on the
west coast. The remaining three classes will focus on major dimensions of the
“California Tao”: nature, the body, and the evolution of consciousness-a
notion that, I will argue, is inseparable from California’s unique
technological experience. California, after all, has led the way towards a
postmodern culture of media, subcultures, computer technology, aero-space, and
rootless consumerism. Its alternative spiritual movements both mirror this
process and attempt to compensate for its considerable problems. By
understanding these dynamics, we can better approach the transformations and
disruptions that lay ahead for all of us.


About the lecturer: Erik Davis wrote the cult classic Techgnosis: Myth, Magic,
and Mysticism in the Age of Information, which has been translated into five
languages. He has given lectures at conferences all over the world on topics
ranging from psychedelic culture to cyberspace to postmodern spirituality,
including programs at Stanford, Swarthmore, Esalen, and London’s ICA. He has
given workshops on the I Ching and Technological Future. He is currently
collaborating with Michael Rauner on a photo essay book about the history of
California spirituality.

For non-CIIIS students, the fee for the four-week program is $225 per person.
Folks may
register online at http://www.ciis.edu/lifelong, or call 415-575-6175. People may
also pre-register up to the day before the first class meeting, or if space
available, at the door.

My standards for clear, effective postings:


Every posting must include *explicit* indication of how it is related to the
group’s charter. During the posting, every few short paragraphs should prove
that the post is *directly* on-topic. Meta-discussion is permissible if one
states every few paragraphs why such an analysis is important for the group’s
stated goals.

General points are on topic only *if* the writer explicitly connects them to
the central topics in the group’s charter. Analogies are helpful only if the
point is also made directly, explaining how the analogy illustrates the direct
point.

My postings in discussion groups try to adhere to being so driven to be
on-topic and contribute useful, easy-to-apply points.

I think that some critical moderators in the Christ Conspiracy no-Jesus group
don’t actually have trouble with my communication clarity, but rather, with my
position that religion is a more or less distorted expression of something
legitimate. The moderator wants postings to either be *for* Christianity, in
which case he can fire at them and block them, or *against* Christianity;
anything else — anything above such kindergarten black-and-white thinking, is
labeled “unclear, confusing”.

“Keep it simple”, the author of the book told me in the group. Translation:
adhere to our two-party politics of black-and-white, us-versus-them, “rational
scientific atheists” versus “idiot junk Christians”.


— Michael Hoffman

I am in the middle of reformatting my 2001-2004 postings onto standard Web
pages. Then I will be able to point you to an easy-to-use collection of my
writings on the subject.
For now:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/messagesearch?query=maximal
Click the Next link.


Someone wrote:

>>>While I remain surprised that a drug could facilitate the soul- searching

and life-review DT prescribes for soul-spirit integration and spiritual
health, it seems an unnecessarily dangerous road towards that destination.
Surely the history of the last 40 years has impressed us all with the dangers
inherent in psychoactive drugs. I am inclined to seek hints about our proper
path in the history and practices of the earliest Christians, and I can
confidently say I’ve not heard anything about them including any sort of
psychoactives in their practices.


Slava wrote:

>>Can you point me to a posting or reference that disputes it? It came from a

discussion group called “divisiontheory” that discusses “Afterlife Phenomena
and our Binary Soul”.


By far the main meaning of ‘afterlife’ in higher, esoteric religion is the
remainder of one’s life after a series of entheogenic mystic state sessions
resulting in deterministic egodeath and transcendent rebirth where freewill
and separate self are fully understood as illusions, rather than remaining as
returning delusions. Permanent ego death, resulting in the full conversion
from delusion to mere conscious illusion, occurs typically after a series of
some 9 visionary-plant initiations, in Traditional and esoteric
religion/initiation systems.

That former, deluded self is metaphorized as one’s “mortal life”. After full
lasting ego death, one has burned away one’s mortality and gained everlasting
imperishability, metaphorized as “immortality”, an idea which also alludes to
the mystic-state experience of timelessness, or frozen block-universe
determinism in which egoic personal control agency is seen to be essentially
illusory, frozen helplessly and impotently into spacetime.

There are warnings of danger all throughout religion and esotericism —
various wrathful deities, imprisonment, traps, dangers. Authentic
spirituality is inherently dangerous, leading to one’s Golem and Centaur
running out of control, building up to weilding such power of personal egoic
control, the egoic agent can no longer control its own runaway power. The
result is self-control seizure and enlightenment when one’s power is
reconceived as empty — depending on how the mind conceives of this mysterious
“oneself” who is held to wield the runaway power.

According to the maximal entheogen theory of religion, visionary plants don’t
*simulate* the traditional religious methods, they *are* the main traditional
methods, by far. Safe methods are safe because they are relatively
ineffective; they become ways of effectively *avoiding* direct primary
religious experiencing, typically excused by redefinining spirituality to
denude it of all intense mystic altered-state experiencing and relabelling the
resulting ordinary state of consicousness as “spiritual”, in a sense which is
a recent post-1960s invention in reaction to the completely and embarrassingly
impressive efficacy of entheogens at reliably and ergonomically producing
intense primary mystic experiences.

Those who haven’t heard about early Christians using entheogens are always
those who haven’t tried to look for and recognize the references that are
available in reasonable abundance. Theirs is a paradigm-based blindness. The
concept of “church” originally meant “a eucharistic meal gathering”. The
heart of the Death Star that blows it all up as having an entheogen-shaped
core is the question, what exactly was the eucharistic meal — it was “mixed
wine”. Then the entire question becomes, “What exactly and speicifically was
in the ‘mixed wine’?”

What’s needed today is a bulleted list of all the indications — actually,
indications-with-interpretations — that support the maximal entheogen theory
of religion. Only now are there enough books and websites, a handful, that
cover the evidence and provide the interpretations. Today’s entheogenists
think small and assume the minimal entheogen theory of religion, supposing
that enthoegen use in religion was rare and suppressed.

It is easy to provide a list of books about entheogens in religious history.
Using online resources, one can glean much of the worldview that enables
recognizing the evidence that is ample for even the maximal entheogen theory
of Christian history all before the modern era; that not only early
Christians, but the Christian tradition overall during the ancient and
medeival/Renaissance eras was based on the use of visionary plants, and not
rarely or by a deviant few, but throughout popular and eccelesiastical
culture.

It is easy to construct an interpretive framework or paradigm in which
religious themes in general are recognized as perennially emanating from the
visinoary-plant based altered state of cognition. Such a paradigm, today’s
“minimalist entheogen paradigm”, then argues against the “minimalist”
assumption still used by today’s tepid and self-defeating entheogen scholars,
who inadvertantly end up giving more of an impression that entheogens were
just the deviant and minor method that the probhitionists and
enthoegen-diminishing meditation advocates claim they were.


Book lists:
http://www.egodeath.com/#BookLists
Original, experiential, mystical Christianity
Mystery Religion, Myth, and the Mystical State
Religious Experiencing
Holy Spirit and Christian Spirituality
Word and Power (doctrine and spiritual experience)
Gnosticism
Western Esotericism
Ecstatic Alchemy
Hermeticism and Ancient Mystic Astrology
Jewish Mysticism
Entheogen theory of religion —
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/KDBM4IID0J82
The active eucharist that reveals the kingdom of God —
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/1WMWVXJ8FZPJD
Eucharist (Catholic authors)
Eucharist (Catholic authors II)
Lord’s Supper (Prot., E. Orth, Ecum.)
Ancient wine as visionary plant beverage —
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/286BVZYFN78Z9
Mythic-only Christ theory
Religious myth: allegorical metaphor of mystic experiencing
The kingdom of God is at hand
Christianity as political rebellion against “divine” Caesar
Earliest Christianity
Ancient Near Eastern religion
Philosophy of Mother of God
Mary “John” Magdalene, The Beloved Disciple
Sophia, religious comprehension
Theology of Religious Pluralism


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience. The essence, paradigm, origin, and fountainhead of religion is
the use of visionary plants to routinely trigger the intense mystic altered
state, producing loose cognitive association binding, which then produces an
experience of frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing,
ever-existing future. The return of the ordinary state of consciousness is
allegorized as a transcendence of Necessity or cosmic determinism. Myth
describes this mystic-state experience. Initiation is classically a series of
some 8 visionary-plant sessions, interspersed with study of perennial
philosophy. Most religion is a distortion, corruption, literalization, and
cooptation of this standard initiation system.

[Re-posting with typos fixed and 1 error corrected]


I am in the middle of reformatting my 2001-2004 postings onto standard Web
pages. Then I will be able to point you to an easy-to-use collection of my
writings on the subject.
For now:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/messagesearch?query=maximal
Click the Next link.


Someone wrote:

>>>While I remain surprised that a drug could facilitate the soul- searching

and life-review DT prescribes for soul-spirit integration and spiritual
health, it seems an unnecessarily dangerous road towards that destination.
Surely the history of the last 40 years has impressed us all with the dangers
inherent in psychoactive drugs. I am inclined to seek hints about our proper
path in the history and practices of the earliest Christians, and I can
confidently say I’ve not heard anything about them including any sort of
psychoactives in their practices.


Slava wrote:

>>Can you point me to a posting or reference that disputes it? It came from a

discussion group called “divisiontheory” that discusses “Afterlife Phenomena
and our Binary Soul”.


By far the main meaning of ‘afterlife’ in higher, esoteric religion is the
remainder of one’s life after a series of entheogenic mystic state sessions
resulting in deterministic egodeath and transcendent rebirth where freewill
and separate self are fully understood as illusions, rather than remaining as
returning delusions. Permanent ego death, resulting in the full conversion
from delusion to mere conscious illusion, occurs typically after a series of
some 9 visionary-plant initiations, in Traditional and esoteric
religion/initiation systems.

That former, deluded self is metaphorized as one’s “mortal life”. After full
lasting ego death, one has burned away one’s mortality and gained everlasting
imperishability, metaphorized as “immortality”, an idea which also alludes to
the mystic-state experience of timelessness, or frozen block-universe
determinism in which egoic personal control agency is seen to be essentially
illusory, frozen helplessly and impotently into spacetime.

There are warnings of danger all throughout religion and esotericism —
various wrathful deities, imprisonment, traps, dangers. Authentic
spirituality is inherently dangerous, leading to one’s Golem and Centaur
running out of control, building up to wielding such power of personal egoic
control, the egoic agent can no longer control its own runaway power. The
result is self-control seizure and enlightenment when one’s power is
reconceived as empty — depending on how the mind conceives of this mysterious
“oneself” who is held to wield the runaway power.

According to the maximal entheogen theory of religion, visionary plants don’t
*simulate* the traditional religious methods, they *are* the main traditional
methods, by far. Safe methods are safe because they are relatively
ineffective; they become ways of effectively *avoiding* direct primary
religious experiencing, typically excused by redefining spirituality to denude
it of all intense mystic altered-state experiencing and relabelling the
resulting ordinary state of consciousness as “spiritual”, in a sense which is
a recent post-1960s invention in reaction to the completely and embarrassingly
impressive efficacy of entheogens at reliably and ergonomically producing
intense primary mystic experiences.

Those who haven’t heard about early Christians using entheogens are always
those who haven’t tried to look for and recognize the references that are
available in reasonable abundance. Theirs is a paradigm-based blindness. The
concept of “church” originally meant “a eucharistic meal gathering”. The
heart of the Death Star that blows it all up as having an entheogen-shaped
core is the question, what exactly was the eucharistic meal — it was “mixed
wine”. Then the entire question becomes, “What exactly and specifically was
in the ‘mixed wine’?”

What’s needed today is a bulleted list of all the indications — actually,
indications-with-interpretations — that support the maximal entheogen theory
of religion. Only now are there enough books and websites, a handful, that
cover the evidence and provide the interpretations. Today’s entheogenists
think small and assume the minimal entheogen theory of religion, supposing
that entheogen use in religion was rare and suppressed.

It is easy to provide a list of books about entheogens in religious history.
Using online resources, one can glean much of the worldview that enables
recognizing the evidence that is ample for even the maximal entheogen theory
of Christian history all before the modern era; that not only early
Christians, but the Christian tradition overall during the ancient and
medieval/Renaissance eras was based on the use of visionary plants, and not
rarely or by a deviant few, but throughout popular and ecclesiastical culture.

It is easy to construct an interpretive framework or paradigm in which
religious themes in general are recognized as perennially emanating from the
visionary-plant based altered state of cognition. Such a paradigm, the
just-now-forming “maximal entheogen paradigm”, argues against the “minimalist”
assumption still used by today’s tepid and self-defeating entheogen scholars,
who inadvertently end up giving more of an impression that entheogens were
just the deviant and minor method that the prohibitionists and
entheogen-diminishing meditation advocates claim they were.


Book lists:
http://www.egodeath.com/#BookLists
Original, experiential, mystical Christianity
Mystery Religion, Myth, and the Mystical State
Religious Experiencing
Holy Spirit and Christian Spirituality
Word and Power (doctrine and spiritual experience)
Gnosticism
Western Esotericism
Ecstatic Alchemy
Hermeticism and Ancient Mystic Astrology
Jewish Mysticism
Entheogen theory of religion —
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/KDBM4IID0J82
The active eucharist that reveals the kingdom of God —
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/1WMWVXJ8FZPJD
Eucharist (Catholic authors)
Eucharist (Catholic authors II)
Lord’s Supper (Prot., E. Orth, Ecum.)
Ancient wine as visionary plant beverage —
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/286BVZYFN78Z9
Mythic-only Christ theory
Religious myth: allegorical metaphor of mystic experiencing
The kingdom of God is at hand
Christianity as political rebellion against “divine” Caesar
Earliest Christianity
Ancient Near Eastern religion
Philosophy of Mother of God
Mary “John” Magdalene, The Beloved Disciple
Sophia, religious comprehension
Theology of Religious Pluralism


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience. The essence, paradigm, origin, and fountainhead of religion is
the use of visionary plants to routinely trigger the intense mystic altered
state, producing loose cognitive association binding, which then produces an
experience of frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing,
ever-existing future. The return of the ordinary state of consciousness is
allegorized as a transcendence of Necessity or cosmic determinism. Myth
describes this mystic-state experience. Initiation is classically a series of
some 8 visionary-plant sessions, interspersed with study of perennial
philosophy. Most religion is a distortion, corruption, literalization, and
cooptation of this standard initiation system.

>>>Is there a popular hypothesis according to which Flavius Josephus is just a

pseudonym or at least an agent of the Roman politician Arius Calpurnius Piso
who plotted the Jewish war?

>>There is an hypothesis on Piso and the Jesus myth, but in my humble view it

is the most extreme of conspiracy theories. I’ve never seen much reason to
give it credibility.


There is good reason to selectively draw upon the Flavius/Piso theory, because
Christianity was largely a rewriting and rebuttal to Ruler Cult themes. We
cannot be all-or-nothing in evaluating radical theories. A useful attitude is
that all radical or alternative theories are correct and insightful in some
way, the challenge being to specifically identify that way.

I am still waiting for the books on the subject to become widely available. I
don’t know the details of the theories, such as whether anyone proposes that
‘Flavius’ is a pseudonym for Piso.

The books on this subject suffer from mono-explanation, trying to derive all
Christianity — which was nothing if not radically thematically
syncretistic — from a single thematic source.

An easy and rewardingly insight-providing approach now in studying the origins
of Christianity is the study of Christian themes as a rebuttal and
modification of the themes of Ruler Cult.


— Michael Hoffman

Wendy wrote:

>>G.A. Wells has changed his mind and now believes that Jesus DID exist?

>>In the JesusMysteries discussion group, I mostly see arguments for the

mythicist point of view. Do we often see it argued that Jesus DID exist, with
backup info?


The arguments for Jesus’ historicity are already well-defined based on
standard published arguments; the dominant paradigm is usefully seen as
including and integrating one large set of arguments for Jesus’ historicity.
Such reasoning, such a type of interpretive framework, is the familiar
established received view, the given. That was Phase I.

In the Internet era, the argument for nonhistoricity of Jesus is easier to
publish and develop. That is Phase II, which is still struggling to formulate
a typical and standardized scenario and interpretive framework that is as
focused and standardized as the familiar received story of Christian origins.

It will take awhile longer for the no-Historical-Jesus model of Christian
origins to become comparably distinct, stable, and standardized, and
positively expressed. Most books, exemplified by comparing Doherty, Freke &
Gandy, and Acharya, emphasize disproof of the received paradigm, and do so
consistently, without having a consistent, distinct, positively specific,
uniform, and consensus proposed paradigm as a compelling alternative to the
received view.

The no-Historical-Jesus researchers need to reach some comparable degree of
consensus on how Christianity actually did form if not by the currently
predominant “big-bang historical Jesus” story of Christian origins. After
that, Phase III will be the response to that specific proposed alternative
story of origins from the adherents of the currently predominant
historical-Jesus paradigm.

It is unlikely that the purely negative disproof that currently predominates
in the no-Jesus books will compel a response from the comfortably established
Historicist camp. Only when a highly compelling and uniform and coherent
positive alternative story of Christian origins is formulated by the no-Jesus
community of researchers will there be a sufficient challenge and threat to
the dominant paradigm to elicit a response.

Lacking such a consensus alternative story of Christian origins, today’s
exchange between Phase I and Phase II adherents is bound to be limited to a
paradigm status-quo standoff of “The official historical writings are
basically reliable.” “No they’re not!” “Yes they are!” The Phase II
paradigm is still too weak, too scattered; it can be ignored safely and
comfortably: “Never mind those kooks over there who doubt everything ever
written, seeing forgery everywhere throughout the entire canon of early
Christian writings.”


Also challenging the effort to formulate a no-Jesus paradigm is the “endless
fence-sitting” attitude, which effectively amounts to accepting the familiar
received Historicist way of thinking by default, with the excuse “Because we
can’t know Jesus’ historicity absolutely for certain, the only rational thing
to do is assign his historicity a plausibility of 50%.” I disagree with the
common and too-easily-made assertion or defense strategy of “We can’t know
Jesus’ historicity absolutely for certain.”

Such an assertion overemphasizes the role of certainty in epistemology, and
underemphasizes the importance of interpretive frameworks which facts,
knowledge, and certainty are importantly relative to.

Within a mature, fully-developed ahistoricist interpretive framework, we *can*
be effectively reasonably certain that the Jesus figure is essentially a
composite figure, such that the facticity of Jesus’ existence becomes entirely
a matter of definition: if ‘Jesus’ is defined as a single historical man
serving as necessary kernel for the eventual composite mythic-accretion
figure, we know things didn’t work that way; all evidence indicates Jesus was
a radically composite figure incorporating *multiple, not single* historical
individuals as input sources.

Based on paradigm-aware analysis, we *can* say we can know there was no
historical Jesus, about as much as anything is certain in history. I reject
as simplistic and paradigm-naive the too-easy assertion that “We can’t know
for certain whether Jesus existed”, an assertion that ends up being biased in
favor of the Historicist story of Christian origins.


— Michael Hoffman

Question: Is the intense mystic state also a seeming metaphore when
viewed from the mystic state?

Would you consider the following words to portray a type of answer
to the above question, and in what way?

“The loosened mind can feel remotely monitored and controlled by a
dominant observer-and-controller entity who is in a position of
power; one becomes a cybernetic puppet, and the perceived locus of
control shifts up to a separate control agent who resides on a
higher level in the control hierarchy.” -Hoffman

Also,

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Michael Hoffman” <mhoffman@e…>
wrote:

> >sweet miracle -> miracle of (pseudo) freewill will

> The miracle is also the mind’s ability to discover no-free-will

but then

> transcendently re-postulate the impossible — free will, personal

power — in

> order to bring practical controllership stability back again. “

Another question: In constructing a mental model of egodeath and
determinism do you conceptualize “practical controlership stability”
as seeming to portray a hierarchy of “(psuedo) freewill will”? Do
you choose to portray the hierarchy as theoretically (mental egoic
logic here)infinite?

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Cheryl” <tcherril@y…> wrote:
> — In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Cheryl” <tcherril@y…> wrote:
> >
>
> >
> > The essence, origin, fountainhead and paradigm of religion
> > …in this order the paradigm of religion follows the essence…
>
>
> Religion itself is only metaphorical in nature. Life is a
metaphore,
> in that the surface contructs are completely metaphorical. This
is
> because the surface contructs can be seen as contructs of the ego,
> illusory and metaphorical in nature.
>
> Question: Is the intense mystic state also a metaphore when
viewed
> from the mystical state? Or when viewed from the model of solid
> block deteminism? Or when understood from a mystical metaphoric
> model?
>
> When viewed from the metaphorical freewillist contruct it is
> contructed as another metaphore of an even deeper unexperienced
> essence.

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/eighthgate.html

I point out that the fire altars outside the cosmic deterministic sphere of
the fixed stars, in Mithraism and Hellenistic thinking, represent the standard
mystic-state experience of bright white light.


— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

History questions:

What kind of historical accounts exist
to help describe the transtion from general widespread
cheap as dirt mystic enlightenment
to loss of enlightenment to literalism?

Since metaphysical enlightenment is distinct from
ethical application of mystical enlightenment,
could it be that “trickster-gamesters-of-the-race”
played the game for the games’ sake,
choosing to allow literalists to play a literilist game,
with no consideration of ethical implications?

As a meta-discussion related to the topic of
the formulation of an effective ergonomic egodeath model,
may I ask if you are *choosing*
to apply your metaphysical enlightenment
to the realm of social and ethical issues?
Or is this a trickster action for the sake of the game itself,
and only for the game?

Cheryl wrote:

>>>Is the intense mystic state also a seeming metaphor when viewed from the

mystic state?


The mystic state is not a metaphor. It is a directly self-existing mode of
cognition, largely characterized by loose cognitive-association binding
between and within mental-contruct matrixes, something commonly and typically
described by metaphor, in pre-modern culture. I keep referents separate from
metaphor; a metaphor describes a non-metaphorical referent. The mystic state
is a given that is later described by using metaphors.

>>>Would you consider the following words to portray a type of answer to the

above question, and in what way?


Michael wrote:

>>The loosened mind can feel remotely monitored and controlled by a dominant

observer-and-controller entity who is in a position of power; one becomes a
cybernetic puppet, and the perceived locus of control shifts up to a separate
control agent who resides on a higher level in the control hierarchy.


Metaphors do inform and give substance — they provide ways of thinking about
and concretizing more abstract experiential phenomena. The mystic state
includes a “closing-in labyrinth” experience; it is important to have a large
set of conceptual metaphors and less-metaphorical idea constructs, to most
fully experience and latch onto and amplify the potential phenomena of the
mystic state.

I’m generally against Steven Katz’ theory that mysticism is nothing but
language, a linguistic construct; I keep the layers separate: there exists a
universal thing, “the mystic state” — characterized by loose cognitive
association binding — that is comprehended and richly experienced by using a
separate, distinct overlay of metaphor and language to engage with it. This
layered model is more powerful than munging the two together — the mystic
state and the metaphor used to intellectually interface with it and explore
it.

Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis
Steven Katz
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/019520011X

Language is inherently metaphor-drenched, but it is most productive to
differentiate between layers or aspects of mystic thinking: the mystic state
of loose cognition, metaphor to describe experiential insights potentially
encountered in that state, and relatively non-metaphorical language to
theoretically and systematically model the mystic state. Though distinct,
there is rich interaction between the mystic state, non-metaphorical theory,
and metaphor — that’s why it is absurd to praise experiencing while
disparaging theory or myth.

You could say that there are 3 required components for maximizing gnosis:
mastery of the mystic state, mastery of theory, and mastery of myth.
Neoplatonism is somewhat like mastery of theory, but it was theory so much in
an ancient mode. The ancients get high marks for mastering the mystic state
and myth, but low marks for theory.

Modernity is potentially better than antiquity at all three, through an
Integral Theory approach of both differentiating and integrating the three
components; do mysticism separately through myth, mystic-state (loose
cognition), and theory, and also integrate and interpenetrate these 3
components. Ancient thinking fully integrated — that is, fused without
differentiation — the mystic state and myth, leaving out the theory in any
sense modern thinking would recognize.

>>>In constructing a mental model of egodeath and determinism, do you

conceptualize “practical controllership stability” as seeming to portray a
hierarchy of “(pseudo) freewill will”? Do you choose to portray the hierarchy
as theoretically infinite?


Against the spiritualists who never find the classic mystic climax experience
but talk of an endless path, I follow the ancient perennial initiation-series
model, which is also a hierarchy, which is also an inward or outward vector.
With ergonomic study of perennial philosophy, and entheogens ready-to-hand,
only around 9 visionary-plant initiation sessions are required for full basic
enlightenment, salvation, redemption, and satori.

This movement centers around the central issue of no-free-will, immediately
forming 3 main levels, but these aren’t usually matched to 3 initiation
sessions. The first few sessions are done within the naive freewill
assumption. The later are dominated by comprehending and experiencing
determinism, and the final sessions break through to transcendent need for
something beyond determinism and the practical self-control limitations and
drawbacks of ordinary rationality.

First there is naive freewill-styled thinking and general feeling of control
power; then there is determinism-consciousness leading to self-control
seizure; then there is leaping out of the system in order to regain practical
control power even though freewill has switched from delusion to consciously
seen-through illusion. I am glad to at last have a place for magic and for
transrationality as Ken Wilber has had (and some sort of transcendent form of
a kind of freewill), but without his clumsy literalism about it.


— Michael Hoffman

Cheryl wrote:

>>What kind of historical accounts exist to help describe the transition from

general widespread cheap as dirt mystic enlightenment to loss of enlightenment
to literalism?


What percentage of Hellenistic-era, Medieval/Renaissance era, and Modern era
thinking was metaphysically enlightened, and what percentage literalist
instead, missing what the pre-moderns comprehended, grasped, and understood?
It’s early for that question, since modern researchers have been too clueless
and literalist to ask until recently.

When we stop being clueless and recognize 2-layer meaning-flipping in myth,
with myth as metaphor for mystic-state phenomena, it is clear that pre-modern
thinking was characteristically based in the entheogenic mystic state, whereas
modernity is characteristically restricted to the non-entheogenic, ordinary
state of consciousness, mystified by the former availability of the Holy
Spirit routinely on tap. One hypothesis is that women were the plant experts
but became oppressed.

Another speculation is that in modernity, people moved away from the land and
cows, losing their entheogenic keys. Dan Russell, like most entheogenists,
doesn’t understand myth, but has written about the suppression and loss of
knowledge about entheogens (_Drug War_, _Shamanism & Propaganda_); same with
Jonathan Ott (_The Entheogenic Reformation_). From the loss of entheogen
knowledge directly results the loss of understanding myth as mystic-state
metaphor.

>>Since metaphysical enlightenment is distinct from ethical application of

mystical enlightenment, could it be that “trickster-gamesters-of-the-race”
played the game for the games’ sake, choosing to allow literalists to play a
literalist game, with no consideration of ethical implications?


I don’t know why pre-moderns and assorted tricksters were secretive about
entheogens and about the actual meaning encoded by myth. There is some merit
to feeding the literalists their own literalist thinking in such a way as to
convey two opposed specific systems of meaning at once to divide thinking
asunder into two.

The hallmark of a truly modern scientific approach to theorizing mystic gnosis
is to explain myth without limiting oneself to the mythic mode: make instead
the nonmythic mode of analysis primary, doing a better more explicit job than
the writings we have of the Neoplatonists. A common mistake today is to try
to use the nonmythic mode of analysis while remaining weak and clueless on the
two other key legs: utilizing the mystic state, and comprehending the
“flippable 2-layered meaning” nature of mythic metaphor.

>>In the effort to formulate an effective ergonomic egodeath model, are you

*choosing* to apply your metaphysical enlightenment to the realm of social and
ethical issues? Or is this a trickster action for the sake of the game
itself, and only for the game?


I am all focused on formulating an effective ergonomic egodeath model;
applying this metaphysical enlightenment model to the realm of social and
ethical issues is specifically a non-goal of this project in its initial phase
I’m dedicated to. This is a point of contention against the stance of popular
spirituality, which insists on conceptualizing egodeath theory construction as
simultaneously theoretical and socio-politically practical.

All recent books on spirituality begin by saying “We should become mystically
enlightened in order to improve the practical world.” I reject that strategy,
which has delivered neither on the promise of improving the world nor of
metaphysical enlightenment. I’ve always adhered to a one-at-a-time approach,
or compartmentalizing and strongly differentiating metaphysical enlightenment
from improving the world.

This is partly just a practical necessity for me as a leading-edge theorist;
Einstein *first* thought of his Physics systems, and *then* set out to improve
the world: today’s spiritualists would condemn him for not doing both in one,
at the same time — but that is idealistic and impractical for the individual
involved; it’s easy and simplistic for the critiques to idealistically demand
the world of each theorist.

My motive was originally personal increase of self-management and self-control
power; nirvana through increased mental and cognitive integrity as a
self-controller agent. Inherent frustrations with that project led to
discovering ego death and enlightenment, as the Paul figure in the New
Testament describes in recounting his former struggle to adhere to “the law”
(an egoic semi-formalized system of conduct one gives to oneself prior to
maturity of initiation) and do what he ought to do.

The main activism I promote to improve the world, an area of activism that is
interrelated with improving higher knowledge, is drug policy reform.
http://www.reformnav.org


— Michael Hoffman

Michael wrote:

>>The loosened mind can feel remotely monitored and controlled by a

dominant observer-and-controller entity who is in a position of
power; one becomes a cybernetic puppet, and the perceived locus of
control shifts up to a separate control agent who resides on a
higher level in the control hierarchy.<<

Hi Michael,

This is often the exact scenario inherent in a person’s first
psychotic episode. Unfortunately today someone undergoing this ego
control crisis gets drugged right out of it, instead of receiving a
a much-needed form of shamanistic initiation.

Melody

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Michael Hoffman” <mhoffman@e…>
wrote:

With ergonomic study of perennial philosophy, and entheogens ready-
to-hand, only around 9 visionary-plant initiation sessions are
required for full basic enlightenment, salvation, redemption, and
satori.

Does one need someone to lead/oversee the initiation? Where can one
find specific information on how-to?

Thanks,
Melody

Assuming
that the mystical experience is

experienced
or
understood

to have a core,

what can be said about the reason some trips are

experienced as

seemingly

different one from the other and among different persons

(….as in “bad” or “good” or “different” ….)

(to include differences in personified experiences)?

Was your experience “influenced” by your egoic knowledge?

“You might say I discovered the key to secular metaphysical
philosophy in 1988,
but didn’t discover the essence of transcendent religion until
around 1995.
Around 1995 I still assumed much of the New Testament should be read
literally; that there was a historical Jesus and crew, even though I
had
experienced rising up to meet the *heavenly*, spiritual Jesus as
personified
principle halfway up in the air, as in the “third or fourth heaven”
in a
system where the sphere of deterministic fixed stars to penetrate is
level 8.”

In what way would you compare your experience of mystic state now
that you’ve “climbed further up the ladder” as it were with earlier
mystic state experiences. In what way does the theory of cybernetic
ego death, or any theory, or lack of theory , or varieties of
cultural mental contructs affect the experience of mystic state.

Do you concieve the core of mystic state as universal in a brain
chemical way (analogous to eyesight is universal in a biological
way), and then the mystic state “influences” egoic constructs or
worldview or perceptual sense of world when also combined with
various worldviews or theories?



concerning cultural difference…
“after we have normalized for cultural differences, “

“my modern whole-system of transcendence works by combining
unprecedentedly *direct* and effective explanation, with any amount
of
tripping. My systematization (the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Death) is
clearer
not just to today’s audience, but to any audience; it is clearer in
absolute
terms, not just relative to its contemporary audience.


One way it is better is that it has much higher *for its intended
audience*
than the old attempted systematizations had *for their intended
audiences*.
Thus

after we have normalized for cultural differences,

my theory still comes
out far ahead. Previous systems were confused and hazy *to their own
audiences*; they were *not* clear and direct and ergonomic to the
audience of
their day.”

Would this include a cultural acknowledging the value of critical
thinking? Would this groundwork be helpful?

Do you think cultural differences account for the seeming resistance
to positively embracing this theory? Such as in the cultural
negativity toward embracing herbs? Or as in an educational system
that promotes a worldview antagonistic toward “book knowledge”?