Dear Involuntary, Perhaps you would stop mental masturbation long enough to say what is Really bothering you? <G> Rick Involuntary wrote: > "We're playing with half a deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals > of government and science should dictate where human curiosity can > legitimately send its attention and where it cannot. It's an essentially > preposterous situation. It is essentially a civil rights issue because > what we're talking about here is the repression of a religious sensibility. > In fact not 'a' religious sensibility, *the* religious sensibility. Not > built on some con game spun out by eunichs, but based on the symbiotic > relationship that was in place for our species for 50,000 years before the > advent of history riding priestcraft and propaganda. So it's a clarion > call to recover a birthright, however uncomfortable that may make us. A > call to realize that life lived in the absence of the psychedelic > experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life > denied, life enslaved to the ego and its fear of dissolution in this > mysterious mama matrix which is all around us and which apparently extends > to infinity and where our historical future actually lies. This is the > other thing.. > > It is now very clear that techniques of machine-human interfacing, > pharmacology of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative > techniques, all kinds of data storage, imaging and retrieval techinques, > all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or > angelic kind of self-imaging of our culture. And the people who are on the > demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full-tilt forward with > their plans to capture everyone as a 100% believing consumer inside some > kind of beige furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple. The > shamanic response in this situation I think is to PUSH THE ART PEDAL > THROUGH THE FLOOR." > > "Years and years ago before the term "psychedelic" was settled on there was > just a phenomenological description. These things were called > "consciousness-expanding" drugs. I think that's a very good term. Think > about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does > not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be? > To my mind the psychedelic position is most fundamentally threatening when > fully logically thought out because it is an anti-drug position, and make > no mistake about it, the issue is "drugged." How drugged shall you be? Or > to put it another way: consciousness. How conscious shall you be? Who > shall be conscious? Who shall be unconscious? Imagine if the Japanese had > won World War II, taken over America, and introduced an insidious drug > which caused the average American to spend six and a half hours a day > consuming enemy propaganda. But this is what was done. Not by the > Japanese but by ourselves. This is television. Six and a half hours a > day! Average! That's the average! So there must be people out there > hooked on twenty-four hours a day. I visit people in L.A. who have one set > on in every room so they're racking up a lot of time for the rest of us. > > You see what is needed is an operational awareness of what we mean by > "drug." A "drug" is something which causes unexamined, obsessive > habituated behavior. You don't examine your behaviour, you just do it, you > do it obsessively. You let nothing get in the way of it. This is the kind > of life we're being sold on every level: to watch, to consume, to buy. The > psychedelic thing is off in this tiny corner, never mentioned and yet it > represents the only counter flow toward a tendency to just leave people in > designer states of consciousness, not their designers, but the designers of > Madison Avenue, the Pentagon, so forth and so on. This is really > happening. It's only a matter of how tight you draw the metaphor that you > realize it. I've been coming and going from Los Angeles a lot recently and > when the plane swings out over the eastern part of the city looking down is > like looking at a printed circuit. All these curved driveways and > cul-de-sacs with the same little modules installed on each end of them and > you realize that as long as the Reader's Digest stays subscribed to and the > TV stays on these are all interchangable parts. This is this nighmarish > thing which McLuhan and others foresaw, the creation of the public. The > public has no history, has no future, lives in a golden moment created by > credit which binds them ineluctably to a fascist system that is never > criticized. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off our > symbiotic relationship with the vegetable, feminine, maternal matrix of the > planet. This is what ended partnership. This is what ended balance > between the sexes. This is what set us on the long slide." > > "So now the culture crisis grows ever more intense. The stakes rise ever > higher. If there were ever a time to be heard and be counted in order to > clarify thinking on these issues it would be now because there is a major > attack on the Bill of Rights underway in the guise of a so-called "Drug > War" and somehow the drug issue is even more frightening than communism, > even more insidious. McCarthy told America that communism was under the > bed, he was wrong. Ronald Reagan and George Bush tell America that drugs > are in the living room and they're right! It is here. It is real. It is > the hydrogen bomb of the third world. The quality of rhetoric emanating > from therapists and psychologists and psychoanalysts is going to have to > radically improve or we are going to have happen to us what happened to > genetics in the Soviet Union. We're going to be Lysenkoized. We're going > to be made lilly-white and all opportunity for exploring this dimension is > going to be closed off - almost as a footnote to the supression of these > synthetic poisonous narcotics which are mostly dealt by governments anyway. > > But the psychedelic issue, as I said, it's a civil rights issue. It's a > civil liberties issue. The reason women couldn't be given the vote in the > nineteenth century, there was a very simple overpowering reason that was > always given: it would destroy society. This was also the reason why the > king could not give up a divine right, chaos would result! And this is why > we're told drugs cannot be legalized, because society would disintegrate. > This is just nonsense. Most societies have always operated in the light of > various habits based on plants. The whole history of mankind could be > written as a series of made and broken relationships with plants. Think > about the influence of tobacco on merchantilism in 17th and 18th century > Europe. Think about the influence of coffee on the modern office worker, > or the way the British influenced opium policy in the far-east to rule > China, or the way the CIA used heroin in the American ghettos in the 1960s > to choke off black dissent and black dissatisfaction with the war. History > is about these plant relationships. They can be raised into consciousness, > integrated into social policy and used to create a more caring meanigful > world, or they can be denied the way sexuality was denied until the force > of the work of Freud and others just made it impossible to maintain the > fiction any longer. This choice of how quickly we develop into a mature > community able to address this issue is entirely with us. Certainly people > like Stan Grof and others have worked valiantly to keep this kind of thing > alive but, my god, you can count them on the fingers of one hand." > > "I should mention that DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter. Yes, DMT, > the most powerful of the hallucinogens occurs in the human brain as a > normal part of metabolism. It also is a Schedule I drug, so you're all > holding and this _might_ be the basis for some kind of case. To just show > what absolute poppycock all this nonsense is: People Have Been Made > Illegal!" > > >From Terence Mckenna's Non-Ordinary States Through Vision Plants
