New topic split from 'concise criticism of analytic idealism' thread.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

In the spirit of compatibility more than contest, you might find the paper of Merlin Sheldrake (I've posted it here.) as a serious and thoughtful contribution to the dialogue. Note: It must be read thoroughly to grasp its depth and nuance. I hope you enjoy it.

With regard to Cleric's recent post, I for one, do not assert that a single powerful cleansing or breakthrough of the "doors of perception" guarantees a "free float" into future evolution. I've had two such events separated by about 15 years; the first in a dream and the second in a Santo Daime ceremony. In both cases, I was not presented with a done deal but rather a powerful opening into future maintenance and evolutionary work, which continues for me to this day where I find myself in the best school I've yet experienced. Nothing final, of course, I expect more to come.

Lou,

At this point, I have to assume you think that I am just picking random fights with you on various threads, trying to persuade you to look into Steiner or spiritual science more and get on 'my' path, but not really following my reasoning at all. I am actually responding to a pattern of thinking and emphasis in your posts which is consistent and, in some ways, escalating. You don't seem to realize that everything you are posting is diametrically opposed to what we are saying, even though I am telling you it is and giving you very detailed reasons why. The Sheldrake paper on Schultes is exactly what Cleric addressed in that post I linked to.

Or, if you mean a "serious and thoughtful contribution to the dialogue", as in a rebuttal to everything I have been writing, then I have to ask to elaborate how. I at least want to know that you understand the simple point that, in my view, what Sheldrake (son) seems to be advocating for, if it were to be adopted as a widescale 'spiritual scientific' path, would comparable to people who start performing brain surgery on patients with a 3,000 year old understanding of the physical brain processes. It's downright reckless and born of this same fixation that I have been writing to you about for many pages now, on regressing to past modes of consciousness to penetrate into genuine understanding of the higher worlds. He even explicitly references the 'doors of perception' argument (which I think originated with Blake but was written as a book by Huxley). There is, of course, something real taking place with the ingesting of substances, but it's not in the least expanding the cognitive faculties necessary to resonate with what is being perceived.


Compare:

Schultes’s attitude was a predictable consequence of his modern scientific training. But it wasn’t inevitable. Over the second half of the twentieth century, a number of Western researchers came to quite different conclusions about the ontological status of psychedelic visions. Unlike Schultes, many chose not to omit ambiguity and confusion from their accounts of their own psychedelic experiences. Indeed, ambiguity and confusion was framed by many researchers as a central feature, whether by psychoanalysts, who were interested in repressed memories, or psychotherapists, who were interested in patients’ levels of self-awareness (Dyck, 2008: 15). Nor was it unusual for Western researchers to describe psychedelic substances as providing access to realms of experience that were different, but not necessarily any less real than those experienced during the ‘ordinary’ states of consciousness normally associated with modern scientific knowledge making. ‘I did tell you of my experience of the dog world using lsd didn’t I?’ wrote the psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond to Aldous Huxley in 1956. ‘The dog world is very different from ours and wholly different from our construction of it.’33 Huxley’s idea of the ‘doors of perception’ arose from the idea that our normal sensory faculties filter out sensory information. In this view, psychedelics open up human capacity for perception and experience, and could permit, as Huxley wrote in a letter to Osmond, ‘the “other world” to rise into consciousness’ (Bisbee et al., 2018: xliii). In these accounts, and those of the patients, the nuanced textures of psychedelic experiences were foregrounded, rather than reduced to epiphenomenal ‘intoxications’

To what Cleric just wrote:

This gives us a good analogy to distinguish between simply cleansing the doors of perception (corresponding to the surgery) and actually organizing our inner being. There are many ways into which our ordinary consciousness may open up towards the finer spectrums and experience imagery. This is possible also with psychedelics. Yet the greatest mistake of our age is to believe that this represents some objective perception of the deeper layers of existence. In reality, the mystical and psychedelic experiences present us a flood of phenomena, similarly to the color sensations a formerly blind person receives after operation. And here's the great difference: opening the doors of perceptions and experiencing a flood of phenomena doesn't in the least equate to seeing, in the very same sense that the flood of color that the blind man experiences is not yet seeing. To see means to be able to make sense of the perceptions. Everything should integrate into a musical whole.
...
I hope this analogy with the blind man acquiring sight makes it clear why there's difference between simply cleansing the doors - which in the analogy corresponds to the surgical procedure - and the organization - which corresponds to the development of brain centers which one has to begin perfecting much like starting from a baby stage. The greatest obstacle for seeing this aright is the desire to consider ourselves complete beings, self-sufficient in our thoughtless state where everything is consider to be just what it is, with no further questions asked, instead of realizing that our fully conscious evolutionary journey hasn't even begun yet.

And please answer the simple question of whether you understand the divergence in approach that we are speaking of and which you keep re-emphasizing with your posts?

Let me try to keep my answer quite simple. MS shows that Schultzes was not able using the reductive view of his version of modern science to be able to ocularly see the different varieties of plants that his Amazonian informants enmeshed in a different cosmology could see quite easily at a distance. Thus, cleaning the doors of perception for Schultzes yielded only interesting displays of colors and not a new way of seeing the practical world. He ended up being almost exactly like the blind man portrayed in Cleric's blind man example. This is the interesting compatibility I saw between the views of Cleric and MS, a compatibility that you reject.

Yes, we do keep circling around each other in quite predictable ways. I suspect the cause of this is that we are on different paths: mine being one that prioritizes devotion and yours being one that prioritizes the thinking mind. These are, of course, two of the four great paths characterized in the Hindu tradition as Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Rāja Yoga and Jñāna Yoga or Service, Devotion, Science of Mind and Self Knowledge (functioning as different branches of the same tree). One option is to endlessly debate the differences in a polarized dialectical style. Another option is to appreciate and respect the diverse contributions each branch makes.

Ok so the issue here is what we often refer to as jumping from the Maya of materialism straight into another Maya, yet assuming the latter has arrived at the truth-in-itself. This happens every few decades in human culture, and many times throughout an individual's life, yet we struggle so hard to remember about the previous world-conception and mode of experience which turned out to be Maya, and apply that to our current world-conception and experience. We forget that humanity is only at the very beginning of awakening to its spiritual activity. We remain stubbornly fixed to the inverted perspective where the mind-container is 99% full and our latest understanding is filling out that last 1%, when really it's the exact opposite. That is the mind-container view subconsciously adopted by MS and many other people.

The practical (spiritual) world is no longer accessible to the Amazonian informants and their consciousness either. In fact, Schultze has made an advance with his scientific, disinterested mode of thinking investigation, and simply needs to integrate that with ancient modes still embedded within his cognition. Ancient consciousness can instinctively detect various spiritual currents coursing through nature, which indeed gives them greater instinctive knowledge of its various forms, but this gives them no precise knowledge of the actual spiritual beings who are responsible for those currents and how they ideate those currents through our own ideational consciousness. For this are required new thinking skills which the 'Amazonians' will only evolve over the course of time (which is not to say every individual Amazonian soul will necessarily remain an Amazonian in subsequent incarnations).

Cleric's post made 100% explicit that the analogy was to the use of psychedelics, of which Ahayusca certainly is one. Why are you ignoring the explicit purpose of the analogy to substitute in your own "interesting compatibility"? It's obvious why - because you don't like the explicit conclusion his analogy leads to, so you create your own instead and pretend that its 'compatible'. You are perfectly capable of integrating the 'thinking mind', Lou. No one can make sense of what MS wrote in that paper without following its chain of evidence and reasoning. But you assert your logical reasoning faculty only when it tends towards your own personal inclinations. When it doesn't, you shut down that faculty and claim that you are "prioritizing devotion", because you can sense where the logical faculty will take you, and you simply don't want to go there.

Nevertheless, I ask you once again, do you see the divergence and do you have any thoughts on Cleric's actual analogy involving psychedelics?

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

At this point, I have to assume you think that I am just picking random fights with you on various threads, trying to persuade you to look into Steiner or spiritual science more and get on 'my' path, but not really following my reasoning at all. I am actually responding to a pattern of thinking and emphasis in your posts which is consistent and, in some ways, escalating. You don't seem to realize that everything you are posting is diametrically opposed to what we are saying, even though I am telling you it is and giving you very detailed reasons why. The Sheldrake paper on Schultes is exactly what Cleric addressed in that post I linked to.

Or, if you mean a "serious and thoughtful contribution to the dialogue", as in a rebuttal to everything I have been writing, then I have to ask to elaborate how. I at least want to know that you understand the simple point that, in my view, what Sheldrake (son) seems to be advocating for, if it were to be adopted as a widescale 'spiritual scientific' path, would comparable to people who start performing brain surgery on patients with a 3,000 year old understanding of the physical brain processes. It's downright reckless and born of this same fixation that I have been writing to you about for many pages now, on regressing to past modes of consciousness to penetrate into genuine understanding of the higher worlds. He even explicitly references the 'doors of perception' argument (which I think originated with Blake but was written as a book by Huxley). There is, of course, something real taking place with the ingesting of substances, but it's not in the least expanding the cognitive faculties necessary to resonate with what is being perceived.


Compare:





To what Cleric just wrote:





And please answer the simple question of whether you understand the divergence in approach that we are speaking of and which you keep re-emphasizing with your posts?

Let me try to keep my answer quite simple. MS shows that Schultzes was not able using the reductive view of his version of modern science to be able to ocularly see the different varieties of plants that his Amazonian informants enmeshed in a different cosmology could see quite easily at a distance. Thus, cleaning the doors of perception for Schultzes yielded only interesting displays of colors and not a new way of seeing the practical world. He ended up being almost exactly like the blind man portrayed in Cleric's blind man example. This is the interesting compatibility I saw between the views of Cleric and MS, a compatibility that you reject.

Yes, we do keep circling around each other in quite predictable ways. I suspect the cause of this is that we are on different paths: mine being one that prioritizes devotion and yours being one that prioritizes the thinking mind. These are, of course, two of the four great paths characterized in the Hindu tradition as Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Rāja Yoga and Jñāna Yoga or Service, Devotion, Science of Mind and Self Knowledge (functioning as different branches of the same tree). One option is to endlessly debate the differences in a polarized dialectical style. Another option is to appreciate and respect the diverse contributions each branch makes.

Ok so the issue here is what we often refer to as jumping from the Maya of materialism straight into another Maya, yet assuming the latter has arrived at the truth-in-itself. This happens every few decades in human culture, and many times throughout an individual's life, yet we struggle so hard to remember about the previous world-conception and mode of experience which turned out to be Maya, and apply that to our current world-conception and experience. We forget that humanity is only at the very beginning of awakening to its spiritual activity. We remain stubbornly fixed to the inverted perspective where the mind-container is 99% full and our latest understanding is filling out that last 1%, when really it's the exact opposite. That is the mind-container view subconsciously adopted by MS and many other people.

The practical (spiritual) world is no longer accessible to the Amazonian informants and their consciousness either. In fact, Schultze has made an advance with his scientific, disinterested mode of thinking investigation, and simply needs to integrate that with ancient modes still embedded within his cognition. Ancient consciousness can instinctively detect various spiritual currents coursing through nature, which indeed gives them greater instinctive knowledge of its various forms, but this gives them no precise knowledge of the actual spiritual beings who are responsible for those currents and how they ideate those currents through our own ideational consciousness. For this are required new thinking skills which the 'Amazonians' will only evolve over the course of time (which is not to say every individual Amazonian soul will necessarily remain an Amazonian in subsequent incarnations).

Cleric's post made 100% explicit that the analogy was to the use of psychedelics, of which Ahayusca certainly is one. Why are you ignoring the explicit purpose of the analogy to substitute in your own "interesting compatibility"? It's obvious why - because you don't like the explicit conclusion his analogy leads to, so you create your own instead and pretend that its 'compatible'. You are perfectly capable of integrating the 'thinking mind', Lou. No one can make sense of what MS wrote in that paper without following its chain of evidence and reasoning. But you assert your logical reasoning faculty only when it tends towards your own personal inclinations. When it doesn't, you shut down that faculty and claim that you are "prioritizing devotion", because you can sense where the logical faculty will take you, and you simply don't want to go there.

Nevertheless, I ask you once again, do you see the divergence and do you have any thoughts on Cleric's actual analogy involving psychedelics?

With regard to Cleric's statement, I agree with the cautionary statement that cleansing the doors of perception is insufficient and warning against addictive fascinations (your example of a new Maya). If his statement is read as a rejection of disciplined ceremonial use or against emerging therapeutic healing modalities, then I strongly disagree.

[Lou Gold]

Yes, we do keep circling around each other in quite predictable ways. I suspect the cause of this is that we are on different paths: mine being one that prioritizes devotion and yours being one that prioritizes the thinking mind. These are, of course, two of the four great paths characterized in the Hindu tradition as Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Rāja Yoga and Jñāna Yoga or Service, Devotion, Science of Mind and Self Knowledge (functioning as different branches of the same tree). One option is to endlessly debate the differences in a polarized dialectical style. Another option is to appreciate and respect the diverse contributions each branch makes.

We often hear something like "all spiritual paths lead to the same place". But what is the nature of that 'place'? It seems that people on Earth will eternally repeat that same phrase and see the paths as parallel lines going into infinity. Then they say "Well, as far as we can see in our vicinity, these paths are parallel - they have no points in common. Yet somewhere out there in the infinite distance, so the story says, they converge. But this is infinitely far away - certainly beyond the threshold of death. So for all intents and purposes we can live on Earth on our parallel paths and don't worry that they have no nearby points in common - celebrate diversity! Eventually these paths have a common point at infinity but we need not to bother with this at present - certainly not while we're still in a body!"
[/quote]

This is not my story. Please do not project it onto me.

[/quote]
It's very nice that you compare the different yoga paths to branches of the same tree but at the same time, there's not a trace of interest to approach the inner perspective of the tree - not in the distant future but starting today. What's your view on that, Lou? Do you think that while within an Earthly costume, all paths are parallel and there's no point to seek the evolving consciousness of the tree? Do you think that the common point between the paths can be found only after death?
[/quote]

I believe that it is surely worthwhile to investigate the inner perspective of the tree, which I do devotionally, by holding its enigmas, paradoxes, mysteries lovingly within my heart so that its presence becomes as a fire or light within and transforming me and driving the evolution of my understandings. I do not believe that the common ground of being can be found only after death. I appreciate that Spiritual Science is one of several contemporary paths available for doing this in the now.

[AshvinP]

Let me try to keep my answer quite simple. MS shows that Schultzes was not able using the reductive view of his version of modern science to be able to ocularly see the different varieties of plants that his Amazonian informants enmeshed in a different cosmology could see quite easily at a distance. Thus, cleaning the doors of perception for Schultzes yielded only interesting displays of colors and not a new way of seeing the practical world. He ended up being almost exactly like the blind man portrayed in Cleric's blind man example. This is the interesting compatibility I saw between the views of Cleric and MS, a compatibility that you reject.

Yes, we do keep circling around each other in quite predictable ways. I suspect the cause of this is that we are on different paths: mine being one that prioritizes devotion and yours being one that prioritizes the thinking mind. These are, of course, two of the four great paths characterized in the Hindu tradition as Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Rāja Yoga and Jñāna Yoga or Service, Devotion, Science of Mind and Self Knowledge (functioning as different branches of the same tree). One option is to endlessly debate the differences in a polarized dialectical style. Another option is to appreciate and respect the diverse contributions each branch makes.

Ok so the issue here is what we often refer to as jumping from the Maya of materialism straight into another Maya, yet assuming the latter has arrived at the truth-in-itself. This happens every few decades in human culture, and many times throughout an individual's life, yet we struggle so hard to remember about the previous world-conception and mode of experience which turned out to be Maya, and apply that to our current world-conception and experience. We forget that humanity is only at the very beginning of awakening to its spiritual activity. We remain stubbornly fixed to the inverted perspective where the mind-container is 99% full and our latest understanding is filling out that last 1%, when really it's the exact opposite. That is the mind-container view subconsciously adopted by MS and many other people.

The practical (spiritual) world is no longer accessible to the Amazonian informants and their consciousness either. In fact, Schultze has made an advance with his scientific, disinterested mode of thinking investigation, and simply needs to integrate that with ancient modes still embedded within his cognition. Ancient consciousness can instinctively detect various spiritual currents coursing through nature, which indeed gives them greater instinctive knowledge of its various forms, but this gives them no precise knowledge of the actual spiritual beings who are responsible for those currents and how they ideate those currents through our own ideational consciousness. For this are required new thinking skills which the 'Amazonians' will only evolve over the course of time (which is not to say every individual Amazonian soul will necessarily remain an Amazonian in subsequent incarnations).

Cleric's post made 100% explicit that the analogy was to the use of psychedelics, of which Ahayusca certainly is one. Why are you ignoring the explicit purpose of the analogy to substitute in your own "interesting compatibility"? It's obvious why - because you don't like the explicit conclusion his analogy leads to, so you create your own instead and pretend that its 'compatible'. You are perfectly capable of integrating the 'thinking mind', Lou. No one can make sense of what MS wrote in that paper without following its chain of evidence and reasoning. But you assert your logical reasoning faculty only when it tends towards your own personal inclinations. When it doesn't, you shut down that faculty and claim that you are "prioritizing devotion", because you can sense where the logical faculty will take you, and you simply don't want to go there.

Nevertheless, I ask you once again, do you see the divergence and do you have any thoughts on Cleric's actual analogy involving psychedelics?

With regard to Cleric's statement, I agree with the cautionary statement that cleansing the doors of perception is insufficient and warning against addictive fascinations (your example of a new Maya). If his statement is read as a rejection of disciplined ceremonial use or against emerging therapeutic healing modalities, then I strongly disagree.

Ok well I didn't realize Cleric had also responded, so I suppose he can respond to what is being highly cautioned against in that regard.

I really just don't get why, if MS or someone similar actually feels 'cleansing the doors of perception' is insufficient in this manner, as you apparently do, why there isn't even a hint of pointing to that which is more sufficient, and likewise why you aren't posting references to the people showing us the path towards finding what is more sufficient, i.e. the 'inner perspective of the tree'. What you are calling 'inner perspective' is not at all the inner perspective we are speaking of. But we can't even point to the latter, because, as again indicated in your last comment to Cleric, you assume you already have encompassed it with your concepts. This is why I call the nature-spiritism, animism, and similar views, the "last phase of materialism" - it's the absolute end of the road to reaching any shared understanding in this lifetime, unless one is actually willing to call its current dogma into question within themselves.

[Lou Gold]

Ok so the issue here is what we often refer to as jumping from the Maya of materialism straight into another Maya, yet assuming the latter has arrived at the truth-in-itself. This happens every few decades in human culture, and many times throughout an individual's life, yet we struggle so hard to remember about the previous world-conception and mode of experience which turned out to be Maya, and apply that to our current world-conception and experience. We forget that humanity is only at the very beginning of awakening to its spiritual activity. We remain stubbornly fixed to the inverted perspective where the mind-container is 99% full and our latest understanding is filling out that last 1%, when really it's the exact opposite. That is the mind-container view subconsciously adopted by MS and many other people.

The practical (spiritual) world is no longer accessible to the Amazonian informants and their consciousness either. In fact, Schultze has made an advance with his scientific, disinterested mode of thinking investigation, and simply needs to integrate that with ancient modes still embedded within his cognition. Ancient consciousness can instinctively detect various spiritual currents coursing through nature, which indeed gives them greater instinctive knowledge of its various forms, but this gives them no precise knowledge of the actual spiritual beings who are responsible for those currents and how they ideate those currents through our own ideational consciousness. For this are required new thinking skills which the 'Amazonians' will only evolve over the course of time (which is not to say every individual Amazonian soul will necessarily remain an Amazonian in subsequent incarnations).

Cleric's post made 100% explicit that the analogy was to the use of psychedelics, of which Ahayusca certainly is one. Why are you ignoring the explicit purpose of the analogy to substitute in your own "interesting compatibility"? It's obvious why - because you don't like the explicit conclusion his analogy leads to, so you create your own instead and pretend that its 'compatible'. You are perfectly capable of integrating the 'thinking mind', Lou. No one can make sense of what MS wrote in that paper without following its chain of evidence and reasoning. But you assert your logical reasoning faculty only when it tends towards your own personal inclinations. When it doesn't, you shut down that faculty and claim that you are "prioritizing devotion", because you can sense where the logical faculty will take you, and you simply don't want to go there.

Nevertheless, I ask you once again, do you see the divergence and do you have any thoughts on Cleric's actual analogy involving psychedelics?

With regard to Cleric's statement, I agree with the cautionary statement that cleansing the doors of perception is insufficient and warning against addictive fascinations (your example of a new Maya). If his statement is read as a rejection of disciplined ceremonial use or against emerging therapeutic healing modalities, then I strongly disagree.

Ok well I didn't realize Cleric had also responded, so I suppose he can respond to what is being highly cautioned against in that regard.

I really just don't get why, if MS or someone similar actually feels 'cleansing the doors of perception' is insufficient in this manner, as you apparently do, why there isn't even a hint of pointing to that which is more sufficient, and likewise why you aren't posting references to the people showing us the path towards finding what is more sufficient, i.e. the 'inner perspective of the tree'. What you are calling 'inner perspective' is not at all the inner perspective we are speaking of. But we can't even point to the latter, because, as again indicated in your last comment to Cleric, you assume you already have encompassed it with your concepts. This is why I call the nature-spiritism, animism, and similar views, the "last phase of materialism" - it's the absolute end of the road to reaching any shared understanding in this lifetime, unless one is actually willing to call its current dogma into question within themselves.

One thing you might want to contemplate is whether indigenous cultures also had a disciplined approach to psychedelics. It seems to me that you sometimes assert they were (and are) of an earlier "instinctional" time and were not consciously aware within the context of their meaningful cosmology and ecology.

[AshvinP]

With regard to Cleric's statement, I agree with the cautionary statement that cleansing the doors of perception is insufficient and warning against addictive fascinations (your example of a new Maya). If his statement is read as a rejection of disciplined ceremonial use or against emerging therapeutic healing modalities, then I strongly disagree.

Ok well I didn't realize Cleric had also responded, so I suppose he can respond to what is being highly cautioned against in that regard.

I really just don't get why, if MS or someone similar actually feels 'cleansing the doors of perception' is insufficient in this manner, as you apparently do, why there isn't even a hint of pointing to that which is more sufficient, and likewise why you aren't posting references to the people showing us the path towards finding what is more sufficient, i.e. the 'inner perspective of the tree'. What you are calling 'inner perspective' is not at all the inner perspective we are speaking of. But we can't even point to the latter, because, as again indicated in your last comment to Cleric, you assume you already have encompassed it with your concepts. This is why I call the nature-spiritism, animism, and similar views, the "last phase of materialism" - it's the absolute end of the road to reaching any shared understanding in this lifetime, unless one is actually willing to call its current dogma into question within themselves.

One thing you might want to contemplate is whether indigenous cultures also had a disciplined approach to psychedelics. It seems to me that you sometimes assert they were (and are) of an earlier "instinctional" time and were not consciously aware within the context of their meaningful cosmology and ecology.

The question is about modern humans with logical, scientific thinking cognition and the capacity for higher cognition who choose not to exercise it, but instead ingest psychedelics as a means to approach the higher worlds. Psychedelics have been around for many millennia, so they are obviously of the past in that sense. The individual's capacity for higher cognition we are speaking of has only been around for 150 years or so, so it's newer and of the future. Spiritual science is, in fact, a science, with evolutionary understanding at its core. It can trace the evolution of humanity and the human individual even more precisely than secular science. If you don't accept that, then you are disputing spiritual scientific research and should just say so, instead of saying you are perfectly welcoming and grateful for it. Your posts here dispute its core tenets at every turn, but don't provide any logical foundation for doing so.

Maybe we can do an experiment. You could visit www.rsarchive.com/lectures, select one, and quote a paragraph or two which you agree with, sharing what you agree with and why. You keep saying you understand and appreciate it, which suggests you are at least familiar with some of it.

[Lou Gold]

Ok well I didn't realize Cleric had also responded, so I suppose he can respond to what is being highly cautioned against in that regard.

I really just don't get why, if MS or someone similar actually feels 'cleansing the doors of perception' is insufficient in this manner, as you apparently do, why there isn't even a hint of pointing to that which is more sufficient, and likewise why you aren't posting references to the people showing us the path towards finding what is more sufficient, i.e. the 'inner perspective of the tree'. What you are calling 'inner perspective' is not at all the inner perspective we are speaking of. But we can't even point to the latter, because, as again indicated in your last comment to Cleric, you assume you already have encompassed it with your concepts. This is why I call the nature-spiritism, animism, and similar views, the "last phase of materialism" - it's the absolute end of the road to reaching any shared understanding in this lifetime, unless one is actually willing to call its current dogma into question within themselves.

One thing you might want to contemplate is whether indigenous cultures also had a disciplined approach to psychedelics. It seems to me that you sometimes assert they were (and are) of an earlier "instinctional" time and were not consciously aware within the context of their meaningful cosmology and ecology.

The question is about modern humans with logical, scientific thinking cognition and the capacity for higher cognition who choose not to exercise it, but instead ingest psychedelics as a means to approach the higher worlds. Psychedelics have been around for many millennia, so they are obviously of the past in that sense. The individual's capacity for higher cognition we are speaking of has only been around for 150 years or so, so it's newer and of the future. Spiritual science is, in fact, a science, with evolutionary understanding at its core. It can trace the evolution of humanity and the human individual even more precisely than secular science. If you don't accept that, then you are disputing spiritual scientific research and should just say so, instead of saying you are perfectly welcoming and grateful for it. Your posts here dispute its core tenets at every turn, but don't provide any logical foundation for doing so.

Maybe we can do an experiment. You could visit www.rsarchive.com/lectures, select one, and quote a paragraph or two which you agree with, sharing what you agree with and why. You keep saying you understand and appreciate it, which suggests you are at least familiar with some of it.

Synchronously, perhaps , your link does not display. The "522" message says that my browser and the transmitting cloud are working but an error is located at the host rsarchive. But no matter because I would not have taken your bait to further comparative analysis or debate/experiment.

I'm firm in my devotional and sacramental ways, which involve communion with others in the here and now and the beyond. In a recent appreciative dialogue with Federica I displayed the results of a synchronous collaborative spiritual process and the image that emerged entitled "Wherever Two Gather" for which I feel deeply grateful. From this position, I also appreciate ways (past and present) that are other than my own. No contest is involved.