Federica wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 2:23 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 5:10 pm
Briefly, it may help to remember, the psychedelics are simply an expression of your spirit's
desire to remain attached to the familiar sensory-conceptual spectrum while pursuing the spiritual. It is the same thing humanity has been doing to itself ever since the Fall. As soon as the ancient Hebrews were delivered from slavery in Egypt, they started worshipping the golden calf. The 'why' of it is a huge topic, and perhaps Cleric will elaborate on that, but there is no mistaking the fact that this is actually what has been happening throughout human history and continues to happen today, as we see with modern 'naive realism' across all philosophies. The secular scientist looks through the microscope or telescope and feels immense power from the molecules and galaxies he beholds, which are otherwise supra-sensory without the technology, thereby making it a 'thing-itself'. The spiritualist with his psycho-technology does something very similar.
Ashvin,
You unusually say “psychedelics are simply an expression of
your spirit's desire”. Psychedelics are
not and have never been an expression of desires of mine. Are you granting me a fully embodied Christ impulse here or is this simply a typo?
The "your" was meant in a plural sense. It's better stated, "psychedelics, if we decide to use them, are an expression of our spirit's desire". And this is self-evident, if we remain connected to first-person perspective, not trying to view 'from the side'. If we decide to use alcohol to blur out the sensory spectrum and inhibit our discerning reason, that is also an expression of our desire. Or maybe we desire to do this by abstractly philosophizing with mystical concepts. The general point was that our astral body and ego-spirit is implicated in all of these things, so it's not like the physical substance/body is completely overriding the higher members of our organism. We are allowing these forces in through our own willing spirit and desire body and, conversely, a strengthened Spirit, through the Christ impulse, can ward off such regressive influences encountered in the higher worlds.
Federica wrote:“It is the same thing humanity has been doing to itself ever since the Fall.” No it’s not the same thing. When naive realists (≅ 99 % of the world population content) stop at the level of appearances and declare the world content existing in itself, they are simply succumbing to the limits brought forward by the human organization itself. They're in a temporary passive understanding inducted by the interplay of social conditioning and characteristics of the waking state. We can accuse naive realists of many crimes, but the fact is, reality presents itself to us as separate, and many are not equipped well enough to holistically encompass it within the scope of their thinking agency. Until we grow out of that naive understanding, we are fully and naturally working within the given of our human organization, and that's the full characterization of the crime. Later we possibly come to question our understanding of reality, be it by personal interest and quest, by epiphany, or by other means.
From my perspective, there is ‘no mistaking’ that this is not at all the case with psychedelic desire. This desire seems to me very different from the condition of naive realism where one is not yet fully awakened to the nature of reality, by reason of being operating at a very natural less-than-full scope of human understanding. Similarly, the scientist excited about extending the reach of sensory perceptions through instrumentation is not tripping, but only expressing at a more structured and extended level what we all naturally express in the act of mapping and verifying our understanding of the physical plane. Those endeavors and that sense of power you refer to is in essence not different from what a baby does and how a baby feels when crawling around, grabbing and tasting all sorts of objects. Conversely, psychedelic desire is not continuous with the desire of growing our knowledge and awareness, in whatever planes it may manifest. It is instead a desire of signing off of a continuous progress, by introducing a fragment of discontinuity on our path. As I tried to convey in the post above, to me it is an abdication of our potential and a distrust in the endogenous evolving capacity with a starting point in the me-now. And in this sense it is harmful to the self.
I disagree with the first part. All of these idolizing tendencies can be located within the sphere of our own life of interest/desire. The 'view from the side' finds it convenient to say, "this is simply how reality presents to us in the waking state". For the average Westerner today, of course this is valid. But this is no different from an illiterate person who is presented every opportunity to learn how to read, yet continually procrastinates and puts it off, saying, "my only crime is being born into a condition where I can't read and it keeps getting more difficult for me to learn." At the end of the day, there is a secret desire
not to learn reading because it adds responsibility - now all of a sudden I must pay attention to the writings in school and can't excuse myself by claiming illiteracy. The naive [scientific] realist today does the same thing - using direct experience and simple reasoning to understand that there are invisible forces constituting the appearances which come through our own thinking consciousness, means that our own thinking consciousness becomes responsible for seeking them out in ever-greater measure.
Is it any different with psychedelics? As Cleric mentioned, the conditions of human evolution are such that now the spiritual must be sought in one way or another, unless one is to succumb to complete nihilism. The materialist is also seeking the spiritual in the forces of nature and ever-more exotic perceptions/theories, only he is quite unconscious of what he is doing. The intellectual idealist, mysticist, or theist seeks the spiritual semi-consciously, smearing it all out in abstract models and religious systems/dogma. The spiritualist using psychoactive substances seeks it out even more consciously, yet, for all the reasons Cleric outlined, fails to realize just how little conscious progress he is actually making into the higher worlds. This is most dangerous. It can be considered the last phase of materialism, because he will hit that 'brick wall', confuse it for the highest possible spiritual achievements, and then devolve into black magic, which eventually leads to more and more unconsciousness, leading exactly where the materialist will go if he continues to completely ignore the spiritual beings behind Nature.
The common factor here is subconscious forces of desire towards the sensuous and physicalized conceptual which have been intermingled with human evolution for many ages now (and the technical scientific details of this can be discerned quite precisely). You are correct that it is a selfish desire, a 'me-now' desire, an abdication of spiritual responsibility, etc. But these are all
our desires. We should guard against the "we are not them" sentiment again. We are all seeking the spiritual in various way yet also want to remain with the convenience, the comfort, the ease, the familiarity, the immediacy, etc. of various approaches. Nothing could really have become more clear for me when getting deeper into imaginative meditation. One big obstacle could be our expectations - we will go into meditations expecting certain results to manifest, especially if they have manifested before. This can thwart our efforts for quite some time. The expectations can also steer our meditations towards certain experiences with pre-formatted concepts of what we think they should be, not too much unlike what I imagine results from habitual psychedelic use but to a much greater degree (I have never used them and feel very fortunate for that).
Generally, I think we (you, Cleric, I) all agree it is the one of the most dangerous ways to seek the spiritual. I simply wouldn't characterize it as 'unnatural', but clinging to the natural ingrained habits of desire/thinking at the most inopportune time.