After eating mushrooms for the first time at the start of the school year (around the end of August) I have become extremely interested in the altered state of mind brought upon by psychedelics. I felt similar to this after my first acid trip almost a year before. I understand that mine is not a unique case after experiencing psychedelics; everybody seems to be fascinated with life while looking through their third eye. I guess I just am a little depressed with the human species as a whole, that for some reason I am the strange one for being curious about psychedelic drugs and consciousness in general. Why is it that people are pefectly okay with being drunk, a state which I believe, is more damaging physically and mentally than that of psychedelia, yet when you say you smoke pot, or have eaten LSD or mushrooms you are instantly labeled as some sort of weirdo kook? The more I think about it, the less I understand it; how the hell is the drunken stupor brought on by alcohol deemed "OK" by society, while the enlightenment and mysticism brought on by psychedelic use is, to some people, the root of all evil? I just wish there were a way to dose all the people in the world to show them that there is more to reality than what they think. Or should I say less? Even though the reality experienced in the psychedelic state is vastly different and entirely new, in my experience, it is a much simpler state of being. All cares I had just seemed to dissipate, school, work, nothing mattered at all, I was just living life like every other human on earth. We're all just living, and it started out that way too, but in our infinite wisdom, we had to complicate things intensely. Not are we just "living" anymore, but now we have to make mortgage payments, set up a 401K for retirement, follow the economy and stock market. Some people's lives are dictated by that shit! It just boggles my mind a bit I guess I'm just thinking aloud here, but life is starting to slowly lose meaning for me. Not in the sense that I don't feel there is a reason to live, but more in the way that it's hard to be motivated to play the game that culture and society wants me to play: go to school for 21 years, get a job, work until I'm 60, then retire and die. It's depressing, yet strangely comforting at the same time. Oh well, I guess I can only wait until my next acid trip to see where the plot goes from here!
Fuck the system - playing the game will mean losing your life's meaning, so don't play the game. You've found infinity and realized the game is just a man-made invention, a system of organization like language. After dropping acid for the first time, I found it very hard to even communicate with people who's whole reality was still "the system". I lost interest in these other people.. but then over time I found out how many other people and things are in-tune to our understanding and how much reality there is outside of the system. Like you said, it's hard to be motivated to play the game.. so don't play it at all, or play it in your own way... The end of the game is the start of your real adventure. So pleasant journeys to you Also I would really recommend reading The Natural Mind, by Andrew Weil... After my first trip I was so intensely overwhelmed by the fullness of life and all the things I now became aware of (every moment since then has been a mind-trip in itself), that it was hard to express myself in words at all (since I saw that language was another "system").. so I looked to the books and was totally surprised to find words in them that read my own thoughts back to me. This was one of those books (talks about drugs vs. society), and also The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts. Just in general though, acid literature definitely helps assimilating back into "life". Another book, "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry"..can't remember the author but it's about life after enlightenment.
Great topic. I think the reason alcohol is so excepted is due to its history. Beer and wine have been brewed since the beginnings of human civilization, distillation was a bit in the future, but it has still existed for centuries. Many people have found alcohol to be completely reprehensible, but many more consider it to be among mankind's oldest and dearest friends. Psychedelics, on the other hand, are often novel compounds (or obscure plant brews) that overwhelm the individual with the sense that their life (and by extension all human life) just isn't that goddamn important, and that terrifies most people. The chosen few that can really appreciate the feeling of dissolving into the universe will always be my close partners, everyone else just floats along the surface. I don't try to make anyone understand, there is no way to. If people one day open their minds and take in all possible experience, then, maybe, the world will actually be a better place. Until then, we're just a bunch of drunken fools fighting, fucking, and forgetting everything that truly matters. Read The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience or Huxley's Doors of Perception, the only two books on hallucinogens I consider essential (but they are absolutely essential).
I think we are all just tripping balls all the time, psychedelics just accentuate it. That was Einstein's missing piece in the theory of everything, he forgot the tripping balls factor.
It is an interesting topic, but I feel that the capitalist system is often not given enough credit by 'hippies'. Its not as bad as you make it out to be, work if you want to work, don't work if you don't want to work. You are free to work as much or as little as you want. The more you work, the more you earn, the more you can choose to buy. If you want more, work more and with that you can choose to purchase other peoples time, goods and/or services. Otherwise don't... It seems ironic complaining about this sytem on the internet, from a computer, most likely in a building, using a power source, and a service provider... We have a lot more choice than many of you suggest... if you want to go and live in the forest... go and live in the forest... Although I completely agree about the alcohol vs. psych's point you make, and can relate to not wanting to play the game too much, but I know in time I will want a place of my own and some other things I can buy with my time
I really like this post man, its really good. I've had the same feeling for a while but was just too confused by my own thought process to put it into words. My guess is that when the human race opted for finer things and this world of competition, society was born. Where life of luxury is more important then family, friends and actually having some fun in your life. I can't help but think when people were one with the land life was simpler, better. Now the world acts as if the land is a hassle. We take take take from it and can't even admit that Global Warming is real! Basically, when all anyone wanted was to make life simpler, it in return made it harder.
pisses me off too. i ponder this idea all of the time. " it puts holes in your brain!"... just Bs well 1st off thats not true 2nd off alcohol fuks up your liver. its just literally poisoning yourself to the point where you dont function correctly
I also posted somewhere on here about how dumb it is that alcohol is more accepted then Weed just because its legal. Me and my friends got caught rolling blunts by someones parents and they said to not smoke weed and to just smoke cigarettes, that they could give us some! Isn't that fucked? If we want to smoke its better that we smoke tons of chemicals in cigarettes rather then an herb?
Getting drunk doesn't break down typical Christian belief structure. LSD does. Even the scientific rational atheists still are largely Christian in their belief structure. Thus they too fear LSD. The suppresion of plant gnosis really is a component of the western inquisition and Christianity. The Native Americans used peyote, mushroms, oliloquio for centuries, then the western world came, abolished it, replaced that mysticism with the Bible. The maya used mushrooms for centuries, westerners came abolished that mysticism, replaced it with the Bible. The impulse of the western inquisition to suppress plant gnosis has lived on for centuries, even today. The salem witch trials, the hunting of witches. Witches were psychedellic users. Oppressing witches, magick, and occult is just another way the Western Inquisition and Christianity are trying to oppress plant gnosis. The modern laws against psychedellics are just a further continuation of the western inquisition and Christianity suppressing plant gnosis. Why? Because plant gnosis lets you 'know' that much of the mysticism perpetuated by the bible and established institution is quite whacky. Any institution has to suppress plant gnosis in order to grow. Even people who don't identify with Christianity or the western world still carry on the impulse to suppress plant gnosis without even realizing or knowing where that impulse comes from, or why that impulse exists. They just do it out of habituation and learned associations.
You should see religulous brother. It really gets on The Church's ass. I don't think Christianity or religion or just belief in god in general is a bad thing, it has helped a lot of people from a destructive path. Having the belief in something like God helps people not feel so alone, and that they can do it because God gave them the will. But at the same time hipocracy is frustrating to say the least..
A most glorious play! Keep looking! It is not a somber march from the maternity ward to the crematorium, your peers only think it is such and want you to think it is such as well. But you already know it is not! No matter what is going on around you, no matter what you must do to put food into your stomach (throw spears at elephants, sell crack on the street, save lives in a hospital, swindle investors out of money . . . ), that is just what you must do to put food in your belly. Now what about the rest of life? Here is where you get more elbow room! This situation you are in, I was once in too, and it was awful, I didn't want to go to school or do anything and just go to Nepal or some unfamiliar land and sit penniless on the streets and just chant and wait and wither until I expired from starvation. I was done with life, I "got it", and didn't like it, wanted to have no part in this terrible herculean drama of human growth and social life and psychological drama. Then I remembered that this is it . . . there is nothing else, no more than this. To what else will you run with your self? To death, like I thought? To moroseness? Those places hold even less for you than the rat race of corporate slime. Here, now, this is the cosmic drama to which we are all compelled as actors. May your role be more interesting than you dare hope.
I agree with you, I know we are given a lot of choices, and that we can pretty much do whatever we want to do. I know I'm not forced to play the game. But if I were to just get up and leave, or work at a low paying, do nothing job for the rest of my life, how would my family and close friends feel about that? I can guarantee I would at least get the stink-eye at Thanksgiving and Christmas lol. So it's not so much the system I dislike, just society's reliance upon it. It truly is a good system, but if you decide that you don't want to participate, people tell you that you're doing something wrong, you're a loser, you're crazy. This is more what I'm concerned with.
Right on brother! I think the sooner people realize they don't mean shit in the cosmic scheme of things, the sooner life will be more lush and beautiful. We humans think that just because we have consciousness, and are able to think, that we are the stars of this cosmic drama. That's why we think that what we do with our lives will somehow have an impact in the world. Of course that's not true at all; how is the corporate executive, or talented athlete anymore important than the guy that gives you a hamburger at McDonald's? It is these people who take their small role too seriously, and end up ruining the play entirely. What's more annoying than a bit actor trying to be the center of attention? I know my role and even if it's small, why make it bigger? It would only take away from the important roles that make the play better.
Not entirely. Most of the current drug laws in the states came about through greed, political manuevering, and racist propaganda. This is a great book you can read it online. It's about how our current laws came to be. http://libertary.com/books/drug-crazy I would also recomend finding a documentary series titled Hooked, Illegal drugs and how they got that way I think it was on the History channel, not sure though. It's a four part documentary that takes a neutral position on the topic. You cant blame everything on Christianity
