I was asked this question by an older man who has a deep connection to nature and is contemplating using a shamanic substance to achieve a higher consciousness. This has brought to mind numerous assertions by younger men and men my age who have told me that I would never be able to expand my consciousness and look outside the box we are stuck in unless I took drugs such as marijuana, LSD, MAGIC MUSHROOMS, ETC. In fact, I have discouraged my promoter and editor from trying to get me on the Joe Rogan Show, where I was informed I would be highly encouraged to smoke weed.
When speaking of a shaman, we are speaking of the opposite of the priest.
The shaman advises barbarians.
Barbarian society is internally nurturing and externally violent to humans.
The priest [newsman and academic included] advises citizens of a civilization.
Civilized society is internally violent and externally nurturing of cross-cultural networks and anti-cultural exploitation of humans.
The shaman does not become the priest when civilization takes over, he becomes the sorcerer, magician, witch-doctor, poet, novelist or warlock, hunted to the ends of society and the internal precincts of the collective mind. The sorcerer is the dissident thinker whose body is trapped within the civilized negation matrix as his mind journeys beyond.
I believe strongly, that the need for primitive thinkers and dreamers to use privation and intoxication to expand their consciousness is three-fold and does not apply to Australian Aborigines and their kin:
-barbarian societies, excluding Australasian folk, do not, as a matter of course, brutalize their women and children, with men directing their energies against enemy men and animal life
-barbarian societies do not emasculate their men, whereas the most consistent feature of civilizations, indeed the feature which provides food surpluses and priesthoods, is emasculation of men, whose slave energies are turned to womanly tasks
-barbarian societies, being internally nurturing, fail to alienate their more unusual minds, but nurture these types [in the shamanic role for instance] and therefore lack the internal psychological predation that characterizes civilized society and propels some small number of minds [overwhelmingly masculine minds] to escape the conceptual boundaries of their society.
With this view in mind, one should understand why barbarian visionaries [shaman] require some help to consistently propel their minds beyond the nurturing society that bore them, whereas the civilized sorcerer, being a dissident, alienated mind, suffers all the pain from the slings and arrows of his suffocating, negating and invalidating society that the shamanic figure seeks through privation, exhaustion and intoxication. Here we arrive at the cruel truth, that the superior [to primitive] and mostly unheeded visions of the civilized thinker is propelled by the very cruelty of civilized society, with far more efficiency and potency than the shaman’s ritualistic attempts to exceed the bounds of his folk’s cosmology.
This may well explain why our society is so avidly engaged in drugging our minds, to feed us the relatively impotent shamanic experience in hopes of diverting our quest for the ultimate truths not necessitated by barbarian society and not tolerated by civilized society.
I challenge anyone to find a drug-using author that has written weirder and more counter-cultural works than I have in my fiction and non-fiction. My severe alienation from modern society, which began at age 5 when I entered the evil matrix of kindergarten, opened a door in my mind which few people can walk through unaided. If I were to use the drugs that Joe Rogan needs to use to think outside the box, I’m afraid that I might just shut that door which has been my refuge from the swarm of tiny thought that is postmodern society.
The Pale Usher
Impressions of Moby Dick: Herman Melville and Modern Man?s Transcendental Journey
Kindle Edition:
Son of a Lesser God
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The druggies just "think" that they're "thinking outside the box". When their brains are screwed up and working at some fraction of their normal capacity, of course everything looks cool and original and like hey, man.
In fact, they're wandering in a grim wasteland, but with bright colors to make them think it's "something".
What a waste.
The cover of one Elton John album, I think, sums up that stoner aspiration, with the singer stepping into some kind of dreamscape.
"Why Won’t You Eat Magic Mushrooms…"
I would advise you not too.
I've noticed hardcore trippers rarely come up with truly dissident or outrageous thought. It usually turns into a long and convoluted defense of the Way Things Are. People have the illusion they're travelling through the cosmos but it rarely seems to produce truly dangerous thinkers. Rogan is a perfect example.
I use reality as a crutch to keep from using drugs ! Thank you peace out...
James, I think you're spot on with this. As someone who had extensive experience with psychedelics in my younger years, I can tell you that while the experiences were often interesting (sometimes enjoyable, other times terrifying, but interesting nonetheless), this notion that they expand your mind or give you a higher consciousness is wishful thinking from people repeating memes that have been promoted since the 1960's. If anything, they put people in a "hypnoid and suggestible" state, as Aldous Huxley admitted.
What I've come to understand is that LSD, magic mushrooms & other psychedelics were pushed by agents of the oligarchs, whether we're talking about Tim Leary's LSD advocacy, MK-Ultra, magic mushrooms being promoted on the cover of Life magazine, or the 60's hippie "counterculture" in general. Much like how slaves were plied with alcohol in the plantation era, the 20th century called for more sophisticated measures to keep the subjects in line and distracted from doing anything constructive.
"Peter Coyote, narrating the documentary 'Hippies' on The History Channel, added that 'Some on the left even theorized that the hippies were the end result of a plot by the CIA to neutralize the anti-war movement with LSD, turning potential protestors into self-absorbed naval-gazers.'"
As crazy at it sounds, it's all true. Social engineering is the name of the game and they've really done a number on the people thinking some disorienting drug will make them enlightened.
Recommended reading:
"The Secret History of Magic Mushrooms"
logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject
"Entheogens: What’s in a Name?
The Untold History of Psychedelic Spirituality, Social Control, and the CIA"
logosmedia.com/Entheogens_WhatsinaName_PsychedelicSpirituality_SocialControl_CIA
Dave McGowan's INSIDE THE LC: THE STRANGE BUT MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF LAUREL CANYON AND THE BIRTH OF THE HIPPIE GENERATION
centerforaninformedamerica.com/laurelcanyon
Henry, thanks so much for this.
Frederick Douglas related how Talbot County, Maryland slaves were encouraged, up to and including coercion, to get drunk for the entire week between Christmas and New Years.