Back to the wild, crazy world of the chemical psychonauts: Reading Dennis McKenna's book (The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss), I have just passed the highlight - he and his brother Terrence's experience in the Colombian Amazon in 1971 spending several weeks with magic mushrooms. I have been there - having had my time with the mushrooms - and am amazed that they survived such indulgence, but they did so barely and with tremendous personal consequences. In effect, Dennis went temporarily insane and was only able to piece his world together over many months - and, as he puts it, the experience has never really left him. What happened to him in some ways happened to me, although on a much smaller scale, and it is this; at first, the mushroom experience seems safe and laid-back, devoid of the adrenaline pumping of such drugs as LSD. Over the next few trips, however, it subtly works you into a very strange place - one where the mushrooms seem to speak to you from an extraterrestrial realm of advanced intelligence. It can get very far out and hairy, as I may have said 35 years ago. With Dennis it got beyond far-out: he felt that his very DNA was merged with the 'shrooms, which opened an alchemical doorway to eternity and immortality.
Many years later, he still believes - although not with the same starry-eyed enthusiasm - that our DNA might be the pathway to the ultimate questions of the universe; that is, that it might be a blueprint for the cosmos, and can be read, with the help of such substances as contained in Mushrooms; and that the very presence of these substances points to an intelligence that put such things here for our use so that we might discover this key to the cosmos. Very far out indeed and very quantum.
I am not against this possibility. It does make me wonder, though - is he talking of the different levels of being that the eastern mystics have been mentioning for thousands of years? Are these the same astral realms mentioned? If so, these were thought to be nothing more than other partial systems, different but just as misleading as our own normal reality. Worse, their promise of and sometimes delivery of special powers made them a trap, no less so than the materialistic traps of our reality. And this is what continues to strike me by reading such things - I find them fascinating (and no more demonic than things of this world), but are we spinning our tires here? Is it worth the effort, or are we only dealing with other illusions?; illusions that extend our knowledge in many ways, but none-the-less are still only partial realities, and as such, illusory?
I do agree with Dennis that many traditional religions seem dry and un-effective - as most are to most people. However, it does seem that buried within them is a wisdom that goes beyond the mushroom world - much as the highest heaven is above and inclusive of all others. Yet, there is something to be said for the psychoactives - they work, without all the discipline required of traditional techniques, and, beyond the cosmic light show that they might present, they do often bring one to the wellspring of creation - not into it exactly, but to its foot. For this, they are worthy, but not necessary for the dedicated mystic, and a red herring for others who may get too attached to the thrills and spills. And yet again - perhaps, in some cases, might these work to get one involved in the real thing? Might they be both a blind alley for some, but the beginning of the real search for others? FK
Many years later, he still believes - although not with the same starry-eyed enthusiasm - that our DNA might be the pathway to the ultimate questions of the universe; that is, that it might be a blueprint for the cosmos, and can be read, with the help of such substances as contained in Mushrooms; and that the very presence of these substances points to an intelligence that put such things here for our use so that we might discover this key to the cosmos. Very far out indeed and very quantum.
I am not against this possibility. It does make me wonder, though - is he talking of the different levels of being that the eastern mystics have been mentioning for thousands of years? Are these the same astral realms mentioned? If so, these were thought to be nothing more than other partial systems, different but just as misleading as our own normal reality. Worse, their promise of and sometimes delivery of special powers made them a trap, no less so than the materialistic traps of our reality. And this is what continues to strike me by reading such things - I find them fascinating (and no more demonic than things of this world), but are we spinning our tires here? Is it worth the effort, or are we only dealing with other illusions?; illusions that extend our knowledge in many ways, but none-the-less are still only partial realities, and as such, illusory?
I do agree with Dennis that many traditional religions seem dry and un-effective - as most are to most people. However, it does seem that buried within them is a wisdom that goes beyond the mushroom world - much as the highest heaven is above and inclusive of all others. Yet, there is something to be said for the psychoactives - they work, without all the discipline required of traditional techniques, and, beyond the cosmic light show that they might present, they do often bring one to the wellspring of creation - not into it exactly, but to its foot. For this, they are worthy, but not necessary for the dedicated mystic, and a red herring for others who may get too attached to the thrills and spills. And yet again - perhaps, in some cases, might these work to get one involved in the real thing? Might they be both a blind alley for some, but the beginning of the real search for others? FK
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