A Critique of the Psychedelic Renaissance
This article is an update to my other texts on psychedelics. It will have a special focus on the distorted idea that psychedelics can be a help in a spiritual practice, or rather, in the widespread self-help industry. It starts with an analysis of why psychedelics will distort a spiritual practice, and ends in an exposure of, that the psychedelic renaissance is about to develop into a "Big Mac" industry.
In the last part of my article, The Compass - The Forgotten Secret of Hara Healing, I describe how problems with Kundalini can be resolved through Harameditation. I also describe the difference between experiences and realization as a difference between rise of energy and rise of consciousness. Realization can only happen through a rise of consciousness, and psychedelics can´t establish a rise of consciuosness, since psychedelics can´t work with the lower chakras. The very concept of bringing us "down to earth" is counterintuitive to getting "high", but it is only by getting down to earth that a rise of consciousness can happen. Psychedelics only work with short openings of the upper chakras. Also see my booklet, The Nine Gates of Middle-earth, about the correct openings of the chakras. My booklet, The Psychedelic Renaissance and David Jay Brown, investigates the psychedelic renaissance. Brown is a typical example of an arrogant and condescending user of psychedelics. Like Timothy Leary, etc., Brown is very much into the thought distortion: Don´t Knock It Till You Try It, about critics who criticizes the use of psychedelics. But this apparently doesn´t count when he talks about the experiences of mystics and masters who have meditated for 30-40 years. Without hesitation he claims that he knows precisely what these people experiences. He for example claims, that this experience of "enlightenment" is something he has tried several time when he was on a psychedelic trip, and he advice that it might be a good cure for many people to try an enlightenment experience once in a while; ergo: taking a psychedelic trip. Anyway, you can´t, through psychedelics, create the physical and energetical changes in your body which an enlightenment experience requires, no more than you can become a professional football player, etc., by taking a psychedelic trip. It requires the enourmous preparatory work. It requires a kundalini awakening, a rise of consciousness, not a rise of energy. I talked about the thought distortion, "Don´t Knock It Till You´ve Tried It", which users of psychedelics are very fond of. There is a self-refuting element in it. It is a common element in texts by users of psychedelics, that they claim that their experiences are the same as that of the mystics, yogis and saints. They almost always start out with such postulations. However, how do they themselves know that? They haven´t tried it. They haven´t gone through the, often life-long, training, which require training of both mind, body, and way of living. It requires familarity with experiences of pittfals and dangers, an ability of navigation, which you only can acquire during a long time period. To use an analogy: users of psychedelics in fact claim that they are expert forest guides, without having walked the many paths of the forest itself. As an example of what requires years of training is the reversion of the body´s energetical cone. The energy system of a typical Western often looks like that of an inverted cone. The reason why you see Buddha sitting with his hands in the Hara centre, is precisely to illustrate the importance of a correct, pyramid-like, energy cone. However, a psychedelic trip causes that the energy is turned upwards instead of downwards. The energy of a person on a psychedelic trip looks precisely as that of an inverted cone. Add to this that the energetical painbody must be passive in meditation. The mind must be empty before a rise of consciousness can happen. However, in a psychedelic trip the content of the painbody is activated, and is flowing into the mind (more about that below). Connected with this, is that a psychedelic trip only can open the upper chakras, not the lower chakras. The dangers are similar to that of a top-down awakening (see my article: The Conspiracy of the Third Eye). In meditation you must establish a state of mind, which is similar to that of the dream state. Firstly, the dreams have a developmental function through their symbol-function (progressive karma). Secondly the dreams function with reference to bodily and energetical balancing and regulation of the swings of the thoughts (compensatory karma). This, the self-regulating system of the dream-process, is a Sisyphean task though, as long as you in the awake life don't help. This help is precisely Meditation as an Art of Life. In Meditation as an Art of Life it is of vital importance, that you begin to practice Harameditation (or other supporting religious/spiritual exercises), if there should occur lucid and/or astral states (opening of the third eye). This consists quite simple in stopping the fascination of the anti-spiritual (ego-based) experiences and temptations, and instead focus the awareness in Hara, and therewith lead the awareness in towards the source of consciousness. This was what Kate Thomas referred to when she said: Possession by evil entities, trance, sexual deviance, alien abduction, witchcraft, sado-masochism, and unwholesome scatological interests (to name but a few of the abnormalities extensively covered in chapter three of Psychology of the Future) have no place in spiritual practice, and the lengthy sessions that engender these aberrant irregularities should be eschewed. What is happening here is that the psyche is being opened to a stratum of existence that it would not otherwise have contacted, and which is anything but benevolent. Could it be that the deviant "archetypes" experienced are not part of the individual’s unconscious but rather a dangerous layer of existence best permanently avoided? Instead you should lead the consciousness towards it´s source. This is the same as leading the consciousness towards the more universal images of time, which work in synchronism with the Now. If you remain in, or explore the astral worlds of the collective time, which the astral state gives access to, then you in other words distract your awareness in past or future. This can cost awakenness and life energy. In addition it can cause Ego-inflation and other spiritual crises. It is in other words very important that you do not move accent from awake day to dreams and sleep, do not use drugs or one-sided development techniques, which promise you great experiences concerning either lucidity or astrality. You have to have patience. Even for people with a regular and well-ordered practice (2-3 hours every day) there can pass weeks, months or years between the reflections into the processes of dreams and sleep. However if practice is appropriate, the spiritual consciousness will with time automatically penetrate the nightlife´s vegetative forms of consciousness. Note the word: vegetative. Everything that works vegetative neeeds time, and must be cared about during a long time. No psychedelic trip can establish that. Three reminders (if you are practicing Meditation as an Art of Life): 1) Let the dreams work by themselves as flowers. 2) Don´t interfere in their self-regulating system with interpretations, psychedelics, or similar. 3) If you interfere they will get more distorted. You will add further layers of your own conditioned reality, further psychological and mental constructs. Dream Yoga is about fertilizing the nightlife´s own vegative forms of consciousness. And this is intimate connected with that you at the same are practicing meditation in the awake state. When a psychedelic trip opens up for collective nonordinary experiences (the upper chakras), it intervenes disruptive in the chakras´s self-regulating structures, or, said differently: it intervenes in how peoples´ karma is working in thinking and time. Therewith it also intervenes in the balancing and development-specific function of karma. Unknowing it creates heavy energetic swings, and the person don´t understand, that the karmic consequences are being equivalent heavy contrabalances and back-swings. You can´t meditate during a psychedelic trip. Meditation is to rest between the swings of the thoughts. This means that you are present in the now, and the space around you widens out. It also means that you are emptying your mind, that the energy flows downwards and takes on the image of a correct turned cone. The opposite happens in a psychedelic trip. You are flowing with the upstreaming content of the painbody (which stretches far down into collective images, original sin and negative karma). The energy system takes on the image of an inverted cone. Furthermore: how is it, that users of psychedelics are repeating the same mistakes and thought distortions, which New Agers, and their postmodernist backgrounds, also have repeated? (apparently psychedelics are not able to reveal the nature of thought distortions - an example is the repetition of the myths of quantum mysticism). In order to explain the reason, I will mention two of the Four Philosophical Hindrances and Openings: 1 and 3. 1 A rational where you take your assumptions, conceptions and values for absolute truths (users of psychedelics are usually fanatics and ideologists) and hereby end up in a contradiction between your thoughts and lived live. It is quite easy to see how users of psychedelics often have ended up in the same problems as those with a top-down awakening A top-down awakening in simple terms means that your crown and third eye chakras are open and that you have quite a bit of energy surrounding your head and shoulders. Basically, you are receiving input from the heaven/sky but not the earth. The issue with this type of awakening is that it is not grounded in anything. It is not required to do much personal work or to open your first three chakras to have this type of awakening (you can, for example, take a psychedelic trip). The person experiencing this type of awakening begins to separate from this earth, this reality. The person undergoing a top-down awakening will have immense energy circulating into their crown, third eye, and around their head and shoulders. Unfortunately for the experiencer of this, the energy is not able to move much further down because the throat chakra and heart chakra require the lower chakras to be open to open themselves. Psychedelic can not do this, since they are a boost upwards (when talking about the vegetative development, I especially refer to the processing of the lower chakras). This is a significant energetic imbalance, and the energetic field of the experiencer often appears to look like an inverted cone. Often the experiencer is partially or fully out of their bodies/disassociated, and they prefer to remain this way (especially when they are euphorical inflated). They feel different and separate from everyone else, and some remain in elaborately set up illusions of their own creation. This is because the ego-inflated awakened has awakened enough to be able to create in reality, but for this group it is rarely on a conscious level- so the creation of significant blocks, illusions, and other issues of a spiritual and physical nature is quite common due a relay of unprocessed personal and emotional material creating reality for them. A top-down awakening is BY FAR the most common spiritual awakening to get stuck in. It also can be the most dangerous because it creates an environment energetically where you are not quite a part of any reality. With the ability to easily shift through dimensions, times, perspectives, and being fully or partially out of your body, it creates opportunity for other energies to attach, and for you to lose a sense of identity or purpose. Without the support that earth and grounding offers (heart and Hara, love and existence), it is difficult to filter the intense energies that are coming through. The more the lower chakras are blocked the worse the imbalance is. With this type of awakening it is common to see people keep their spiritual lives and their physical lives quite separate. By this, I mean that they may be all about love, light, angels, and awakening in workshops or online, but in their daily lives they are often quite miserable and do not want to participate in life. Often I work with people struggling with depression and anxiety who put on an outward appearance, a mask of being spiritual and enlightened but in their daily lives they are struggling to function, to engage with others, or to want to be on Earth. This is an incredible common symptom in New Age circles due to the immensity of spiritual misguiding. 3 An existence-philosophical, where you in your opinion formation and identity formation strive towards being something else than what you are, where you imitate others, are a slave of other´s ideas and ideals (the psychedelics, the shamans, the literature), and where your actions are characterized by irresoluteness and doubt. In the end of this update, I will return to the concept of Kundalini. If we again look at the image of the human energy-field as that of a cone, then you can say that when this cone is inverted (unbalanced), then your upper body and head are characterized by too much dense energy. If the energy in your upper body is dense, it is my experience, that no matter how much neutral observation you are practising, then this can´t remove the dense energy. You´ll need to practice the Supplying Hara Exercise. Often this will take years. It is a vegetative process. In order to explain, let´s turn to Chinese philosophy (Taoism). Here the concept of Hara is known as the lower Tan Tien. The lower Tan Tien is also called the “medicine field” or “elixir field,” as it gathers and contains the healing power of Chi. Other names for it are the “ocean of Chi,” the “sea of energy,” the “cauldron,” and the “navel center.” The use of the expressions “ocean” and “sea” refer to the wavelike quality of Chi. The expression “cauldron” refers to the function of the lower Tan Tien as the center of internal alchemy that transforms energy (note the associations with The Gundestrup Cauldron, described on the page: Nordic Shamanism and Forest Therapy). (alchemy is a good term when it comes to explain the concept of vegetative development). The lower Tan Tien serves as the source of the life force or vital force. This then becomes transformed into the more subtle Shen Chi, or spirit/power energy. It is the rise of this power that is referred to in Kundalini philosophy. But Kundalini Yoga descriptions are deeply deceptive, since you also can have a rise of dense energy (without Shen Chi). This was what I have referred to, when I explained how you can have a rise of energy where you have a lot of experiences, but no realizations. Shortly said: What I mean by experience is the same as "rise of energy". What I mean by realization is the same as "rise of consciousness". In her splendid book, Working with Kundalini – An Experiential Guide to the Process of Awakening, the spiritual teacher, Mary Shutan, talks about pre-kundalini and Neuro-kundalini, where you experience rise of energy but no rise of consciousness. When Shutan talks of Kundalini awakening, she means a rise of consciousness, which is the same as my talk of a rise of realization. It is only the latter which is a genuine Kundalini awakening. All the known problems with Kundalini (Dark Night of the Soul, or ego-inflation) are in my view due to a rise of energy (pre-kundalini, neuro-kundalini), and not a rise of consciousness (kundalini awakening). Thus, throughout all Taoist Tan Tien practices the lower Tan Tien (Hara) remains key to supplying the body and the mind with a free, uninterrupted flow of energy (which allows the rise of consciousness). Note that a rise of consciousness requires lot of other mental work (among others, the five basic exercises described on the page: Meditation as an Art of Life). Taoist practices are above all practices by which the unity of what is above and below is acknowledged and honoured. Through its service as a reservoir and transformer of Chi, the lower Tan Tien confirms the unity between earth and heaven in the body (in my booklet on the chakras, The Nine Gates of Middle-earth, I have described this as the union of Mother Earth and Father Heaven). In Taoism, there is a strong emphasis on practitioners being “rooted and grounded”, which refers to establishing stability both mentally and physically. Lower Tan Tien practices (the Harameditation) is an effective method of bringing us “down to earth” and receiving the energy of the earth. It also helps us to live from our own center and be proactive instead of reactive. Harameditation proposes that the source of true happiness and joy lies within our very selves and not anywhere else. The negative energies within and around us, which we may experience as obstacles to our happiness is the “raw material” for energy transformation. Through this practice we may learn to accept and appreciate ourselves, others, and the world around us. We learn to see our own negative energies as garbage we can recycle into compost that can then serve to fortify out positive energies. Hara is the place where our prenatal Chi is stored, it is the place where all the energy that we absorb and collect during Harameditation is stored, and it is the place where denser energies are transformed into more subtle energies, which hereafter can arise and fill us with joy and creativity. It is a vegetative development. Finally, I talked about that I fully accept that a psychedelic trip, sometimes, not only is something that is happening in the head. Hallucinations, or visions, can have an external character (I talk out of my own experiences here). I have explained this several times. I have referred to it as: the Wholeness begins to dream. A psychedelic trip can cause a glimpse of this. I will, for example, advice you to read my Ebook, Philosophical Counseling with Tolkien, chapter 2: Philosophical Theology, part 2: Divine Prividence and Free Will. I will also advice you to read my booklet: Philosophy of Mind, where I explain that consciousness (not mind!) is one and the same as the Wholeness. This is further explained in my two texts: 1) Richard Dawkins and The Rise of Atheist Scientism (Scientism Critique: Part 1) - (free Ebook). 2) Rupert Sheldrake and the Rise of Neo-Lysenkoism (Scientism Critique: Part 2) - (free booklet). Conclusively, I will mention the main problem with the use of psychedelics in combination with spiritual practice. And the problem is that psychedelic users are ignorant about the philosophical structures behind their ideas. I mentioned it briefly above. This is a complete central issue in the whole of my cultural criticism. The psychedelic users follow a New Age-accentuated linear evolutionistic philosophy, which are in complete contradiction to the traditionalist cyclic view of indigenous people. Traditionally, it was only shamans who used the psychedelics, and they used them for the good of the collective. New Agers are using psychedelics as if they themselves were shamans, and they use them for a kind of self-development, which are accentuated by spiritual narcissism. If you are talking from a shamanic perspective, this will create an enormous conflict with the spirits. Add to this that the enormous amount of psychedelics users, via their use of social medias, now has managed to create a so-called "Big-pharma behavior". Private companies are now beginning to sell services and products within the psychedelic field. Take for example companies such as "Psyched Wellness" and "Aphrodite Health". Some prognoses predict that "psychedelic therapy" will be accepted around 2025. This development implies the problem of that the borders between New Age pseudoscience and the established sciences more and more are being blurred (again: see the above booklet on Rupert Sheldrake. Read also my article: The Galileo Commision has written an Anti-scientism Report, but is itself a worst-case Scenario of Scientism). The British firm Compass Pathways are seeking to develop a Big Mac-model for psychedelic therapy (see, for example, this article: A millionaire couple is threatening to create a magic mushroom monopoly, by Olivia Goldhill). So, we are seeing precisely that development towards that kind of society which Aldous Huxley predicted in his dystopian novel Brave New World (I have described this in my booklet: The Psychedelic Renaissance and David Jay Brown). Other related texts on the Psychedelic Renaissance: The Beatles and Their Relation to Psychedelics (article) The Psychedelic Experience versus the Mystical Experience (booklet) Plastic Shamanism and the Tradtional Shamanic Awakening (booklet) New Netflix Documentary Gaslights People Into Becoming Drug Users (blog post) A Shamanic Kundalini Awakening (a critical book review) (blog post) |
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