3 posts tagged “psychedelic”
“I believe that the World Wide Web is, as a matter of fact, the noogenesis of the noosphere.” - Ralph Abraham, The Evolutionary Mind (1988)
Lawrence Hagerty wrote in The Spirit of the Internet,“…the Internet is not the noosphere. It is merely an infrastructure that is now available for the noosphere to use.” Hagerty goes on to profess, “I believe that the Internet is serving as just such an attractor, or basin of attraction, drawing the Earth’s most creative minds into a synergistic union out of which a new form of human consciousness can arise from the wells of chaos.“
The noosphere is a term created by Jesuit priest/radical thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose ideas were frankly force-fed to me in college in the eighties (I happened to attend a Jesuit university where he was practically worshiped as a god). For that reason perhaps I wrongly assumed his teachings were more widespread than they actually were at the time. But I find no uncertain irony that his ideas continue to haunt my own delightfully synchronous journey towards Singularity.
Not the technological singularity of Ray Kurzweil; I’m talking more about what’s happening over at Reality Sandwich, and other important, alternative think tanks of our time. “New science” is termed thusly because, reminiscent of Capra’s intuitions of decades past, scientific discoveries are merged with new (and perhaps very old) interpretations of consciousness. This is how it should be; the Newtonian universe must ultimately be discarded in favor of the quantum discoveries that tickle our brains, easing us into new frontiers of existence, consciousness and human evolution. The homo cyber I find mentioned here and there, if left alone in the wilderness of pure artificial or mechanistic intelligence, would be the unfortunate result of not taking the final step of this process. Like refusing to take the red pill, our psyches would be left to rot inside the prison Matrix of third dimensional space-time. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” reminds Shakespeare.
The Internet may be Noosphere 1.0, a precursor to an enlightened state of consciousness; or perhaps, Noosphere for Beginners, or Noosphere for Dummies. Though arguably a creation of Big Brother’s sinister and eavesdropping omnipresence, the Internet is also being used, perfectly a la Tao, as a vehicle to transmit thoughts and ideas in preparation for a purely telepathic noosphere. The next several years its role will be vastly influential in terms of the global progression of consciousness, and I urge all to participate as they can until then (or until the government curtails this freedom, much as it has done with suppressing entheogens); but at some point, perhaps soon, the circuits and transistors will go the way of the covered wagon. Many of us will leave our electronic devices abandoned on the beach as we eventually look up and realize the great sea of enlightenment and oneness is before us, and go in for a dip – never to return. The key to ridding ourselves of the shackles of this reality is love, pure and simple. Love is the thing no machine can transmit; love is the unique trait, or ability, that will catapult our transformation from homo sapiens not to homo cyber, but to homo luminus.
The minds at work on the great consciousness project at this moment are alive during this time not by accident. They are all Surfing the Tao though they may not be aware of it. We are all giving what we have, and taking what we need, in some kind of post-modern, spirit-driven, psychedelic communistic mind trip, hastened by our collective visions of 2012 and beyond. Hagerty calles it entheospace; I might describe the sensation as a sort of dreamstate, finding oneself floating down a river of consciousness, gently colliding with others riding down the same stream in a kind of synchronistic, fractal pattern of atunement, as we all slip closer to the great sea.
Daniel Pinchbeck’s first book was entitled, Breaking Open the Head – which I mention here not for its particular content, which is a mind-expanding examination of the entheogenic experience, but because it so aptly illustrates my own particular state of being.
My own head cracked in college, during several misguided entheogenic experiences. I discovered Terence McKenna, but as far as spirituality goes, I was definitely a seeker who didn’t really want to spend any time looking.
This all changed in 1999. The previous fracture, which had begun to scar over, was rent asunder, and a torrent of new knowledge and higher frequencies began to stream in. I will only say: the true masters are truly hidden. And it is meant to stay that way, for now, perhaps because actual participants can often teach each other more in the beginning. But I was urged to continue meditating, and before long I had what Neil Kramer over at The Cleaver might call a fourth dimensional experience.
Without any entheogenic aid, I crossed over into the void. Suddenly, I Knew.
There are no further words for what I experienced. The language simply doesn’t exist. But it changed everything I knew, all that I was. What followed was years of reading, researching, listening, loving, meditating and change. Many of the books that appeared as if by magic I have listed here. My intellectual side was frustrated, but my spirit was at peace for the first time I can remember in my adult life. The end result of that was, I wrote a book, which was really just a cathartic expression of my overwhelmed psyche.
My own path is still guided by amazing synchronicity and coincidence. I find it startling how often I find articles written about the very subject I had been ruminating about. How I discover brilliant minds have already found answers to the questions I have been asking. How so many of our paths are beginning to converge on the Great Path. Spirituality, Taoism, 2012, eschatology, Planet X, the Matrix, conspiracy, sinister agendas, alien technology, symbology, synchromysticism, mind control, electromagnetism, alternative energy, quantum physics, plasma physics, torsion physics, entheogenic-inspired thought and conscious enlightenment, ecocentric living, — the puzzle pieces are coming together rapidly. I cannot explain how I know what I Know, yet I will say; the quickening is upon us. The noosphere is coalescing. The Puzzle of Being, and the question of consciousness, is in the process of being realized by a vast cadre of psycho-cryptographers.
The great irony is, I sense, that this enlightened, super-charged, noospheric state of being is and has always has been, here and now. This ancient Way that has been lost during our fall, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, is now being quickly rediscovered, picked up and dusted off as some kind of primordial reflex to protect ourselves from what we subconsciously know is coming. We are remembering, so that we will survive.
I remember Y2K. Regarding expectations for 2012, the intensity of thought, intellect, spirit, and energy now in 2008 is somewhat on par with what happened the months previous to Y2K. And we have nearly five years left. What incredible postulations, theories, discoveries, transitions, realizations, opportunities, manifestations, creations and expectations will surface between now and then?
And what will happen on December 21, 2012 at 11:11 universal time? That remains to be seen; but to prepare for either global catastrophe, psychedelic wormholes or simply more life as we know it – the only answer is, and always will be: love, peace and harmony.
Sometimes I wonder how I find what I do here online – and when I do, I wonder what else I’m missing. I’m only one person. Only one computer. Only so many hours in the day.
If you’ve made it this far, please consider leaving a comment here regarding what author, what religion, what spiritual path, what thinker, what scientist, what discovery, what issue, what website, what experience – what ANYTHING that has made a difference for you on your journey.
Give what you have. Take what you need.
As it acts in the world, the Tao
is like the bending of a bow.
The top if bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
It adjusts excess and deficiency
so that there is perfect balance.
It takes from what is too much
and gives to what isn’t enough.
– Tao Te Ching #77
Plasma, or ionized gas, is often referred to as the fourth state of matter and is defined as an “assemblage of charged particles called electrons and ions that react collectively to forces exerted by electric and magnetic fields”. It is said to make up more than 99% of the visible and non-visible universe.
The sun and other stars are made up of plasma, as is the solar wind. And what used to be thought of as the emptiness or void of space, the interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic mediums, is now known to be filled with it. On earth, plasma is found in various products such as plasma TV displays, fluorescent lamps and neon signs, as well as in various natural lightning phenomena, the ionosphere, and the polar aurorae.
First identified in our era by Sir William Crookes in 1879 and named thusly by Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir in 1929, plasma’s complexity continues to baffle much of the scientific world. Among the first scientists to research plasma physics in our modern era are notables Kristian Birkeland and later, Hannes Alfven, who coined the term Plasma Universe and won a Nobel Prize for his efforts in 1970. Though the subject is still full of controversy, there are now many, many research institutes working on this new wave of scientific thought. Some alternative researchers insist that plasma physics has still not been fully utilized and understood in terms of its relevance to cosmology. So much so, apparently, that the Los Alamos site on the Plasma Universe includes this disclaimer. But it is sure to be the focus of enormous research this century. This site writes, “Gravity was the focus of 20th century astrophysics. For the 21st century, it will be electromagnetism and plasmas in addition.”
Check out the video called Thunderbolts of the Gods, which explains this enlightening piece of the great puzzle of existence. The Thunderbolts Project is involved in raising awareness of the Electric Universe, which opens up radical new lines of thought in terms of cosmogony, chaos theory and theoretical and quantum physics – essentially the very origins and nature of our reality itself. However from this lively debate on Wikipedia regarding inclusion of the material on its site, one can infer that the discussion is far from over (though as the final word points out, this article on Comet Holmes’ recent activities may change that).
I found several highly interesting posits from the Electric Universe crowd. One, that it’s actually electric charge emanating from comets, not cosmic dust per the old ‘dirty snowball’ idea, that we can see as they fly through space. The Electric Universe theory seeks to knock conventional scientific theory surrounding the mystery of comets altogether to its knees. Another involves the suspicious fractal filamentary designs, such as Lichtenberg figures, indicating possible electric discharges in locations commonly thought of as being impact craters on the moons and planets in our solar system, like the spiders on Mars – including perhaps even Tungusta, which I have long suspected had more to do with an electromagnetic display of some sort, ala Tesla, than the meteor theory that is more widely accepted.
Orthodox science takes a very long time to allow such paradigm shifts to trickle down into all the various disciplines. Quantum physics shattered science decades ago and its reverberations are still being accounted for to this day. Plasma physics may well indeed follow up on this rupture in conventional theory, altering our understanding of the universe in ways we cannot yet imagine.
Going even further out onto the fringe, the metaphysical reverberations will also undoubtedly take their sweet time. After over thirty years, The Tao of Physics is still making its rounds. On the other hand, alternative theorists are already discussing such radical ideas as the effect of our coming 2012 alignment with the galactic plane on consciousness, and perhaps even dimensional shifts, like some kind of psychedelic wormhole in spacetime. The fact that known ‘mind control’ technologies work by changing electromagnetic fields must lead us to at least consider that other ‘natural’ electromagnetic displays in our universe may influence us at the very base of our existence as well.
We are, in truth, all electric entities, resonating and reverberating with our environments on a level we perhaps do not completely understand; theories surrounding the Schumann resonance are a good example. My own eclectic experience with energetic thought patterns, energetic healing such as chi gung, even our Buddha-natures and the very concept of the Tao itself, as an energetic and perhaps even electric field which encompasses all of creation, has me wondering if all of this may well slide science that much closer to spirit – for some of us, anyway. We may phrase things differently than the ancients, but somehow, they intuited truths that science is still working to ‘discover’. I believe there are clues out there, both in science and in the fringes of metaphysics, that we might pay attention to as we slide ever and more quickly closer to the changes that are to come.
Journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, self-proclaimed cynic and son of Beatnik parents, transversed the realms of the psychic and the psychedelic, as well as his own personal drama, to bring us his version of the Eschaton in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. His scholarly prose is punctuated with radical, apocalyptic refrains which underscore his own revelations as to the immanent arrival of something both terrifying and wonderful. If he is correct, our near future contains the potential for both catastrophe and conscious enlightenment, a view I happen to share to some extent.
Whether this transformation will occur in one simultaneous event on December 21, 2012 remains to be seen. However Mr. Pinchbeck threw himself to the wolves in this book, revealing not just his own relationship issues, self-doubt and twisted shamanic journeys, but a full-on prophetic experience of Quetzalcoatl himself and a vision of our future perhaps only a very small handful of people are willing to consider.
He calls this book an “extravagant thought experiment”, explaining his dual lines of investigation from philosophical groundwork to his own “process of discovery”, which led us from psychedelic trips all over the world, to crop circles, alien abduction, occult manifestations, time vs. consciousness theory, global environmental and economic collapse, and back to his own frustrating and comparatively two-dimensional Manhattan habitat. Through these various means, he points out our general unwillingness as a species, in these post-modern times, to recognize the ever-increasing void of spiritual awareness; our cultural blinders have rendered us more or less incapable of recognizing the signs of our own imminent demise, which come to us through journeys into a level of consciousness few seem prepared to take.
While his writings and experiences differ greatly in style, organization, and attitude, I found the skeletal framework somehow reminiscent of my own, as if there were some great field of knowledge to be tapped into whose messages are passed on through one’s own particular experience, research, circumstances, filters, lexicon, allegory, etc. – the flesh, as it were. Granted, the subject matter stems from the same genre, though our intentions are arguably dissimilar; however I couldn’t help but notice how much of this work resonated with my own in Surfing the Tao. After much agonizing over whether to share what I found to be synchronous lines of thought, I have decided to note some here humbly, knowing my own self-published, obscure volume will likely only make it into a handful of minds. I ask the reader not to misinterpret the following as any folly of ego; I recognize my own small work can never be compared to Pinchbeck’s literary talent, however critiqued he may be. I do this only in the spirit of noticing how similarly the Tao can touch the thought patterns of an open mind and heart, and that the synchronicity of it all could raise a few eyebrows as to what may or may not be truer than we realize…
DP: “Throughout my early life and into my thirties, I lacked a metaphysical view of any sort.” (p. 19) AVM: “For the first thirty-odd years of my life, I wandered in ignorance.” (p. vii)
DP: “…I concluded, sadly, that our current civilization is not a machine built to last. (p.8) AVM: “As time and technology progresses, general knowledge is actually regressing…A system based on money instead of love will eventually falter.” (p.7)
DP: “…the modern materialist sees myth as antiquated and simpleminded – at best, metaphoric or symbolic.” (pp. 9-11) AVM: “..we have been taught to think of the ‘gods’ as mythological or symbolic…”(p. 31)
DP: “…a text can only act as a scaffolding of concepts, a ladder for others to climb.” (p. 15) AVM: ““Though some texts can be used to help guide us, no one ever entered the actual ascended state through the pages of a book.” (p. 210)
DP: “Real knowledge of what I am saying must be earned, and lived, by each individual, in his or her own way.” (p. 15) AVM: “This is a highly personal experience…little things will pop up in everyday life that will start to ‘prove’ it to each person in their own way.” (p. 14)
DP: “Few of us have time to make our own investigation of such abstruse realms as psychic research – and why would be bother, when our ‘experts’ assure us they have the situation wrapped up?” (p. 38) AVM: “…those who control the leading educational and intellectual institutions of our day have settled on the general public view of non-supernatural evolution…Many would rather accept the lives they have been taught…and not bother with anything more.” (p. 5)
DP: “…modern physicists…were surprised…[to find] that matter was largely composed of empty space. At this quantum level, physicists discovered that their attempts to measure the phenomena they were studying affected that phenomena…” (p. 47-8) AVM: “…inside an atom, there really isn’t any substance at all; just tiny sparks of energy…physicists are surprised to discover you can’t measure sub-atomic activity without influencing it.” (p. 15)
DP: “I found that attuning myself to synchronicities…required the development of a kind of intuitive skill…some of these synchronicities involved conjunctions between personal episodes and world events that seemed to me both numinous and inexplicable.” (p. 55) AVM: “My life became filled with so many bizarre synchronicities and small daily miracles that few people would even believe them.” (p. vii)
DP: “It is only as a fully self-reflective individual consciousness that one can make the choice, out of free will, to reconcile with the Divine, through sacrifice, or supercession, of the ego.” (p. 117) AVM: “Choose love: use your free will to seek His will, and soon it will coincide with your own and your life will be truly blessed.” (p. 20)
DP: “In the popular culture of our secular age, the gods, demigods, fairies and gnomes of the old mythic realm have returned as extraterrestrials.” (p. 121) AVM: “Author John A. Keel wrote in his work Operation Trojan horse, “The UFO manifestations seem to be, by and large merely minor variations of the age-old demonological phenomenon.” (p. 50)
DP: “According to this hypothesis, Christ ‘redeems’ us only when we follow his lead. We still have to save our own souls.” (p. 117) AVM: “It is a bit of a paradox – we must first save ourselves, by refusing to be fearful, and maintaining a positive state of mind.” (p. 199)
DP: “Our conventional notion of history, like our conventional understanding of space and time, supports a linear, evolutionary and causally deterministic view of events.” (p. 189) AVM: “Most people alive today probably think our world is just the result of natural evolution…” (p. 1)
DP: “As represented in the Tai Chi symbol, one pole does not negate its antipode, but reflects and includes it.” (p.209) AVM: “Yin and yang are not opposites – yinyang is the essence of the oneness of all things.” (p. 28)
DP: “The superstrings, quantum jumps, and wormholes through space-time described by contemporary physicists might prove the basis for shamanic techniques of visiting other realms…” (p. 245) AVM: “The passageways between [black and/or white holes] are referred to as wormholes, gateways through space/time…This concept mirrors our ancients’ views about our reality [re. origins of ‘the gods’.]” (p.42)
DP: “’EVERYTHING IS SAFE IN GOD’S HANDS.’ This telegraphed answer [to a question regarding the fate of humanity] was startling – and reassuring…It has liberated me from fear and anxiety.” (p. 259) AVM: “God’s plan is great but complicated…only know that He loves us and everything will be ok in the end…Stop worrying…never give in to fear.” (pp. 250-1)
DP: “As it says in the Tao Te Ching, ‘Non-Tao is short-lived.” (p. 375) AVM: “’That which goes against the Tao comes to an early end.’ - Lao Tzu” (p. 14)
DP: “Such a shift would not be the ‘end of the world,’ but the end of a world, and the opening of the next.” (p. 15) AVM: “Far from being the end of everything, this event could trigger our ascension into a higher realm…” (p. 249)
But whereas many of my own thoughts seem mirrored in his book, I found it interesting how his own particular circumstances, and journey towards this consciousness, manifested in such different ways. While I’m no stranger to psychedelics and have indeed had some prophetic experiences thereby, my most profound revelations were actually not drug-induced but rather brought about during moments of startling clarity during deep meditation. What truth I believe I stumbled upon comes from within; our own atoms already contain the necessary ingredients for wisdom, transcendence and enlightenment. Mr. Pinchbeck does not hesitate to tell of his terrifying psychedelic foray into the realm of the trickster daimon and the occult; he does indeed admit the inherent dangers therein, “The initial visions had been seductively Luciferic.” (p. 72) While he does admit the inherent dangers of the “daimonic reality”, I might suggest the best protection there, as anywhere, is love. And love is something he seems to have struggled with, on a personal level, throughout – though he does recognize the necessity and power of positive thinking, something he was not afraid to comment on during a recent and much-discussed argument with Whitley Strieber on his radio show.
But he is on a very different journey than I am; for many, psychedelics offer a way to, in Pinchbeck’s own words, ‘break open the head’ in a way they might not otherwise be able to, in a world that seeks to keep this kind of knowledge hidden. Certainly one cannot help but be mystified by the profound and strikingly similar types of inferences made by the likes of McKenna, Burroughs, Narby, Pinchbeck himself and others in these altered states. To seek knowledge of another realm, consciousness or dimension, you have to somehow travel there.
Towards the end, Pinchbeck shares the transmission he received from Quetzalcoatl. I read it umpteen times, my sense of discernment on high alert, as if searching for a way to Know…I am left with the overwhelming sense that he did intuit truth and wisdom, the sort of truth one gleans from Knowing with the Spirit; in the intellectual world, nothing like this could ever be proven. I suffer the same dilemma. Somehow I find solace knowing that if these revelations indicate mental illness according to western psychiatric theory, at least I would be in good company in the psych ward. So, knowing how difficult it is to write about these things in a secular materialist culture, he does win my respect and admiration for even coming out with this material. As I said before – the wolves are eager to tear it apart, and he has laid bare his jugular, “Even if it required isolation from the mainstream, I preferred to sacrifice my beliefs and preconceptions, along with the comforts and status they afforded, rather than cling to a set of inherited values that I increasingly suspected to be false.” (p. 40) At the risk of repeating myself, again I find evidence that our many diverse paths have the potential to converge onto the Great Path – that singular Truth of Being which seems to so deftly escape our waking consciousness.
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl was published in hardback in 2006 and paperback in 2007. Mr. Pinchbeck can be found online at Breaking Open the Head, Reality Sandwich, Whole Life Times, featured in a video at Postmodern Times, his Amazon blog and MySpace among others.
