Fascinating thank you. Perhaps treating people like criminals makes them so. Fear is the real enemy.
The other night I dreamt I ate many acid gummy’s in a Rainbow of Colours. I took a lot of tabs and liquid from late nighties to 2002. Haven’t taken since. Perhaps it’s a sign to try again. These are wild times and the wild within seems like a good place to be. The early morning in summer sounds perfect. 👌
Me too. Into my 56th years of travelling and have no intention of stopping.
Had a great convo with Susan a few years back, when the neuroscientists were cock-a-hoop they had found WHERE in the brain religious experiences took place.
Big deal. Had to be somewhere in the brain
What they CAN'T do is explain why we have them
Steiner prophesied a century back that we would try to substitute the brain for the soul.
Yeah but you can get Psilocybin easily - and I prefer that; back end of the 60s in Oxford we cold get synthetic Psilocybin and Mescaline, and if available, always used those rather than the (quite excellent! LSD available).
There is a big problem with LSD in America and its getting worse every year... I cant find any.
The mind expanding plants are the medicine of the earth. Big Pharma medicine is all poison that overides the wisdom of the body.
It is good to take a Spirit Walk with them a few times a year. LSD. Mushrooms. Ayahuasca. Peyote. Even marijuana. But marijuana is highly addictive, and one must have willpower for that. Having a guide is a great way to fuck up your high. Do your Spirit Walk alone. In silent darkness or in nature.
The bad trips always turn out to be the best ones.
The CIA thought they could use LSD to control people. It had the opposite effect. The hippies burned their draft cards. In 1967, 100,000 tripping hippies surrounded the Pentagon and began a Tibeten Chant to elevate the building into outer space. We could all benefit from a hit of that stuff.
There is a similar problem here in the Uk particularly where the present writer is: where do you find any? It’s not like you can place an ad or place a card with your name and phone number on a newsagent window below the words; Wanted: LSD. Of course back in the seventies the stuff would come to you and there were all the free festivals. Now in the Autumn of one’s life and when looking back in wonder at the sheer joy that was experienced on those trips, it becomes very frustrating not knowing where or how to get any. Anybody got any acid?
"...whether a simple drug that affects the brain can really create true spirituality...
Is this loss of self the nonduality that can take years of meditation practice to find? Or are these just tricks of the ultimate trickster drug? I cannot answer this deepest question about LSD any more than anyone else can."
The problem with Blackmore and many others is that you can't have just a little harmless scientific naturalism, you can't be just a little on the side of determinism and psycho-physical reductionism, you have to go all the way to the logical conclusion, to what the authors of the various papers in this book claim [Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility], it's like an anti-intellectual black hole that sucks you into ultimate absurdity where not even the light of reason can escape. What really takes the cake in the book (for me) is the essay by Susan Blackmore where she says that her 30 years of Zen training has shown her that free will is an illusion, but that she has "learned to live with it"! I think she must be stuck in that intermediate stage of Zen liberation where "the mountains are no longer mountains, and the rivers no longer rivers"... Perhaps a good whack upside the head with the Zen Master's cane might take her to the final realization that ultimate consciousness can be attained only through everyday activities (which must of course, exclude concocting absurd theories about the non-existence of existence!).
Thank you so much for sharing and Susan Blackmore for allowing its distribution here 🙌 beautiful read to start my day.
Thank you for this article. Really enjoyed reading it. Amazing stuff.
If you recall, back in 2010 I interviewed you on my internet talk show, the Opium Den. Nice to see you’re still in the game.
Yes! I remember us having a lovely conversation. We reviewed your book too if I recall?
Yes, it was fun - one of my favorites. Robert reviewed my book ages ago, and was kind.
Fascinating thank you. Perhaps treating people like criminals makes them so. Fear is the real enemy.
The other night I dreamt I ate many acid gummy’s in a Rainbow of Colours. I took a lot of tabs and liquid from late nighties to 2002. Haven’t taken since. Perhaps it’s a sign to try again. These are wild times and the wild within seems like a good place to be. The early morning in summer sounds perfect. 👌
Me too. Into my 56th years of travelling and have no intention of stopping.
Had a great convo with Susan a few years back, when the neuroscientists were cock-a-hoop they had found WHERE in the brain religious experiences took place.
Big deal. Had to be somewhere in the brain
What they CAN'T do is explain why we have them
Steiner prophesied a century back that we would try to substitute the brain for the soul.
As usual, he was correct.
Yeah but you can get Psilocybin easily - and I prefer that; back end of the 60s in Oxford we cold get synthetic Psilocybin and Mescaline, and if available, always used those rather than the (quite excellent! LSD available).
There is a big problem with LSD in America and its getting worse every year... I cant find any.
The mind expanding plants are the medicine of the earth. Big Pharma medicine is all poison that overides the wisdom of the body.
It is good to take a Spirit Walk with them a few times a year. LSD. Mushrooms. Ayahuasca. Peyote. Even marijuana. But marijuana is highly addictive, and one must have willpower for that. Having a guide is a great way to fuck up your high. Do your Spirit Walk alone. In silent darkness or in nature.
The bad trips always turn out to be the best ones.
The CIA thought they could use LSD to control people. It had the opposite effect. The hippies burned their draft cards. In 1967, 100,000 tripping hippies surrounded the Pentagon and began a Tibeten Chant to elevate the building into outer space. We could all benefit from a hit of that stuff.
Was LSD good? The proof is in the music.
There is a similar problem here in the Uk particularly where the present writer is: where do you find any? It’s not like you can place an ad or place a card with your name and phone number on a newsagent window below the words; Wanted: LSD. Of course back in the seventies the stuff would come to you and there were all the free festivals. Now in the Autumn of one’s life and when looking back in wonder at the sheer joy that was experienced on those trips, it becomes very frustrating not knowing where or how to get any. Anybody got any acid?
From Blackmore's intro :
"...whether a simple drug that affects the brain can really create true spirituality...
Is this loss of self the nonduality that can take years of meditation practice to find? Or are these just tricks of the ultimate trickster drug? I cannot answer this deepest question about LSD any more than anyone else can."
Here's a possibility:
Awakenings I- VI
https://peterwebster.substack.com/p/awakenings-0d5
The problem with Blackmore and many others is that you can't have just a little harmless scientific naturalism, you can't be just a little on the side of determinism and psycho-physical reductionism, you have to go all the way to the logical conclusion, to what the authors of the various papers in this book claim [Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility], it's like an anti-intellectual black hole that sucks you into ultimate absurdity where not even the light of reason can escape. What really takes the cake in the book (for me) is the essay by Susan Blackmore where she says that her 30 years of Zen training has shown her that free will is an illusion, but that she has "learned to live with it"! I think she must be stuck in that intermediate stage of Zen liberation where "the mountains are no longer mountains, and the rivers no longer rivers"... Perhaps a good whack upside the head with the Zen Master's cane might take her to the final realization that ultimate consciousness can be attained only through everyday activities (which must of course, exclude concocting absurd theories about the non-existence of existence!).