The consumption of Psychoactive drugs and Entheogens (from the Greek word 'Entheos' meaning God Within) have been a legitimate path to Consciousness Expansion for aeons..
An integral characteristic of New Age understanding and perspectives is that the human species is approaching a gestalt point of consciousness, a unique time which only comes about every couple of thousand years, or every few hundred thousand, depending upon which system one adheres to, sometimes both. The belief that we need to change direction or face dire consequences for our species and planet, is evidently making a gradual immersion into popular discourse; we can look about us at the current, heightened scares about global warming, about the need for communication between global powers, more honesty in governance and a more compassionate approach within our daily lives. Prof. Charles Taylor recently won the Templeton Prize and its £800,000 jackpot for a philosophic treatise upon how 'spirituality' can help solve the worlds problems. Whatever one purports that 'spirituality' to be, whether a closer relationship with God or a deeper relationship to the planet and our own selves, it remains clear that there is something missing from our consciousness, a specific dimension of experience that all of the worlds religions have either pointed towards, or forged around the unique experience and insight of many different prophets.
All of these messages seem to point towards the same thing: as the human being stands upon this plateau of development, the necessity for our species to recognise their capacity of consciousness, and surge outwards into the spirals of time and space with it, has reached its highest point of urgency. While there are many ways and means of tapping this capacity for changing the way a human brain accommodates its environment, becoming closer to the spiritual, the divine or nebulous, many have wisely turned to the ways of the Varma Marg, the Left-Hand path of Tantra, which embraces the use of sex and drugs to achieve enlightenment, or simply put, a more natural state of being. In the urban environments of today, these strong techniques for consciousness expansion are some of the most effective, battling as we are with the perpetual noise of consumer culture and the din of mass media messages.
While drugs and sex are sometimes broadcast as a dangerous shortcut to the expansion of consciousness, the use of psychoactive drugs has always been a staple part of the shaman's diet, from Salvia Divinorum in Meso-America to the fly-agaric mushroom in Siberia. The modern day explorer of consciousness has the same pathways on offer, with new synthetics and concentrate derivatives like LSD, MDMA and DMT giving a richer choice to this already well populated menu of gateways to expansive consciousness. While many of these drugs are either illegal or have strict control laws against them, some, such as Salvia Divinorum, have a fully legal status almost everywhere bar a few rogue states in the USA and Australia. The illegality of some of these drugs can ward off people who might otherwise have a very positive experience with them, but personal responsibility and common sense have a further reaching impact upon the self-willing individual than the law ever could. And the resultant good press from the better experiences, as limited as its distribution may be, is a sound testament to the cultural significance of these substances. They produce peak experiences, what Abraham Maslow incorporated into his hierarchy of needs as Self-Transcendence, central to the complete human experience, a necessary part of the development of our consciousness. It seems probable that the more peak experiences an individual has, the greater the quality of life. And peak experiences seem to be a consequence of a sudden change in perspective- of a monumental understanding which words can't easily classify. It's these changes in perspective which, when used in a safe and secure environment with people you trust, psychoactives and entheogens can give a stunning, wide open level of access to.
What remains strange is our choice of drugs – as a species we regularly imbibe alcohol, recently classified as equally if not more dangerous and health threatening than some of the drugs that have been classified as illegal. And yet alcohol shuts down the mind, desensitises the human brain to intelligence. While bad quality cannabis can do the same thing, the better quality can often enhance sensibility, and the entheogens that many of the worlds governments recognise on a par with crack-cocaine can establish a good deep rooted sense of self, and a deeper sense of a relationship to the universe and one's immediate environment. It seems astounding, on comparison, the prejudice erected in favour of one drug over another, a seemingly blind mesh of black/white views where in reality, because the substances and their various effects cannot be articulated in a black/white way, another set of criteria needs to be established to define them. 'Mind-manifesting' was the term that stuck in the 1960s to describe LSD and other psychoactives – 'psyche-delic'. Making the mind a tangible entity which one can dip into and explore deeper. And as the universe we experience finds itself entirely contained within our mind, within the barriers of our six-senses, it makes sense that if we want to deepen our relationship with ourselves and the universe, that we have to deepen our relationship with our own minds, as painful and baffling as that can sometimes be.
The vast majority of our lives our spent with people knowing exactly how to get into our minds, what makes us tick and how to make us do it, tick-tock-tick-tock, a battery set to a timer of commerce, for the production of capital and the endless consumption of its oftentimes unnecessary fruits. So that by extension, the deeper experience we have of our own minds the more tapped in we are to a greater universal rhythm than the one set by human hands.
This is how we can bring ourselves forward, looking beyond the tomorrow and the yesterday to the now, ever changing, never static and, once we open the mind to it, fairly unpredictable. In the modern urban environment, kicking back with some good psychedelics in the right place, at the right time and with the right people could bring us closer into a better position to govern ourselves towards a better future, and enhance our relationship with Spirit, with the Divine, which is possibly just another way of articulating the hidden dimensions of our minds .
For more information on entheogens and psychactive drugs, their history and safe ingestion, take a look at the following sites:
