I feel some have done a good job explaining certain individuals, Shulgin shouldn’t really be in this conversation cuz he was more chemist than philosopher.
I think my problem with so many psychedelic philosopher types is they act as though they’ve figured out a state of mind that really can’t be described in words. They try their best but it all comes out as meaningless fluff more often than not.
-GC
Psychedelic narcissism.
It's the "I have reached altered states nobody else has therefore I know what the meaning of life and reality is" mindset.
Psychedelics do so much but at the same time they do so little to get to the bottom of all the questions. What is dangerous about them is they sometimes can infer in the individual the belief or moreover, the delusion, they've unlocked some secret knowledge or realms of consciousness that are exclusive and only 'special' people can access them. The changes they do bring on can be perceived as monumental in actuality are very tiny, at least in terms of changes in the individual at, say, the level of personality and psychological structures.
You can't blame people like Leary, Alpert, McKenna etc because they got a free ticket to talk about this stuff like it was REALLY real. They saw a niche in the market and capitalized on it and they all benefited hugely, at least during the peak of their fame and influence. Someone mentioned in a previous post about them having drank their own kool aid and it's absolutely true. They did drink their kool aid and they no doubt began to actually believe they had unlocked superior knowledge to parts of the human psyche and condition overall that nobody else had done and it was their mission from the heavens to share these prophetic visions with the world. I know Leary was more inclined to take this position but many of them must have been staring at themselves in the mirror basking in their own reflection. How could they not have done that when they were seen as heroes by their own followers and idolized in the wider psychedelic culture.
Also you have to factor in the truth that society as a whole are starved of meaning, purpose and identity. They project onto their idols (celebrities in this example) what they want to see and think the world is about and it's only natural that whoever happens to have this role projected onto them gradually begins to warm to it and from then onwards, depending on many factors including predispositions to certain personality traits, behaviours and of course conditioning and developmental factors, act accordingly with their environment. Their environment continues to give them the power to define reality and with this power obviously comes great responsibility. I mean we could go onto how this affects many areas of our society including politics but let's not go there. It's safe to say this dynamic between follower and leader, the archaic search for the God among us, the one to take us to the light and look after us, is present in our celebrity worshipping culture and it's no different with those of the original first and second wave psychedelic pioneers. This is a BREEDING GROUND for narcissism. It just happens under the guise of 'acceptable' narcissism because it's often denied, repressed and rebranded into something else because taking psychedelics removes your natural inclination to exhibit narcisisstic traits, right? There's the typical stereotyping naivety around psychedelics like because we're all good people and we mean peace and love and everything is about 'good vibes' we all of a sudden become perfect human beings and incapable of corrupting ourselves and others. In the context of psychedelic pioneers, it's hard to see how this dynamic wasn't abused to some degree, perhaps not intentionally but even so, it probably happened.
I also think maybe we are talking about denial as well. Denial of the fact that no matter what we attribute to ourselves, we will never know the answers to many age old questions. And you have to be careful that you don't begin to start attaching labels to yourself and assume that these labels automatically assume some sort of achievement. I mean, people meditate and they become meditators but I think 99% of them are full of shit. They meditate because it's trendy. They wear yoga pants because they saw a celebrity in a magazine wearing them and they want to be like that celebrity. Or they believe there is some sort of sophistication and social approval from looking like a meditator. It's the same with people holding wine glasses up when taking Facebook selfies. They believe if you do certain things it makes their social class instantly rise. All you have to do these days it seems is hold a wine glass up and be in a restaurant and now you're all of a sudden part of the elite society. Everybody wants to look rich these days. Notice how everybody wants to LOOK rich. The secret to deciphering all this is in the motive.
How many actually are though?
It's no different with psychedelics. People attach all these labels to themselves and attribute stars they earn in meditation apps, lectures they've listened to, the haircuts they get, the clothes they wear and the people they hang out with, as some sort of proof of having find 'it', whatever 'it' is. You see many people in Starbucks DELIBERATELY sitting at the front window with their Mac laptop just so they can be SEEN looking like they are living the dream. Of course they don't realize that what they are trying to emulate is because of many years of MILLIONS of dollars being pumped into marketing and PR to get people to BUY into a lifestyle choice in order to ASSUME that lifestyle choice is actually a representation of success, wealth, happiness, social status etc. Again, emphasis on BUY and ASSUME. These are doing words, not being words.
Everybody is looking for something and ultimately somebody will have a sales pitch to sell you the answer. But is it actually the answer?
Are you a consumer or a producer? Are you being herded around or are you the shepherd?
I think it's important to bare all this in mind when you're looking at the overall dynamic that is inferred with the psychedelic teachings, especially prior to the 'modern' scientific and wholly empirical revitalization of psychedelic research. It's all very cult-like in some ways and that always infers narcissism, at least at the top of the cult social hiearchy where there's always the all-seeing-all-knowing prophet and his followers below him.
I find the psychology of all this very interesting.
www.ramdass.org
