Might it be said that that is just hanging up one phone and picking up another? In all, the spiritual awareness comes from within. Certainly action is the thing to do, but just because a man is awakened doesn't mean he will get out of bed, and he may well fall back asleep. What I mean is that I disagree with calling any of it a false experience, just that not all experiences are interpreted in the same way, or lead to the same results.I am reminded of the parable of the sower:
(if you people wonder why I persist in biblical quotations, it is because I believe that it is a scripture based on the mystical experience as much as all the Hindu, Taoist, and Buddhist strains of thought psychedelic folk are often drawn to, and the maligning of the religion by such persons is highly misguided, and the lauding of the Eastern traditions equally misguided, if you talked to 98% of their constiuency they would be just as ego-deluded as your average follower of the Abrahamic religions.
The particulars of these sets of myths and dogmas are insubstantial, mere allegory for the ineffable experience. As for people who prefer not to use the language of preexisting codifications of the experience at all, understand that some of us are fond of it. Hear, those that can hear.).
I agree 100% with what youre saying about the Abrahamic relgiions.
As for your claim that prayer/meditation can be looked at as another phone well I am not going debate that point. Instead, I will give you an analogy. So assuming the goal is enlightenment/gnoses/liberation/realization, etc (whatever you wanna call it) then for the sake of analogy lets make it a physical place, say Iceland.
So then, in my view the drugs are like pictures of iceland. They show you where you need to go. This can be very helpful to people who do not know about Iceland as well as people who doubt that Iceland exists, or don't understand why they should want to go to Iceland. However, looking at pictures of iceland will never actually get you to Iceland. For that you must use some sort of actual transportation, such as a boat or an aircraft or something. These would be analogous to prayer and meditation, things which bring about changes in the heart. Do you see what I am saying? I believe that psychedelics show us what is possible but it is up to us to make those possibilities into realities. And to do that, you must employ non drug techniques because no matter how many times I tried (and believe me, I tried thousands of times) a psychedelic drug was never able to produce a lasting enlightenment for me. Nor have I ever heard of anyone, ever, who became enlightened from a drug.
And so what I mean by false experiences, I mean someone who believes they are very spiritual and that enlightenment is just around the corner for them as long as they keep smoking weed, eating acid, shrooms 2c-what have you and ranting about how we are all one. I believe I have the right to call it false because I once was such a person, who believed that these drugs were the key to enlightenment. But I would now say there are no short cuts to spiritual growth. If you want a parable for this one, here you go:
The Parable Of The Wedding Banquet
Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
“But they paid no attention and went off–one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless.
“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
“For many are invited, but few are chosen.” (Matt 22:1-14)
It's good to see you've finally decided to sign up and get posting, I know I lurked for an awfully long time before I did the same.
