Interesting perspective. Not completely in line with my own, but some valid things to contemplate within for sure!


My mood of late against meditation and post-1960s American spirituality: I'm sick and tired of it, I hate it, and I'm not going to take it anymore.  This nonsense and claptrap has gone on for entirely too long.  If spiritual people are offended by this pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, then too damn bad for them and their feelings.  It is necessary to sacrifice false spirituality in order to gain a firm grip on the straight facts. 
On the whole, to concede the legitimacy of someone's drug-free meaningful spirituality that gives meaning to their lives is, in practice, to condone lies and falsity and to encourage suppression of Truth together with suppression of entheogens.  The fact is, entheogens are the source, fountainhead, wellspring and so on of all that is highest and most profound and most central in religion; *real* Christianity and *real* Buddhism and *real* esotericism are, *first and foremost*, entheogenic. 
The legitimacy of drug-free spirituality is *nothing* in comparison to that of real spirituality, which is practically identical with entheogens.  I grant a millionth of a percent legitimacy and efficacy to the upstart proposed alternative methods which, the bottom line is, *don't work*.  Drug-free spirituality is a failure.  Any exceptions are nothing, because they just prove the rule, offering only a travesty of religion, an insult to the genuine, actual, authentic *intense* religion.  There is far more than enough support to back up my adamant hardline view. 
Enough lies -- won't someone, for once, tell it like it is?  I wash my hands of these lies; I want nothing to do with them.  There is one true path: entheogens.  The other proposed paths are cheap ripoffs that are nothing in comparison: to admit as I have done that meditation is a tenth of a percent as effective as entheogens is to tell evil lies.  Here I state the truth, that meditation is a millionth of a millionth as effective as entheogens, which is to say, meditation is extremely ineffective, while entheogens are extremely effective. 
Put side by side, the bottom line is, meditation/contemplation is a failure, while entheogens are a success.  The received dominant framework is the assumption that direct religious experiencing is rare and not entheogenic -- we must yell in the streets that that is the very opposite of the truth; direct religious experiencing is potentially utterly common, and is entheogenic: the received framework is bunk, wrong, mistaken, false, and wholly and profoundly off-base. 
There is no mystery about the mysteries, esotericism, and gnosis: to the extent that the mysteries, gnosis, and esotericism actually delivered on their promise of direct religious experiencing, to that exact extent, the mysteries, gnosis, and esotericism  were entheogen-based.  The one or two supposed exceptions only prove the rule: meditation/contemplation is entirely a mistake, a lie, futile, hopeless, a false replacement, a phony substitute that debases religious experiencing, and has to be discarded and rejected as a hypothesis about the nature of religious experiencing.
Neither I nor my audience has another minute to waste conceding legitimacy to the illegitimate, condoning confusion and error.  It is a tiny slight mistake to wholly dismiss drug-free spirituality as I do, whereas it is a colossal error and lie of the first order to grant drug-free meditation/contemplation a significant amount of legitimacy. 
Drug-free meditation/contemplation definitely does *not* have a significant amount of legitimacy; its legitimacy is vanishingly small next to the towering efficacy of entheogens.  Drug-free meditation/contemplation has no more than an incidental, curiosity degree of efficacy or legitimacy.
The received view, which treats drug-free meditation/contemplation as favorably as possible, while diminishing entheogens as much as possible, is evil in that in practice, its main effect is to block and impede and prevent actual direct religious experience, substituting a placebo instead.
Let us compare today's drug-free spirituality scene with natural mysticism.
Every time anyone says "nature", "garden", or "natural", the first thing you should picture is an Amanita mushroom, surrounded then by cannabis, opium, morning glories, datura, nightshade, henbane, thornapple, and cowpie mushrooms.  From the Garden of Eden to Paradise of the Kingdom of Heaven, what makes a sacred garden sacred is its central purpose, entheogenic plants -- psychoactive drugs.
In the modern period, artificial drug-free mysticism (meditation/contemplation) has enjoyed highly favorable conditions, and yet it has been proven to be almost completely ineffective and un-ergonomic at inducing any specific result, which is why everyone considers enlightenment to be so rare and difficult -- because they begin with the assumption that enlightenment must be a matter of drug-free mysticism, but drug-free mysticism basically doesn't work; it only mimics to some extent the full-on entheogen-triggered intense mystic altered state. 
Meanwhile, the natural, entheogen method of triggering the mystic phenomena has been violently and systematically suppressed during the entire broad modern period, yet shows tremendous potential and normally brings about the full gamut of ego death and related experiences, and shows every potential of bringing about full enlightenment, of a specifically definable sort (as I have explicitly written about in postings and in my Intro webpage), to the normal, average person.
It is completely and extremely unfair to compare the achievements of artificial drug-free mysticism with natural entheogen-induced mysticism during the modern period that gives many benefits to the drug-free approach, and puts every impediment before the mystic garden approach.  Grow a plant, go to jail, so how can we even begin to compare the achievements of the two attempted methods of enlightenment?
Drug-free mysticism fills the magazines with false and empty promises and claims that are never going to be realized in the normal, average person; to sustain these books of lies they have had to ever lower and lower their promises.  No American Buddhism magazine now is so foolish as to claim that their methods produce an altered state of consciousness -- instead, they vaguely promise some undefinable and unaccountable spiritual uplift of daily life.
Drug-free mysticism is a recent fantastic construct that is parasitical upon entheogen-based actual religious experiencing.  People report that entheogens commonly produce intense religious experiences, and people report that meditation usually does not produce intense religious experiences.  These reports of the failure and poor prospects of meditation and the success and tremendous prospects of entheogens are clear and unambiguous even though drug-free meditation has been given every break while every obstacle has been placed in the way of entheogens. 
Even though drug-free meditation has been given a big unfair head start, and though people sabotage and trip up the entheogen method, entheogens are *still* winning the race so much that the entheogen diminishers have been forced to deny that religious experiencing or spiritual enlightenment has anything to do with an intense altered state.  These entheogen diminishers have had to redefine spirituality as a mere uplifting of normal daily life.
Few indeed are the spiritualists who claim that drug-free meditation is reliable and effective at producing an intense mystic altered state in the average, normal person -- it is a claim that not only lacks evidence, but rather, has all evidence clearly working against it.  Like the phony drug war, the claim of the drug-free meditation/contemplation advocates cannot stand up to a genuine debate and critical investigation, but must retreat into vague claims and unaccountable conceptions of spirituality, recent trendy innovations which lack historical evidence and reproducible evidence. 
When 99% of people 99% of the time fail to obtain any sort of religious state of consciousness from drug-free meditation, the excuse of the entheogen diminishers is "you're not doing it right".  Entheogen-favoring spiritualists don't have to bother inventing such excuses, because the entheogen method actually delivers on its promises, producing if anything, an overwhelming excess of the religious state of consciousness. 
There is no contest when comparing the degree of reliability and intensity of entheogen versus drug-free spirituality methods for the average, normal, ordinary, typical person: entheogens are vastly more reliable, effective, ergonomic, intense, and efficient. 
People who claim that meditation is effective, reliable, and repeatable have a low, small conception of what religious experiencing and spirituality can be, or they have an abnormal brain constitution that's irrelevant to almost everyone, or they claim that their guru or some rumored remote sage has succeeded, even though no one else is having any luck with the "ideal" drug-free approach. 
Drawing a distribution curve for the efficacy and reliability of drug-free versus entheogenic methods, and comparing the curves, the drug-free method can only be characterized as pathetic, a blip that just registers enough to prove that the best method of preventing and avoiding spiritual experiencing and mystic enlightenment is by drug-free meditation/contemplation. 
Do you want to have nothing to do with religious experiencing and intense mystic enlightenment?  Then I wholeheartedly recommend drug-free enlightenment, which has been firmly proven, after countless many attempts, to almost never produce religious experiencing and intense mystic enlightenment. 
The good news is, there is a method that is highly reliable and ergonomic: combining visionary plants with intellectual study.  The method of combining visionary plants with intellectual study doesn't magically improve daily life or the socio-political world; it brings what is first of all claimed: intense mystic experiencing and metaphysical enlightenment about the nature and relationship of self, time, space, control, and world.
Dick wrote:
>I have been studying mystical experiences (including gnosis and much other) for near on fifty years,
During the modern era, which is the most spiritually illiterate and dark era ever, fifty years of research is 50 years of inventorying faint and mediocre religious experiences.
Belief in the potency of drug-free religious experiencing often fits with belief in psychic phenomena.  I definitely dismiss, in principle, psychic phenomena, because such phenomena would complicate my model of enlightenment.
I do acknowledge that there are many reports of drug-free, including spontaneous, mystical experiences.  I have never denied this and will never flatly deny this.  Rather, turning the tables against the entheogen-diminishers, I diminish and criticize drug-free and spontaneous mystical experiences as being incidental and mere curiosities, minor accidents and random quirks that are the mind's entheogen-ready circuits leaking a bit of noise. 
Drug-free mystical experiences are rare and weak and not repeatable on demand; they are on the whole basically irrelevant, of relatively little import next to the towering efficicacy, intensity, reliability, and repeatability of entheogens as a trigger.
>>None of these documented experience were brought about by drugs; they were quite natural and spontaneous. How do I know? Easy, from hindsight of experience one can know that they are not shooting the sh*t.
Rather, the fact that one can have a drug-free mystic experience proves that the reports might or might not have involved drugs.  I can relate to your sureness by recalling that I know for a fact that Rush is an acid-based Rock group, even though, on some people's interpretation, I have no certain proof.
>However, if people wish to take drugs then that is their business (and societies problem - for we all familiar with the effects of over-doing it).
That parenthetical assertion and its surrounding worldview with a raft of implicit meta-assertions is highly debatable.
>I am very opposed to messing with the mind
That characterization of psychoactive drug use is highly debatable.  For example, the drugs work because they are like well-fitting chemical keys, in contrast to how alcohol works in nonspecific shotgun fashion as far as specific receptors are concerned.  If I recall, this point is covered in Ott's book The Natural Paradises.
>The point being is that after forty years of communication with folk I have never yet read of a drug induced experience which comes anywhere near matching a spontaneous transcendent mystical experience, and that is a fact.
That judgement is unbelievable and incredible, because it contradicts (without putting forth justifying evidence) what many entheogen researchers have reported and concluded: that many drug-induced experiences closely match spontaneous mystical experiences.  Who are we to believe, and on what basis: the researchers who judge that the drug and nondrug experiences are fully indistinguishable, or those who judge that the non-drug mystical experiences are nowhere near matched by drug-induced mystical experiences?
The content of mystic experiencing is the same type and character, whether triggered by drugs or not.  There is plenty of evidence (reports and writings) to support this.  I have little respect for these writings as they are usually gathered, however, because we are then usually merely comparing first-time entheogen users with one-time spontaneous mystics, or meditators highly invested in many years of meditation.  We need broader distribution curves, culled in an environment less biased against psychoactive drugs. 
Entheogens are more reliable and available on demand than drug-free methods, and are generally far more intense.
>If the research were to have found
>otherwise then I would state it as so; but it is not.
Other researchers have stated it as so.  Who are we to believe, and on what basis?  There are two opposed camps of researchers or people making claims.  How do we choose between the two worldviews and sets of assertions and interpretations?
>True, from what one hears and reads, then it becomes clear that drugs can at times open the doors to the mind at various levels - but not very deep.
That's a completely debatable judgement that relies on a certain interpretive framework.  Most published reports are by the dregs of society; if people weren't thrown in jail with careers deliberately wrecked by the prohibition-for-profit bandwagon, we would have more fine writers and thinkers opening the doors at fully deep levels.  Today's system of prohibition produces a filtering effect that gives the impression of drugs being limited to ignorant high school kids.
>On the other hand however there is the negative side - and this is not found or documented with spontaneous experiences.
That's entirely debatable.  The claimed negative effects of drugs, including degree and scope, is supported by a huge amount of evil, harmful, destructive, profit-driven propaganda: prohibition-for-profit.  Psychoactive drugs should be decriminalized; prohibition of psychoactive drugs and suppression of those who use them should be illegal.
Drug-free mystical experiences are generally harmless because they are rare and feeble in effect.  Efficacy and potential harm are correlated.  Guns that merely squirt water are less harmful than real guns that shoot bullets.  Drug-free spirituality is a harmless water gun and doesn't stand to threaten the egoic delusion of personal free will and separate self. 
Psychotomimetic drugs are a real threat to the egoic psyche, a direct threat and detonator shaped precisely to threaten the heart and foundation of egoic delusion: the mental worldmodel that is founded on the assumption of freewill control power and separate-self.
>...I am a ... pragmatist ... why bother to try to induce experiences which come naturally anyway
Because drug-free mystical experiences don't come with much intensity or frequency; they are rare and generally feeble.  Entheogens are the only ergonomic choice for pragmatics.
>when the individual is, for
>some reason, ready to cope with them
That cliched expression is an excuse for the rareness of mystic experiences and the inefficacy of drug-free meditation: "The method works, but you weren't ready yet."
>and integrate them within their own process of becoming the more that we are?
>... evidence suggests that anyone having a spontaneous 'wham bang' experience (which blows their mind) will come to handle it - it may take a few years however. But there are many documented reports of people who have induced an experience which they were not ready for and have later committed suicide by virtue of failure to integrate what they have found. And this of course is tragic.
Were there many?  What proportion?  What were the actual causes?  The above stock assertions won't fly without essentially sound support, though they are always trotted out as unquestionable facts of the universe in what passes for "debate" about drug-induced mysticism.  Somewhere there must be entire nations filled with these masses of acid casualities, upon whom the old familiar entheogen-diminishing song and dance so heavily relies, even though other research reports the lack of any statistical correlation between abnormal psychology and entheogen use. 
The one thing we can be certain of at this point is that we have forbidden research before it even had a chance to begin.
>... I am in full agreement - the advent of Rome pushed Western civilisation back into the dark ages for two thousand years.
Lately I have speculated with Edwin Johnson's book "The Pauline Epistles Re-studied and Explained" that the years of the dark ages didn't exist; the Reformation (1517) happened only a few centuries after the fall of Rome (476), and that Christianity, particularly scripture-based official Christianity, is a recent invention and that Christianity is completely centered and based in the brief Middle Ages or so-called "Renaissance" (re-birth of antiquity culture after its absense) rather than coming from around the year 180 or 50 CE. 
The advent of Roman Catholocism "pushed Western civilization back into the dark ages for two thousand years" in that the Catholic church was invented around 1525 and invented stories about its having begun 1,500 years ago, inserting many nonexistent centuries in between and then excusing the total lack of evidence for those centuries by condemning them as utterly dark centuries in which next to nothing happened, and dismissing the total lack of evidence for pre-476 Christianity with various flimsy excuses: "they worshipped in secret", "they were ashamed of the cross so never portrayed it".
>If it were not for Rome (and state Priestcraft) we would not only have been on the moon a thousand years sooner
I don't know how science was spurred or hindered by institutional religion -- books are available trying to determine this relationship.
>but people would have a proper understanding of the metaphysical aspects of their emanation of BEING.
That happened commonly until the Protestant/Modern/Scientific era, per Nasr's book Knowledge and the Sacred, and some other theorists of Tradition.  I don't know why esoteric knowledge relatively withered at that time.  I suppose that people got farther from nature's psychoactive plants, such as cowpie mushrooms, and therefore became literally exiled from the mystic garden of Eden.
>... he claims that 90% of the stuff called 'Gnosticism' is utter junk ... 99% of it is.
>KNOW THY SELF - both the transcendent and imminent bits.
>1. Given that consciousness exists then what exists for consciousness to become conscious of?
>2. What is the real Self when everything which is not the real essential Self is extracted from our system of dynamics?
>By the way, the process of things which are not YOU being stripped away from the system of our incarnate dynamics is called PURGATION - and this is a spontaneous process, NOT self induced.
It's definitionally arbitrary.  In some sense purgation of egoic delusion is self-induced, a product of the personal will, an act of mystic suicide.  In some sense, the psyche is lifted, is rescued, is acted upon and transformed from beyond the personal will.
>Eventually at the end of this process there is an annihilation of self existence (quite scary at the time).
Loss of control, loss of freewill, during the psychotomimetic loose-cog state -- the mind that is too logical to be afraid ought to be most afraid, being now ready to be crucified and to crucify one's lower self, in full defeat and full glory.  Enlightenment is deadly bad news for egoic controllership, an apocalyptic destruction of the old, through full instability, to a new world which will stably stand forever.
>After a duration of non existence (the cessation of the flow of consciousness) there is a resurrection of our being. But that resurrection is back into the eternal mode of our cognitive being - the innate and essential primordial condition of cognitive being. And it IS SO. Ipso Facto. Keep in mind also the FACT that you cannot know the absolute nature of objectivity until such time that you first come to discover the absolute nature of your Self - the observer of the observed. Creation is ONE thing; but it is constructed in the mode of a duality - the observer and the observed. The phenomenon of consciousness works this way. Hence, the only way to find out what we really are is by going home to where we have our ground of being - in the cognitive aspect of the life force.

http://www.egodeath.com/...gNewAge.htm#_Toc64389634

and blah blah blah..

so...what is a claptrap?

I very much share in this loathing of drug-free spirituality.

I walked home from the metro and got caught up in a spiritual conversation with a Khrishna woman.
Innitially it was nice and we shared many beliefs(Such as intelligent design), but when I expressed
my excitement about DMT, she was quick to shun me and claim that my supposed spiritual experiences
couldn't have been genuine, simply because they were achieved with the use drugs.

This is sickeningly ignorant. I have had these blind, ignorant judgements poored out over me many times
when trying to share my DMT and Mushroom experiences with "spiritual" people. Many of them Khrishna's, or
Vaishnavi's as they like to call themselves. Some were "neo-buddhists". Some were Christians.

They live a life of judging others 10 times harsher than they judge themselves and call themselves "enlightened"
because they've been reading a certain book and/or been gobbling up each and every word of some kind of Guru.
And then they go around and judge my path to Divination, Entheogens, as false and not genuine. Basically making the ancient egoic claim: "Only my way to live is right. All the others are wrong".

I find it curious that so many Khrishna's, Buddhists & Christians claim that psychedelic drugs cannot POSSIBLY deliver a genuinely spiritual experience, when most who make those claims NEVER took a Psychedelic drug in their life. So if they don't know what experiences Psychedelic drugs may give them, how can they even compair it to what they think is "the real thing?"
So ignoble.


HOWEVER....
I should add that Psychedelics ALONE can never be expected to yield spiritual experiences. Many who take psychedelic drugs, afterwards claim to have only experienced "funny colors, visual distortion & feeling light headed"
Nothing spiritual about that, yet many people who try psychedelics report experiencing no more than that.

To have a spiritual experience on Psychedelics you'd have to hold some spiritual beliefs in the first place. Or at least be open to the possibility of a Spiritual experience. Many people do not have such beliefs, nor are they open to such beliefs. These people will not experience religious extasy, Spiritual/Psychological insights even if they would take huge doses of LSD and DMT frequently throughout their life.
It takes a certain kind of mind to find purpose, meaning & spirituality in a Psychedelic experience.

And alot of my spiritual beliefs I have inspired uppon bits & pieces of Religious scriptures. I found many wisdom
in Budhhist teachings, Meso-American teachings, Catholic teachings, Islamic teachings & Judaic teachings that I
picked up and made my own, because I found these particulair snippets to be usefull and applicable in becomming
a kinder, more aware & more peacefull human being. I left alot of doctrines behind in those very teachings too,
that I have found to be hate-spreading, hypocritical, irrational nonsense.

But those wisdoms that I HAVE picked up from these religious teachings, in turn, play a large role in how
I interpret my Psychedelic experiences. Many of these teachings have also HUGELY helped me deal with
Psychedelic experiences that were difficult, sinister & chaotic. These spiritual perspectives have helped me
through the most hellish DMT experiences & the most frightening moments during Mushroom & LSD experiences.

So the knife cuts both ways.

I recently watched a video where the Dalai Lama was asked what he thought about people using psychedelics to achieve spiritual experiences. His comment was simply that you shouldnt use drugs, and dont need them, to achieve this.

I agree and disagree. The part of me that agree's says, that one who achieves the same experience internally without the use of drugs follows a much more difficult path that requires a lot more dedication and time. The outcome can be much more solidified and can potentially be more rewarding. It requires more of the person in order to get there.

The part of me that disagree's...

I really don't think I would be at the point I am now without psychedelics. I wasn't and possibly wouldnt ever had been as motivated to achieve the spiritual understanding, or point of enlightenment I now reside in, without mushrooms and DMT. DMT specifically. Could I quit using them now that I am well on my way? Yes I could but I also feel that this is MY way. Does this make me weak minded due to the fact that I am not willing to now try and achieve these psychedelic experiences without the use of drugs? Personally for myself my opinion is, Yes in a way.

I do wish to expand myself to the point I could experience full in depth meditation, full experiences from floatation tanks ect. I AM working on this. But in my mind it is more difficult and IMO I am taking the easier path. BUT... IMHO just because it is the easier path (IMO) does not make it any less substantial.

I see it like this. Even in buddhism, it is common practice to help one another. I see psychedelics as, Plants that are Helping Humans UNDERSTAND, to give us a push in the correct direction, to keep us on track. Without the help of psychedelics, humans may have wandered from the true path along time ago.

As a general statement, I tend to find people who are "for" things are often filled with many interesting perspectives and usually quite animated and energetic.. Those who I run into who tend to always being "against" things tend to be rather draining and dull..

That is not meant towards anyone here but is a loose comment based on the notion of the article..

Horses for courses, different strokes to rule the world n all that.. Having opposition and loathing towards things hardly sounds healthy.. I guess as an example I am getting at the idea of being pro-peace rather than anti-war.

Feed the right things and they flourish (imo).

Energy flows where attention goes.

I dont think one should depend on drugs for anything, especially spirituality.

That being said, i do believe responsible use of entheogens *can* assist one in spiritual development.

For me the moment one refers to these things as drugs, I realize that there is a profound split in the way that they relate to these things in relation to how I relate to these things.

It is not a linear progression. There is something else going on here, for me at least.

The idea of "relying on a drug" just doesn't fit into my worldview. It is a cognitive difference in some respects. I feel like if you asked a Huichol or Mazatec they might agree, as much as they can. Of course we come from different worlds.

+1

I'd also like to add I took psychedelics over 100 times before I every had something I'd call a "spiritual experience"

Idk if the above was a reference to my post, but if it was...

First off, i should have said entheogen in the first sentence , however drug was easier to type, since i was on my iphone; and entheogens def are drugs in many ways. But a reference to a drug does have many negative implications that i would not personally put in the same place as, say the word entheogen.

I simply meant, from my own personal experience, depending on an experience induced by a substance to help spiritually isnt, well dependable for a spiritual experience. Not to say that entheogens cant induce a spiritual experience, however ime one should not depend on this.

Its quite a difficult thought for me to express in words.

I still don't agree with you.

I see this sentiment similar to people who claim that eating food is not as spiritual or w/e as breatharians, and that we should not rely on food..we should rely on breathing prana.

It is hard for the western mind(and maybe the eastern mind?) to fathom..that maybe the idea that we do this on our own is not the be all end all of it all.

Yes, I know that you can reach all kinds of altered states and astral project "on your own"..what does that even mean though? Does a person eating a diet specifically high in choline to help them go astral qualify as doing it on your own?

These medicines are foods...

..actually I see them an planetary exo-pheremones. I don't think we are dependant on them..I think the planetary grid to some degree depends on them.

Nature puts these things out for a reason, and (IMO) the reason is not necessarily for some people to take them a few times and then abandone them to "do it themselves" and not be dependant..it does not work that way with all the other vital neurotransmitters, hormones and vitamins we get from the environment..so why would this?

The idea that you are not dependant on what the earth gives is an illusion you cannot escape.

Aren't lots of medicines used to simply to help cure a problem? If someone takes something a few times and gets the effect(s) they were looking for why not discontinue use? At least not until you feel the need (if ever) to use the medicine again?

I guess it is kind of like Watts said, "Once you get the message, hang up the phone."

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be disrespectful to anyone who uses a lot of psychedelics. I could care less if someone trips every day for 10 years or if they decide a life of sobriety is their own path. Just let me do my thing

I agree with you Jamie, this is also my view. What I meant in my post specifically as far as doing it on your own, was internally using only the mind aside from psychedelics. Cause when I use psychedelics they are assisting to further my own internal spiritual view.

I don't see entheogenic food (I like that ) as giving me spirtual experiences alone, only as a door way in a hall that I am already passing through. I use many door ways and entheogens are only a piece of the puzzle.

I haven't had many profound experiences without entheogens, but the ones I have had without were just as profound, but in a different way. Exogenous use vs endogenous use.

The spiritual path is a life long process. Yes you could hang up the phone if you were so inclined to, and some do. But there are many messages and when you think you received THE MESSAGE, if you push farther you realize it wasn't THE MESSAGE, but just a message amongst many.

"If you get the message hang up the phone"

I always felt this was kind of like saying integrate before seeking further. Not like the phone is a one use item

Just to be clear, i agree with over 90% of the first half (and only half) i read of the OP.

And jamie, i agree with most of what you are saying, from what i could understand
However, are you suggesting one should depend on entheos for a spiritual experience, or rather have a spritual experience dependent on entheos?
I believe that consuming an entheogen and expecting a spiritual experience can, at times, be counter productive. Hence why i say depending on entheogens for a spiritual experience isnt dependable. But, to refine my words, id like to add that depending on an entheogen for a spiritual experience isnt generally dependable.

That being said, entheogens are profound tools that may assist one on a spiritaul path of life of spiritual experience. Of course not guaranteed

I am not saying anyone should do anything, let alone depend on anything. I don't think that taking a psychedelic plant necessarily = spirituality either. If you don't work to integrate those energetic experiences into other aspects of your life, than you just have an experience and that's it. It might be illuminating, but it might just fade the next day, or you might just freak out.

My point(and the only one I wish to make here) is that I feel that the association with between these things and our western idea of "drugs"(I think the term drug classically refers to a dried herb) is a gross misrepresentation.

You can use these things as just drugs if you like, but that is not the only way to use them, and it is certainly not how I perceive they're role in indigenous cultures.

I see working with these plant(or animal/fungal) medicines as an intimate relationship working with the energies of this earth, for as long as I am part of this earth..not just as a medicine to fix my personal issues, but as a conduit to a deeper energetic dialogue throughout the biosphere(and cosmos) between the various beings that live here and make it what it is.

Maybe I am delusional, and maybe that does not fit into any rational or materialist western paradigm and I am fine with that. It does fit somewhat better into the paradigms of the indigenous peoples of this world who have held the space for a different realm of understanding for a long long time, and I would like to pay respect to them for doing so. Mostly because I resonate with much of those ideas.

In reference to Alan Watts and that quote(that gets quoted so often)..whatever else he was, he was also a drunk. I don't know what else to say about that but to me that has always sort of struck me as odd..that people continue to bring up Alan Watts and those words he said, when he was a drunk the whole time. He did not walk his talk. I don't wish to judge him, but I don't necessarily value his ideas personally.

There are so many valid spiritual paths, that I find it hard to believe anyone can possible discern what is the right path. You could also say that many people are dependant on meditation, yoga, channelers etc as they are on "drugs". In the end, we are all dependant..and we need to get over the idea that we are individuals in a larger eco-spherical sense of the term. We cant survive without eating the earth, breathing her air, drinking her water, and absorbing light from the sun. We are utterly dependant on all of these things for our consciousness to even exist in this form. Our egos fool us into thinking we are separate, and so we strive to build them up more and more.

I think that the west is afraid to let go and acknowledge that we cant do much of anything on our own. We are afraid to be dependant, and it is a great weakness. We think we are superior, autonomous beings and we essentially cut off our extended arms and legs in the process. It could be what brings about our end.

I would also like to say, that I feel more and more that the idea that was have to do this ourselves, or that working with energies the earth provides to get there ets is somehow a weaker path, or a lesser short cuts etc, is a New Age idea. It is not something I would imagine immerging within a culture that is entirely symbiotic with the natural world around them. It is a new age idea that comes out of an industrial culture, sick and deluded.

nope.
cures are a relatively rare thing. most medicines are treatments.

I see what you are saying, and I kinda agree. I think the only difference is semantics.

Let's take anti-biotics that are used to treat things like syphilis, bacterial meningitis,
or tuberculosis. If a treatment is able to stop all symptoms couldn't that be considered a cure?

Also, "lots" is a subjective term so even if the majority of medicines used are treatments rather than cures there are still many medicines that are in fact cures - even if they are relatively rare.