I suppose one thing I could have made clearer is that the situation I am concerned about impacts me no less than anyone else. The psychedelic culture of the 1960’s played a huge role in promulgating Eastern traditions in the West, which I have benefited from a lot, in terms of literature available to me, and communities both online and in person. There’s a lot out there to access. But for whatever reason, in spite of Latin America being far more accessible to us geographically, linguistically, and culturally here in North America than Asia is, there just hasn’t been much attention there. That is starting to change with ayahuasca tourism, but even now, there do not seem to be many voices who learned the way psychedelic technology is used in these cultures and returned to teach us, the way this happened with Eastern traditions, especially though not exclusively Buddhism. There is a wealth of culture that we know with 100% certainty has been using psychedelic technology from time immemorial, and we went: you know what? Let’s go to India, or Thailand, or Japan, or Dharamsala, or write endless speculations about Vedic Soma or the Eleusinian Mysteries. Meanwhile, people have been visiting folk like Maria Sabina, or countless ayahuasca shamans throughout a whole range of Amazonian countries, and bring back little more than travelogues. It just boggles my mind, and when I started this thread, I was hoping to hear some names I had not heard before, because there’s so little out there seemingly. Ron Wheelock and Hamilton Souther are the only folk from our culture whom I have heard of who actually apprenticed themselves to it, and Ron I don’t think has documented or teaches what he knows, and Hamilton has only written a couple small books, and does not teach (though they both work). Carlos Castaneda, of course, just straight up lied, it is now well known.

..it was almost another Friday night rumble at the Forum, as they didn't see the sign to the Arena pointed the other way...

There is a lot that could be deconstructed in this thread..but I'm not going to get into that much..


OneisEros wrote:


In my experience, the majority of cultures practice secrecy with regards to 'psychedelic' and other knowledge...the Americas is unusual in its open-ness...and even then plenty was secret...incl India
Particularly if we're talking indigenous cultures, people who take the time to become a part of the culture, are not inclined to write books on it...that's more for anthropologists and scientists who visit briefly but are really quite detached from what they are writing around..or rather who they are writing about..

I know people who've truly studied in South America or Mexico, spent years living with families there, and have no inclination to mention it in writing, or indeed to many people ...And why should they? And also why would they?

In most of culture and history this kind of knowledge has been not for books ..it's oral tradition
But knowledge is not wisdom..

Personally, I've received wisdom from indigenous elders, those initiated into the Vedas or Tibetan Buddhism, and also the random guy in the bar, or the old woman feeding pigeons in the park...
Wisdom is everywhere, in little pieces, and doesn't have to be associated with any particular tradition..

But the topic here is 'psychedelic' wisdom..
How is someone who knows mushroom curanderoism in Mexico or ayahuasca in Peru necessarily going to have any helpful wisdom on psychedelic plants in other parts of the world..most of this shamanic navigation and entity laden worlds is seen as the lower dimensions by some traditions..

True wisdom (that can be essential to psychedelic navigation) is beyond psychedelics themselves...someone may not need to have ingested a psychedelic to have access to that kind of wisdom..

I would tend to think that truly 'psychedelic' is beyond simply this or that plant tradition, or meditation tradition..

Some people have a karma of being public talkers, spokespeople...but not most with wisdom..
I think what you're calling out for you have to find yourself, not in a book..
Buddha was yes trained in Samkhya, Vedas and other traditions, but he found his own way...
I think the truly wise I've met would also say, find your own way...reality is a book

and Gratitude is an important thing too...that anyone replied to your posts at all, even if it wasn't the answers you wanted..
OneisEros, you have asked good questions and identified a 'gap' in written information...I just don't know that the answers you seek will ever be in text...

I don't really know much about enlightenment, what it is or who is or isn't enlightened. There have been plenty of arguments over the years on this forum about it. Much like the concept of god or consciousness, it appears to me to be very subjective as to what people feel enlightenment is.

As far as the wisdom and learning an instrument analogy goes, i used to have a girlfriend some time ago who was well into playing irish music on her violin. She'd been to all sorts of workshops where you meet, learn from and play with very good players. One time a mate of mine came down country to visit us and he bought his violin that he had taught himself to play. When he started playing in front of us, he came out with some weird wonky assed playing. It was all over the place and very angular and far from perfect. It was basically him personified in the music that he was playing. It was wonderful.

And i think that the psychedelic experience where one gains wisdom is similar. You trawl the depths of yourself and get to know yourself. It's a personal thing and once you take too much the words of others on board, it can dilute this due the very suggestible state that one is in when tripping.
But again, this is probably a very simplified ideal and if i was to give a good source of psychedelic wisdom for myself, it would be Daevid Allen.

hug454 wrote:

..'you never blow your trip forever..'

I think this answer gives some good explanations for the situation. As to why people would share this sort of thing - I don’t see anything necessary about having the information leading to disseminating it, which partially accounts for this gap. But, I’m not sure that that on its own would explain the amount of attention paid elsewhere other than these traditions. One reason I could offer for why this sort of thing should, at this point in time, be disseminated in our culture is just this: their use is coming into the mainstream, and I distrust a culture newly introduced to these things’ ability to use this technology properly. Not that it would be harmful per se - it just strikes me that until that is engaged more directly, the current models will result in reductionist perspectives on the causes and principles of psychedelic (qua psychedelic, per se) healing. I have seen people speak of “shamanism” when they mean “mysticism”, and when corrected, denounce it as quack faith healing, because it is strongly based in magic, which is deeply uncomfortable for folk who want to reduce this sort of thing to something more palatable like an assistant to mindfulness, meditation, psychotherapy, or philosophy - something that has arguably already been done to something like Buddhism.

Hope I’m not stepping on any toes by saying it, but I think the underlying concern I am trying to express here is basically with the appropriative arrogance of this culture, which is so strongly based in: individualism, materialism (metaphysical and aspirational), and colonialism.

-edit- I want to be very clear - I am not pointing at you, any of you. But I might, while being grateful for his efforts, be wondering why Richard Alpert went to India, rather than Peru, as an example. We, the less formative folk in the community compared to the movers and shakers of our history, are working with what we were given by these individuals, whom we owe everything we are to. While I appreciate what this counter-culture is, I am also concerned here. My concern is with the Zeitgeist, not you guys. For some reason, just about every conceivable resource besides the cultures that openly have traditions around these things were looked at, while a far smaller ratio was accorded to these. Part of that can be explained by these cultures not being proselytizers, but I’m not sure I’m totally satisfied with that explanation.

I don't know if there is such a thing as psychedelic wisdom: wisdom that specifically applies to psychedelic experience and not just life or epiphenomena of life itself.

I often come to this place, the DMT nexus, for advice on psychedelics. Especially because different people sometimes have conflicting opinions on psychedelic substances, and i find it usefull to learn about these different points of view before ingesting something.

Another source that i find usefull is psychonautwiki, because it gives an indication of strength and duration of almost any psychedelic that i would ever consider taking, and also compares the effects of different novel or not well known psychedelics to those of well known psychedelics.

When it comes to wisdom on other psychedelically relevant issues though, like integrating experiences, dealing with anxiety, being receptive and open to the experience, and so on, i don't think the written word is half as usefull as personal experience.

Like with so many things, it realy is a matter of learning while doing. You have to find your own way of doing them, something that works for you personally, and accept that sometimes you will fall flat on your face.

I have had my share of bad experiences, i have often failed to properly integrate an experience as well, or wasted precious moments on trivial bullshit. And each of those failures have been usefull to me and tought me a lot, both about myself as well as about how to use psychedelics wisely.

Interesting. I only just now noticed you posted a hyperlink. It sounds somewhat reminiscent of certain strains in some Zen traditions.

You're good, I actually just added the link after I posted the other thread. I didn't want to hijack your thread and didn't have the full write up ready for the other thread.

OneIsEros wrote:

..i think to an extent most surviving world cultures who may have knowledge of psychedelic techniques have shared their basic wisdom, the spiritual wisdom which they would believe crucial in any such state, and around which their view of the world, cosmos and dimensions are based..it may also be a matter of how many people are listening..? But also certainly much of what we are exposed to in literature is the choice of the authors, often subservient to the institution that funds them, or their own narrative..
ultimately many traditions share similarities as much as regional differences...
One of the main reasons given for restricted information is that these tools are potentially dangerous, and require extensive training, or could be misused by those not filtered or who haven't attained wisdom, such as for the manipulation of others..And this doesn't simply apply to plants...one tribe's magic is another's siddhis..Their wisdom is one of spoken l earning...But also, another reason things are kept from text based learning was given by Socrates in his arguments against the introduction of books for learning..From a point of view of understanding retention of information, this is still relevant..

I completely take your point on the mainstreaming of psychedelics in culture, and I think that is a Thread topic into itself...hence I wouldn't want to say much on that here...except that, in terms of counter-culture, there is a gradient between 'learning from' and 'appropriation', the latter of which can lead to dilution of wisdom...and in terms of the current medical/psychiatric system/framework - I do not think it has sufficient experience, guidance or wisdom to be administering psychedelics yet, which there is clamouring to do

..and also tend to agree with dragonrider's assesment that the trials of personal experience are required...and hug454's analogy of self inquiry..studying something, understanding it or knowing it are different

This, I think, is the other half of the fact that these cultures are not proselytizers.

Ram Dass went to India, not Latin America. Terence McKenna, though he went to Latin America, received some posthumous criticism from his ex-wife, Kathleen Harrison, because he did not agree with what the people he met there told him: that these things are, fundamentally, medicines. He was not really interested in that. He was more interested in what mushrooms had to tell him, rather than what the cultures who had a history with these things had to tell him. He constantly misrepresented them (he claimed shamanism is a role fit for people with schizophrenia…), and I am not impressed with his “revelations”. Although, I do love the Stoned Ape theory as a creation myth, and acknowledge a huge cultural debt to him and his brother. But he didn’t bring back what he was taught by them, he just wasn’t interested.

One of the things I found interesting about Hamilton Souther’s short books is, he mentioned that he was unsure whether ayahuasca could help people with psychological conditions, like depression, when ayahuasca tourism began to pick up and people from around the globe began to visit he and his teachers. It was a revelation to him when he realized it did - because in the course of his training, within the cultural framework he was learning in, they were doing physical, magical healing. Tim Leary, by contrast, died a staunch materialist, who viewed these things fundamentally as “in your head”. Tim Leary’s first trip was with Maria Sabina. That model of use does not appear to have been impactful. Like Terence, he completely ignored that model, and invented a new model: psychedelia as “philosophers-getting-stoned”. McKenna, by the way, stated he did not believe psychedelics could induce telepathy. As far out as that guy would get, he was basically a materialist. Is it any surprise they didn’t find shamanism interesting? Sure, they used the word a lot, because indigenous sensationalism is a thing. But beyond that? Not much.

I think another aspect to look at in regards to why spiritual practices from the east were studied and brought to the west more so than South American cultures is the nature and history of colonialism and eurocentricity. Historically, based on differences of context, colonialism was very different in the east than South America, with South America and South Americans being looked at with more overall disdain by European conquerors. The narratives generated from this impact the overall attitudes and considerations people have over time. I feel like I come across undercurrents of understanding South Americans as "savages" whereas the East is seen as "enlightened" in their respective philosophies. Eastern ideologies almost being more palpable than South American ones for people in the west. To extend this idea further, we could also ask why such wisdom is never looked for in Africa. The reasons seem to also be related to colonialism and the attitudes derived from it.

One love

Bingo.

This is exactly what i think as well.

And then there was also the process of decolonization, that has left a deep mark on western civilization as it is today. European colonial powers initially resisted this process, and tried to keep those nations under their controll. But after WW2, when europeans, americans and canadians experienced the horrors of war and oppression for themselves, there was no longer a great support within the western populations for these colonial wars. So most europeans realised that we, the west, did not have the moral high ground in this process. But in india, the largest european colony, the independance movement lead by gandhi hád the moral high ground. In this conflict, they where the ones who where morally superiour, and we where now the bad guys.
Especially india was significant, because their revolution had been peacefull and also because the UK was and still is a cultural superpower. If the netherlands would have been that global superpower, maybe indonesia would have been that place that we in the west could have projected our fantasies of enlightenment on and the people in the west would not have known or cared about the maharashi or hare krishna. And if france would have been that superpower, it might have been vietnam.

That ugly colonial history is ofcourse still haunting european nations today, just like racial segregation is still haunting america.
I believe it is a major source of that feeling of alienation that many people in the west have towards their own culture and modernity.

Now that the indian economy is booming and will possibly overtake the chinese and american economy within the next few decades, it is becoming more and more obvious that indians are at least as materialistic, decadent and superficial as we are. But both the people in india as we in the west, do not want to know about this.
That idea that we in the west are the greedy, decadent materialists and all of those indians are all super spiritual and enlightened is too dear to many people to give up.

I might add one other piece of speculation, which may at first strike you as peculiar, but which I believe makes sense in the context of history.

God is dead. Jesus, in particular. Yes, I know, sounds strange, given how overwhelmingly Christian the colonization efforts were and, indeed, are (they never stopped). But it’s a funny fact - for those in the know, for some number of centuries now, the church has not been overwhelmingly popular among the intellectual elites. The medieval period - what does the word “medieval” summon in your mind? “Dark” ages, barbarism and backwardness. The reformation’s “puritanism”, no less. It is “enlightenment” that is prized - in contrast to the “dark” of the period when it was elite to be religious. Now, no longer.

Though governments have been happy to use Christianity for their colonial purposes, and have often tricked the colonists themselves into believing their own narrative - it was less sincere than might be expected. Impolite to voice out loud, to be sure, but - for the intellectual elites (who in large part steered the colonial enterprises), religion was mostly a weapon to colonise with. The founding fathers of America, almost to a man, were not Christians. They were almost entirely deists at best, and nearly all the rest, atheists, which of course was very much on par with the intellectual scene at the time. Nietzsche did not kill God, he simply announced that God had been a corpse for some time already.

The “savagery”, I suspect, extends not only to the indigenous cultures themselves, which are simultaneously romanticized and neglected, but also to the Christian religion they inherited from the legacy of colonialism. Hinduism and Buddhism are sexier. This might be a bit of a shock to folk who take on anti-colonialist narratives, but even though Christianity was a colonialist tool, some forms of anti-Christian sentiment can themselves be colonialist. Ask yourself: how allergic do you feel to devoutly Christian indigenous peoples? Doesn’t some part of you wish they would shake off that adventitious stain and get closer to their sexier roots? There. That’s what I mean. I suspect you know exactly what I mean.

Amen

And I think Hegel said God is dead first. Nietzsche just got famous for it.



One love

Oh, i didn't know hegel did the postmortem. Rigor mortis must have already set in then, by the time nietzsche was born.

For clarity, I think his words were "death of God" and it was a part of his dialectic and a theological observation and argument.

One love

Voidmatrix wrote:

..it's a good question, and one that can be extended to South America and the Carribbean, where there are a lot of potential psychedelic wisdoms in african descendants has been largely ignored even recently..in some places such as Haiti and the Carribbean the only preservation of 'indigenous' knowledge and genes is in the descendants of escaped slaves who inter-married with the indigenous tribes, who faced genocidal threat from colonial forces..

A few pioneers have and do look at African wisdom in this area (like the late Kilindi Iyi who dropped in here occasionally, RIP) , but again much falls under the kind of semi secrecy I described earlier..

But secrecy is not an absolute sense here, it's more that such traditions invite the genuine to learn and become initiated...There's been so much false and negative stereotyping of particularly african-carribean 'magic' in mainstream Anglo/US perception has kept such things further shrouded from modern knowledge
If the knowledge is still alive in living tradition it can be accessed by those who take or have the time to seek it out, travel, spend time gaining trust etc

The bigger tragedy here is the gradual diminishing and loss of wisdom traditions, worldwide, through a number of factors..the knowledge is becoming rarer, and modern culture may need to learn its own wisdom from scratch

institutional Christianity obviously bears a huge burden...there are so many colonial factors in Asia that have lead to the diminishing of the kind of knowledge you seem to be alluding to...the political changes and wars in Vietnam, China...the movement of islamic culture into Indonesia, where previously vedic culture had also colonised 'indigenous' traditions...and the 'colonisation' of traditional ayahuasca by opportunistic 'shamans' (who aren't qualified by the standards of even 20 years ago) and tourist centres..

OneIsEros wrote:

..from a little time talking to Terence back in the day, he seemed immensely respectful of 'shamans', curanderos, and marvelled at their skills, and frequently mentioned them (a lot more than in writing or public talks) ...for him it was highly specialist, something he wouldn't have time to study.. also he was a modern culture person...and a solo 'warrior/explorer' (based on his models of use)..spending many years training to remove illnesses and bad spirits is one path, but deeper learning in many cultures was still a 'you're on your own' kind of training, with a general spiritual philosophy as a guide...

The few who take the time to actually study what i think you're talking about, OneIsEros, don't tend to write on it

but as dragonrider kind of alludes to, there's the nexus...even just that one percent of posts here that stand out from the noise...as collective human learning, there's psychedelic wisdom in here...though that's getting endangered too

I'll admit my bias here in being mixed ehtnicity, and some of that being of African descent. The attitudes around the continent as a whole has a way of making one feel as though societies around the world care not for what has been there. It's hard to find decent literature in my opinion on the continent as a whole, much less spiritual traditions and wisdom traditions.



It kind of seems that traditions from these sources are held in the least esteem overall, not that it is a competition in anyway, but that lends itself to curtailing of accessibility of sound information.


This idea is one of the reasons why I have the kind of "wisdom from within" or "individually discovered wisdom." If one is not born into a particular style of thinking (culture) then they will have to augment how they think to fit that paradigm. But that can be risky (as it could be the case for someone born into such a thought paradigm) as we are putting our trust into something "unknown;" it's a gamble (and if born into it, it's hard to break the mold of conditioning we are born into). So for many, trying to take in other wisdom traditions can be very difficult. Many never have the proper kinds of introductions or first glimpses of knowledge into an ideology in a way that makes it broadly appealing. Things tend to get watered down and bastardized. Unfortunately, that seems to almost be necessary if it's to be broadly appealing.

The wisdom we speak of also had to be figured out initially somewhere; it had to start somewhere, so someone (or several disparate sources) had to figure things out, so why can't an individual do the same?

I'm also a proponent for change being constant, and that in some way this may apply to what we call wisdom over time. Perhaps we need new interpretation, perhaps we need some new wisdom.



People seem to gravitate towards what's most appealing, so Reddit drowns us out



I share similar views. I've listened to a fair amount of McKenna and always got the sense that he had immense respect for curanderos and ayahuasceros.

One love

Voidmatrix
as for Reddit, well...they sometimes refer to here if they want to offer evidence


..i think it's partly fear...something Terence pointed out once was the western christian raised modern world is a lot more comfortable with 'shamanic trance' than 'possession trance' (which is wrongly assumed usually negative in the west) ..but the latter can be said to be deeper in some ways..also look at works like 'Heart of Darkness' etc..

that said, when you're standing in front of a 7ft tall Masai warrior holding a spear, you want be asking questions in earnest and gain some trust..

anyhow, things are still alive and well for things like Santeria in the US, and it's not just so called black people in there..

PS in India, a similar kind of fear often exists in northern Indians towards Tamil culture..