Spiritual Journal, 2/4/02
Feb. 8th, 2002 03:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsyche7:04 a.m.
Every once in a while, my brain reminds me that there are people who consider entheogenic use as cheating, its fruit undeserved. I want to (need to?) respond to this.
You have two people. Person A utilizes traditional methods to engender the ecstatic state. This person may use such time-tested methods as chanting, drumming, dancing, swaying, fasting, or sleep deprivation. (Of course, incidentally, traditional cultures often used entheogenic substances, but I suppose that is neither here nor there....)
Person B ingests a substance that is psychoactive.
Work involved is often brought up by entheogen-use opponents. They'd point to Person A and say, "At least this person did something to bring about this physiological change in perspective. The other person just swallowed something." Person A, also, produces the bases of his/her ecstatic state endogenously; Person B had to rely on something outside the body. It's often assumed that being reliant on an outside substance is bad and should be avoided.
In some way, this whole scenario seems to boil down to the deserving and the undeserving; the person who did the most work and was the more self-reliant is the deserving one. He/she worked hard for that ecstasy; the resultant mindset is his/her reward.
But I am reminded of something in the Bible: the rain falls on both the just and the unjust. Person B may not have put in as much grunt work, but that does not mean that he/she should be denied a similar experience to Person A.
This is eerily reminiscent of the old argument of salvation through works and salvation through faith. Our Puritan morality makes it so that we find inherent goodness in work; and we detest those who "keep their hands idle." But faith is the cornerstone of belief, and (good) works are not enough for salvation.
I'm just saying. The just and the unjust are equally treated by the universe: the sun shines on them both. Those who work for their ecstasy are not necessarily more deserving than those who use "shortcuts" or somatic triggers; they are just perceived that way by us--we, the bystanders, whose powers and levels of perception are skewed, idiosyncratic, and necessarily limited.
LSD, as well as all of the other entheogens, is no respecter of persons. The gods made manifest will do so in anyone who has consumed. The god within will blossom in both the sinner and the saint. And, in my opinion, such egalitarianism can only be positive. Equal access to and opportunity for the deeply ecstatic state is a boon for the whole of mankind. (Whether or not everyone takes part in this opportunity does not diminish the significance of the presentation and availability of that opportunity.)
Every once in a while, my brain reminds me that there are people who consider entheogenic use as cheating, its fruit undeserved. I want to (need to?) respond to this.
You have two people. Person A utilizes traditional methods to engender the ecstatic state. This person may use such time-tested methods as chanting, drumming, dancing, swaying, fasting, or sleep deprivation. (Of course, incidentally, traditional cultures often used entheogenic substances, but I suppose that is neither here nor there....)
Person B ingests a substance that is psychoactive.
Work involved is often brought up by entheogen-use opponents. They'd point to Person A and say, "At least this person did something to bring about this physiological change in perspective. The other person just swallowed something." Person A, also, produces the bases of his/her ecstatic state endogenously; Person B had to rely on something outside the body. It's often assumed that being reliant on an outside substance is bad and should be avoided.
In some way, this whole scenario seems to boil down to the deserving and the undeserving; the person who did the most work and was the more self-reliant is the deserving one. He/she worked hard for that ecstasy; the resultant mindset is his/her reward.
But I am reminded of something in the Bible: the rain falls on both the just and the unjust. Person B may not have put in as much grunt work, but that does not mean that he/she should be denied a similar experience to Person A.
This is eerily reminiscent of the old argument of salvation through works and salvation through faith. Our Puritan morality makes it so that we find inherent goodness in work; and we detest those who "keep their hands idle." But faith is the cornerstone of belief, and (good) works are not enough for salvation.
I'm just saying. The just and the unjust are equally treated by the universe: the sun shines on them both. Those who work for their ecstasy are not necessarily more deserving than those who use "shortcuts" or somatic triggers; they are just perceived that way by us--we, the bystanders, whose powers and levels of perception are skewed, idiosyncratic, and necessarily limited.
LSD, as well as all of the other entheogens, is no respecter of persons. The gods made manifest will do so in anyone who has consumed. The god within will blossom in both the sinner and the saint. And, in my opinion, such egalitarianism can only be positive. Equal access to and opportunity for the deeply ecstatic state is a boon for the whole of mankind. (Whether or not everyone takes part in this opportunity does not diminish the significance of the presentation and availability of that opportunity.)
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Comment, Part Two
Date: 2002-02-10 06:47 pm (UTC)The other thing that I like about the idea of enlightenment is that its definition does not limit the gaining of spiritual insight to periods when one is in "a state of being beyond reason or self-control". Nor does it assume that spiritual insight necessarily includes "rapturous delight". (I've had spiritual insights and been horrified and saddened by them.)
Now that I've made my point about the ecstasy versus enlightenment, I'm going to address whether I think drug use is "cheating" in gaining each.
I do not believe that drug use is an invalid ecstatic practice. As you know, I have used drugs, and using the formal definition of ecstasy, I can say that yes, I have been beyond reason, in some ways beyond self-control, and I have certainly experienced rapturous delight.
I think saying that drug use is "cheating" as a form of spiritual insight or that one simply cannot gain spiritual insight from drug use would be overly harsh. Let us look at your idea of people pursuing "activities and actions...meant to lift them out of their everyday in order to commune with the divine". You call these practices ecstatic; let's use the first definition of ecstasy, "the state of being beyond reason". Kierkegaard has examined the idea of the divine being beyond reason before: he defines faith as being beyond reason. He theorizes that one cannot determine God's existence or God's will through reason; we cannot know these for fact. Therefore we must have faith - beyond reason. (I believe this is what rudel meant when s/he said that faith is "realizing that belief is not enough and doesn't work".)
So yes, I would have to say that drug use, in creating a state of being beyond reason, can aid in spiritual insight.
What I object to is not the idea of using drugs as a means of enlightenment - what I do object to is the idea of drugs being one's only tool for enlightenment. Your dichotomy, I think, is flawed. You say:
You have two people. Person A utilizes traditional methods to engender the ecstatic state. This person may use such time-tested methods as chanting, drumming, dancing, swaying, fasting, or sleep deprivation. (Of course, incidentally, traditional cultures often used entheogenic substances, but I suppose that is neither here nor there....)
Person B ingests a substance that is psychoactive.
Some traditional cultures, as you mentioned, did use entheogenic substances. But they didn't just do that; they also chanted, fasted, went on pilgrimages, and so on. In all my studies of mystics and so on, I'm afraid I'd argue that they did put a lot of "work" into.
This brings me to the following assertion:
In some way, this whole scenario seems to boil down to the deserving and the undeserving; the person who did the most work and was the more self-reliant is the deserving one. He/she worked hard for that ecstasy; the resultant mindset is his/her reward.