Magic Mushroom Cloud

I want to explain some of the more esoteric ideas from the last post. The Mayans talked about 2012 as being the end, which may actually be the beginning of something extraordinary. Every religion has its eschatology. We are possibly on the edge of a new consciousness. Check out the discussion boards of Daniel Pinchbeck’s Breakingopenthehead.com. Some of the best discussions on the topic. Strangely troubling and exhilarating times we’re living in. Something is happening here, and we don’t know what it is. Yet another Bob Dylan reference. UFOs, ghosts, the afterlife, string theory, we use only a small percentage of our brains. Obviously there is more to life than what we see.

I don’t entirely agree with the Mayan cosmology hypothesis. Most religions are metaphorical and allegorical and a compilation of stories from other religions. Are we supposed to believe that the Mayans had the true window in? I may end up eating these words but that’s how I feel on September 1, 2004. I hope we do reach a collective expanded consciousness and we arrive at it through something other than a cataclysm. The human race has hardly earned the right to evolve, but then we may just have to in order to save ourselves.

The books I’ve read on the subject take too many leaps. I’m thinking about a book by Jose Arguelles, which has some of the same problems as Zecharia Sitchin--king of the ancient astronauts theory, if you don’t know him. They’re both on to something, there’s a lot more going on than we’ve been told, but they have not reached the final answer. They pick and choose the passages which fit their theories. The Old Testament is a mixture of stories from other cultures--Persian, pagan, etc. Sitchin wants us to believe that his analysis of the Old Testament is truth. I don’t want to get into it too much but he theorizes that the Gods of the Old Testament were flesh and blood ET’s who created us using genetic manipulation. It’s hard to read that last sentence without laughing. A closed-mind is a closed-mind, whether it’s about gay marriages or far-out cosmology. Anything that questions dominant thought is a positive if it’s done with enough intelligence and sobriety. Then again, there’s nothing less sober than RA Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger which is incredibly head-blowing. Disappointingly, he discounts some of it in Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth.

I have not done many psychedelics myself. Dropped acid a couple of times. Taken mushrooms a couple more. No profound visionary experiences. When I do it I want to do it right. Something like Aldous Huxley: laying out the music to be listened to beforehand, really studying the effects. I am not sure I am ready yet. For the moment, I will try to travel inside myself via writing. I’ll read up on other people’s experiences, like Pinchbeck. It’s not the same, I agree, but I’ve found that reading can be a visionary experience. I read a book about channeling which felt like a form of intense meditation. All of a sudden, a voice said to me, "I chose to be you." I am not kidding. This was not wish fulfillment.

I used to feel such sentiments to be silly. I was an aspiring intellectual, which meant I was above such ideas. I cultivated cynicism, arrogance. At the same time, I loved renegade writers. Something of a contradiction. I actually aspired to be a "New Yorker" writer, which is really very tame--sophisticated, very adult, but doesn’t stray from the party line. New Agers give some ideas a bad name. Kenny G and John Coltrane play the same instrument but that doesn’t make the saxophone worthless. If I am going to be a challenging writer, I can’t write off far out issues--especially issues which have such important implications.