"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness."
-- The Varieties of Religious Experience
"The White Man goes into church and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tipi and talks with Jesus."
Here's one example of what drug use might tell us about consciousness. About four years ago, I experienced a peyote "trip" in Arizona, in which I clearly saw (in my mind's eye, Horatio) a bright-neon-green slide show of Mesoamerican imagery. Mesoamerican imagery. Now, I grew up in Virginia and have had no particular experiences with such cultures, though I am fascinated by the pre-Columbian world. Imagine: such imagery, provided by a cactus in "Indian country"??? This incident clearly gives us hints about the possible existence of an overarching consciousness containing archetypes... Combine this with the increasingly known fact that plants can communicate in ways that, until a few years ago, we never dreamed of (see the 2023 documentary "The Secret Life of Plants" on Curiosity Stream) and the conceptual suggestions are tantalizing!
Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use drugs that speed up and sharpen mental processes.
Freud's real discovery was that drugs like cocaine could make psychiatry UNNECESSARY for the vast majority of people. The medical establishment hated the idea -- so they judged the drug based on its worst possible use!
As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.
The DEA is still saying that psilocybin has no medical uses and is addictive. They should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for using such lies to keep people from using the gifts of Mother Nature.
If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
Katie MacBride's one-sided attack on MAPS reminds me of why I got into an argument with Vincent Rado. Yes, psychedelic hype can go too far, but let's solve the huge problem first by ending the drug war!!!
Drug prohibition is a caustic lye that destroys every democratic freedom that it comes in contact with.
Why does no one talk about empathogens for preventing atrocities? Because they'd rather hate drugs than use them for the benefit of humanity. They don't want to solve problems, they prefer hatred.
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