Kosmos a Theory of Psychedelic Experience
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Kosmos A Theory of Psychedelic Experience Peter Webster ...Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons, Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. From Kosmos, by Walt Whitman Cover image: “Basket Tray with Man in the Maze” Akimel O'odham (Pima) circa 1900 ©National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (catalog number 11/415 ) Photo by NMAI Photo Services Kosmos © 2018 Chantal Webster Introductory Remarks I began writing this book more than thirty years ago when, due to circumstances not worth mentioning here, I retired from “active service”. The so-called drug war was ramping up mightily and it seemed that the 1960s were finally about to be completely demonized and the significance of the period dismissed or even forgotten, especially any remembrance of how important and catalytic of personal and social change certain “drugs” had been. My intentions for the essay were therefore to tell a little of my history in connection with what I had learned about the era I grew up in, how I—and the era—had been affected by psychedelics, and also to present a “Theory of Psychedelic Experience” that would provide a framework for understanding what these substances do and how they do it. After some preliminary study and the writing of two or three chapters, I laid aside my book project for awhile and began writing drug policy reviews and articles for a few publications such as the International Journal of Drug Policy.1 It still seemed in those days that with the right persuasion our western governments might be coaxed into backing off from the destructive policies of Drug Prohibition honorably, if slowly, incrementally. How naïve. But at least the effort sharpened my writing skills a little—of benefit for my primary project. Further work occurred sporadically as I researched the scientific and popular literature for material I would need to promote my core ideas about psychedelic drugs. During this period and as part of my study I also created one of the first online collections of the classic psychedelic literature, The Psychedelic Library, still available today. The project helped greatly to refresh my memories of the '60s, and re-create for me the feeling of optimism that the classic writing and research had produced back then. Additional periods of “doing other things” brought me—too rapidly!—to the present when I finally realized that if I didn't finish this project soon I might never do so. The recent popularity of the KINDLE e-book readers and format for self-publishing was the key to some dedicated finishing-up that led to the computer file you see now on your “device”. I had previously published a “physical” book with a friend2 but was a bit disappointed that the result, although a handsome volume indeed, nevertheless required a list price that could only discourage many from discovering what we had to say. Being able to make the present essay available at a very affordable price was just the prod I needed, even if that meant foregoing the prestige of such a respected publisher as we had previously. The reader will surely notice that much of the text of the first chapters was written quite some time ago. But rather than completely rewriting my earlier work according to new studies I had located, I decided to leave “as-is” the earlier chapters—with the addition of a paragraph and/or a footnote here and 1 International Journal of Drug Policy Some of these articles, and a few others are available at Research Gate. 2 Gosso & Webster, The Dream on the Rock: Visions of Prehistory. State University of New York Press, 2014 there to bring the topics up to date. I think this choice will better show the progression of my thoughts from early days until the most recent. It will be for the last chapters to tie everything together, correct and re-formulate some aspects of the earlier writing, and draw final conclusions. 1. The Drug-Takers A drug is a substance that, when injected into a rat, produces a paper. — Anonymous We humans are inveterate drug-takers. In the modern age, drug-based remedies for every medical condition under the sun seems the norm, with some of the most powerful and rich industries on the planet competing to provide us with a pill for our every complaint whether life-threatening or trivial. Humankind's age-old trust and fascination with substances that can cure or effect other significant bodily changes is surely an important factor in our modern predilection for them. Whether this enterprise has become somewhat counter-productive for public health is a matter to be carefully considered: scandals concerning drugs that don’t cure what they are supposed to cure, or those with side-effects that might make one prefer the disease, absurdly inflated prices for “new” drugs that aren’t even as effective as those out-of-patent ones they are supposed to upstage... The list of abuses is long and surely supports an argument that the human necessity for health should provide profit solely for those requiring its restoration and maintenance, and all costs of manufacture, distribution, administration, and research of the necessary products be supplied by progressive taxation and the entire process monitored by non-profit, non-partisan professional organizations.3 But this essay is only marginally concerned with the pharmaceutical industry and modern curative medicine. I am more concerned here to tell the story of some other kinds of drug: those plants and preparations that have been used since time immemorial to alter the way in which we perceive. True, these substances were routinely used over many millennia in a similarly curative way as our modern drug collection, (albeit under a radically different guiding paradigm), and they can also be used in our modern age as important items of the pharmacopoeia. Yet their most important potential role for continued human evolution has only hesitantly become obvious. In fact, it is the same role that they have been playing all along since the naissance of psychologically modern humans about seventy thousand years ago, a role that for the most part has been ignored, even forbidden by “Western Civilization” for hundreds of years. The goals of this newly-realized partnership are two: the first being a personal transformation for the individual, a coming-of-age experience as practised widely among tribal societies. Traditionally done as ritual practice for the young, a coming-of-age for we moderns need not necessarily take place during one’s early years, but could also be a mid-life event. Aldous Huxley, Cary Grant and many others, serve as examples of those who have awakened 3 Angell, Marcia: “The Truth About the Drug Companies,” The New York Review of Books, July 15, 2004 • Volume 51, Number 12.: “The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion) [in 2002]. Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.” to a fuller life through such initiation. Then secondly, the partnership could provide a way to assist us to ameliorate the so-called human condition, to catalyse a collective transformation of the being that evolutionary necessity has produced. No longer need we direct our energies primarily for competitive survival and reproduction as all species have been required to do, using our special individual talents and intellect for that end and only to the degree required by the situation, emergency or other pressing demand presenting the occasional opportunity to improvise. Now, we have a chance, perhaps just a slim one, to collectively overcome the deleterious side-effects of our evolutionary baggage. I believe that the psychedelics provide a chance, perhaps only a slender one, for Homo faber, the cunning, ruthless, foolhardy, pleasure-greedy tool-maker, to merge into that other creature whose presence we have so rashly presumed, Homo sapiens, the wise, the understanding, the compassionate, in whose fourfold vision art, politics, science, and religion are one. Surely we must seize that chance.4 History is replete with examples of individuals who have overcome such instinctive tendencies, but that same history shows just how governed we are collectively. In the following chapters I will attempt to organize all that I have learned, experienced, surmised, and even guessed about humankind's long association with “psychedelic drugs”, a term I will use more carefully than has become standard. Meaning literally “mind-manifesting”, an imperfect and incomplete description certainly, the term nevertheless seems preferable to any of the “scientific” labels that have been suggested over the years, such as the inappropriate “hallucinogen” and deplorable “psychotomimetic”. A term more recently popular with many insiders is “entheogen”, yet I think this implies a rather one-sided evaluation of what the substances seem to do.5 For present purposes then, a “psychedelic drug” will indicate a chemical substance or whole plant, or preparation made from a plant or plants, that seems to have no discernible specific and repeatable effect on each and every individual who takes the substance, yet which—through a neurological mechanism yet to be described—undeniably and often powerfully affects perception, thinking, self-image, philosophical and metaphysical conceptions and convictions..