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Home , Cannabis rights, Dominator culture, Psychonautics

Ginger Santiago Title: Psychonautic Science and Plant Technologies: Cultural Hegemony, , and

Abstract:

The Westerized cultural of materialism, and its narrrow programming through governmental controls, mass media, scientific materialsim, and other closed-system feeback loops through , is deterimental to humans and environment. Heresy within a becomes a moral imperative when faced with a crisis of this magnitude. The cultural hegemony is a progam and it can be transcended through the use psychonautic science using psychoactive plants as technologies. This paper explores paradigms, human consciousness potentials, cultural programming, and cognitive rights in respects to psychonautic science. The cognitive effects of the cannabis “high” are explored. Humans have the capacity for multiple states of consciousness and plants are technologies to help facilitate access to these states.

A Planetary Appraisal and its Detrimental Effects

We live inside a fragile ecosystem, which we have plundered and poisoned due to our misaligned consumptive and economic values. The current Western dominator culture has turned people into cogs in a machine based on economic growth, and stripped them of any sovereignty and internal self-guidance mechanisms. A shift is desperately needed from our current cultural paradigm of authoritarian, consumeristic, war mongering, plundering, and materialistic values to a discovery of what is “The Real” or what is vital, essential, and true.

The internal and consensually enforced resistance to this much needed change comes from an investment in ideas we have not truly considered, for if we had, we surely would discover the flimsy façade of this cultural programming. We repeat what we have been taught, and embrace and defend these beliefs and values. It is further directed and enculturated through media marketing in a consumeristic- brainwashing exercise. We are immersed in what researcher, Richard Eckersley, refers to as a “cultural fraud,” manufactured by this massive and growing media marketing complex (Eckersley, 256).

If we examine them, it becomes evident these dominator-culture beliefs and values truly do not hold water, nor do we believe in them with any sincerity. We are able to fool ourselves by adhering to long-held traditions of religions, work “ethics,” economic growth, institutionalized powers, and modern ideas of success and its symbols, which keep us under this spell. This hegemonic promotion of fraudulent materialistic national, social, and personal values, derived from economics, production, and consumption, keeps us distracted from contacting our own inner world, where our internal moral compass can be found. In his article, “Is Modern Western Culture a Health Hazard?" Eckersley says, “Modern Western culture undermines, even reverses, universal values and time-tested wisdom” (Eckersley 254).

2 We are members of a cult and have been brainwashed. The cult is called Westernized Culture. It is a sham. It is poison to the world and the soul of humanity. These ideas were often passed down to us by default from our parents and our grandparents to them. We are eating cold leftovers of the Industrial Age and the Baby Boomer Generation. The sale and the dress suit is a farce. The contents of the pretty packages are toxic, and empty in nutrition or . Investment in this social program is making us sick and killing the planet (Hari, 181-82).

Not only is our outside world polluted and poisoned, we are also feeling the psychological effects on our general collective disposition. Our very well being is threatened by these materialistic and consumptive values. Studies show that these values do not lead to a destination of happiness, but instead “dissatisfaction, depression, anxiety, anger, isolation, and alienation” (Kasser).

In Johann Hari’s book, “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on ,” Hari discusses what researcher Bruce Alexander calls “dislocation,” or being cutoff from meaning, which Alexander says is borne out of living in the modern age. Withering social bonds and a consumer mindset, he says, brings about dislocation. (Hari, 180).

Understanding Context of the Scientific Paradigm

Moreover, it appears the status quo, led by traditional science (physics), has subconsciously subscribed to a mechanistic-materialistic scientific worldview. Although this worldview has gone through many revolutions and evolutions within the scientific community, for the sake of simplicity and use, science works in reductionist models using classical (Newtonian) physics (Barseghyan). In general, scientific paradigms are reflected in individual understanding, and cultural practices and beliefs, as it is physics that tells us what is “real,” or defines our reality. Historically, it is science that leads the way in imprinting the current acceptable paradigm for our mainstream experience with reality.

3 Dr. David Hookes, in his paper, “The ‘Quantum Theory’ of Marxian Political Economy, and Sustainable Development,” suggests, “quantum theory is a much better model for understanding society and culture than Cartesian-Newtonianism.”

(Hookes, Intro).

It is more important than ever that the metaphysical truths discovered by physics, from the time of Einstein onward, should be brought to the general public, and in a way that can be understood. Quantum theory, chaos theory, string theory, the unified field theory, and the “theory of everything,” have a great potential for expanding the material/objectified consciousness imprinting, and therefore help return us to a more integrated worldview (holism), for these new paradigms examine systems and a much deeper interconnectivity. These new paradigms speak of “fields” and that things “arise” from these fields. The new paradigms also speak of instantaneous “spooky action at a distance, ” “wave-particle duality,” and an “observer effect.”

In what is called “normal science” a researcher works within the accepted paradigm. The motives for holding old paradigms together have much to do a tendency to “play by the rules,” for publication in research journals, peer recognition, tenured positions, and research monies. In science, when anomalies appear, science is thrust into crisis, which forces the scientists to do what they do not seem to like to do: consider a new philosophy and present concepts that challenge the “normal science.” This leads to scientific revolution. (Kuhn). These kinds of moves within research are met with raucous arguments. There is great resistance to change, as illustrated earlier in our mainstream consensus models. Going along and not rocking the boat must be considered as fail-safes to keep all these structures going and afloat (Schuster, 5-6). Historically, scientists who have dared to challenge the normal science of the time have been met with expulsion, , the Inquisition, and even death (Entire Section: Redefining Reality Series).

Seemingly “happy illusions” can be fantastic exercises in the game of life. However, in terms of our vital systems of our biological and environment (LIFE) we are at a

4 crossroads. While quantum theory perhaps challenges our perception of the nature of reality, it in no way challenges the reality of nature. In this new paradigm we are forced into many paradoxes. It is a mind expansion that blurs the objectified/materialistic reality, but in a way that also increases our relationship to it. We can begin to experience a sense of “inter-being” with life through the quantum lens. In Johann Hari’s book, “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the ,” physician Gabor Mate sums it up: “It’s really like […] we’re still operating out of Newtonian physics in an age of quantum physics. Newtonian physics is very valuable, of course. It deals with a lot of things—but it doesn’t deal with the heart of things” (Hari, 184).

As an illustration, Hookes’ paper is examining reconstruction of economics based on the Cartesian-Newtonian model of reality shifting to the quantum theory of economics. In his diagram he shows the transition from a to an , and the resulting change in social structure and relationship. In this paradigm shift, top-down systems of hierarchal, bureaucratic, undemocratic, alienating, and localized organizational understandings are converted to non- hierarchal, cooperative, delocalized-localized, non-alienating, and democratic. Due to this restructuring, quantum theory, accepted as the standard, poses a threat to the very structures that support our current dominator paradigm (Hookes, 10). It is this very movement from one paradigm to another in which an atmosphere of social equality, cooperativeness, and interconnectivity with each other and the planet that answers can be found for our current crisis. The internet has been a great technological “physical-virtual” extension of these principals. Computer technology has begun in some ways to empower individuals for open source collaborations.

5

Searching for the Red Pill

Assessing this situation and intellectually understanding it, only goes so far. The only cure for our planetary crisis is a reconnection, resulting in self-knowledge, and a change in human consciousness. We must find the way to create this opening inside ourselves and then to teach others to do the same. Without this exercise, we will end up committing collective suicide and murder of indigenous peoples. Ecocide, “destruction of the natural environment, especially when willfully done,” is an unfortunate new word, has been added to our vocabulary (Broswimmer). In order to break the spell of our self-created illusions, some catalyst is needed.

If we are to find a catalyst to break this collective spell—it should be swift and precise in directing us. There should be no need for committees, beauracracy, red tape, and the well-trodden, but ineffective methods of reforming outworn cultural institutions we subordinate ourselves to in order to inform us. It should at once give us fortitude and sovereignty, but also unify us as a species, reconciling us in relationship with all life on this planet. It should remove our imprinted programming and open us up to the ever-present, yet latent potential of creating

6 new forms that better serve the planet and each other. It should answer to our dissatisfaction with materialism, which begs to add objects to our life and equate this with internal happiness. It should reconnect us with the original power that has inspired religions. It should awaken us from the deep sleep of an objectified reality and turn us inward to the richness of our imaginative life. This catalyst should be through direct experience and must be an accelerant for our evolution, for this is a planetary emergency.

Disconnect from Nature

It is an old argument that we have become disconnected from nature and therefore have become destructive and lost as a species. However, what does this “disconnection” really mean? While spending time in nature, appreciating it, and caring for it conscientiously as stewards are all important elements to averting planetary crisis, I wonder about a deeper relationship with nature. In this relationship, we would truly become one with nature in a profound way. It is only in an experience that this could happen. While mystical experiences of this sort do happen (Whitman comes to mind), I speculate that these types of experiences do not happen frequently, or are fleeting at best.

If we examine the plants as partners to us--not only for our food, oxygen, prevention of erosion, and material needs, and look a bit deeper--it is possible to really understand what Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis, called the “plant-human symbiosis” or “plant-human co-evolution.”

From Dennis McKenna’s lecture, Origins of the Human Imagination: Plant-Human Coevolution, this plant-human connection can be illuminated by understanding plant language and our own neurology. He says messenger molecules in plants (as signaling and alliteration) and our own neurology are very similar. In fact, he says, “Just as plants have messenger molecules that mediate their relationships within the ecology--within our heads, we also depend on these neurotransmitter-type

7 molecules often very similar to what you find in plants--in fact, they come from what you find in plants. That’s no surprise, that is a reflection of this co-evolution”

Reaching for the Fringe

If it has been accepted thus far in this paper that historically, social and scientific paradigms have been enforced to the point of threat of imprisonment and death, it can be extrapolated that as a residue, and sovereign understanding brought about by direct experience is paradigm challenging and therefore managed and culled within social structures. Any new thought is considered “fringe” until it is accepted into the consensus, which requires Kuhn’s critical mass. As illustrated earlier, it is the social and political context of any field or culture that acts as a feedback loop for acceptable norms. If we begin to examine all current institutions with this understanding, patterns of brainwashing and control begin to clearly emerge. Commercialism through the media-mindset is one example. A homogenized sense of narrow “reality tunnels” (Wilson) is seen through television and films. The “War on Drugs,” perpetuated by government and law is another. “We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don't even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this is reality. This is naïve realism” (Wilson).

When there are no answers to be found in a closed-loop, self-perpetuating system, the individual seeking answers to dire questions is forced to step outside of it. To lead us out of the culturally created madness, we begin to consider novel answers that appear to the mainstream as heresy.

Heresy as a Moral Imperative

We have created unconscious habitual cultural programming in a closed system, which when used as a dominator culture, no longer serves the individual or the planet. It is our moral responsibility to find--through whatever means necessary-- the antidote in order to break it. While it is the microscope and telescope that give

8 vision to the subatomic and astronomical, it is mind-altering substances used as technology that allows the inner-explorer—or psychonaut--to peer into unseen worlds (his or her mind/soul and nervous system) as well. It is here that answers for world problems are discovered and “brought back” for application in the mainstream. In his book, “, Society & Law: Towards a Politics of Consciousness,” Waterman asks, “What better way to oppose the monopolization of truth and meaning than to go in search of their foundations within one’s own psyche?” (Waterman).

The human-plant symbiotic relationship is an exercise in shutting out the value system of the “petty bourgeois,” (McKenna) and reconnecting with the fantastic wisdom in our neurology and cellular biology. “A is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity.” (Leary, Metzner, Alpert).

Beyond the surface ideas of inspiration or recreation usually associated with psychoactive plants, when used by a true psychonaut, these altered states of consciousness indeed are an exploration into new dimensions and made into an “applied science” by integrating ideas and insights found in these inner expeditions, into our outer-appearing consensus culture. I propose here this is a deep exploration--in a quantum model --of getting to Gabor Mate’s “heart of the matter.”

Psychonautic Science

A psychonaut is one who "seeks to investigate their mind using intentionally induced altered states of consciousness for spiritual, scientific, or research purposes” (Blom). Psychonauts such as , John D. Lilly, Alan Ginsberg, Robert Anton Wilson, Graham Hancock, Richard Alpert, and Terence McKenna are among the modern-day psychonautic pioneers. A crystallization of certain ideas put forth by psychonauts is seen to be valuable and relevant, especially when examining

9 our planetary environmental and consciousness crisis. Inferences are being drawn here between scientific revolutions and resulting paradigm shifts found through new discoveries, the “secret world of plants,” neurology, and the psychedelic experience. Other tools abound, including , yoga, holotropic breathing, drumming, chanting, and even computer technology, video games, virtual reality, etc. The psychedelic experience is a stepping out of the dark hallway of enculturated beliefs, into an infinite field of your own transcendental experience, free of mal- formed cultural programming and in the creation of new forms.

In tribal and indigenous , the shaman is the psychonaut. , or psychonautic science brings the participant to a worldview of the connectedness of all life, which was “undermined by the emergence of Cartesian dualism and embodied in Western science” (Wells). In many of the books, articles, and documentaries reviewed for this paper, many times there was a bridge found between various forms of spiritual practice and the newest discoveries in science.

In the documentary, “Hoffman’s Potion: The Pioneers of LSD,” it is clear that most of the researchers who were using the as a therapeutic medicine in the 1950s, were approaching this type of research with much reverence, being careful to give participants guidance and support in a compassionate environment. It appears due a combination of social uprisings in civil rights, peace movements, and women’s rights movements of the time, there was backlash and subsequent outlaw of the substances, and research into their potential. Other pyschonauts, such as Aldous Huxley have called for a more reserved and responsible approach. Some members of the psychonautic community say exploration with psychoactive substances belongs more in the domain of , than with mind or body medicine and call for a ritualized context.

10 Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna, was a psychonaut, author, speaker, intellectual, psychedelic teacher, and proponent of a revivication of shamanism, who was examining our collective cultural values in respects to consciousness, creativity, and the environment. McKenna was an outspoken advocate for the uses of psychoactive plants as re-emergent technologies for shifting consciousness away from the dominator culture that is wreaking havoc on our world, and into a more self- experiential and unifying perspective. McKenna called the entirety of this experience and shift “The Archaic Revival.” On The Archaic Revival he says, “…We lost something precious, the absence of which has made us ill with narcissism. Only a recovery of the relationship that we evolved with nature through use of psychoactive plants before the fall into history can offer us hope of a humane and open-ended future.” (McKenna, Food of the Gods).

On culture, McKenna reminds us:

“Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax schemes, and what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you, it disempowers you, it uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture. […] The culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines - meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood and what have you” (McKenna, Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines).

11 Cannabis and Consciousness

There is not any other known technology that has the ability to dissolve the human’s egoic constructs that hold these programmed, and highly unethical values in place, more adeptly than psychoactive plants. For those who do not have the fortitude for deep inner-space exploration through the use of the more potent hallucinogenic substances, cannabis offers a means to detach from symbol manipulation from overcontrollers, and begin the process of tapping into the autonomous, yet connected self. Cannabis is becoming more and more accepted into the mainstream culture of the United States through state , legalization, and medical use laws being passed. However, it still remains illegal in many states, and at the Federal level.

In his book, “What did to Walter Benjamin: Mind-Altering Essays on ,” Marincolo tells us that with the history of prohibition, advocates of marijuana have turned their focus to proving the plant’s medicinal value or the detrimental effects of prohibition, and activists are wary of discussing the mind- altering aspects. However, in the context of ominous environmental challenges, these investigations in consciousness and resulting understandings might be the needed “cure.” Timothy Leary’s phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” becomes useful here, and should be supported with his explanation of it in his autobiography: “ ‘Turn on’ means go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Psychedelic drugs are one way to accomplish this end. ‘Tune in’ means interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. ‘Drop out’ suggests an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. ‘Drop Out’ means self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change” (Leary, Flashbacks).

12 In the marijuana high, emotions are more profoundly empathetic, the physical senses are more engaged, there is enhanced pattern recognition, associative connections are made, and a strong presence with the “here and now” is experienced (Marincolo, Hastings). It appears that under the influence of the cannabis high, time and thought is altered in such a way that it is somewhat non- linear. It also reduces the strong consensus programming (noise) we are constantly inundated with, and brings one to a deeper experience inside the self (signal).

Marincolo goes on to illustrate the various marijuana “highs” as cognitive enhancers through hyperfocusing of attention, acceleration of thought, deeper meditation states, and an ability to focus on and resolve episodic memories and integrate them. Using introspection, one can achieve new insights, and gains a broader sense of humor. There is enhanced imagination and even experiences of transcendence, , and moments of awe. He takes an alternate view on what is qualified as memory disruptions, saying these are spaces of time of less constrained (linear) goals, where one is “flowing.” He specifies, “Refined knowledge and experience with marijuana is crucial for a user to profit from various cognitive alterations during a high” (97).

Terence McKenna clearly tells us in his book Food of the Gods, that cannabis use and resulting consciousness, promotes the original social values of partnership with the planet. He says:

“Cannabis is anathema to the dominator culture because it deconditions or decouples users from accepted values. Because of its subliminally psychedelic effect, cannabis, when pursued as a lifestyle, places a person in intuitive contact with less goal- oriented and less competitive behavior patterns. For these reasons marijuana is unwelcome in the modern office environment, while a drug such as coffee, which reinforces the values of industrial culture, is both welcomed and encouraged.

13 Cannabis use is correctly sensed as heretical and deeply disloyal to the values of male dominance and stratified hierarchy. Legalization of marijuana is thus a complex issue, since it involves legitimating a social factor that might ameliorate or even modify ego-dominant values. […] The fear that the flower children engendered in the establishment becomes understandable when analyzed in the light of the idea that what confronted the establishment was an outbreak of genderless partnership thinking based on a diminished sense of self-importance.” (T. McKenna)

Caveats

Though studies have found a correlation between marijuana use and various mental illnesses, including psychosis and schizophrenia, it is unclear whether there is causation. Negative states reported by some users taking higher doses include paranoia, visual, and auditory hallucination. Effects on cognition vary in individuals, and seems related to proportions of THC to CBD. There is a possible detrimental effect to neuroplasticity mechanisms that underlie certain brain functions in the executive function, learning, and memory areas of the brain, but there is much controversy as to whether this impairment persists after ceasing use. Evidence strongly suggests, but cannot prove that heavy use increases risk for psychosis and schizophrenia in a small minority of users. Predisposition plays a part in these findings.

In studies, users who are not predisposed to such episodes reported positive experiences, including feeling “more at ease with the world, and only minor perceptual changes.” Moderate dependence is also shown by some studies to affect 1 in 9 cannabis users, though there were no withdrawal symptoms upon ceasing use (Murray, Morrison, Henquet, and Di Forti). Mackenzie suggests in order to “foster

14 informed choice and predictable outcomes while avoiding negative experiences, comprehensive databases of multidisciplinary evidence of various psychoactive substances must be constructed.” She says this lies in the domain of neuroscience, and in particular research in the field of neurophenomenology, which she says is essential, and which addresses the “hard problem” in science (consciousness). She calls for further evaluation on exogenous substances in “social, cultural, economic, and political contexts” post-neurophenomenological taxonomic data accumulation.

In his argument for legalization, Marincolo also calls for an “experiential database for scientific research.” Reasons cited are: in an illegal market, users do not always know what strains they are using. Also, there are diverse effects and growing conditions that are widely unknown to the user in an illegal market. He says, “Prohibition prevents independent, expert information on cannabis biology, strains, genetics, and growing from entering the mainstream media” (152).

The War on Drugs (Is a War on Consciousness)

Cannabis and Cognitive

Albeit, surrounding this generally unassuming and mildly psychoactive plant, many lives have been destroyed and billions of dollars spent during the prohibition era (Hari, Alexander). Marijuana was placed into Schedule I drugs, which is specified as “substances, or chemicals [which] are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence” (DEA).

In their book, “The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire,” Ellens and Roberts call this an “intellectual censorship issue,” saying there is much more to our minds than our default state of consciousness. They call these potentialities reached through

15 various modalities and technologies (drug and non-drug) “multistates,” or “mindapps.” As stated earlier in this paper, Ellens and Roberts are also pointing to a pending (and inevitable) cultural shift saying, “As the world culture becomes increasingly multistate, single state policy will occupy a place of honor between the Flat Earth Exhibit and the Piltdown Man in the Museum of Discarded Ideas.” They argue very strongly that it is not in the domain of any institution--government or otherwise--to regulate a person’s own right to explore and develop his or her own mind. These people (in the United States, some “26 million experienced people,” a statistic gotten from the and Mental Health Services Administration, 2010) know full well that there are other mindstates beyond the default state, which overcontrollers try to enforce.

In Graham Hancock’s essay, “The War on Consciousness,” he posits certain rights to explore consciousness should or do fall under freedoms, as posed by the Western ideal of freedom. He says our own consciousness is “an intimate and elemental part of the individual.” He states if we are not sovereign over our own mind, “then we cannot in any meaningful sense be sovereign over anything else either.” He points out the violent means to which our own explorations beyond the default state has been outlawed. “The ‘War on Drugs’ has thus unexpectedly succeeded in engineering a stark reversal of the true direction of Western history by empowering faceless bureaucratic authorities to send armed agents to break into our homes, arrest us, throw us into prison, and deprive us of our income and reputation simply because we wish to explore the sometimes radical, though always temporary, alterations in our own consciousness that drugs facilitate” (Hancock).

Marincolo calls for us to re-examine the language regarding the “War on Drugs,” and to “critically oppose the metaphoric content of slogans about psychoactive substances that have been conjured up by spin doctors in recent decades.” He says these propaganda campaigns were used to instill fears in the general public. “Fears,” he says, “are an easy way to narrow down our perception and to influence and control our actions” (149).

16 In her paper, Mackenzie also comments on rights in regards to the use of psychedelics and psychoactive substances in the context of what she calls “human flourishing.” She says that the difficulty is that the use of psychedelics and other psychoactive substances falls under the domain of medicine, and that altered states of consciousness are “largely pathologized.” Though she says cognitive liberty is not a right recognized in law, the war on drugs has created prohibition without “evidence-based rationales.” In yet another illustration of a top-down, hierarchal paradigm, it is only medicine and law that has the power to prescribe and control substances and their use, rather than the sovereign citizen’s right to choose and determine freely without interference.

“… Cultural understandings, theological history and socioeconomic politics have combined to ensure that psychedelics are not accepted as technologies to enhance human health and spiritual growth. They attribute this to the historic effects of hegemonic desires to exert control over experiences of spiritual meaning which might justify conflicts with earthly authorities” (qtd. in Mackenzie).

McKenna calls for a “radical intervention in the evolution of our socialpsychology” and names this radical intervention as psychedelics, for reasons that they not only dissolve boundaries (ego dissolution, and institutional dissolution), but also because it puts one in a state of the “felt experience,” where authenticity and deepening of awareness and reconnection with truth is found (McKenna, 1990 MAPS Conference).

Timothy Leary and The Fifth Freedom

Leary calls this cognitive liberty “The Fifth Freedom: The Right to Get High” in his book “The Politics of Ecstasy.” While Leary is most often associated with LSD trips, his ideas regarding freedoms, society, and oppression fit in the cannabis rights argument, and he does in fact, address marijuana in this book. Generally speaking he

17 says, “Where then will the next evolutionary step occur? Within the human cortex… The uncharted realm lies behind your own forehead. Internal geography. Internal politics. Internal control. Internal freedom.” He goes on to say, “We are, in a real sense, prisoners of the cognitive concepts and intellectual strategies which are passed from generation to generation. The cognitive continuity of history…” (66).

In his presentation, “How to Change Behavior,” at the International Congress of Applied Psychology in Copenhagen, in 1961, Timothy Leary said, “Behavior is […] artificial and culturally determined.” He points out that culture is a “game” and cultural stability is maintained with roles, rules, goals, , language, and values, but it is only the “mystic” who can see through the game structure by stepping outside of it in an experience beyond our “little egos and ego games” and in a strategy of “applied mysticism” or the “mystic experience” (what I am calling in this paper “psychonatic science”). In his presentation, he said:

“Now the reaction of the Western world to consciousness- expanding drugs is extremely interesting. We tend to apply our familiar game roles, rituals, goals, rules, [and] concepts to the non-game experience produced by these substances. Those of you who have not had the shattering exposure to such old and worshipped plants as and the sacred mushroom and cannabis or such startling newcomers as psilocybin and lysergic acid will wonder at this point about the nature of these experiences. What do these substances do?

The neuro-physiological answer—the answer from outside— to this question is not yet ready. The answer from the inside (from the awareness of the subject) can be cast in countless metaphors. Let’s try a physiological analogy. Let’s assume that the cortex, the seat of consciousness, is a millionfold network of neurons, a fantastic computing machine.

18 has imposed a few, pitifully small programs on the cortex. These programs may activate perhaps one-tenth or one one- hundredth of the potential neural connections. All the learned games of life can be seen as programs which select, censor, alert and thus drastically limit the available cortical response (Mr. Aldous Huxley’s reducing valves)” (reprinted in Solomon).

He goes on to say these ideas are seen as “strange and horrid” and also ignored and opposed by Western culture because we overvalue the mind, and are “committed to overplaying the objective, external behavior game.”

Nevertheless, there is a subset of the human experience, found in every culture— Westernized culture being no exception, where certain individuals are called to break out of the habitual programming and patterning of a consensus reality machine, and to explore meaning, values, philosophy, relationship, nature, and healing. Leary says people such as this are “invariably misunderstood” as anarchists bent on dismantling social structures. He says this is untrue, for the ones who can see that culture is a game have taken an “evolutionary point of view.”

In the book, “The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World,” Ray and Anderson discuss a bit of this evolutionary potential in the population of the of cultural creatives. In a simple diagram, they show a path with two side-paths diverging off of the main one. The main path they call the “Standing Pat: The Modern’s Path.” The Moderns, they say, accept The System. The path diverging to the left they call “Leaning Backward: The Traditionalist’s Path.” The Traditionalist’s life-stance is rejecting the system, which is a reaction against the modern/secular worldview. The path diverging to the right they call “Leaning Forward: The Cultural Creatives’ Path,” which they say is the planet’s new counterculture. The Cultural Creatives want to go beyond The System and are “inwardly departing from the materialist worldview” (82).

19 This is exactly what the psychedelic experience, informed by psychonautic science proposes to do: to explore beyond old forms, in Leary’s applied mysticism, integrating new materialized forms into the current culture, molding and changing it. This can sometimes be found in reform and sometimes in revolution.

Summary

We are inside an environmental crisis, which is a direct result of mal and underformed conscious states indoctrinated by Westernized culture, and enforced by its cultural program (scientific, media, political, governmental, law). Citizens of the modern Westernized dominator culture are growing increasingly dissatisfied and unhappy with materialistic values and we are at a crossroads in terms of an environmental crisis.

Psychonautic science uses plant technologies and other substances to explore states of consciousness, for introspection and revelation at the personal and cultural level. The human mind is capable of achieving multistates of consciousness far beyond the narrow forms of consensus culture. Those who feel called to this type of research should be protected under cognitive liberty freedoms and laws. Psychoactive plants and other substances should be released from their current status of drug scheduling. Mature, responsible adults, should be able to explore and experiment with these technologies without interference. Cannabis, as an example, is an anathema to these cultural “norms” and “values” and one reason it is outlawed.

The current cultural hegemony is a destructive force upon environment and sovereign exploration of consciousness, which when approached through psychonautic science, has the potential to increase connectivity to our own inner- landscape, and come into a more harmonious relationship with the planet, through breaking narrowly defined patterns of thought and behavior. Denial of explorations

20 of altered-states of consciousness through plant technology is a breech on cognitive liberties. We have a right to explore, change our minds, and grow out of dysfunctional and highly detrimental social programs. These investigations are based on free will and self-deterimination (agency) and in explorations for a better world and society.

21 REFERENCES

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6. Eckersley, R. "Is Modern Western Culture a Health Hazard?" International Journal of Epidemiology 35.2 (2005): 252-58. Web.

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