Could Flower Power Have Saved the World? T
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maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 21 Could Flower Power Have Saved the World? T appears to have been, at one time or an- The psychedelic experience other, part and parcel of human cultures throughout the world; with or without assistance from the plant world, and usually with. Today, as our civilization careens mindlessly out of control and we face rejection by the planet that is our only home, it is appropriate to ask whether the virtual absence of the psychedelic experience in modern culture might be con- nected with the predicament in which we find ourselves. Gregory Sams The fields of ecology and green consciousness are products of the Sixties [email protected] hippy movement, now branched and developed far beyond the first “back http://www.gregorysams.com to the land” aspirations of the time. Before then, a few select and far-sight- ed individuals primed the pump, from Rachel Carson to Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley to George Ohsawa. But it was the wholesale ingestion of psychedelics that enabled large numbers of a new generation to break out …as our civilization of a mental straightjacket that has constrained our dominant Western thought processes for far too long. careens mindlessly out Psychedelics can transport us into an degree can often appear ludicrous. unfamiliar space. The familiar world in The “alternative” culture that devel- of control and we face which we live, with houses, plumbers, oped in the Sixties was the first mass- parliaments, cellphones, cars, advertising, movement to recognize that the channel rejection by the planet restaurants and so forth is but one chan- we are tuned to is incompatible with the nel on the set of all possible channels. fostering of health, happiness or peace that is our only home, it is Because this is the reality we have cre- and goodwill among humankind. Per- ated within the world around us, we are haps we did not recognize the coming of tuned to it to such a degree that we easily climate change and the scale of the threat. appropriate to ask whether become oblivious to the deeper nature But we certainly recognized, through a of this intricately interwoven world, of new and spiritual perspective, that our the virtual absence of the which we are but a part, living upon our communal ship was in danger of sinking. little speck of dust within the Universe. The state’s natural response was to do psychedelic experience The psychedelic experience is not everything in their power to prevent us embraced as an escape from our world from building lifeboats, to stop us from but as a ticket to escape from the single tuning into new and experimental chan- in modern culture might channel; to see the bigger picture and the nels. And what may have most frightened smaller picture; to see our world from a the maintainers of the status quo was the be connected with the different perspective, even from a differ- prospect of a generation who were insert- ent dimension. It is hard to emerge from ing flowers into gun barrels; embracing predicament in which this voyage without developing a realiza- threatening concepts like love, peace, tion, amongst many others, that those ‘in one-ness and non-violence; looking inside power’ are possessed of a narrow vision themselves; and rejecting a nine-to-five we find ourselves. fuelled primarily by the desire to stay in future as tax-paying consumers in an power. Their viewpoint is of one channel untenable endless-growth economy. Who only--the one that represents the status would need Big Government any more? quo they understand, in whatever country The psychedelic experience re-connect- they control--and their efforts to control ed us with our inner self and a world of and fine-tune this channel to a micro- spirit; with concepts such as harmony and 22 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 good vibrations; practices such as medi- Perhaps we can track the original tation and yoga; values such as conser- suppression of the shamanic, psyche- vation and re-cycling; organic farming delic experience right back to Adam and The fields of and natural eating; alternative healing Eve in the Garden of Eden, described in techniques from acupuncture to herbal the Bible’s opening pages, and the most ecology and and the laying on of hands. It is diffi- commonly known Bible story of all. In cult, today, to imagine just how grey and this fundamental story, the fruit-pushing disconnected from our true reality was snake is portrayed as an agent of the dark green consciousness the pre-Sixties culture of the Western side for telling Eve that “when you eat world. Opening the doors of perception of it your eyes will be opened, and you are products in those days was a much greater surprise will be like God, knowing good and evil” than it is today. Yet it is depressing to see (Genesis 3). The snake, of course, has of the Sixties just how little has changed in the core been symbolic of knowledge and divinity mindset of those who profess to run our across many religious and shamanic tra- world; those who rely upon the power of ditions throughout the world. An angry hippy movement, coercion and propaganda to achieve their God, as punishment for being disobeyed, ends; those who ban cannabis and psy- visits toil and suffering upon the hu- now branched chedelic drugs; those who seek to restrict man race thereafter, especially targeting and even ban the expression of dissent women by promising to “greatly multiply and developed and protest; those who would drill holes your pain in childbearing” and decree- in the lifeboats. ing that men shall “rule over you.” It’s a But how did we get disconnected in peculiar story to be sure, and one that far beyond the first place--how did we get to the has impacted upon us ever since. point where things that come natu- An alternative interpretation of this the first rally would be part of an “alternative” Adam and Eve story was held by the culture--be a “movement” instead of the widespread Gnostic sects known as the back to the land mainstream? In the same way that we Ophites, who revered and recognized the would not need a nutritional supplements serpent as man’s benefactor and saw Je- industry were our food not refined and hovah as the bad guy who sought to keep aspirations denatured in the first place, there would us in ignorance by denying us knowledge be little need for ecological awareness of our potential divinity. The Ophites of the time. and a green movement had our culture were declared heretics and brutally ex- not come to be isolated and dis-connected tinguished by the spread of an organized from the world around it. and intolerant Christianity in the fourth Though our profligate consumption century. One could be forgiven for sug- of the world’s oil reserves can easily be gesting that had our species embraced the seen as a root cause of our ecological serpent’s gift, we might still be living in crisis, it is important to recognize that harmony with each other and our planet- our dis-connection from the planet was -enjoying life in the paradise that we in place long before the Age of Oil. It is inhabit. Instead, a lack of differentiation complex, bordering on the impossible, between good and evil seems to be the to conceive just how the discovery of hallmark of those in power today. cheap and transportable power would The powerful post-Constantine have impacted upon a culture that had Church claimed a monopoly on spiritu- not banned shamans and the shamanic ality, banning or destroying anything experience. Those who developed the oil they thought to be in conflict with their industry were of the same stock as those religious hegemony. Witchcraft, astrol- who slaughtered herds of buffalo in order ogy, spiritualism, soothsaying, and to sell their tongues, the same who would worshipping the Sun or moon could all destroy beautiful landscapes to extract get one into serious trouble. A patent was a few pounds of yellow metal, the same effectively put upon the ecstatic state, who ardently believed in a universal god with punishment meted out to those whose prime purpose lay in producing, caught seeking a ‘religious’ experience by providing for and monitoring the human any means other than those approved by race. the Church. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 23 The psychedelic experience and Doors opened by the psychedelic ex- shamans were out--thought control was perience allow us to blow this crippling in. A select group of people now decided mental straightjacket right out of our what we could think and how we should mind space, revealing a world more inter- Doors opened by behave, assuming a mandate from God to connected, alive and wonder-filled than do so. The natural world was not sup- we had ever realized; a world in which we the psychedelic posed to be able to teach us things and may feel like gods, but not a world that our intuition was not to be trusted in we can rule over like deterministic kings; matters which had been divinely decreed, a world that is our host and teacher as experience or decreed by those who claimed divine well as our conscious provider. We learn responsibility to do so. We could use our to respect the world, and wonder at how allow us to intellect to learn about the natural world, we could have ever done otherwise.