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Wednesday 24 June 2020

Unlock the Natural Doors in the Wall

'In the Western world visionaries and mystics are a good deal less common than they used to be. There are two principal reasons for this state of affairs - a philosophical reason and a chemical reason. In the currently fashionable picture of the universe there is no place for valid transcendental experience. Consequently those who have had what they regard as valid transcendental experiences are looked upon with suspicion, as being either lunatics or swindlers. To be a mystic or a visionary is no longer credible.

But it is not only our mental climate that is unfavourable to the visionary and the mystic, it is also our chemical environment - an environment profoundly different from that in which our forefathers passed their lives.'- Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley, 1956
 
 
The prohibition, for more than a century, of cannabis, psilocybin, peyote, ayahuasca and other such natural healers has been a massive hurdle to the further understanding of human consciousness, the mind and the world we live in. These plants, revered in their cultures, and looked upon as spiritual, medicinal and healing plants and fungi, are what Aldous Huxley referred to in his 1950s classic, The Doors of Perception, as 'Doors in the Wall', that open out the human mind, living in a compartmentalized fashion with its total focus on survival, to the 'Mind at Large' or the universal mind. While synthetic doors have been created in the meantime, and other doors such as fasting, meditation and exercise still remain open, the question remains as to the impact that prohibiting the usage of these wonderful, natural mechanisms have had on the world.

Every one of these plants and fungi takes our minds out of the daily tasks of survival and enables us to see the brilliance and beauty of the universe we live in. As Huxley and William Blake said, they cleanse the doors of our perception, making things appear as they really are, infinite. At these moments our minds are at one with the universal mind and many of the filters that enable us to function on a day to day level in the tasks in pursuit of survival, are removed temporarily. They bring a reverence and better understanding of nature and our minds and provide a glimpse into what the universal mind or supreme consciousness is. All this is achieved through minimal damage to mind and body. Unlike some of the other doors in the wall that take your mind out of its compartmentalized existence and then present it with vast horrors, providing it often with no way to return back within its secure walls, or that destroy the body in the process, these doors provide a means to safely venture out into the mind at large and return back to our compartmentalized minds, bringing back from the journey the priceless treasure of a vast improvement in our understanding of the without and within. None of these wonderful natural mechanisms are anywhere as addictive or deadly as the widely prevalent and freely available alcohol, tobacco and opium but are vastly more potent in their abilities to open up our minds to mental exploration and reality. They rarely lock us out, leaving us without an anchor, drifting insanely in the vast and sometimes terrifying unknowns of super-consciousness, but actually aid us in a better understanding of our day to day lives and actions for survival post the experience. You could call it a space walk in the realms of the mind  with the tethers on.

All these natural mechanisms have been used for thousands of years in their respective cultures and society has not suffered as much for it in all the years put together as it currently suffers for the few years that the alternatives have been made available, alternatives such as alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs emerging from the chemists lab. Writers and thinkers such as Huxley have spoken in depth about the potential of natural ways of gaining tremendously greater insights into the working of the mind and of reality itself. Science too has increasingly shown the benefits of these plants as medicine, especially for mental illnesses.

It is worth noting that most of these mechanisms were inherent in traditional cultures and it is the so-called modern human, economic and social upper classes, and predominantly western societies that have put locks on these natural doors in the wall. This has been done gradually as a part of the systematic erosion and suppression of traditional cultures, viewed as inferior to western ideas and ways of life. In this context, it is interesting to note that even some of the leading western explorers of these natural mechanisms for mind exploration chose to use a synthetic compound consisting of the active principle of these natural plants and fungi, such as mescalin instead of peyote, as in the case of Huxley and lysergic acid synthesized from ergot instead of psilocybin, as in the case of Timothy Leary. Perhaps the fact that a chemist synthesized these compounds in a lab produced a feeling of safety and control for these users in line with their familiar systems of medicine rather than consuming these plants or fungi in their natural form as advocated by the natural systems that were a result of their evolution and traditional direct use for mental study and exploration. The fact that the natural plant or fungi was not used, only one of its compounds, would have surely taken away something from the real experience resulting, in my opinion, in an incomplete experience as compared to the one provided by the balanced natural plant and fungi. But then the trend of placing more faith in chemically synthesized substances emerging from the chemists lab was well underway by this time. It had already existed for many years by this time and had produced heroin, cocaine, nitrous oxide and barbiturates. This misplaced confidence in the power of the chemist, and faith that what the chemist produced was safer than what nature created, has been one of the fundamental reasons why these natural doors in the wall were locked up and the doors that opened through synthetic substances embraced. This eventually led to the global ban of psilocybin, peyote and cannabis through the 1961 Single Convention treaty and led to the subsequent worldwide avalanche of pharmaceutical drugs and synthetic ways to open up the mind as well as its legal and illegal abuse. 
 
Thus, mental exploration continued to happen but mostly along synthetic paths, often with fatal results, while the vast store of experience that the natural ways provided was shunned and forgotten. An irony of this approach was that the more the synthetic ways damaged body, mind and society, the more the blame for this was placed on the natural plants and fungi. The situation has reached such a stage today that the mere mention of the word 'drugs' invokes negative images of these banned wonderful natural healers while the products of the chemists lab form a part of nearly every household and every person's daily diet without a second thought being given to the impact it is having on man and society.

At one time, the 20th century was touted as the century with the potential for the greatest spiritual development and human understanding, but we may have vastly underachieved as evidenced by the fact that with increased communication, technology, and awareness of the planet, we have also taken it to the brink of extinction through our recent man-made inventions of petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, mass weaponry, alcohol and tobacco alongside indiscriminate actions such as environmental degradation and the quelling of traditional medical systems, native peoples and their ways of life. Possibly the imbalance in our development could have been countered with the availability, usage, increased study and awareness of how these natural plants and fungi affect the world and how they contribute to living in connection with nature, the universal spirit and ultimate reality. These plants could have served as tremendous aids in helping us choose the right path of progress, thought and action, one that is humane, inclusive, just and sustainable for the whole planet.

Even today in 2020, all these plants remain part of the banned list of narcotic and psychotropic substances that form the 1961 Single Convention treaty that all nations religiously adhere to. This is in spite of the ever growing awareness of the benefits and safety of these plants and fungi, of the selfish motives that resulted in their prohibition and of the harms that the alternatives now available have inflicted on life and planet. We must correct this wrong at the earliest and take these revered, medicinal and vastly useful healers of the world out of these global lists of banned and controlled substances. The lists need to consist of man-made synthetic chemical substances and not these magical and powerful creations of nature. With this change, there is the possibility that the planet can re-balance itself into sustainability primarily through humans, its current main threat, regaining their balance through an improved understanding and consciousness of reality and the universe and the vast and beneficial powers that these magical doors in the wall hold. Yes, I am still optimistic that we can do this and it is still not too late...but we must unlock these natural doors in the wall without further delay before all life is lost to the void in the blink of a cosmic eye...
 
Following are some of Huxley's writings on the above subject. Words in italics are my thoughts at the time of reading.


'It was in 1886 that the German pharmacologist, Ludwig Lewin, published the first systematic study of the cactus, to which his own name was subsequently given. Anhalonium Lewinii was new to science. To primitive religion and the Indians of Mexico and the American Southwest it was a friend of immemorially long standing. Indeed, it was much more than a friend. In the words of one of the early Spanish visitors to the New World, 'they eat a root which they call Peyotl, and which they venerate as though it were a deity.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


'Why they should have venerated it as a deity became apparent when such eminent psychologists as Jaensch, Havelock Ellis and Weir Mitchell began their experiments with mescalin, the active principle of peyotl. True, they stopped short at a point well this side of idolatry; but all concurred in assigning to mescalin a position among drugs of unique distinction. Administered in suitable doses, it changes the quality of consciousness more profoundly and yet is less toxic than any other substance in the pharmacologist's repertory.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


'According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


'Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate 'spiritual exercises,' or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception of 'everything that is happening everywhere in the universe' (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.  


'That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few minutes, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul. Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory - all these haves served, in H.G. Wells' phrase, as Doors in the Wall. And for private, for everyday use there have always been chemical intoxicants. All the vegetable sedatives and narcotics, all the euphorics that grow on trees, the hallucinogens that ripen in berries or can be squeezed from roots - all, without exception have been known and systematically used by human beings from time immemorial. And to these natural modifiers of consciousness modern science has added its quota of synthetics - chloral, for example, and benzedrine, the bromides and the barbiturates.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954. 


'Most of these modifiers of consciousness cannot now be taken except under doctor's orders, or else illegally and at considerable risk. For unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco. All the other chemical Doors in the Wall are labelled Dope, and their unauthorized takers are Fiends.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


Cannabis meets all these criteria plus it it naturally growing worldwide and has been used for tens of thousands of years...no need for a new drug, we just need to bring it back..reefer madness had clouded even Huxley's mind at the time that this was written...
 
'What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short. Such a drug must be potent in minute doses and synthesizable. If it does not possess these qualities, its production, like that of wine, beer, spirits and tobacco will interfere with the raising of indispensible food and fibres. It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to the heart and lungs than the tars and nicotine of cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of impotence or release from inhibition.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


Huxley misses a point or two here..no drug will be universally perfect for all. There will always be a minority (better that than a majority) for whom any drug will be incompatible given different mental and physical constitutions. Also his obsession and faith in the Western system of synthesizing something that can be had in measured doses like pills or alcohol is unnecessary for natural intoxicants where margins are much larger and safer..cannabis is the ideal...peyote and psilocybin too where it is available but not to the extent of cannabis...nature has done the work already, no need for pharmacologists and neurologists to re-invent the wheel...

'Although obviously superior to cocaine, opium, alcohol and tobacco, mescalin is not yet the ideal drug. Along with the happily transfigured majority of mescalin takers there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory. Moreover, for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time. But chemistry and physiology are capable nowadays of practically anything. If the psychologists and sociologists will define the ideal, the neurologists and pharmacologists can be relied upon to discover the means whereby that ideal can be realized or at least (for this kind of ideal can never, in the very nature of things, be fully realized) more nearly approached than in the wine-bibbing past, the whisky-drinking, marijuana- smoking and barbiturate-swallowing present.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


Ganja in the Indian sub-continent...

'The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates - alcohol and 'goof-pills' in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohammedan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


As with cannabis...

'For these Native Americans, religious experience is something more direct and illuminating, more spontaneous, less the home-made product of the superficial, self-conscious mind. Sometimes (according to the reports collected by Dr. Slotkin) they see visions which may be of Christ Himself.  Sometimes they hear the voice of the Great Spirit. Sometimes they become aware of the presence of God and of those personal shortcomings which must be corrected if they are to do His will. The practical consequences of these chemical openings of doors into the Other World seem to be wholly good. Dr. Slotkin reports that habitual Peyotists are on the whole more industrious, more temperate (many of them abstain altogether from alcohol), more peaceable than non-Peyotists. A tree with such satisfactory fruits cannot be condemned out of hand as evil.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


'"Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Clothes him in front, but leaves him bare behind"

But actually it is we, the rich and highly educated whites, who have left ourselves bare behind. We cover our anterior nakedness with some philosophy - Christian, Marxian, Freudo-Physicalist - but abaft we remain uncovered, at the mercy of all the winds of circumstance. The poor Indian, on the other hand, has had the wit to protect his rear by supplementing the fig-leaf of a theology with the breech-clout of transcendental experience.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.


'But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.



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