Lift
SWIM
The craziest thing happened just after I vaped some spice and I thought you guys here would find it both amusing and profound. Once I started going, I thought I'd offer my academic prowess as a gift to this wonderful forum, in the form of a promo essay. Please feel free to disagree with my interpretation. In the end, you'll know the origin of my psychedelic nickname and handle on this forum, a name given to me by an ancient friend.
This all started after I was feeling all glowy-and-mellow from my experience, so I said fuck it, I'm ordering a pizza instead of cooking up some lunch. I'm still only about 15 minutes off my dose when I step out of my house to go walk to the pizzeria and I see, scratched into the glass wall of a phone booth, the following letters:
D M T
I'm thinking, holy shit, what serendipity! But also, why would some petty vandal bother with such a message? Turns out, I was looking THROUGH the phone booth. Somebody had carved:
T M O
on the outside, and because the "O" was all square-like from the long scratches, I just thought it was a "D." A chill went down my spine even moreso than it would have if it said DMT. There was something about the act of "seeing through" reality in order to discern a totally different meaning that what was actually implied. All at once the world seemed to turn in on itself and I was conscious of my "limited" three-dimensional perspective on the city street scene. I felt like the Spice itself was sending me a message, something to the effect of--"Your simple, ultimately shallow reality is just a surface reflection of a wholly different set of natural laws, this being an illustrative example."
I thought at once of Plato and his Allegory of the Cave.
And I was humbled.
So what is Plato's Allegory of the Cave? Let's examine it in the context of psychedelics, because in my opinion, this is exactly the kind of "enlightenment" that comes with a major, revelatory psychedelic experience, and the Greeks of Plato's time were well known for the "Eleusinian Mysteries," which many scholars infer was a once-in-a-lifetime psychedelic coming-of-age Shamanic experience. I firmly believe that the Greeks, and the Hebrews, and all ancient societies, going back to the Egyptians, had an elite, "Priesthood" class that regularly used psychedelic medicines to explore their intellects and the meaning of existence in this world. It may be hard to believe in today's screwed up world, but there was once a time when knowledge "Gnosis" was not feared, but prized above all else.
So, again, what is the Allegory of the Cave? Well, it's a philosophical principle found in "The Republic" that has sustained for centuries. To make a long story short, Plato argues that the majority of people in the world are as unenlightened as a gaggle of prisoners bound by chains in a cave and forced to watch 2-dimensional shadow puppet shows all their life. They are isolated from even each other. They don't know they are even human! They think they are in fact shadows, that this is all there is to the Universe. They represent the majority of human beings in the world.
Well, you take one of these people and you unchain them, they are going to turn around and see the "campfire" that projects the light that makes the shadow puppets. They are going to freak the fuck out, right? So much so, Plato argues, they will deny the "reality" of the fire and the puppets and declare that his former reality was "more real." I think that this represents a number of people who are shown the reality of psychedelic experience. They take this substance, this "drug," and though it undermines, dwarfs, and exposes the frivolity of their shadow-puppet world, they deny it. They can't wait to slip back into those chains! (Brief aside-I do not condemn anyone for getting "high" on psychedelics, I'm not one to criticize anyone's trip!)
For the rest of us, who are eager to "see how far the rabbit hole goes" (forgive me for mixing metaphors here, but you can't help but think about The Matrix), it doesn't get any easier. All of our lives we have been conditioned to the low light of the campfire on the wall! Obviously, Plato uses light to represent enlightenment or "Truth." Simply looking at the campfire is blinding to us. I believe that here, Plato is illustrating just how difficult it is to even stand in the presence of Truth, and that it takes some adjusting to. Our first encounter with the Truth (or The Other, what-have-you) is bedazzlement.
But now there is a third step. Fire is only one kind of light. Now this poor sap is dragged out of the cave entirely and given the Sun itself to behold. It will take some time, he starts with shadows, then reflections in pools of water. But after a while, he can see there are people here! Plato says:
Sound like a familiar revelation? So this enlightened person spends some time in the sun, and eventually figures out all the truths that define the sun's role in our Universe, a bringer of heat, life, seasons, etc. Now here is where Plato makes an interesting point, one that speaks well of the psychedelic experience. This person looks with pity on his former life as a shadow-cave-prisoner, and he goes back in to help liberate his fellow prisoners. But his eyes are adjusted to the light of the sun, and when he tries to compete with the slaves, to argue in the context of their 2-dimensional illusion world, he's unfit. He can barely see down there! They mock him and tell him he's more blind now that he's had his little journey! They say that it is better not to even think of ascending! (Aside-Perhaps the shadow prisoners could pass a law to make it illegal?)
Such is the impossibility of bringing the Truth of Enlightenment to those who do not take the journey themselves, eagerly and open-mindedly. Plato concludes:
So that's it, what do you think? I now have 15 years of psychedelic experience under my belt. For many of these years, I watched my friends and trip-mates taper off, admit that they are no longer interested in the psychedelic experience, until it was only I that remained. It was about this time that I realized that the content of these trips were not mere illusions and phantasms, but deeply profound spiritual truths that do not fade with the passing of the experience.
I once came upon a comic strip by a very psychedelic comic artist that made my hair stand up on end with regard to this experience. I leave you with this.
This all started after I was feeling all glowy-and-mellow from my experience, so I said fuck it, I'm ordering a pizza instead of cooking up some lunch. I'm still only about 15 minutes off my dose when I step out of my house to go walk to the pizzeria and I see, scratched into the glass wall of a phone booth, the following letters:
D M T
I'm thinking, holy shit, what serendipity! But also, why would some petty vandal bother with such a message? Turns out, I was looking THROUGH the phone booth. Somebody had carved:
T M O
on the outside, and because the "O" was all square-like from the long scratches, I just thought it was a "D." A chill went down my spine even moreso than it would have if it said DMT. There was something about the act of "seeing through" reality in order to discern a totally different meaning that what was actually implied. All at once the world seemed to turn in on itself and I was conscious of my "limited" three-dimensional perspective on the city street scene. I felt like the Spice itself was sending me a message, something to the effect of--"Your simple, ultimately shallow reality is just a surface reflection of a wholly different set of natural laws, this being an illustrative example."
I thought at once of Plato and his Allegory of the Cave.
And I was humbled.
So what is Plato's Allegory of the Cave? Let's examine it in the context of psychedelics, because in my opinion, this is exactly the kind of "enlightenment" that comes with a major, revelatory psychedelic experience, and the Greeks of Plato's time were well known for the "Eleusinian Mysteries," which many scholars infer was a once-in-a-lifetime psychedelic coming-of-age Shamanic experience. I firmly believe that the Greeks, and the Hebrews, and all ancient societies, going back to the Egyptians, had an elite, "Priesthood" class that regularly used psychedelic medicines to explore their intellects and the meaning of existence in this world. It may be hard to believe in today's screwed up world, but there was once a time when knowledge "Gnosis" was not feared, but prized above all else.
So, again, what is the Allegory of the Cave? Well, it's a philosophical principle found in "The Republic" that has sustained for centuries. To make a long story short, Plato argues that the majority of people in the world are as unenlightened as a gaggle of prisoners bound by chains in a cave and forced to watch 2-dimensional shadow puppet shows all their life. They are isolated from even each other. They don't know they are even human! They think they are in fact shadows, that this is all there is to the Universe. They represent the majority of human beings in the world.
Well, you take one of these people and you unchain them, they are going to turn around and see the "campfire" that projects the light that makes the shadow puppets. They are going to freak the fuck out, right? So much so, Plato argues, they will deny the "reality" of the fire and the puppets and declare that his former reality was "more real." I think that this represents a number of people who are shown the reality of psychedelic experience. They take this substance, this "drug," and though it undermines, dwarfs, and exposes the frivolity of their shadow-puppet world, they deny it. They can't wait to slip back into those chains! (Brief aside-I do not condemn anyone for getting "high" on psychedelics, I'm not one to criticize anyone's trip!)
For the rest of us, who are eager to "see how far the rabbit hole goes" (forgive me for mixing metaphors here, but you can't help but think about The Matrix), it doesn't get any easier. All of our lives we have been conditioned to the low light of the campfire on the wall! Obviously, Plato uses light to represent enlightenment or "Truth." Simply looking at the campfire is blinding to us. I believe that here, Plato is illustrating just how difficult it is to even stand in the presence of Truth, and that it takes some adjusting to. Our first encounter with the Truth (or The Other, what-have-you) is bedazzlement.
But now there is a third step. Fire is only one kind of light. Now this poor sap is dragged out of the cave entirely and given the Sun itself to behold. It will take some time, he starts with shadows, then reflections in pools of water. But after a while, he can see there are people here! Plato says:
Sound like a familiar revelation? So this enlightened person spends some time in the sun, and eventually figures out all the truths that define the sun's role in our Universe, a bringer of heat, life, seasons, etc. Now here is where Plato makes an interesting point, one that speaks well of the psychedelic experience. This person looks with pity on his former life as a shadow-cave-prisoner, and he goes back in to help liberate his fellow prisoners. But his eyes are adjusted to the light of the sun, and when he tries to compete with the slaves, to argue in the context of their 2-dimensional illusion world, he's unfit. He can barely see down there! They mock him and tell him he's more blind now that he's had his little journey! They say that it is better not to even think of ascending! (Aside-Perhaps the shadow prisoners could pass a law to make it illegal?)
Such is the impossibility of bringing the Truth of Enlightenment to those who do not take the journey themselves, eagerly and open-mindedly. Plato concludes:
So that's it, what do you think? I now have 15 years of psychedelic experience under my belt. For many of these years, I watched my friends and trip-mates taper off, admit that they are no longer interested in the psychedelic experience, until it was only I that remained. It was about this time that I realized that the content of these trips were not mere illusions and phantasms, but deeply profound spiritual truths that do not fade with the passing of the experience.
I once came upon a comic strip by a very psychedelic comic artist that made my hair stand up on end with regard to this experience. I leave you with this.
