Such a great analogy, the caterpillar/butterfly parable... yeah a lot of people seem to require a sort of "cocoon" phase before becoming psychicly aware. Like a sort of psychotic break, or a psychological metamorphosis that is -mistaken- for a psychotic break.
That's another danger I see in society not recognizing what's going on in these individuals... ever see a caterpillar that didn't make it? That got stuck in the "cocoon" and couldn't get out? It happens. It ain't pretty.
I've got a friend who had a mushroom trip that opened his third eye, but he was alone and wasn't able to handle it. Society didn't help him out with the integration of the experience. Instead they put him on a dopamine antagonist. For those of you unfamiliar with psychology, all this does is basically inhibit the neural mechanisms that could potentially allow him to "break on thru to the other side" of his metamorphosis. It didn't -reverse- the metamorphosis, he's still crazy... he just doesn't have enough energy or motivation to be a nuisance to society with his craziness. He just spends most of his time on the couch at home being crazy now. Swim has tried a few times to get him into a ceremony, but he's so convinced that he's crazy and that "psychedelic drugs made him crazy" that he's not willing to give it a shot. Not like he has anything to lose at this point... it's really sad, to see that he's given into other peoples' definition of him. He IS crazy now because he believes he is. He takes his resperidol and spouts off insane psychobabble and that's about it. Oh yeah and he regularly displays psychic phenomena all the time but just doesn't have a constructive way to channel it. So many times while he's been spouting off insane psychobabble he's commented on things or events going on in my life, or thoughts that I've had, that he couldn't POSSIBLY have known about. But none of his shrinks spend enough time with him to notice any of that, they just talk to him for five minutes and perscribe some pill for a chemical imbalance that they haven't even tested him for, that may or may not even be there, like they could somehow know after talking with him for just five minutes. And even if there is a chemical imbalance there, who's to say if it's the cause of his strange behavior or just a symptom of his altered perceptual state (Cf. my example above of a person in a world of blind people suddenly developing sight). So many "schizophrenics" display these unusual psychic abilities... but so few people take the time to notice. It's so much easier to just write them off as being "crazy" and that's that, you never have to think about the deeper implications of "just what the hell does that mean anyway?
Based on observations like these, I've come up with the following model:
There's basically three different states of consciousness: Schizophrenia, Uniphrenia, and Somniphrenia.
Somniphrenia is the state we all start out in, a sort of sleeper state, the caterpillar state if you will. In this state our consciousness is divided, but we are unaware of it so we think we're normal, and since most people are in this state, it seems normal by the common definition even though this state is actually horribly insane.
Schizophrenia is when we start to awaken. This is the coccoon stage wherein we start to become aware of our divided nature, but don't know how to deal with this new awareness. Proper set and setting is required for a successful metamorphosis, at which point we (hopefully) enter into:
Uniphrenia, where we learn to control our new awareness and realize we are all one. To a somniphrenic, a uniphrenic talks crazy talk about psychic phenomena, spirits, and how we're all one, etc. The difference is they are totally calm and rational about it. For the schizophrenic, their heightened awareness leads only into further and further states of division, separating them from themselves and everyone else; for the uniphrenic, their experience leads to a newfound state of unification and healing. They become happier, healthier, and generally much cooler to be around than they were before they had their little "psychotic break." This person goes on to become the "mystic" or "guru" or "shaman" or any number of other terms applied to people who are by society's definition still "crazy" in their idealogies but are completely capable of functioning in society, often better than so-called "normal" people except for the fact that they don't quite fit in amongst all the somniphrenics.
That caterpillar analogy works on a collective scale as well... apparently when the catpillar is undergoing metamorphosis, the old caterpillar cells actually react violently to the new butterfly cells and try to kill them. The butterfly cells however, instead of fighting back, practice a form of non-violent reistance... they simply continue to grow and multiply, and just go on doing their thing until eventually they outnumber the caterpillar cells to the point where the old ones just give up the fight and embrace the coming of the New Way.
That gives us something to look forward to eh?
Even though we don't have any 'real' legitimacy here. My own personal laboratory and others like it have ground legitimacy... We are going to have to be the ones who grow up and step up. We have to run our own show. We have to be professional and intelligent. I would like to be able to run some legitimate underground studies sometime in the future. Most likely in the area of chemisty... I think that is the only real area that I could contribute definite knowledge in.
So I've been having this thought for awhile now... maybe I should suggest it in its own thread... why not have a section for our own "underground" report writeups, for those of us who actually know how to write a formatted journal article? This would be something you would actually have to submit to and have it peer-reviewed in order to be accepted. I like this idea because we're not bound by the same limitations of "publish or perish," etc., that normal acedimic scientists are, and we aren't bound by the limitations of any particular commercial journal trying to appeal to its audience or be politically correct or whatever. We're just a community of like minded people supporting each other's interests. This would also encourage more scientific experimentation on our behalf, instead of the semiscientific investigations that so often get posted on here that are indeed helpful but never seem to come to any real conclusions, or if they do you have to scour thru all these posts to find 'em.
Let's take a step up here people and take those scientific reins in our own hands! Fuck waiting for the mainstream to catch up! Whaddaya say?
Agreed thats mainly why SWIM comes here and rants on endlessly about it Obviously its been on swims mind more then once. More to come..
Heck yeah brother, lookin' forward to it! Like you Swim hardly ever smokes dmt, maybe only a few times a year, but he thinks about it all the friggin' time! Finally, something he thinks about more often than sex! :lol:
). I wish it was as easy for me to accept some of the things I have seen as real. But that's just how I am. Anyway I think I have gone as far as I'd like in this conversation. 