The Serpent’s Promise, or: Drugs as Ritual Self-Sacrifice
How the Oldest Exchange of All May Have Been the Original Scam
I am reposting the article now because it seems more relevant than ever, and to do so I have first gone through it and excised those parts (including quotes by Carlos Castaneda, Terence McKenna, and Aleister Crowley) that no longer seem in line with my current understanding, while adding a little bit here and there to suggest areas previously unaddressed (such as MK-ULTRA). Ideally, I would need to rework the whole piece to bring it up to date with my current perspective, but rather than do this I have simply cleaned it up and updated it slightly, most notably by adding more references to the ancestors–who I now see as the key to understanding this subject, as well as to everything else about ourselves. The premise of my argument remains the same, however, and it is this: Consciousness-altering drugs, and most especially psychedelic substances, are a form of concentrated death.
Anyone who has smoked DMT knows why it has been called “white knuckle stuff.” One puff on a pipe and the experiencer is thrown—in the time it takes to inhale and exhale—into another world in which no familiar features remain. It is a world stranger and more outlandish than anything our wildest dreams or nightmares could ever conjure. It is also a world that’s inhabited and where—most disconcerting of all—the inhabitants are focusing their attention on us. The abyss gazes also. Smoking DMT is like being turned inside out: not only is a vast and previously unseen aspect of reality exposed to us, but, in that same instant, we are also exposed to it. There is no place to hide on a DMT trip, because the universe is fiercely and unfathomably alive, and it is right under our skins. Anyone who has smoked DMT once and knows what to expect will have to push his or her courage to the sticking place before volunteering to say “bye-bye to Kansas” again. The main consolation for the white-knuckled DMT-smoker is the knowledge that even the most intense trip only lasts from 5 to 15 minutes. What sort of courage would it require to smoke DMT knowing it was a one-way trip and that our consciousness was about to be cannonballed into the Imaginal realms forever? Who would be able to hold their pipe steady knowing that?
What follows in this article is not based on hard science or accepted facts about brain or body chemistry or about drugs, alcohol, and what are now popularly called “entheogens.” It is a mixture of personal experience, deductive reasoning, and something I can only describe as “received knowledge,” and the reader is advised to add a “maybe” or “it seems to me” to the end of every sentence to counteract the otherwise authoritative tone of the piece, necessary for clarity and succinctness. I first wrote this article in 2011 in a period of a few hours. As I remember it, the main thrust of my argument came to me while I was walking through a large, dry river bed in Guatemala. I was quite sober, having completely given up smoking marijuana by then, yet whatever the catalyst might have been, I remember how thoughts began to pour into my mind without any apparent source. They weren’t obviously distinct from my ordinary thoughts, except that they were more lucid than usual, and at the same time, quite novel to me. I believed at the time (or at least afterwards) that I was receiving information from “the spirits.” Now I would prefer to say it came from the ancestors.
When I say that consciousness-altering drugs, and most especially psychedelic substances, are a form of concentrated death, it is not meant to give a wholly negative spin to such substances. Death regenerates life and keeps things moving forward; without it, there is no evolution, no advance. Poetically speaking, death provides the beat of time to the dance floor of Eternity. That is why Chronos, the Lord of Time, is depicted as the Grim Reaper. Time is the catalyst of motion added to the “substance” of space. As “condensed death particles,” entheogens and other drugs attack the nervous system, targeting specifically the neurons, not only of the brain but of the entire body, within which more and more neurological systems are being discovered (such as in the heart and intestines). This “attack” by the psychotropic molecules on our neurons is not without intent, however; so far as I can intuit, the intent is to hijack the cells of our bodies and use them as vehicles to cross over from “death” into “life.” By “death” I refer to the inorganic realms, where the organic realms pertain to what we know of as “life.”
Shamanically speaking, to smoke DMT or ingest any other hallucinogen is to offer up our cells as a sacrifice to the spirits. By such sacrifice, we are allowing our consciousness to be possessed by mysterious and invisible agents of transformation. When we ingest a psychoactive substance, just as when we smoke tobacco or take a stuff drink, a number of our neurons are “destroyed,” which is to say, broken down to their basic constituents. In the moment of destruction, they become “food” for inorganic intelligences to gain temporary substance in our organic realm of existence, via our consciousness. There is a moment of overlap between the worlds of life and death, the temporal and the eternal.
As part of us “dies,” it is absorbed by the spirit-intelligences residing in the plant or chemical, intelligences which are seeking an experience of organic existence otherwise unavailable to them. (Since plants are organic life forms, it might be more accurate to say they are seeking a different, more sentient kind of organic experience.) In those brief moments or hours, while our neurons are being consumed by the drug, they are still connected to our conscious selves, to the nervous system and neural network. As a result, we get to consciously experience existence “on the other side,” through the eyes of the spirits or ancestors; at the same time, those spirits are able to experience life through our eyes. This form of ritual sacrifice is an ancient exchange, possibly the oldest one of all. It may even be what the parable of the fruit of good and evil is referring to: the knowledge of death.
In Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, Karl Jansen writes, “LSD and DMT bind to serotonin receptors and this is thought to push the start button for a cascade of events resulting in a psychedelic trip.”[1] To the extent that psychedelics bind to and thereby alter the receptor sites, the question arises: what does this alteration of the nervous system allow us to receive? The kind of energy that is received via the altered receptor sites, as well as the amount, would perhaps be determined not merely by what is being ingested (the chemicals in the plant), but also by the circumstances under which it taken and—perhaps most critically of all—the psychological make-up (and preparedness) of the person ingesting. Native Americans doing peyote or Peruvians shamans taking ayahuasca would then be an entirely different affair to Westerners aspiring to become master Magi or seeking congress with the divine, while having little clue what they are doing, and little or no relationship to the plant/chemical (and residing ancestral spirit) being ingested.
Spirits are inorganic intelligences (which may include what we call souls of the dead). Being inorganic and/or dead, they lack access to sentient physical form. At the same time, inorganic spirits (which may be ancestral fragments) apparently can live in organic matter, as elemental or “faery” beings are said to live in rocks and plants and the like. It may be that these spirits seek specifically to experience human existence, and that getting incarnate humans to ingest certain plants is one way for them to achieve this. Whatever the case, they appear to desire not just congress with but ingress into (and through) our consciousness, which they attain by accessing not only our neurons (as they are “hijacked” by the psychoactive chemicals) but the entire network which those neurons are linked up to. I estimate there are three layers of neural circuit-boards to a human being. The most superficial is that of the brain, which is then linked up to the larger network of the nervous system, including all the organs which store individual memories (the brain’s function being to access and “decode” these memories), memories which make up the life and identity of the individual, or total body. Lastly, beneath that, encompassing every atom of the body, there is the subatomic network of the DNA, which contains our genetic code and hence the memories of the entire species. These three levels (all of which can be found in the body) may also correspond with the physical body, the energy body (psyche?), and the soul (or Soul) which exists outside of spacetime, but this is just a guess.
Potentially, certain psychoactive plants and chemicals can “light up” the neural network of our brains and even our greater nervous systems. In extreme cases, such as shamanic initiation, they may even allow us access to a genetic level of consciousness, where ancestral memories and/or “past lives” are stored. This process is perhaps similar to splitting the atom to create a nuclear explosion: if our bodies (like the rest of physical reality) are holographic systems, each neuron, each molecule, contains the information of the whole network. (A blood sample will tell you something about the whole body.) When psychoactive molecules “invade” the molecules of our bodies, they crack them open and release the information stored inside, giving us momentary awareness of the whole network: “nuclear” vision. There’s an obvious side effect of this, however. Since accessing the information of the neural network requires hacking into the system, psychoactive substances cause inevitable damage in the process. As a result, the long-term effects are generally the opposite of the short-term ones. I believe that psychoactive substances cause “ruptures” in the neural pathways of the brain and the total body (possibly even in the DNA), as well as in the energy body or psyche. These ruptures then prevent a spontaneous activation of the system, further on down the line. They may give us a taste of enlightenment—our natural state of being—but the possibility of a lasting enlightenment later on is drastically reduced. In this way, psychoactive substances, like gurus, and perhaps like occult knowledge in general, engender spiritual addiction. As with all addictions, we need ever more powerful doses to get “high.”
Gaia's secret revenge ?
There is a very clear parallel to be drawn here with the ecosystem, which of course is the source of most if not all psychoactive substances. If the trees and other plant life of the Earth form a sort of neural network for the planet (a scenario deftly illustrated in Alan Moore’s run of Swamp Thing comics), then decimating the rain forests and other forms of environmental damage would be affecting more than merely our oxygen supply. It would also be rapidly reducing the capacity of the Earth’s biosphere to function as intended, as an information system by which the planet (like the human body) can become fully self-aware (planetary consciousness). Ironically enough, it may be partly because of this system shut-down that there is such a collective pull towards a “psychedelic solution.” The irony, if this is an accurate description, is that the destruction of the ecosphere is not only a symptom but also a cause of our increased disconnect from Nature and from our bodies. As we seek to experience our primal/cosmic natures via the psychoactive substances which the Earth (and modern science) provides, the imagined solution may only be compounding the problem. If so, it would be Gaia’s secret revenge, because if the (ab)use of psychoactive substances is decimating our own individual “biospheres” and preventing us from having full access to our natural faculties, this exactly mirrors the ways in which our disconnection from the environment has affected the Earth’s biosphere.
Although this is a potentially controversial point of view within the entheogen and alternate perceptions community, there is ample evidence to support it. On the one hand, we have a blockbuster such as Avatar, which advocates environmental activism and mind expansion through psychedelics, while at the same time feeding the military-industrial-entertainment complex that is slowly destroying the planet and keeping the collective mind numbed out on corporate crapola like Avatar. So far, the only explanation of this contradiction I’ve heard is that the movie is evidence of a planetary awakening! The countless contradictions within the film—to say nothing of its corporate crappiness—belie such an “explanation.” If a movie made by the Hollywood military-entertainment complex appears to vilify right-wing military forces as anti-environmental, while glorifying psychedelics and “back to roots” tribal values, you can be sure the film’s backers have their reasons.
On the other hand, we need look no further than two of the leading forces in the psychedelic revolution—Carlos Castaneda and Terrence McKenna—to glimpse the dark side of the entheogen experience. McKenna died of a brain tumor at age fifty-three, and Castaneda died of liver cancer, aged seventy-two. The brain and the liver are the two organs most obviously and indisputably affected by psychoactive substances. These visionary spokesmen’s deaths underscore their messages[2] and have served to counteract, at least to a degree, their influence regarding the presumed positive value of entheogens. Castaneda quotes don Juan Matus in one of the later books, admitting that power plants “do untold damage to the body,” and explaining that they were only necessary because of Castaneda’s extreme “stupidity.” A third body of evidence (probably the most persuasive) for the dubious benefits of entheogen-use would be the countless proponents and spokespersons who claim to have been transformed by power plants, whose rhetoric and behavior betrays an obvious lack of balance, coherence, or sobriety. (It would seem cruel to mention any names at this point.)[3]
It will no doubt be argued that, if used properly (shamanically), entheogens such as ayahuasca, ibogaine, and psilocybin can be used for healing, so how can they be said to harm the body? The answer is in just what “proper” or shamanic use entails, as well as what we understand by “healing.” The electromagnetic field or “aura” around the human body, which corresponds roughly with the neural networks I have been describing, is where all physical illnesses originate, so it is here that any shamanic healing via entheogens presumably occurs—if indeed it does occur. Such “soul-healing,” when effective, could conceivably make up for any damage being done to the body by entheogens, because by sealing up fractures or clearing out blockages in the energy body (the total psyche), by connecting to the ancestors (which is probably the original use of these substances), the body would be able to regenerate itself over time. Generally speaking, this does require a shaman—an experienced energetic healer—administering the entheogens, and even taking them in the patient’s stead. Performing energetic surgery upon our own psyches would obviously be a highly risky endeavor, not to say insane. At best, the chances are that we will use the entheogen-induced experience of heightened awareness to avoid areas of blockage—or to plough through them without necessary preparation—rather than heal and integrate them. This may not result in physical sickness (at least not right away), but it will likely lead to ego inflation, on the one hand, and dissociation and fragmentation (mild schizophrenia) on the other. Perhaps most commonly, it will lead to a combination of both.
The idea that psychedelics are a concentrated “death substance”—a form of holistic poison—does not contradict the idea that they can be used for healing, because this is true of all homeopathic remedies. Dosage is key: even a little bit too much and medicine becomes poison. With psychoactive substances, this relates not so much to the amount ingested but to the frequency of use, and, equally or perhaps more important, to the circumstances under which they are being used. In my own case, I began drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco regularly (about once a week) at around the age of fourteen or fifteen (my first “tipple” was around five or six). I smoked my first hashish and tobacco joint at age seventeen, and smoked it daily until about the age of twenty-five. After that I smoked it less and less frequently, and by my thirties I used it more or less as a hallucinogen. My marijuana use tapered off completely in my forties and I haven’t smoked in over five years. My use of hallucinogens spanned a little less than twenty years, from 1987 to 2004, and during that period I probably had around a hundred powerful experiences (quite a few of which were marijuana-induced). I would estimate, conservatively speaking, that less than two dozen of these were “necessary” (appropriate), and that perhaps still less were truly “shamanic,” by which I mean healing or transformative to my being. That would render somewhere between 75% and 90% of my use of psychoactive substances gratuitous and therefore deleterious to both my mental and physical health. Overall, I like to think that it evens out, that the 10-25% of shamanic experiences were sufficiently transforming to compensate for the damage I did to my nervous system by over-indulging. Nonetheless, if this is true, I still have to face the fact that I’d be more or less exactly where I am today if I had avoided psychoactive substances altogether. If I am honest, I am pretty sure that I would be considerably better off; but of course this is ultimately unknowable to me.
The bottom line is that I was using psychoactive substances, not simply to expand my consciousness, but to escape the confines of a contracted consciousness. What’s the difference? Perhaps nothing save that the latter is an honest description where the former is not. In other words, if I had been content within the parameters of my limited consciousness, I would not have been so eager to experiment with heightened states of awareness. So-called “consciousness expansion” becomes merely recreational once we have attained a certain level of consciousness, a level at which we have more than enough to integrate without stirring up still more elements of our unconscious. And integration entails coming back down to earth to see what’s going on in our mundane awareness, something that doesn’t happen if we keep shooting for ever-higher states of consciousness and ever more mind-expanding experiences, via entheogens. How much does expanding our consciousness enhance our day-to-day capacity to function in the world and relate to other people at an ordinary level? And how much are we simply increasing our ability to talk endlessly about abstract subjects and fly off into imaginary/imaginal realms, bringing back shiny trinkets (songs, poems, paintings, books) to show off how “evolved” our consciousness is to the world? Be honest now.
Continued:
