Salvia Divinorum - Experience - The World Is Me ... Is YOU

<body stylesrc="../../technical/backgroundformywords.htm" background="../../technical/leafwords.jpg" bgcolor="#C0C0C0" text="#003300" link="#0000FF" vlink="#000080" alink="#800080"> <p align="center"><font size="5" color="#008000">Salvia Divinorum Scotland ~ Experience ~ Selfish Indulgence?</font> <hr> <p><strong><font size="4">'The World is Me' ... Is <i>You</i></font></strong></p> <blockquote> <p>Your reply adds to my understanding generally and I thank you for that. The descriptions of some of your other experiences are quite intriguing and compelling. However, cutting to the chase (to get you a reply before I go on holiday), the <i>key</i> thing, the area where you quoted me fully in order to reflect directly, is probably where there is still the greatest misunderstanding.</p> <p><a name="failedinsitutions"></a>When I say that these worldly institutions have failed me. I mean in so much as they fail <i>anyone</i> interested in the realms that plant allies reveal. And I take these revelations, these experiences, to be <i>essential</i> in gaining a fuller understanding of reality. So, while these institutions make claims as to an understanding of what’s going on, and in so far as they teach on the basis of their ideologies, I see them as poison.</p> <p>Let me re-phrase.  I see that these worldly institutions have failed. <i>Period</i>.</p> <p>This is not a hindrance for me in the sense of it being <i>me</i> who feels as if they have been let down. It’s not something that’s been done <i>to</i> me; I don’t take it that personally. It’s just a statement of fact.</p> <p>I may be alienated from these institutions, but these institutions are alienated from a greater reality. They are alienated from the mind of nature, from the logos, from the felt presence of immediate experience, call it what you will. - I know in which of these two senses I would rather be alienated.</p> <p>To go on to your quote, "But more specifically – you seem alienated from the recognition that these worldly institutions which have failed you – <i>actually are you. </i>This is the impossibility of the ontology that Salvia reveals isn’t it? The world <i>is</i> me."</p> <p>Well, I don’t know about this. We agree that our experiences are quite distinct. ‘The world is me’ is <i>your</i> conclusion from <i>your</i> experience. I’ll try to be open to this. Maybe next time I’m in Salvia-space I’ll see how it grabs me, but at the moment it’s just an <i>idea</i>, …and I’m not really sure how <i>useful</i> an idea it will turn out to be. <i>If</i> where it leads is for you to say something like, "So my sense is that you really feel you have failed yourself", then it may indeed be limited.</p> <p><a name="missedgist"></a>Were I to reply to a quote such as, "I am seriously tired of hearing so-called radical revolutionaries screaming on about ‘capitalism’ in the streets, and then trotting off to Burger King in their new Nikes." With something like, "I sense that you really feel that you are seriously tired of yourself." then I think you’d be entitled to feel, even if not fully non sequitur, at least that the argument was being used inappropriately, and I’d missed the gist.</p> <p>The failure is not with <i>me</i> it’s with the institutions. Specifically, because and in so far as these institutions fail to attempt to integrate the psychedelic experience, let’s be clear - by and large they fail even to <i>acknowledge</i> the psychedelic experience.</p> <p>To suggest that the "game I was born into, that I live and breathe on a daily basis … - really is infinity" again I feel does not turn out to be particularly <i>useful</i>. The issue is whether or not the psychedelic realm is relevant to life lived and breathed on a daily basis.</p> <p>What does your ‘daily life really is infinity’ conclusion suggest with regard to psychedelic experience? That the altered state is a distraction from what’s going on here and now, thus not really relevant? That there’s no <i>need</i> to be reminded of these other realms?</p> <p>Okay, so it’s not that you are absolutely morally opposed to the practice of psychedelic ingestion, your argument is subtler. But to me the notion that certain psychedelics are somehow at odds with daily life, even if suggested in a more sophisticated manner than one usually hears, is <i>still</i> a reflection of how estranged ordinary consensus has become. It’s our current degree of estrangement that’s historically unprecedented, not the possibility that we (me, you, society) could become <i>more</i> psychedelic.</p> <p>I’m not complaining about my predicament of having been failed by those around me. Sometimes I see this aspect of being a plant-person as a sort of great cosmic joke, and very funny it is too. <a name="fuellingideologies"></a> But without the use of particular plant allies one has to realise that the vacuum is otherwise filled by something else. This is what I mean when I say that one cannot expect reason alone to overcome competing ideologies and whatever else is <i>fuelling</i> them.</p> <p>Alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, chocolate, tranquillisers, television, - as an individual you can choose to abstain from all of these, but you still need to realise "that what we call reality is a culturally determined construct. And what we need is to accept at the deepest level possible that culture is the product of a long, co-operative, highly selective, highly developed, and, last but not least, highly <i>coercive</i> process that culminates in an agreement that shields us from other possibilities <a HREF="../../shamanism/castaneda/beingindreaming/" target="_blank">[…]</a>". Now this is what we <i>really</i> live, breathe and (I say) have to <i>overcome</i> on a daily basis.</p> <p>I’ll finish with clarification of what <i>I</i> mean when I emphasise the positive aspects of fear. - Your counterpoint seemed to be more to do with <i>pain</i> than fear, which is a rather different matter.</p> <p>What I’m suggesting is that what lies at the heart of the particular terror of the psychedelic revelation is the fear of having one’s preconceptions stripped away.</p> <p>As to the ‘what ifs’ of damaging subtle psychic configurations. This seems rather vague and speculative. ‘What ifs’ and maybes can be used against anything and to stop you doing anything. I don’t make an argument for Salvia based on ‘what if’ it perhaps turns out good for me. I’m saying that, yes, I do experience aspects of terror, but when I consider the dynamics of that fear, and the consequences of <i>not</i> facing it, I reckon that a decision to remain in one’s corner has got more to do with a desire to return to a comforting delusion.</p> <p>In the film ‘The Matrix’, one of the rebels sells out, saying something like, "I know that this juicy steak is an illusion / just a stream of electrical impulses, but it will still taste good". I see this as part of the human condition and it’s something that I’m trying to overcome. In my analysis it’s a question of seeing it in the longer run as not really being a healthy option.</p> <p>I’ll close for now with a related quote on the subject of terror (…over to you Terence).</p> <p>"I'm not saying that there is something intrinsically good about terror. I'm saying that, granted the situation, if one is not terrified then one must be somewhat out of the full dynamics of what is happening. To not be terrified means that one is either a fool or that one has taken a compound that paralyses the ability to be terrified. I have nothing against hedonism, and I certainly bring something out of it. But the experience must move one's heart, and it will not move the heart unless it deals with issues of life and death. If it deals with life and death then it will move one to fear, it will move one to tears, it will move one to laughter <a HREF="../../quotes/mckenna/atouchofterror.htm" target="_blank">[…]</a></p> </blockquote> <hr> <table border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td width="10%"> <p align="left"><a href="index.htm#oneparty"><Back</a></td> <td width="14%"> <p align="center"><a href="../">Experience</a></td> <td width="15%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../home.htm">Main Menu</a></td> <td width="15%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../salvia/">Salvia Menu</a></td> <td width="26%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../salvia/effects/">Salvia Effects</a> / <a href="../../salvia/effects/feedback/index.htm">Feedback</a></td> <td width="13%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../menu2.htm">Menu 2</a></td> <td width="10%"> <p align="right"><a href="../../contact/" title="contact details and links to information on salvia prices and availability">Contact</a></td> </tr> </table> <p> </p> </body>