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- Message-ID: <193308Z07071995@anon.penet.fi>
- Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.drugs.psychedelics
- From: an265416@anon.penet.fi (Divine Rascal)
- Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 19:23:37 UTC
- Subject: A Guide for the Novice Transcendental Mystic.
-
- A GUIDE FOR THE NOVICE TRANSCENDENTAL MYSTIC
-
- or
-
- HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE VOID
-
-
-
- I am writing this guide in order to help the people who are
- about to take a psychedelic drug for the first time attain the
- true psychedelic state of mind. "Set" and, to a lesser extent,
- "setting", are so important when seeking illumination that it
- can hardly be reiterated enough.
-
- Good karma is helpful in attaining illumination, but it is not
- sufficient. I have good karma but I am also, by nature, a
- skeptic and a scientist. And perhaps even worse is the fact that
- I am arrogant.
-
- When reading statements such as "set & setting are of paramount
- importance..." I have thought to myself that that is probably
- true for most people, but that I am so superior to other humans
- that there is no need for me to be concerned with such things.
- "After all", I thought, "I have already experienced a total of 5
- minutes of the first blushes of non-game ecstasy even WITHOUT
- drugs, so there is no risk that I will not attain nirvana WITH
- drugs".
-
- But I have news for you people out there who may be as ignorant
- as me. It is NOT all in the drug. The drug, be it LSD or
- psilocybin, MDMA or DMT, is only a catalyst. Your heart must be
- in it, or you will surely fail in your attempt at cosmic
- awareness. Such things are difficult for people like me who are
- scientists and skeptics at the core of their egos. First of all,
- we have trouble taking statements at face value. We require
- "proof". We have been burned too many times before to simply
- accept the words of the guru/guide/yogi/mystic as statements of
- fact. I don't know what to say to convince the die-hard
- rationalists like myself out there. I expect there is nothing to
- do except to try a drug and fail. That was how I learned my
- lesson.
-
- It does not really matter much if you have good karma or not. I
- have known for years that ethics and morals and personality and
- actions are nothing but games. I have felt it, I have known it,
- and I have understood it. And still I failed. Still I clung onto
- my ego. I took 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine 6 times (a
- few times at heroic dosages), and I could not let go. I felt
- sick and bored and I could not break through.
-
- Faith is key. As Timothy Leary wrote in The Psychedelic
- Experience: "Faith is the first step on the 'Secret Pathway.'"
-
- I was told by myriad books: "Have faith that your brain will
- take care of your body. You can't go wrong. Just turn off your
- mind and float downstream." "Sure", I thought to myself, "I
- understand". And surely I DID understand. I just wasn't able to
- do it.
-
- From the time I was about twelve years old I began practising
- meditation. I was not conscious of the fact that I was
- meditating, but I was. I began practising lying in a position
- for hours without moving. I tried to wait as long as I could to
- respond to bodily worries. I.e., when I felt something in my
- throat I would try to remain still for as long as I could
- without coughing. I suffered from insomnia, and this is probably
- partly the reason I began practising such control. When lying in
- my bed at night I used to toss and turn for hours. One day,
- however, I found that if I tried to relax and not move under any
- circumstance, I would fall asleep. After a year or so, it seemed
- to me that I was spending most of my time in a meditative state,
- and I was nearly constantly in a very pleasurable state. This
- was also the time when I experienced (on three separate
- occasions) what I would term the first blushes of true ecstasy.
- My present view of the world, on morals, and on life was also
- developed during this period of my life. After a couple of years
- of this, however, I suddenly stopped exerting active control
- over my thoughts and my body. I do not know why, but I suspect
- it was because I came to the (erroneous) conclusion that my
- years of pleasure and nigh-ecstasy had been generated by my at
- this time diagnosed manic-depression. Pleasure was farther and
- farther between, and it seemed to totally stop at the age of 18.
- I began taking Prozac which helped me somewhat. To be sure I am
- a manic-depressive, but it was, I now believe, the meditation
- that was responsible for my state of mind. It wasn't the mania.
-
- Why this little autobiographical passage? Because I want to
- impress upon the reader how easily we can be fooled into
- believing certain things, and how these beliefs can alter our
- lives and the way we think.
-
- If you intend to attain cosmic awareness through the use of
- psychedelic drugs, I urge you to study and practise meditation.
- The ability to control your thoughts and the realization that
- the mind controls everything will be of great help to you in
- your quest. Read 'The Psychedelic Experience'. Read. Remember.
-
-
- "Modern psychedelic chemicals provide a key to this forgotten
- realm of awareness. But just as this manual without the
- psychedelic awareness is nothing but an exercise in academic
- Tibetology, so, too, the potent chemical key is of little value
- without the guidance and the teachings."
-
- - 'The Psychedelic Experience - a manual based on the
- Tibetan Book of the Dead'
-
-
-
- A Divine Rascal
-
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