4D minds, spiritual energies, and fire-walking...

Psychedelic Society - McKenna offers a 'to-the-point' description of what exactly he deems such a society to be: those which abandon their beliefs in order to allow the direct experience to guide and influence them. This makes sense - by discrediting everything, there cannot be any bias. Your belief can be renewed in what what this new perception grants. His suggestion of the mind being a fourth dimensional organ was interesting. Certainly we know we all have minds, but they are not something tangible. Because of this we might never fully know what its capabilities are or aren't. There are times during conscious or altered states where we are 'tuned in' and can appreciate the capacity of thoughts that emerge. I believe McKenna is trying to illustrate the importance of this tuning in and using our minds to their fullest extent without the 'extra baggage' that usually gets absorbed. He states, "half the time you think you are thinking you are actually listening; that ideas are remarkably slippery creatures that are very difficult to trace to their origin". (If I only had a dollar every time I lost my train of thought!) I thought his comments on language really touched what our class discussion revolved around last week; "We all create our own universe because we are all operating with our own private languages which are only very crudely translatable into any other person's language. How many times, just within this class in group discussions, have we found ourselves stuck trying to explain our thoughts - we know what we want to mean and are thinking, but have a difficult time construing it. If we are able to spit it out, sometimes it can be mistaken or interpreted quite differently than intended. Lastly for this read, McKenna states, "We can claim this higher level of freedom by the simple act of paying attention to being". If you would now ask me what the theme of Huxley's Doors is I'd repeat this quote.

Sterling's essay was interesting regarding the battle between religious practices and drug enforcement policies. I think that this controversy will continue to manifest itself - even though we are a country offering freedom, that freedom is certainly controlled. Worship who or what you want, just do it according to what the government dictates is safe and practical. In a humorous twist on this persecution of Native Americans' worship, Sterling suggests we acknowledge and learn from their teachings and practices as significant and historical much like we do to their Thanksgiving Day contributions. To segue this reading into Pearce's, Pearce makes the statement, "Laws there will be, and only the breaking of them will be through that crack-forming procedure". Peyote IS this culture's 'crack-forming procedure'.

Pearce's comment on how we perceive things reminded me yet again of Huxley. Pearce explains, "what a thing is is to an unknowable extent determined by or influenced by what we think it is". Much like Huxley's comment on our perceptions driven by "who influenced whom to say what when?". Are these biased perceptions what is being reflected on our mirrored minds? This ties in with Polanyi's metanoia; we are all, perhaps, given abilities to construct ideas and thoughts in unlimited ways, but because of interaction and networking with others' ideas and their thought processes, are own personal thought processes are hindered. It's almost as if when presented with a new idea by someone else, we are unknowingly adorned with blinders that confine our ability to perceive that same thought in a new way. (This makes more sense in my head than what it does typed out onto this keyboard, so my apologies if this makes no sense!) As for the fire-walking and hook-hanging, it was interesting to learn that once it was found that people who participated in such events could not only survive these but sometimes come away unharmed there was a new acceptance and notion of 'reality-potential' and such practices continued and grew. I can't help to think (in my westernized mind that is full of bias, blinders, and skepticism) that such dangerous practices that could potentially result in severe injury or death would receive such receptive audience participation simply because there were a few incidences that left the participants unscathed....what about the several others who WERE injured, disfigured or died?