“Here is some of the [natural? processed?] fruit of that tree. It can make you wise. It can expand your awareness. It is delicious to the taste and very desirable for obtaining knowledge and increased consciousness.”Is the psychedelic option really the siren call of a “shortcut”? as in: let's skip (or speedup) those generally incremental wake-up and growth stages that prepare us for expanded awareness? If wake-up and growth seem to take such a ruddy long time; if they require such persistent learning, relearning; aligning, re-aligning; action and correction, why not just pop a pill — snort, inject, ingest — a substance to blow our minds open to new vistas — new vistas that might hook us into repetitive cravings for (synthetic?) enlightenment.
What if knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and discernment do not come by “eating,” but rather by 1) observing things as they really are? and 2) experiencing the growth and just recompense of right action?
Are we just repeating the déjà vu on déjà vu of trying to use the physics of this world — the flesh (i.e., grosser matter2) component — to shortcut to spiritual experience?3
What if chemically-stimulated (synthetic?) enlightenment is a totally different experience (an illusory psychedelic) from the endowments experienced with non-chemical enlightenment?
What if the search for enlightenment that we initiate here below through manipulation of the physical is not the same as enlightenment initiated from above according to spirit and eternal principles?
What if the unified ground of all being that some experience during “trips” is not a present, undifferentiated state, but an original (recalled / remembered) “state of being,” and that in our present condition we are progressing through states and stages of differentiation, “transcending and including” all that harmonizes with higher states as we move to those higher states of being and awareness?
What if unified ground is like a stem cell4 that appears like every other embryonic stem cell until some mysterious moment of “choice” or trigger when it begins to differentiate? What if the pre-trigger state is where the sense of unity with all things originates, and is thereafter transcended but included?
What if the unity ahead for evolving souls is as different as the unified body is from the stem cell; and that to conflate past unity with future unity is a fundamental error in perspective and understanding?
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1. Mark Passio On Psychedelics Used For Consciousness Expansion Documentary (Time 3:02:18) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39i-50UFYn4&t=9331s
2. Doctrine and Covenants | Section 131:7-8 ~ There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.
3. Though Passio rejects religion and man-made law as corrupting and enslaving, which much of it is because of the nature of the Natural Man to become obsessed with pursuing and protecting power and gain, yet some of Passio's own dogma seems to suffer from absolutes and generalizations that do not accord with observing or understanding the world as it really is or would be under his absolutes; so despite his views, I quote scripture which seems to me to illustrate a better understanding of this world's duality and the purposes of combining spirit and flesh.
New Testament | Romans 8:4-8 ~ That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
New Testament | Galatians 5:16-18 ~ Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
New Testament | Galatians 6:8 ~ For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
New Testament | John 3:6 ~ That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
New Testament | John 6:63 ~ It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell
