IUBio

it's interesting

John johnhkm at netsprintXXXX.net.au
Mon May 10 10:47:35 EST 1999


dag.stenberg at helsinki.nospam.fi wrote in message
<7h6l9o$821$1 at oravannahka.Helsinki.FI>...

>Look, why do you not relax - you do not have to suffer from the feeling
>that you are Messiah and have to save the world or get crucified.
>
>There are lots of people around who believe that once people understand,
>we will all be brothers and sisters and never make war again. I even
>know a couple of other guys who believe They are Messiah.
>
>As far as descriptions in the literature go, it seems that most
>everybody who takes a hallucinogen trip gets that feeling of being
>Messiah, having the supreme Knowledge that has to be communicated to the
>world in order to save Mankind (and/or Nature). This Insight is said to
>occur after various drugs: marijuana, LSD, mescalin, etc., etc.) so it
>probably has nothing to do with the kind of drug, but with the Workings
>of the Average Human Brain when in a State of Divergent thinking.


Maybe its a cultural thing, but where I come from we take drugs for fun.
There can be this religious side to it, particularly with LSD, but for me at
least its more a drag towards rather than a capture, except when I'm coming
down off a strong trip and just having fun watching the mind engage in this
frenetic activity, until you get so sick of it you just want to sleep. I
haven't done trips for many years now, but for the most part they were just
great fun and most people I knew did it for the same reason. Most also
became bored with it, generally something to do very occasionally. About the
only useful thing I discovered was just how fragile selves can be. I used to
say when coming down, "putting the bits back together". The only Messiah we
dreamed about was the perfect source for trips.

People do get carried away with the effects, for me it was more like
entertainment. Sometimes they over react, forgetting that what they are
experiencing is just the drug messing up their chemistry. Others go chasing
Aldous Huxley's dream, although I must admit the idea of being given a trip
while on my deathbed has a definite appeal. A group of us were enjoying some
particularly delicious trips when one of the girls wrote down three words
and kept insisting that she had discovered the great answers. She
immediately proclaimed herself a genius and was determined to go out and
save the world. The three words were Peace, Love, and Harmony. I mean to say
... . Eventually I yelled at her to shut up because her incessant ranting
was ruining my peace and serenity and so was labelled the devil for the
remainder of the trip. There are some people who are bad trips and most
seeking something deeper out of the trip don't appreciate the fact that in
those limited number cases where individuals did derive something useful
from the altered state it was generally a matter of long incubation
(thinking about the problem in hand) and the drug effect producing an
impetus in the right direction (disciplined divergent thinking). And the
ability to think while off the planet, which can take some learning.

You're right about the literature Dag, but was all the research done in
California?



John
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