Consciousness Cafe - Entheogens and Psychedelic Cultural Transmissions

Well that review was a surreal read. Pinchbeck's new obsession with 2012 makes me cringe, but so does this reviewer's assertion that global warming's no problem and that capitalism isn't essentially eating itself. They're both delusional.
 

You hit it right on the head!

I completely agree with you, and I think that waiting for the coming apocalypse is escapist and an excuse to run away from the NOW.
 

Mr. Pinchbeck does not have the slightest shred of evidence to back up a single of his assertions concerning the nature of Time, his role as Quetzlcoatl's medium, etc. etc. He is an interesting writer, and I enjoyed 2012, but only because the meme itself is so fascinating. When I heard Jay Leno mention the date I knew it had finally penetrated the collective unconscious quite fully, so it's slightly disturbing that a "true believer" in the idea is getting so much attention. This can only serve to plant the eschatonic idea in the minds of ever more people, which would certainly include a few potential Mohammed Atta's, and I hate to think of the weird apoca-cult movement that can come alive in the next five years. Anyone remember Aum Shinrikyo's efforts to help "move along" their predicted apocalypse... "moves like a fist through the traffic, anger and no one can feel it, shoves a little bump into the momentum, just a little longer but you feel it in the creases and the shadows, the rattling deep emotion. the cool, cool river sweeps the wild wide ocean."
 

I found this commentary on “Pinchbeck’s thought,” and figured I would respond to it. My perspective is that the critic made a number of projections onto my work, leading to serious distortions. He quotes from Brian Dougherty’s Reason review of my book, which presented a terribly reasoned libertarian and rational skeptic’s critique of “2012”, and was full of misunderstandings and reductions of my positions into easy pigeonholes.

1. “Pinchbeck’s millenarian belief in redemptive apocalypse”: I don’t have such a belief.

Up front, it is important to make a distinction between thoughts, hypotheses, and beliefs. What I find in a lot of critiques of my work is that ideas I explore as hypotheses are taken as “beliefs,” even though I insist, again and again, in my books and talks, that I am making a “thought experiment.” I frequently pause to note that what I am describing is hypothetical, possible, or theoretical – or just my perspective. Critics tend to take the easy shot, and reduce my theoretical arguments to beliefs. If we can’t entertain alternative hypotheses, we limit our possibilities, and may miss important phenomena, because we have not allowed ourselves to take it seriously.

In “2012”, I do put forth the hypothesis – not the belief – that we are currently in the Apocalypse. I look at this possibility through a Jungian lens, as an archetype that may be currently constellating in our human reality, with physical as well as psychic dimensions to it. I quote Edward Edinger, Jung’s student, on the Apocalypse as “the momentous event of the coming of the Self into conscious realization.” I offer the possibility that the Maya possessed a different system of knowledge than our own, but one that was at least equally legitimate. Their calendars are, by the hypothesis explored by several thinkers, actually “timetables for the evolution of human consciousness” (Calleman). 2012 represents the completion of one cycle and the beginning of the next. I offer as a hypothesis that this next cycle might represent a different form of human consciousness, with a different relationship to time, space, and being.

2. My “soteriological belief in an immaterial “consciousness shift”.

Once again, I do not have a “belief” in this – I offer it as a hypothesis, to a certain extent, a possibility. I do make an argument, utilizing a number of different perspectives, that a consciousness shift, or “consciousness mutation” in the term of Jean Gebser, might be the evolutionary destiny of our species. I also wouldn’t call such a consciousness shift “immaterial” – it would most probably have many material manifestations.

3. My “distrust of modernity and technology.”

It is not a question of “distrust.” I argue throughout that modernity and the development of technology were necessary for our evolutionary process. I argue that technology is a representation of our psychic development – any instrument begins as a thought-form that is then rendered in material form. Hence, until we heal the destructive and regressive aspects of our psyche, the more powerful our technology becomes, the more endangered we are. I do think that the solution of the crises we face will require more nuanced and sophisticated use of techniques and technologies that do not violate the integrity of natural systems – along with the acceptance of psychic energy and intuitive and mystical modes of cognition. .

My “romanticization of aboriginal societies and magical modes of thought (at the expense of rational/analytical cognition).”

Once again, this is the opposite of what I actually write and say, again and again and again, and is therefore based on the writer’s projection onto my work. My entire concept is that we are moving toward an integration of rational and empirical consciousness with the intuitive and mystical modes of cognition known to indigenous tribes and myth-based civilizations. Obviously, before we can make such an integration, we would have to recover those lost modes of intuitive and mystical knowing, which modern society forfeited, leading to the extermination of the witches, the repression of psychedelics, etc. If it seems that I am giving priority to the magical and intuitive modes of cognition, this is only necessary as a balancing force, as it is these modes that have been repressed.

I also do not romanticize aboriginal societies – however, once again, some rebalancing is needed here, as these societies have been regularly denigrated and derided by modern Westerners. The fact is, aboriginals survived in unbroken continuity for tens of thousands of years, maintaining a sustainable balance with the natural world. For this reason, we may have things that we need to learn from these cultures, if we would like to secure our own continuity. I also believe their training in supersensible perception through initiatory discipline may be very important to our future.


4. My “revisionist critique of capitalism as essentially rapacious.”

I am not “anti capitalist” or “pro capitalist,” just as I am not “anti tribal culture” or “pro tribal culture.” I respect capitalism for its tremendous powers of transformation and its efficiency. I write in “2012” that “technical efficiency” is value-neutral and could be used to help and heal the world. It is a question of repurposing the energies of capitalism so that they are helpful rather than harmful.

I do critique capitalism, as it is currently practiced, through the philosophical perspectives of Walter Benjamin (Breaking Open the Head) and Herbert Marcuse (2012), and I stand by those critiques.

5. My “seemingly transcendentalist perspective that only by transcending the evils of this world, by shaking capitalist modernity off our back, can the world somehow be saved.”

As I said above, it is not about “shaking capitalist modernity off our back,” but by mastering the tremendous forces for transformation that have been unleashed by capitalism, and turning them toward helping the world and salvaging the integrity of the planetary environment. Far from being anti-capitalist, the first thing I did upon completing “2012” was co-found The Evolver Project, a llc.

6. “An accompanying underlying nihilism that suggests that perhaps” I do “not want the world to be saved.”

I would have to see this, and the rest of his comments here, as the writer’s projection upon my work, with little connection to what I actually write or say. My perspective is that “We go deeper into the physical to get to the infinite” – we have to engage on a much deeper level with this reality if we want to aid our own spiritual evolution. I do not like the concept of transcendence, but prefer the ideal of immanence. I am definitely not a Luddite, but see the accelerating development of technology as an aspect of our psycho-spiritual evolution.

I do think that there are other “realms of existence,” which are not “nonphysical” but have their own substantial reality in ways we cannot fully understand yet. I think these realms exist because of my own experiences of them, which to me are more important as proof than any theoretical refutation. I do not think it is a question of these realms being “superordinate” or subordinate. They simply operate on different principles, corresponding to other forms of consciousness and intelligence. I also do not consider myself part of an "elite" for having experienced them. Anyone can go through the ontological experience for themselves, and many have.
 

In response to Daniel Pinchbeck:

(I will refer to Daniel Pinchbeck as Mr. Pinchbeck out of respect)

Mr. Pinchbeck, as I noted before I agree with you that we need to develop an understand of a variety of states of consciousness, that there are other realms of existence that we must understand better, that we need to integrate parapsychology and the practice of meditation and use of entheogens into the science of psychology and mainstream therapy; and that the 21st century requires a true visionary perspective (which I believe you possess). My main issues revolve around the millennial and tech-dismissive perspective you have adopted.

You say "What I find in a lot of critiques of my work is that ideas I explore as hypotheses are taken as beliefs, even though I insist, again and again, in my books and talks, that I am making a thought experiment. I frequently pause to note that what I am describing is hypothetical, possible, or theoretical or just my perspective. Critics tend to take the easy shot, and reduce my theoretical arguments to beliefs."

The problem Mr. Pinchbeck is that you explore in great depth a set of ideas representing a set of interlocked points of view without an opposition opinion. It is true that you dance around these ideas without really expressing them as your own. But if you did not have an opinion you would have represented a more balanced set of thinkers in your book. You are the writer and you chose the sources you used, they did not jump into your book their own.

Please accept responsibility for the direction your book has taken.

To return to transhumanism: the Singularity is the single strongest vision of the 21st century orthogonal to your spiritual vision of 2012. Yet in "2012" you give only a couple of pages to talking about Ray Kurzweil and John Smart, in largely dismissive terms, and you only deal with the most easily shot down ideas in transhumanism: the idea of autonomous AI, transcension, and downloaded minds.

On another technological front you entirely ignore Bruce Sterling and the Viridian movement, bioremediation, other techno-optimists such as Kevin Kelly and Bob Metcalfe; anybody who proposes real solutions to current problems was ignored. I believe that by omission you purposefully create a sense of hopelessness that then requires a kind of messianic resort to "consciousness shifts" or other forms of powerless surrender. You say are "definitely not a Luddite" but you generally demonstrate contempt for rational, technological solutions to the problems we may face, and instead spend long sections of your book on a Ghost Dance of crop circles and UFOs.


You also present 2012 as a transpersonal psychological entity, stating "I look at this possibility through a Jungian lens, as an archetype that may be currently constellating in our human reality, with physical as well as psychic dimensions to it. I quote Edward Edinger, Jung's student, on the Apocalypse as 'the momentous event of the coming of the Self into conscious realization.'" But you acknowledge that concept as the "Apocalypse". In society as a whole the Apocalypse has generally destructive catastrophic meaning. The Apocalypse is either the destruction of civilization, of humanity, the Earth or the whole of manifestation depending on your particular eschatological vision. Pretty nasty stuff. You cannot use the term "Apocalypse" (ignoring less charged terms such as the Singularity) without the destructive baggage it carries. I don't think most people reading your book ascribes a Jungian interpretation to the Apocalypse. You had a choice. There is a violent, dark edge to your vision of the future.

You write about your lack of balance between rational and magical modes of thought, "Obviously, before we can make such an integration, we would have to recover those lost modes of intuitive and mystical knowing, which modern society forfeited, leading to the extermination of the witches, the repression of psychedelics, etc. If it seems that I am giving priority to the magical and intuitive modes of cognition, this is only necessary as a balancing force, as it is these modes that have been repressed." I have heard that argument used by pagans and it falls flat for them as well. This is not a time when we have a surfeit of creativity in our society. Richard Florida has written a bestseller titled "Rise of the Creative Class" and Daniel Pink repeats the theme as "Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future". Intuition and magic are getting their due.

I propose that you give short shrift to rationality because the combination of intuition and rationality allows capitalism to prosper without major revisions, and our problems to be solved without major crisis.

I could say much more about your comments, but I think if this response gets much longer there is not much chance that many people will actually read it.

The real problems of the 21st century will be resolved by hard work, engineering, new technology; some lifestyle changes; but not consciousness shifts and not motivated by fear of impending doom.

Psychedelics make human life better and improves our creativity but ultimately capitalism will survive, some people will get rich, inequities will continue and hopefully the world will become a bit more just than it was before. There is nothing essentially countercultural about psychedelic culture.

When Jay Leno is talking about Burning Man and 2012, it becomes important to make this point.
 

When I said surfeit, I meant deficit. Damn uneditable comments.
 

RESPONSE TO USTAATH'S COMMENTS:

What fun! I appreciate this type of engagement. What follows are some responses to your criticisms.

Ustaath writes: "The problem Mr. Pinchbeck is that you explore in great depth a set of ideas representing a set of interlocked points of view without an opposition opinion."

Actually, I feel that I did intersperse a large number of opposing opinions throughout my book, from archaeologists, crop circle debunkers, psychiatry professors, etc. The book is already 400 pages long, and it is not an encyclopedia. Of course I was putting forth my personal perspective and making the arguments that I found most compelling - that is what writers do. Yet I believe I allowed for more open criticism within the book than most authors do - and I continue to dialogue openly with those with opposing points of view, such as yourself.

Ustaath: "On another technological front you entirely ignore Bruce Sterling and the Viridian movement, bioremediation, other techno-optimists such as Kevin Kelly and Bob Metcalfe; anybody who proposes real solutions to current problems was ignored."

It is not that I "ignored" them - this type of work was not the focus of my book, which was about my efforts to understand the nature of indigenous prophecy. In fact, the theme of my next book will be a solution-oriented look at how we can shift to a sustainable planetary civilization, and I will examine bioremediation, biomimicry, and so on. I do have to say that I have yet to be entirely convinced of the "Viridian movement" - it is a great idea, but I haven't heard many applications. Similarly, I enjoy Worldchanging.com, but I find many of the techno-positivist projects they describe to be in early stages or to have little real substance behind them. I certainly hope that there will be compelling technological solutions from these quarters - as of yet, I haven't heard them.

Ustaath: "I believe that by omission you purposefully create a sense of hopelessness that then requires a kind of messianic resort to "consciousness shifts" or other forms of powerless surrender. You say are "definitely not a Luddite" but you generally demonstrate contempt for rational, technological solutions to the problems we may face, and instead spend long sections of your book on a Ghost Dance of crop circles and UFOs."

I do not think I "purposefully create a sense of hopelessness" - there is a huge amount of hope in my writing. Once again, I do not have "contempt for rational, technological solutions" - this is your projection. However, true solutions may require a deeper integration of rationality and intuition, technology and technique.

I spend time on crop circles and alien abduction because these phenomena specifically evade the explanational grids and categories of the rational mind, and require a new interpretative framework, which I believe that my book provides - and by doing so, it is performing an important service.

Ustaath: "In society as a whole the Apocalypse has generally destructive catastrophic meaning. The Apocalypse is either the destruction of civilization, of humanity, the Earth or the whole of manifestation depending on your particular eschatological vision. Pretty nasty stuff. You cannot use the term "Apocalypse" (ignoring less charged terms such as the Singularity) without the destructive baggage it carries."

An alternative meaning for Apocalypse is revealing or uncovering. Yes it also has destructive connotations, but just because these connotations are "pretty nasty stuff," that doesn't mean we can avoid facing the implications of this time. I support Edinger's thesis, that the more of us who undergo an "inner Apocalypse" and attain what Jean Gebser calls "ego freedom," the less need will there be for a total civilizational collapse.

Ustaath: "There is a violent, dark edge to your vision of the future."

There is a violent, dark edge to the present - or haven't you noticed?

Ustaath: "I propose that you give short shrift to rationality because the combination of intuition and rationality allows capitalism to prosper without major revisions, and our problems to be solved without major crisis."

We are already in "major crisis," as Katrina, Peak Oil, the Iraq War, and accelerating climate change make evident. At current rates, 25% of all mammalian species will be extinct within 30 years. All tropical forests will be gone in 40 years. The worlds fisheries will collapse within 40 years. The human sperm count is declining 1% a year, due to chemical pollutants. Check out the UN's recent projections on climate change. In NYC, flowers that do not bloom until March blossomed in December. When the climate changes, agricultural tables can also change, leading to unpredictable food production. This is the effect to unbridled capitalism, and its "irrational rationality," which does not take the longterm health of ecosystems into account.

Ustaath: "The real problems of the 21st century will be resolved by hard work, engineering, new technology; some lifestyle changes; but not consciousness shifts ... ultimately capitalism will survive, some people will get rich, inequities will continue and hopefully the world will become a bit more just than it was before."

Ustaath, when you make these points you are no longer making an argument but simply offering expressions of your own faith and your own beliefs, which are not based on anything substantial. I don't know whether or not capitalism will survive - I expect it will in some form, but actually it may not. Just as there was a time before "capitalism" and before "history," there might be a time after them.

Think about the certitude of the ancien regime before the French Revolution - or even the USSR before the fall of the wall. Massive systemic change can happen in a very accelerated fashion, when the time has come for such a change. Capitalism may survive in the way monarchy survives in Western Europe - as a vestigial remainder, while the actual dynamics of human society are centered on something else - perhaps a retribalized humanity that has returned to systems of ceremonial exchange and gift economies. Similarly, when you dismiss the possibility of "consciousness shifts," you are simply projecting your own biases. My perspective is that consciousness is changing all the time - and at an ever-more accelerated rate.

I also think that the psychic dimensions of this evolution cannot be ignored - I see us accessing psychic energy for planetary transformation. Before the 18th Century, nobody had any idea how to make use of electricity, and once we did we changed the surface of the Earth in a mere two centuries. Harnessing psychic energy and paranormal capacities could lead to an exponential acceleration of human potential, and validate the 2012 hypothesis within the next few years.

I do not say this will definitely happen - but I suspect that it might.
 

My initial response to all this is the following quote;

"There is no psychological evolution."
- J. Krishnamurti, The Core of the Teachings

The whole notion of 2012 seems to me a reflection of this essential need for a truly radical change of human nature - which is essentially a change in the human brain-mind itself. My deepest gut instinct tells me that there *must* be some kind of 'revolution-mutation in human consciousness' itself, as J. Krishnamurti defines it through his work - that is, the SELF (Ego / "I") must come to an natural end, without effort - if there is to be any peace on this beautiful sacred planet Earth. For only when all false psychological duality and separation between "Me" and "Other", "I" and "You" disappears will humanity be saved.

Just some food for thought. Peace.

Henry
 

I'm with Pinchbeck. Inequity has to go. ( Didn;t those psychedelics increase your sensitivity to pain-empathy). Change happens partly because people make them and partly because they accept the powers moving in and around them. There are many people who can already envision and feel a sytem that is more functional, intergrated and whole than captialism. Bio-remediation plays a big role here and will be even more effective once human beings, ( in western cultures ) re-member how to tune into the subjectivity of other creatures.

I can also envision a time when psychic energy, aligned cyclic waves of solar and cosmic energies will be intergrated into a functional global system. ( Renewable energy is still in it infancy). Actually it will be much like what has been used in the past- the kind of thing hinted at by (possibly encoded into) the crop circles.

We'll be able to bypass the nasty visions of some of the transhumanists, having to join with machines, cyborgs, class based genetic engineering, and some super intellegence based on A.I.. We'll be psy-borgs- that is psychically involved and sharing feelings with minerals, metals, ( yes our technology) animals, other people, a simultanous consciousness. We haven't developed the right kind of vision to mess with genetics, we'll just create new pollution and entropy- same with nano.

You have to be able to see beyond, or hold simulanotusly the vision that historical linear evolution isn't total and there have been civillizations, societies, cultures, and individuals that have attained this kind of visioning. ( spherical empathic structural x-ray vision) That they may have evolved to a level beyond our society.

what's the point of colonialism, the last five hundred years of hell, peoples the world over shattered, it we don't embrace, ( even in our thinking) everyone?

No- basic leary neuropolitics- inequity gone- optimal diversification and interconnectivty of individuality and culture

The changes we need, that we are living need to be, and are global. I'm not so impressed by worldchanging either, neither the tone or the techiques. It would be nice if the world would adopt solutions like bio-remedaiton presented with the cool stylish rationalism you seemed to project. But we are not there.
Initiation is crisis- its passion- in the old sense to suffer. ( Empathy)

Psychedelics teach you to go with the flow, and create in it. These big ominous forces are real man... whatever we call them ( and yes I agree there are consequences and baggage attached to to different names) we have to acknowledge them, go with them and create that next wave of reality out of this planetary initiation .

Strictly opinion. Forgive the spelling...

Dynamic Peace and Compassion