Magical Blend Magazine
Issue #49

Psychedelic Shamanism

By Jim DeKorne

Psychedelic Shamanism goes far beyond a primarily self-concerned transcendence of ordinary reality. It is transcendence for a broader purpose, the helping of humankind. The enlightenment of shamanism is the ability to light up what others perceive as darkness, and thereby to see and to journey on behalf of a humanity that is perilously close to losing its spiritual connectedness with all its relatives the plants and animals of this good Earth.l

We are tearing the earth to pieces, we are spewing out toxins, and the entire planet is reacting. Psychedelics are going to play a major role in helping people to become aware of what is really happening.2

The draconian laws against psychedelic drugs, including the prohibition of legitimate research into their effects upon human consciousness, are ultimately based upon our culture’s fear of the new model of reality they imply. To put it bluntly, if we took the psychedelic paradigm seriously, we would be forced to change our lives completely. It is hard to imagine anything more revolutionary, and hence (from the conventional point of view), more dangerous and worthy of repression.

Drug-induced alterations of consciousness are labeled as deadly, self-indulgent illusions in Western society, hence are seen as a challenge to the status quo and something to forbid for all eternity. The intemperate panic fueling our anti-drug legislation reveals an appalling irrationality within the national psyche. Murderers routinely receive lighter prison sentences than people captured with unauthorized plants in their possession.

The average sentence served for murder in the U.S. is six and a half years, while eight years with no possibility of parole is mandatory for the possession of 700 marijuana plants. It doesn’t matter if the plants are seedlings or mature; the federal government treats each as a potential kilo of product.3

Laws like these, and the confused and impoverished value system that allows them to manifest, are seriously dissociated from reality. The people who demand them and the people who enforce them have lost all humane perspective, and these appalling statutes long ago forfeited the respect and allegiance of rational minds. Injustice always breeds contempt for the law.

The irony of this, of course, lies in the distinct promise psychedelic substances offer for the resolution of current human problems at both personal and collective levels. Here are medicines that could help us to grow, yet we make it all but impossible to obtain and use them. That, it seems to me, is a synonym for chronic illness at best, evolutionary suicide at worst.

I am today a psychologically and spiritually enriched person because of psychedelic drug experiences I had decades ago, yet I’d be the last person to proselytize the use of such materials as a path for everyone. These substances are powerful catalysts for personal insight, yet when absorbed into the metabolism of those who are not ready for them, they have proven to be both individually and socially disruptive. Of course this is not a characteristic of the drugs, but of the consciousness of those who ingest them. Our reactionary laws against psychedelics may be seen as an index of how far we have to go as a culture to attain even minimum levels of psychological sophistication in these matters.

Suffice it to say, I and countless other individuals have had deeply meaningful experiences with hallucinogens which almost certainly would never have occurred without them. I have learned that human awareness plays itself out between the poles of unity and multiplicity, and within this multiplicity reside intelligences capable of becoming allies to human endeavor. What is most important is such occurrences are not particularly unusual; others have received similar insights both with and without the use of a chemical catalyst. Mystical writings the world over reveal comparable ideas, and data collected from research in depth psychology, comparative religion and shamanism strongly suggest these perceptions may actually constitute the hidden substructure of consciousness itself. To prohibit legitimate access to our deepest realms of awareness through rigid, fear-based legislation may be one of the most egregious errors of our contemporary culture, nothing less than a denial of our essence as human beings.

Denial, in the pathological meaning of the word, is an avoidance mechanism deeply embedded within the unconscious psyche. It is an irrational refusal to recognize legitimate challenges to our beliefs and addictions. Denial, for example, is a common response of alcoholics in avoiding the reality of their condition. Denial is a much larger problem in today’s world than just a maladaptive tactic of addictive personalities. It is an endemic (and potentially fatal) cultural disease. In her essay, Denial in the Decisive Decade, Sandra Postel makes a direct connection between denial as a cultural non-strategy and the world-wide ecological crisis threatening the stability of our planet:

Rather than face the truth, denial’s victims choose slow suicide. In a similar way, by pursuing life-styles and economic goals that ravage the environment, we sacrifice long-term health and well-being for immediate gratification a trade-off that cannot yield a happy ending.

There is a practice in the treatment of alcoholism called intervention, in which family members and friends, aided by a counselor, attempt to shake the alcoholic out of denial.... A similar kind of intervention is needed to arrest the global disease of environmental degradation.... Extraordinary change is possible when enough courageous people grasp the need for it and become willing to act.... Once denial is stripped away, what other option do we have? (Emphasis mine)4

Anyone with the courage to stare reality in the face must acknowledge that ecological disruptions created by the human exploitation of nature have grown into autonomous forces, in many cases now beyond the control of the sorcerer’s apprentices who set them in motion. Natural systems are in an accelerating state of metastasis, and the ancient predator paradigms of Individualism, Nationalism and Exclusiveness have lost most of their relevance. No matter how much we prefer to deny it, such beliefs now have little survival value even for individuals, much less for societies.

Any plausible solution to these problems implies some recognition of the fact that no part can flourish at the expense of its fellows without doing damage to the whole. Reduced to its essence, this can all be summarized as a crisis in consciousness. If our consciousness, the way we perceive reality, is pathologically flawed, then it behooves those of us able to realize this fact to find a new paradigm, a new way to position and perceive ourselves in the flow of time and events.

Shamanic cultures have always defined themselves within that transcendent reality we have belatedly identified as expanded consciousness. Although perceived by us as primitive, these usually tribal societies retain a discernment that we have lost, to everyone’s peril. They do not recognize themselves apart from their surroundings, and often attribute their deepest wisdom to insights provided by psychedelic catalysts:

Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored. Shamanism has always known this, and shamanism has always, in its most authentic expressions, taught that the path required allies. These allies are the hallucinogenic plants and the mysterious teaching entities, luminous and transcendental, that reside in a nearby dimension of ecstatic beauty and understanding we have denied, until it is now nearly too late.5

If we as a culture are ever going to recant our denial of some of the most elementary facts of life, it seems there is little time left to accomplish it. If a critical mass of new awareness is to manifest soon enough to halt the further degeneration of our global life-support systems, it will have to emerge within the lifetimes of most of the people now on the planet. Compared with the time-scale of previous evolutionary changes, this window of opportunity is a mere nano-second, millions of years of slow mutation concentrated into one accelerated moment of choice the choice of a materially addicted, semi-conscious species to become fully conscious in the instant before extinction.

Terence McKenna is the primary contemporary advocate for the idea that the intelligent use of psychedelic drugs by those best equipped to benefit from them, might be one way to achieve such awareness in the time remaining:

The solution to much of modern malaise, including chemical dependencies and repressed psychoses and neuroses, is direct exposure to the authentic dimensions of risk represented by the experience of psychedelic plants. The pro-psychedelic plant position is clearly an anti-drug position. Drug dependencies are the result of habitual, unexamined and obsessive behavior; these are precisely the tendencies in our psychological makeup that the psychedelics mitigate. The plant hallucinogens dissolve habits and hold motivations up to inspection by a wider, less egocentric and more grounded point of view within the individual. It is foolish to suggest there is no risk, but it is equally uninformed to suggest the risk is not worth taking.6

This radical and seemingly eccentric notion has been floating around since the sixties, at least. It resurfaced in the late seventies in this guise:

There is now such a desperate need for humanity to improve its navigational skills on the ocean of life that any aid which can hasten the process should be entertained. Consciousness altering drugs may be drastic measures, but what could be more drastic than the problems now engulfing the planet? Physicians seldom hesitate to prescribe medicines for sickness of the body. Why then, should we not prescribe medicines for sickness of the soul, especially when our very survival is at stake?7

The author of this quotation was advocating psychotherapeutic applications of Ketamine, a legal anesthetic that has profound hallucinogenic properties in reduced doses. John Lilly, MD, probably the investigator with the most experience with this drug, eventually came to regard Ketamine as too risky for this purpose. It could be argued that the primary reason for this reservation was that the research group he was involved with apparently lacked a shamanic structure to manage the hallucinogenic experience without serious consequences:

Several had found themselves prone to robotlike behavior, carried to the point where it appeared that the body was actually taken over by alien forces.8

Most people shake their heads at such information, and regard the notion of possession by alien forces as a drug-induced hallucination. It is this disbelief, based upon the deeply ingrained illusions of materialism, that is the crux of the problem; we are handicapping ourselves into extinction by our pseudo-scientific denial of any perception transcending a narrowly defined consensus reality. Ultimately, we must face the question of how willing we are to accept the hypothesis of other dimensions; not the lip service paid to Heaven and Hell by the monotheistic religions, but the possibility of immediate personal perception of other realms of experience.

The entity phenomenon challenges our will and capacity to take the next step in the evolution of consciousness, at a time when the survival of our species is threatened. When seen in this perspective, psychedelic shamanism becomes a moral imperative for those of us who care enough about our lives to live them fully and fearlessly, regardless of consequences. Consequences create new choices, which create new consequences. We are all on our own in the shamanic dimensions, and you can thank the gods for that.

Notes
1. Harner, M. (1980). The Way of the Shaman, Harper & Row, San Francisco, p. 139.
2. McKenna, T. (1991). Sacred Plants and Mystic Realities, The Archaic Revival, Harper, San Francisco, p. 249.
3. Potterton, R. (1992). A Criminal System of Justice, Playboy, September, p. 47.
4. Postel, S. Denial in the Decisive Decade, Brown, L (1992). State of the World, Norton, NY, p. 3, passim.
5. McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the Gods, Bantam, NY, p. 274.
6. McKenna, T. (1991). Plan/Plant/Planet, The Archaic Revival, Harper, San Francisco, p. 219.
7. Moore, M. (1978). Journeys into the Bright World, Para Research, Rockport, MA, p. 53.
8. Ibid., p. 167.