Amazing! The drug-leery censorship algorithms at the Internet Archive actually allowed me to post the following review of "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James1. I was initially irked by their requirement that I limit my effusions to 1,000 words, but then I reflected that this was probably for the best. It obliges me to pounce straight for the jugular in attacking the great psychologist's failure to connect the dots between Hinduism and the anesthetic revelation 2 . I still give the book four out of five stars, however, insofar as James actually acknowledged the power of altered states -- and just in time, too -- for had he done so in modern times, he would have been kicked out of academia for such Drug War heresy.
William James discusses how the use of anesthetic compounds such as laughing gas can provide one with a tantalizing glimpse of new realities. "Our normal waking consciousness," quoth James, "is but one special type of consciousness." He fails to realize, however, that such "anesthetic revelation 3 s," as he calls them, comprise but a subset of the transcendent experiences that have been invoked purposefully for millennia by indigenous religious seekers with the use of psychoactive substances. Although James makes half a dozen references to Hinduism in this book, he never mentions the fact that the Hindu religion was inspired by the use of a psychoactive substance called Soma. Had he made the connection, America's demagogue politicians would have had a harder time convincing us that drugs were evil. Instead, they have succeeded so well that even James's alma mater, Harvard University, does not mention either laughing gas 4 or the anesthetic revelation 5 in their online biography of James6.
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
Hollywood presents cocaine as a drug of killers. In reality, strategic cocaine use by an educated person can lead to great mental power, especially as just one part of a pharmacologically balanced diet.
Was looking for natural sleeping aids online. Everyone ignores the fact that all the stuff that REALLY works has been outlawed! We live in a pretend world wherein the outlawed stuff no longer even exists in our minds! We are blind to our lost legacy regarding plant medicines!
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
Drug testing should flag impairment only. Any other use is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment.
All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.
In a free future, newspapers will have philosophers on their staffs to ensure that said papers are not inciting consequence-riddled hysteria through a biased coverage of drug-related mishaps.
Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice.
I can think of no greater intrusion than to deny a person autonomy over how they think and feel in life. It is sort of a meta-intrusion, the mother of all anti-democratic intrusions.
The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
