mazing! 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. 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 revelations," 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 or the anesthetic revelation in their online biography of James2.
It's amazing. Drug law is outlawing science -- and yet so few complain. Drug law tells us what mushrooms we can collect, for God's sake. Is that not straight-up insane? Or are Americans so used to being treated as children that they accept this corrupt status quo?
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.
The problem with blaming things on addiction genes is that it whitewashes the role of society and its laws. It's easy to imagine an enlightened country wherein drug availability, education and attitudes make addiction highly unlikely, addiction genes or no addiction genes.
Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.
I know. I'm on SNRIs. But SSRIs and SNRIs are both made with materialist presumptions in mind: that the best way to change people is with a surgical strike at one-size-fits-all chemistry. That's the opposite of the shamanic holism that I favor.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Soma and the Anesthetic Revelation: How William James failed to connect the dots, published on March 31, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
mazing! 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. 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.
You have been reading an article entitled, Soma and the Anesthetic Revelation: How William James failed to connect the dots, published on March 31, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
