I’m not saying that you can’t push consciousness
around, and I’m not saying that you cannot
induce psycholitic states, states of self
recognition, states of abandonment of neurotic
behaviour patterns, and that sort of thing,
certainly these things happen. But this informing
impossible mystery, this thing which need
not exist at all so far as we can tell. It
is entirely a gratuitous mystery, this informing
sense of the other that approaches us with
poetry and jeweled machines and visionary
vistas of the far future and lost races in
space and biological destinies possible but
untried, that is not approachable any other
way, and I think you know, that all this lineage
mumbo jumbo and the close holding of secrets
means you don’t have a strong hand. If you’re
holding your hand close to your chest is because
you’re afraid to play it. And the shamanism
that is happening at the most primitive cultural
level is shamanism that is willing to show
its hand. I mean they don’t tell you that
you’re not pure enough or celibate enough
or haven’t mastered textual proficiency
enough. They just say “yes, come with us
into the woods and we’ll just show you what
we know”. And what we know is that we don’t
know nothing. And this is how we found that
out. We found that out by putting ourselves
at the mercy of something that we absolutely
cannot understand. Something which cannot
be boiled down to serve ideology, this horse
cannot be broken. Any priest that will try
to ride it will be thrown for a loop. Any
politician who tries to ride it will be trampled
beneath it. It is a true mystery. And the
male ego, that reductionist, Newtonian, Cartesian,
positivist approach always pushes for closure.
There is never satisfaction unless there is
explanation. And yet explanation is a fool’s
game. Anybody can create an explanation, the
history of thought is the history of one cock-eyed
explanation after another. Which is immediately
perceived as ludicrous, once it becomes outmoded.
So the mystery is not an unsolved problem,
it is a true mystery. Nobody knows what is
going on. I don’t think any tradition has
taken a measure of this, or operates in the
light of it. The people who actually handle
the molten alchemical ore that pours out of
the furnaces of hyperspace have very little
to say about it. Have no interpretation to
offer, it’s the public relations people,
and the priestcraft people and the people
who have a book they’re selling. They are
just full information, explanation, denunciation,
adoration, so forth and so on. But the people
who stand close to the mystery are silent.
And what I would like to put across, and what
I’m always trying to put across, and what
is very hard to put across even though we
say it over and over again, is how real what
we’re talking about is. It is real. It can
just shake your teeth out. It is very fine
to sit under the teaching tree and talk about
psychedelic drugs. You know how much this
is like being smashed on a psychedelic drug.
Not at all! Not one iota. Because what is
required in the actual confrontation of the
thing is that all this theory is that all
this theory, all this tradition, all this
self examination is brought in to the focus
of the moment. It is existentially real, you
are being tried and you are being tested by
a thing and an agency that you cannot know.
And this is very different from getting a
laugh from an audience or a paycheck from
an institution, or your book reviewed in the
newspaper, that is all dross, and foolishness.
Because know that there are weasels everywhere
and that your position in human society is
no indication of your existential validity.
But if you can pass through the fire of the
psychedelic experience, and it is a fire,
the hexagram “Li”, the clinging is the
sign of the psychedelic experience, it is
the noetic fire, it’s the fire that descended
on Pentecost and gave language to the apostle,
if you can pass through that fire then you
have made a pact outside of history, outside
of the validations and value systems of men
and women, you have found authentic being.
And it’s a great challenge, a great controversy,
people, you know, react differently, they
want to preserve this particular tradition
which mitigates against that particular tradition
and which mitigates against… the fact is
we can only say what we know. And I diligently
sought existential validity in the various
rumoured sophic-oasis in the landscape of
human aspirations, such as yoga, such as sitting,
such as, such as, and it’s just a matter
of shopping around, you know, and finding
out what actually sets your knees knocking,
what actually makes tears of joy run down
your face spontaneously, what actually can
make you grovel and plead for mercy. Amd It
is this force, this real invocation of real
spirit, it is a dark night of the soul, it
is an ecstasy, apotheosis, apocatastasis,
it even happens outside of Greek. It is pure
challenge met and overcome, pure self authentication.
And in a world where we are just buffeted,
used, set against one another, misled, misconstrued
lied to and controlled, nevertheless you can
just push between the tents of carnival row
and walk out into the woods and there you
find the spiritual life waiting, there you
find the limpid sophic waters of the Tao,
that were always there, and it’s a matter
of courage. Not of finding the guru, not of
seeking the answer. Everybody who’s seeking
the answer is in flight from the answer. Because
the answer is not sought it is faced! You
know what it is, you just have to face the
demands that it will make upon you, because
it isn’t easy. Somebody isn’t going to
pass by your prostrate form and touch you
on the head and tell you you’re enlightened,
it’s going to be burned out of you, the
way the dross is burned away from the precious
metal in the alchemical furnace. It takes
courage and commitment, and the willingness
to make what Plotinus called the flight of
the alone to the alone. This is what shamanism
is about. We do have a good time with each
other, we do have a good time with all these
drugs and copulating furiously upon them and
making metaphors with them, but the truth
is that it is the narrow neck that challenges
us, and the narrow neck that authenticates
us. And when you pass through it, each time
you come through the other side, you’ve
taken a step along the path of knowledge that
is irrevocable, you are not set back. Nature
loves courage. Nature is an infinitude of
doorways opening into authentic being. Calling
to us with the voice of our ancestors, the
spirits of the planet, the time travelers
that rove the centuries ahead of us. And who
knows what else. The whole fact of being is
a palpable, ongoing, continuous miracle. And
we know this, we feel it. But we are the programmed
victims of a death-dealing society. So our
task becomes I think to use the empowerment
that these kind of gatherings give us. And
to use the self recognition that we can each
have here that we are not alone. That, you
know, I’m saying this because I’m glib,
but we all know it. That’s how I’m able
to say it. It is elicited from the group mind.
If it weren’t in you I would be incomprehensible.
So we form then an understanding and then
we each are strengthened in the private trials
of our souls when we go to meet these things,
when we try to hammer out a relationship to
the ally, when we try to hammer out a relationship
to the denizens of our own unconscious. This
is life authentically lived. And I’m sure
that you’re probably like me in that you
come to these kind of gathering points from
a much more mundane life, a life of a scramble
for sustenance and whatever career mongering
we’re all doing, I mean very few of us have
a chance to keep the white hot image of ourselves
as a sky-walker in front of us. But nevertheless,
this is the fact, this is the internal myth
that drives us and delivers knowledge and
delivers authentic being. And it takes a very
very small number of people to make a change.
Especially when the change is not resisted,
because what we’re saying is not menacing
to the establishment, it’s utterly incomprehensible
to the establishment. So we can formulate
in our benign neglect, we can formulate our
own self image, and when finally in the chaos
of the world we are asked for what our answer
would be, what solution we would propose,
it would be all there, all finished, ready
and waiting. This is how mutation, real mutation
occurs in biological populations. It isn’t
that there’s a mutation and suddenly it
works better and so it takes over. No, it’s
that the mutation is always there in the background
and it’s never significant until the conditions
change, it gets dry, it gets wet. Suddenly
those mutant genes that allowed an organism
to survive in wetter or dryer conditions make
all the difference. So we are a residual mutation
that will not die, but it carried along in
the bloodstream of the beast and every 20
or 30 years or so, like the hatch of locusts
or the coming of some other natural phenomenon
in the ecosystem of the planet, there are
waves of reform, and of transcendent hope.
It begins in America with the transcendentalists.
As part of that now, we have only to bide
our time, this shamanic model is at the very
centerpiece of the new society that will be
constellated if there is to be any future
society at all.
