John Lash: Countdown To 2012 (Page 4 of 4)

Last year I circulated a proposal for a book on the entheogenic revolution, which I consider to be the most significant cultural and historical event of the 20th Century -- now continuing into the 21st. My talks with Joanna on futureprimitive.org, titled "Rapture and Revolution," cover the same topic. In the book I intended to trace the origins of the revolution and explain its central theme, formulated in the Wasson thesis.

The book, tentatively titled "PARADISE DENIED,"opens with a description of the mushroom ceremony attended by Wasson and conducted by the Mazatec curandera, Maria Sabina. At this ceremony the ancient indigenous practice of psychoactive trance induced by sacred plants was introduced into the modern world. I am convinced that everyone who claims to have a sense of planetary conscience, and who shares my concern for the loss of our humanity, ought to know about this moment. This is why I am posting the first chapter of the book on this site.

The entheogenic revolution is also a revelation. The Wasson thesis has been the catalyst for a new view of how human evolution is grounded in religious experience, but in fact this view is the oldest perspective of our species. Ecstatic knowing is our primoridal birthright, given to us by the earth itself. It can neither be conferred nor eliminated by off-planet gods or their male intermediaries. Ecstatic trance was the primary technique of shamanism, the oldest religious practice on earth which preceded all religious dogmas, institutions, and hierarchies. But for millennia the original religious experience of our species has been under taboo -- a taboo currently being enforced with the aim of complete prohibition of access to salubrious nature-given psychoactive plants. Such plants are widely known to be harmless and non-addictive, and have been proven to heal many kinds of illness, mental and physical, and to cure addiction. The Wasson story is more relevant today than it has ever been.

As I stated in my talks with Joanna, I maintain that where a person stands on the issue of cognitive ecstasy induced by psychoactive plants determines where they will stand in the coming planetary shift, more than any other single issue. I do not mean that everyone has to ingest entheogens to make the shift: I mean that taking a stand on the issue of access to such plants will be the decisive factor in how an individual faces and affects the shift. Personally, I believe the shift is going to show us the worst of which we as humans are capable: zombie-like totalitarian entrancement in violence, division, and insanity. If so, it is crucial that another kind of entrancement should not be ignored or suppressed: the rapture of knowing the divine and supernatural dimension of life, first-hand, and being mirrored in the natural magic we thus behold.

In the end, human dignity (if not survival) may reside in our knowing what had to be denied for humankind to turn away from the earth and become self-hating and self-annihilating.

JLL: January 28, 2008, Andalucia