Pot Smoking and Other Spiritual Hazards (Page 6 of 6)

If your life is working, and you are happy, and things are going well....all roses and ganja is part of your path and you enjoy it then fine. Its not a problem for " you."
I think some of the counterpoints offered had more to do with people who have seen others greatly damaged by this type of thing and in heavy denial about it. People here on Earth can be very different with different sensitivities and origins in antiquity that we know very little about.
Again, all power plant substances open your energy field. Depending on many things that are not properly undetstood, its very easy for some people to then take on all manner of " unnatural " energy attachements.
This along with the way it seems to dirty the aura should be a yellow flag to the Energy Warrior on the path.
Also it seems to blind people to situations going on in their lives that peers notice as unhealthy in the large.
Add to this the negative Egos vehement defense of its appetites with all manner of elaborate and contrived justifications, some of them fantastic.....just like the effects. Interesting.

AS I said before and I think Robert Monroe would have agreed, you SHOULD enjoy your stay on Earth.
If its your thing, then by all means do it up right, but be aware that there is a real dark side to this thing and not only " your mileage may vary " but other people have gotten themselves in major tight spots with it.
There is a shadow side that is well active as in most things here.
All of this is coming from someone who has been there and back with this thing, so I have first hand experience as well as experience studying people who have made it a way of life and their lives are positively in tatters down the road, and they not only have become great liars about it but have erected all manner of elaborate defense structures within their reality which then severely limits expression.

The following is an article by Tim Leary which I consider one of his best and one that pertains to this subject.
Please take note of what he refers to as " Hedonic Masturbation."
He like a few others has noticed the role DNA plays in all the show.

"The Post-Larval Must Be Very Cautious in Communicating with Larval Humans

Exo-psychology holds that the human larval exists in a reality defined by the four survival imprints. Although the brain receives 100 million impulses a second, mundane consciousness is limited to signals which have been conditioned to one of the four imprinted game-boards.

Unconditioned sensations, the raw swirl of an unfiltered reality, exist as background noise.

In communicating with larvals the following points must, therefore, be remembered:

The larval has no interest in you, you do not exist, unless you can hook into Hir limited reality-island, transmit on Hir narrow mind-band, unless your behavior offers meaning in terms of possible benefit or threat to Hir:

   1. cellular well being
   2. emotional-hierarchical status
   3. artifact manipulation game
   4. socio-sexual security; domestic reassurance

All larval interactions are instrumental to one of the four survival attitudes. Larvals are comfortably adapted to this limited four-channel communication, scan automatically for the survival meaning of each stimulus and scuttle by each other like ants, each intent on Hir own "reality" - reacting automaticallly to relevant cues from others.

Larval communication occurs in terms of four systems, some of which are comprehensible to the entire species, some of which are limited to members of the same cultural-imprint group.

Larvals do not like to receive information unless the facts fit into their 3rd Circuit reality net and immediately reward their emotional status. Democrats were delighted to hear the facts about Nixon, but Republicans were irritated and resistant.

Larvals submit themselves to learn new symbols only under special motivational circumstances where the new connections build on and confirm established systems or give promise of future emotional rewards of which the teacher is model.

Larvals fervently resist new symbols which require a change in their network of associations. This resistance to learning is not psychological; it is neurological and biochemical. New ideas require a change in the wiring of associations and literally cause a "headache."

Communicating with a larval involves building onto the net of associations. You must literally wire each new idea to an existing neural connection. Larvals learn almost no new symbol systems after childhood. They simply add on or translate into symbols closely connected to the imprint. This accounts for the fact that it takes at least one generation for a new idea to be understood.

It is especially important in communicating with larvals to remember that few symbols now exist for post-larval processes.

You cannot use butterfly language to communicate with caterpillars.

Circuit 4 language involves domestic-moral and social values. Here we discover that there are great cultural differences. The basic sperm-egg invitations to orgasm are, of course, global, but the semantics of displacement, inhibition and sublimation become subtle. Indeed, the individuality, intimacy, specificity, inconsistency and volatility of value symbols requires the greatest caution on the part of post-larvals communicating with yokels.

Most larvals live in terror of being seen as sinful or "bad." Constant reassurance is required to maintain the feeling of being socially approved.

In communicating with larvals about sexual, philosophic, or ethical matters, one enters very dangerous terrain. It is almost impossible to discuss philosophy with yokels. Hypocrisy, unconscious motivation, irrational paradox, need for approval and fear-of-shame dominate every discussion of philosophy-religion.

Larvals may be bored by and may tune-out Circuit 3 symbols which do not fit their imprints and conditioned networks. But Circuit 4 moral symbols or behaviors which are sensed as different trigger off responses of passion and even violence. Because of this philosophic sensitivity, yokel humans tend to avoid philosophic discussions.

This phobia can cause painful reactions when a post-larval attempts to discuss exo-psychology with a mundane.

The reasons for this philosophic phobia:

    1. Yokels are ignorant about where life came from, where it is going and why. They are thus terrified by their mortality. Each larval has accepted a flimsy philosophy of life-and-death which SHe does not really believe. Thus the irritation and panic when this basic hypocrisy is threatened by a scientific discussion about life-origin and life destination.

        "The Lutheran church has always been based on the Bible," explains Phil Beck, Production Manager of a local paint company and the superintendent of the Church's Sunday School. "If you start questioning it, where do you stop? If I have to have that much education to sit down and understand Genesis, then why did God let Luther put it in the people's language? At what point do I throw the whole mad mess out the door?" Time magazine

    2. Yokels are robot-slaves to DNA. They blindly labor to perpetuate the species, to breed, to establish domestic arrangements for rearing young and to transmit cultural survival patterns. Any discussion which threatens to expose or question this robothood is extremely painful. The larval cannot tolerate the insight into uneasy areas of uncertainty.

    3. Expression and inhibition of sexual behavior is charged with terror, because orgasm and sperm-egg transfer must be domesticated to provide for stable child rearing.

In communicating with larvals one must realize that discussions about life, death, philosophic ultimates, child-rearing, sexuality - are highly individualistic. Reactions to these topics are unpredictable, depending on the intimacy and safety of the situation.

Hypocrisy and violent defensiveness is endemic.

Post-terrestrials, of course, think of little else except what happens after larval imprints are retracted. They are fascinated by communications with their body, their brain, their DNA.

Post-larvals emit vibrations which sometimes disturb yokels and other times seduce them into a temporary abandonment of philosophic repressions.

Post-terrestrials are usually funny, erotic, relativistic and philosophically provocative. Yokels can unconsciously sense the difference in a post-terrestrial. It is therefore advisable to be accurate and sensitive when interacting with larvals.

One must be careful not to seduce the yokel into betraying too much truth.

During a philosophic discussion with post-terrestrials, larvals will often get carried away in temporary enthusiasm, confess doubt about their cosmologies, admit ethical relativities and even accept post-larval strivings to leave the planet and escape death.

The post-terrestrial is urged to act with delicacy to avoid any overt or implied criticism of yokel values. It must be remembered that, to the larval, astronomy and genetics involve 4th Circuit ethical issues, which threaten loss of moral approval.

Discussing exo-psychology with a yokel is like discussing sexual experiences with a pre-adolescent. SHe just can't understand the new reality because Hir neural circuits have not been turned-on. And SHe may turn you in for philosophic child-molesting.

Sooner or later the larval is going to realize that, after the exciting flight conversation, SHe is going to remain grounded. At this point the yokel can become passionately moralistic, attacking the post-terrestrial for being elitist, callous to human suffering, anti-human, escapist, or even diabolical.

Immortals must be careful not to wound the sensibilities of mortals.

In particular, one must be diplomatic in discussing the future evolution of the human species. Larval humans naturally believe that evolution has already reached its highest stage with homo sapiens!

Circuit 7 discussions which suggest that evolution is just half-completed, that the human species is fetal and not yet born, that many new superior species will evolve from the present gene pool - are especially wounding to yokel hubris.

Science fiction writers and astronomers have often speculated on the problem of communication between human and interstellar entities. This problem is no longer academic. It is happening. This book is an example.

Post-terrestrials Must Also Be Cautious In Communicating with Premature Post-larvals

"The Hippy" and the "Yogi-Body Engineer" represent the first two of twelve post-terrestrial stages, transitional stages of "wingless butterflies," evolved beyond terrestrial attachments, no longer hooked to mundane symbols. The one-G earth and its survival routines are no longer "real." The Hippie-Zen adept is no longer reflexively reactive to emotional status cues, is unmotivated for dexterous success and unmoved by the virtue-shame systems by which society domesticates its workers; but has not yet evolved to the mastery of the newly activated circuits. The true post-terrestrial is shame-less.

The word "Hippy" is a generic term for the first post-larval stages describing those who genetically (Zodiac type) , neurologically (imprint) or historically (hedonic/sub-cultures) get trapped in passive-receptive hedonic life styles. Transcendental masturbation.

The first post-Hiroshima generation has produced millions of Zen "Hippies" who have evolved from the mundane but do not realize that they are extra-terrestrial.

The problem is, in part, one of historical linguistics. The only languages, the only symbols provided by primitive psychology for extramundane experiences were "larval religious." The new reality of the Hippy is symbolized by vague, mystical terms.

A communication vacuum develops. On the one hand, The Hippy, Yogi and Tantric relaizes that SHe has evolved somehow. On the other hand, the five-brained person, detached from larval symbols, lurches around grasping at any transcendental straw - magic, occultism, chanting, witchcraft, telepathy, guru-ism, mystical Christianity, Hassidism, experimental evangelism, the endless varieties of oriental charlatanism.

The trap of body-consciousness and sensory consumerism has been well summarized by Federico Fellini:

    "People are losing faith in the future. Our [larval] education, unfortunately, molded us for a life that was always tensed towards a series of achievements - school, military service, a career and, as a grand finale, the encounter with the heavenly father. But now that our tomorrows no longer appear in that optimistic perspective, we are left with a feeling of impotence and fear. People who can no longer believe in a "better tomorrow" logically tend to behave with a desperate egotism. They are preoccupied with protecting, brutally if necessary, those little personal gains, one's little body, one's little sensual appetites. To me this is the most dangerous feature of the '70's"

Five-brained persons flopping around sporadically detached from mundane imprints, lacking a vocabulary and a methedology for extra-terrestrial movement, falll back on larval concepts of transcendence. Caterpillar fantasies about what post-larval life will be like.

A warning is in order. Many five-brained Hippies and Yogis are the most vehement opponents of extra-terrestrial evolution. They use three bland sets of criteria to resist practical plans for interstellar migration:

    Look within. Astral travel, passive changing of consciousness will transport us to the promised land.

    Return to nature. Back to the paleolithic! Simplify, avoid technology, stalk the wild asparagus, rely on body wisdom, organic purity, sensory pleasure.

    All is one. The cosmos is a homogenous mist of flavorless cotton-candy. Exo-psychology and neurogenetics are attacked as unnatural, elitist attempts to differentiate the vanilla-pudding unity of simplistic Hinduism, Buddhism, u.s.w.

Underlying all three of these occult postures is a revulsion against science, technology, evolution and intellectual competence. Implicit in the occultist theory is the assumption that there is nothing left to learn except to rote-memorize some Hindu chants, to rote-recite some glib theosophical dogmas, to quiet the restless inquiring mind.

The three stages of the neurosomatic circuit - 13. Hippy, 14. Yogi, 15. Tantric - are body-oriented and involve a deliberate symbol-stupidity. It is understandable that the five-brained person reacts against the insectoid-cyborg materialism of larval technology, the scientism that produces plastic consumerism, military-industrialism, assembly-line anonomie, and polluted over-population. But the rejection of scientific inquiry becomes a know-nothing smugness. Occultists become long-haired rednecks.

The evidence from astronomy, bio-chemistry, genetics, nuclear-physics, defines the true frontier of philosophy and religion. Scientific American is more "far-out" than any occult magazine, the Periodic Table of Elements more prophetic than the Tarot deck. The nucleus of the atom is a realm more mysterious and omnicient than any theological fantasy. The cosmology of an expanding-universe-riddled-with-Black-Holes more bizarre than the eschatologies of Dante, Homer and Ramayana.

Despite this noble rejection of the artificial, the Hippie-Yogi-Tantric establishment is an entrenched, self-indulgent block to evolution - a transitional stage preparatory to planetary migration.

We see the limitations of neurosomatic contelligence most clearly in the teachings of don Juan. Castaneda's warrior-sorcerers are admirable in their dignified, humorous, disciplined attempts to retract social imprints. Don Juan has worked out an accurate, metaphorical neurologic. He precisely defines the larval-imprint reality-island (tonal) and the direct experience of the nagual.

But don Juan's philosophy is pessimistic: "There are no survivors on this earth." It fails to evolve to Stage 15 neurosomatic linkage: "And then I was alone," is the bleak conclusion.

The first post-Hiroshima generation was truly a lost generation. Liberated from yokel imprints but with no place to go beyond body geography. The cynicism and malaise of the 1970's is the result of this disillusion.

For these reasons the exo-psychologist must speak with caution in communicating with the members of the "Woodstock" generation. They have imprinted their bodies but are too old and set in their ways (at age 25-35) [when this was written] to receive the neurophysical signals for extra-terrestrial migration.

. . .

This [information] is not for Every Body. The human species is now at a point of genetic fission. Assume that ninety-three percent of the species is going to adapt to life on the planet. Ecology is the seductive dinosaur science that will lead most of the post-human species to conform to terrestrial conditions, become reasonably comfortable, passive, robot-conditioned cyborg insectoids directed by centralized (ABC, NBC, CIA, CNN, MAO, KGB) broadcasting systems. For terrestrial readers this manual outlines the neurological steps necessary to adapt harmoniously to hedonic, five-brained cyborg existence.

This transmission flashes a different signal for the seven percent who we assume are DNA-designed to attain biological immortality, leave the womb-planet, become galactic citizens and fuse with superior interstellar entities.

This manual is not designed for conventional author-reader games.

It is a signal for mutation.

A test of intelligence.
A scan for personal power."