Push/Pull

Push/Pull

by Marco M. Pardi

“So irresistible is the transformative power of enlightenment that your life seems to be shifted into a new dimension, opened to new and unexpected possibilities.” Eugene Herrigel The Method of Zen.

“The action of the creative individual may be described as a twofold motion of withdrawal and return: withdrawal for the purpose of his personal enlightenment, return for the task of enlightening his fellow men.” Arnold Toynbee A Study of History.

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Those of us who are parents remember that period when our child was developing the concept of causality. The instant we explained something in what we were sure were age appropriate terms we heard, “Why?” Not wanting to stifle development, we attempted to clarify and enhance the information. And then, “Why?” We entered the ring, convinced that logic and reason would prevail. And got more Why. But some remember a different outcome: “Because I said so. That’s why.”

Though we may not have understood it at the time, this was a foray into the area of potential disconnect between knowing and feeling, the intangible difference between knowing something is so and feeling something is so. That disconnect is not inherently there at birth or through early development. It is developed over time through an enculturation process which greatly values knowledge over feelings. Facts are elevated to the highest position of authority and respect while feelings, senses, are relegated to lower positions as untrustworthy and inferior. Feelings which dare to ascend to the level of fact become beliefs, which you may attempt to counter at your peril. Yet, even Bertrand Russell, the preeminent philosopher of his Age, advised us that, ultimately, everything we think we know rests upon a belief that we are capable of knowing anything at all. This was the famous conundrum of Descartes, about which he threw up his hands and said, Cogito, ergo sum.

But why perpetuate a false dichotomy? Did Socrates rule out the senses and the subjective when he said, Know thyself? Especially in those parts of the world under the influence of Materialist – Reductionist thinking we find at least half the equation missing in a reverse of the common mistake that psychosomatic means “It’s all in your head.” If it were all in your head there would be no soma in that word. The mistake is the presumption that the term means only that a psychic, or mental state caused a particular somatic, or bodily state. The reverse is commonly true. And in the same way we cannot allow ourselves to be just the body without the mind, the soma without the psyche.

Those of us with teaching experience, particularly in higher education, know there are students who learn the material, they know it and mentally file it only until they can vomit it onto a test paper, being careful to not splash outside the box, and it’s gone. They never internalized it, never felt it become part of how they experience the world, much less themselves. They did not have an epiphany. But for those working in the fields of Behavioral Change, internalization is the Holy Grail.

I’m currently working my way through a dense text exploring the latest in archaeobotany and archaeochemistry, in this case the studies of old traces of earlier Man’s activities related to plants and chemicals. True, the going would be a bit tough for the layman, dealing with sequential thermal desorption-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS) and pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) applied to residues in drinking vessels and fermentation bowls dating back many thousands of years BCE. But the findings are absolutely startling. As far back as 10,000 BCE, and probably earlier Man (actually women, from all the evidence) developed and utilized effective means not only of fermentation, but of extracting precise measures of naturally occurring psychedelics which, if mixed incorrectly were almost instantly fatal. The ritualized ingestion of these mixtures enabled cognitive expansion into hitherto unseen and unknown dimensions with effects similar to those of N-N-dimethyltriptamine but of longer duration. More than just a light show, these episodes enabled (as they currently do) communication with deceased relatives, friends, and sources of wisdom. And these conveyed verifiable information. Apparently originating in the Levant, these ritual occurrences spread throughout Europe and North Africa though famously associated with Eleusis in Greece. Hence, the Eleusinian Mysteries which, under persecution from the new Christian Rome, evolved surreptitiously into the Christian Eucharist. Later, Church “Fathers” purged women out of all authoritative roles and banned the use of anything but unadulterated wine and simple bread. What had been an intensely subjective experience was flattened into a purely material, objective experience – congregational communion in which nothing happened beyond the swallowing of the approved substances.

Does learning this add to my knowledge base? Yes. Does it change my feelings about the prehistory of self development? Not greatly, but only because I’ve been aware of the probable role of such fungi as Amanita muscaria for decades. But a person encountering this information for the first time must certainly be deeply affected. For me, the information developing in this text simply adds to the early pharmacopoeia we have been rediscovering recently.

In examining the residue evidence for the development of psychedelic cocktails as the crux of such enlightening rituals as the Eleusinian Mysteries and the early proto-Christian Eucharist a number of researchers have opened what Huxley famously spoke of as The Doors of Perception, giving rise to an in-spiration of new knowledge and associated feelings. But let’s look at another opportunity to alter perception. All of us are at least familiar with, and have probably read Homer’s Odyssey. If part of our schoolwork it was probably presented as fictional, epic literature perhaps based in a very few facts, elevating a particular person to heroic status.

But those of us who studied Greek and Latin Classics remember Plotinus (ca, CE 205-270) who, in examining Homeric Greek, decoded the Odyssey not as a simple fable but as a metaphor for our journey through life, and the afterlife. Though he may not have known it, his presentation remarkably tracks the underlying principles in the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day (marketed as the Egyptian Book of the Dead) and the Bardo Thodol (marketed as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Who would buy a book titled “Bardo Thodol”? Okay, I would).

Reading this brought a sudden epiphany, a change of perspective from a Ho Hum, another fairy tale to a deeply felt understanding of the importance and personal value of the story. And the lesson in my coming forth by day is that, once again, we must beware the swing of the pendulum, the drive toward Materialist Reductionism. Too many interpret this as “science” when it is in fact scientism – the unrealized felt belief that only objectively measurable knowledge is valid.

Advocating cult-like belief in their inherent correctness, Republican administrations, built largely on the utter ignorance of many voters, especially the under-educated evangelicals, attack science unless it serves to increase their bank accounts or enhance their military weapons. Health and environmental sciences take a horrific beating. Now that we in the U.S. have an opportunity to reverse some of the damage done, we must be vigilant in clearly stating and adhering to the boundaries of what science can and cannot do. As currently practiced, science is empirical. It demands objective and verifiable proof. That’s fine for most, but not all applications. It must not be used, as it has been so often, as a cudgel to subdue and invalidate the subjective. Science does not advance by obsessively poring over what it already knows; it advances by opening the portals into what it does not know. And that often demands a change in perception. Few people seem to realize that the term science is quite recent; we still award the Doctor of Philosophy degree precisely because it is through the open explorations characteristic of philosophy that our knowledge, and hopefully our understanding increases. And as our understanding increases we internalize both knowledge and feeling in balance. We apply our knowledge, not merely recite it.

Yes, that demands an openness to new avenues of perception. Are you tired of pushing on a door designed to be opened by pulling? Perhaps it’s time to change perception.

As a final note I did find a passing comment in this text to be off the mark. In commenting on the immediate efficacy of the psychedelic potion versus “spending a lifetime in a Buddhist monastery waiting for enlightenment” the author seriously mischaracterized the monastic experience, basically as a wasted life when quickee drugs would have done it. I do not subscribe to the use of drugs, though I grudgingly understand them when needed as a “kick in the ass” for the less thoughtful. A realization of one’s self, in its entirety and its context, deeply felt and subjectively understood, can come as easily as changing our perception from push to pull. It’s our materialist enculturation which tells us we can’t be there yet, which tells us to keep pushing. In the same vein, no Zen master or monastic abbot can tell us when we are enlightened. Or not.