REVELATION (Understanding GAIA’s Message)

Part 1:
ENTANGLEMENT:

It was December 2011. I left cold Moscow and arrived at warm California to celebrate the 25th anniversary of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies).

As a Russian representative of MAPS since June 2010, I was looking forward to the event and hoped to meet in person the people whom I had known from the MAPS bulletin articles, which I had translated into Russian with the help of my friends and colleagues.
 (http://prosvetlenie.daism.ru/zhurnal/maps)


MAPS (www.maps.org) is an organization which supports and coordinates scientific research of psychedelics, such as MDMA, mescaline, psylocybin, etc., and their influence on humans around the world. MAPS has also taken on a difficult mission to legalize psychedelics, and has been dealing with the obstacles connected with the prohibition of LSD and other psychedelics in the US and other countries.

Cartographie Psychedelica (an official name of MAPS’s 25th anniversary) took place at the Marriott Hotel in Oakland, California. Over 700 people from more than 30 countries attended the event.

It was pompous. The venue was a luxurious hotel with huge assembly halls with water carafes and coffee carts, while most presentations were success stories.

The event was also attended by a lot of scientists. Some of them had been conducting different types of research of psychedelic culture since the 1960s: the psychology of altered states of consciousness, influence of psychedelics on the human brain, culture, science, etc.

There were two types of scientists: those who conducted research officially, supported by MAPS or other organizations; and those who conducted their research on their own initiative, because they were inspired by the spirit of psy-culture and had personal interest in it.

During the celebration, I attended a variety of events from the official program, including:

-       An interesting review on how psychedelics have influenced different aspects of science and culture, conducted by Tomas Roberts, one of the pioneers of the psychedelic movement;

-       A lecture on the healing of post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and other illnesses, such as drug and alcohol addiction and other psychological disorders, with ecstasy (MDMA) (Michael and Ann Mithoefer);

-       A round table discussion on the healing effects of marijuana, with the participation of about a dozen contemporary researchers;

-       An explicit discussion about biomechanical processes which occur in the human brain as a result of psychedelics consumption;

-       Reports on changes in the attitude of mass media towards psychedelics, and other interesting events.

 

Watching the audience, I discovered four main types of people there:

1.     The researchers of the 60s - smarty-pants and intellectuals; there were not too many of them, although they were quite easy-going and free-spirited;

2.     New Age hippies; there were plenty of them: young, predominantly lacking rationality, acid style people in New Age hats or mushroom outfits, with everlasting smell of marijuana…

3.     Yuppies from transpersonal psychology - members of MAPS staff; there weren’t too many of them. They are actually Builders of the Future; most of them were young people with patriotic smiles;

4.     Standard neurotics - primarily middle-aged people who had achieved success in social life, but were still very unhappy spiritually, which I could easily see from the outside.

All those people created one unified space, rolling in luxury and glamour of the Oakland Marriott Hotel.

Despite the formal style and organization, the lively spirit of the psychedelic culture still emerged from the pompousness of the forms, and played freely.

I met it:

- in the elevator as a mushroom-human, who after finding out that I was from Russia said,  “muchamors,” (amanita muscaria) pleasantly surprising me;

- in the sweet taste of the forbidden (prohibited activities) coming from all kinds of unpredictable places of the hotel;

- in Rick Doblin’s story about his love for counterculture, which arose when he was a young man studying Russian in the Soviet Union. His parents asked him to bring some holy Jewish books to Russia secretly for the Jews from the synagogue. To give the books to them, he had to meet the rabbi secretly, in the subway, and this experience had a big impact on him.

Rick also told us that he had sold a bunch of the Beatles records on the black market and made a lot of money (see the picture on the right). The adventure gave him an amazing taste of living in a counterculture, which he had not experienced in his ordinary life in the United States, and defined his aspiration to counterculture activities, eventually leading him to establishing MAPS.

The lively spirit of psy-culture jumped out at me from an inspiring lecture by James Fadiman, one of the founders of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (Palo Alto, California) and author of the book “The Psychedelic Explorers’ Guide,” published recently in the United States. James told us about how he conducted experiments with a group of his colleagues - scientists who had been working on some science problem for at least 3 months without finding a solution - in the 60s, using LSD.

Of course, the majority had a breakthrough after the LSD sessions. James told us about an architect who had some problems with his building project. During an LSD session, he saw the perfect building and was able to successfully complete his project. 

“I have been there, so I can describe each detail!” he said after the session.

According to James, LSD was so effective that after several session’s experimenters they asked the participants to come with two problems to solve, because one was usually solved so quickly that it was not clear what to do with the rest of the time.

Such talks impress and inspire. There were lots of them, and not only by lecturers, but also by attendees, with whom I drank coffee and had lunch nearby. The majority of the people there were enchanted by psychedelics.

……………

But sometimes I felt disappointment.

Even James Fadiman, a man with a good sense of humor, very alive in his not so young age, nevertheless, described his wordview as,

        

“All beliefs are false, so pick any which is useful.”

I decided to ask him, “Is that true, that all beliefs are false???”

                                            

The audience began to laugh. James introduced me, but the question put him to a nonplus. Probably, he had never thought that way. Thinking further, I realized that by “useful” he meant useful for the physical body, for health. It reminded me of a post-modernistic point of view that the real value is what is useful for the body, and the rest is just points of view – they mean nothing in reality, because they can’t be used as a basis for action.

It seemed strange that after so many years of psychedelic experience, a human being came to understand that physical health was the main value, while the rest was just beliefs. Yes, maybe, it corresponded to a postmodern point of view, but there, in that community, I wanted to meet frontier ideas stretching beyond the borders of the dominant ideology of the western society.

I had a lot of conversations like that with James. I continued to search and hoped to explode my doubts. I tried to talk to pioneers of psychedelic movements – Ralph Metzner, Richard Yensen, Tomas Roberts, Kylea Taylor, Rick Doblin, David Lukoff, and others…

All of them acknowledge the use of psychedelics. There was a time when psychedelics played an overwhelmingly important role in their life, changing it completely.

But now, each one of them, slowly but truthfully, was going “back” to social life.

While in the 60s they primarily focused on their inner world and their personal breakthrough they received from psychedelics, now their focus shifted onto the outside world.

The main question of the conference was how to change the outside world and its social rules to make it friendlier to psychedelics, but not how to change, improve ourselves with the help of psychedelics.

All those meetings, talks, official events activated my thinking about the role of psychedelics in western culture and the strange changeability of this movement.

I was thinking:

On the one hand, psychedelics first appeared in the West, as if from nowhere, and almost immediately attracted the attention of the cultural elite, which began using them to study the new fields of the human psyche.

On the other hand, almost immediately after the boom, psychedelics quickly became forbidden almost everywhere in the world.

And now, 40 years later, the same cultural elite is gathering together from all over the world at the Marriott to discuss the healing effects of psychedelics. Paradoxically, one of the healing effects is that it frees the human from attachments to official things, helps him become free from social games, from obfuscation (which is why Timothy Leary left Harvard), from formalities.

Strange! Maybe, in some informal environment, between cactuses or in the jungle, while under the influence of drugs or, pardon me, in a psychedelic state of mind, a gathering of such interests would be appropriate… but at the Marriott?

The irony (paradox) of what was happening at the Psychedelic Science celebration arose from the strong contrast between the informality of the subjects under discussion and the formal style of the discussion itself, detailed discussion of use of different substances (for example, doses), and almost full disregard of the purposes of psychedelic use.  I found it amusing.

Yes, psychedelics bring something very important, very valuable. This is also proven by the fact that in spite of the prohibition of LSD in all countries, including the United States, for more than 50 years the cultural elite have been gathering here in California and analyzing its effects.

But why then the attention of all these people is focused on such small questions like the percentage of bad trips when certain dosages and substances are used, while ideological questions like what for, by whom, and how psychedelics should be used are given no attention?

Why is such a breakthrough as psychedelics now used for healing alcoholism and war veterans’ PTSD? I continued thinking about it throughout the conference and after it, as well as on my way back to Russia.

So why? Do people really not understand it? Why don’t they try to question it?

So, to analyze these questions, I decided to rethink the history of psychedelics, and understand what they bring to the world.

Part 2

COMPREHENSION

Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD-25 in Switzerland in 1938, but did not explore it further. Only 5 years later, he fully understood what he had found. Albert discovered the strange psychological effect of LSD accidentally, after the substance absorbed into his bloodstream through his fingertip.

It happened on April 16, 1943. Three days later, on April 19, also known as Bicycle Day, Albert consciously ingested 250 micrograms of LSD and experienced much more intense effects, which allowed him to understand the great force of this discovery.

That’s how Albert summed up his experiment,

“This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive substance with

extraordinary properties and potency. There was to my knowledge no other known

substance that evoked such profound psychic effects in such extremely low doses, that

caused such dramatic changes in human consciousness and our experience of the inner

and outer world.”

So, what’s the meaning of Albert Hoffman’s discovery?

To understand it, we should take into account that 1943 was the very middle of World War II and Switzerland is located in the center of Europe.

It’s hardly accidental that LSD was invented in the middle of World War II and in the middle of Europe. 1943 was also a year when A. bomb was created.

It may seem accidental for someone who is not aware of psychedelic experience, someone whose life is based on materialism.

For this person, awareness is just an accidental occurrence, and the discovery of a substance, which stimulates a huge leap of consciousness, is just an accident which could have happened anywhere, any time.

But for me, a person to whom life has proven many times that there are no accidents (nothing happens by chance), “accidental” thinking is just an attempt to escape the Truth. Everything is part of the process, and so the date when LSD was created, as well as its location, are extremely important.

Maybe, the date and place of birth of each of us is a key factor to opening our mission.

Albert wrote,

“I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance - LSD, it is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be…”

In my opinion, Albert felt that the substance was a message to humankind. This was a message of something bigger, something greater.

It can be called GAIA (Whole organism of Earth, God, Absolute) or something else. It was given to us as a response to World War II.

In my opinion, LSD is Gaia’s response to the cruelty of war, senselessness and horror of the evil done by people.

So, what is LSD for people? It is the way to awake the human, let him feel the unity with others. That’s when war becomes senseless. What to kill oneself for?

It explains why LSD appeared in the center of Europe, almost in the middle of World War II… as if point of yin appears in yang.

Has humanity received the message?

In 1943, LSD didn’t seize the minds of Europeans. Moreover, LSD wasn’t that popular in Europe even in the late 50s.

It means Europeans were unable to accept Gaia’s response fully. They probably were too busy reconstructing their life after the war. That’s when this response started to penetrate the United States, the young generation of Americans, with the help of Europeans (Aldous Huxley).

Americans, mainly young American jews who descended from European immigrants, proved to be the most sensitive to Gaia’s message. Sharing the Jewish identity, the nation which had suffered the most from the Holocaust and other tragedies of World War II, American Jews were deeply impacted by the postwar existential crisis of European culture. At the same time, they had less postwar hardships than the European Jews, so it was easier for them to find a way out of the crisis. Perhaps, their collective unconsciousness was also going through a change…

That generation, after discovering LSD, saw it as a way to resolve the after-war existentia. For them, it was a healing stick, which could save their life, outlook, destiny…

This happened to many pioneers of psychedelics: David Lukoff, Timothy Leary, Ram Das (Richard Alpert), James Fadiman…

Of course, among those pioneers were not only Jews.

Still, the number of Jews was pretty high.

If we stick to an idea that everything is part of the process (everything is important, or every single fact has a meaning), each seemingly insignificant thing may help us uncover GAIA’s message in full.

We can even see that those young Jews, having discovered LSD, began to fulfill the mission of the chosen nation – to research and bring to the world the message of GAIA.

And in some ethical sense, they, as a nation, were grateful for the suffering they’d had during World War II.

Those sufferings can be compensated by the discoveries and insights, which have been made by the pioneers of psychedelics.

Part 3

REVELATION

What is the message brought to the world by LSD?

“God came to the US in the form of LSD,” said Ram Dass teacher, as he consumed a large dose of the substance. I believe this phrase reflects the essence of this message better than anything.

God become embodied. He accepted the human. God stopped being outside, sitting in the sky and punishing. He began appearing from the inside. LSD gave us an opportunity to experience transcendence, which before had been achievable by only a few people, only after several decades of spiritual practice.

This experience changed our perception: now the most active, progressive part of the population not only have heard about this opportunity, but also have experienced it. Now they know that beyond our physical world is something else. A new, alive, active cultural environment appeared, which is open to a new outlook.

Thus, the materialistic outlook was shaken. At least inside of those people.

And a hope has been born that materialism, which is dominant on planet Earth, which actually gave birth to all World Wars, could be changed into another, more harmonious outlook.

Of course, it was not the defeat of materialistic culture yet, but a quick breakthrough of its limits, made by the frontier cultural elite.

Possibly, we can formulate the message in different ways:

There is – Spirit, Divine, Higher World, Absolute, some reality, which bigger (higher) than physical world – the core of this message could be formulated this way.

or

Our planet GAIA – is one.

or

Each human being is bigger than the physical body and can achieve other states of mind

Mind (awareness) is the first (real) reality

Life in this primal reality is more whole, divine and surprising

But how to bring that to life? How to transfer subjective experience into the reality, where objectivism and materialism still rule?

If LSD is God, how to follow it?

These questions came to those at the frontier of the consciousness development. Each of them was searching for their own answers, building their way to them by their own life.

And possibly some of these people can embody GAIA’s message and find a new worldview?

It’s been a lot of time and we can comprehend the pioneer’s paths and find out where they came to in their attempts to find the answers to the above questions.

Analyzing the stories of these people I picked out three main types of trajectories of the psychedelics pioneers, who made an attempt to bring GAIA’s (LSD) message to life:

    Open Conflict (Attack)

Some of the searchers began to enjoy the taste of deep freedom. They didn’t want to obey the social order anymore. That’s why they entered a conflict with the state system, which (the social structure) protected the dominant ideology and prohibited LSD and other psychedelics. The brightest example of that is the destiny of Timothy Leary.

Timothy Leary is an American psychologist and writer, known as a major advocate of psychedelics. For that, he was put in jail 29 times around the globe. President Richard Niхon called him “the most dangerous man in America.”

Naturally, in a conflict between the state and a single person, the state will most likely win. The result of that is also more or less obvious – it is Golgotha. As a rule, the state will break or kill the enemy.

    Withdrawal (Backdown)

Another part of psychedelic pioneers went out of the social structure, possibly having understood, that they could hardly win. There were plenty of withdrawal variants – move to Peru to drink ayahuasca, or to Goa to smoke hash, or find a niche like spontaneous drawing, or New Age music.

I met a person like that during the Tavale festival in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He was from New York.He said that he was from the 60s, one of the pioneers of the psychedelic movement. He used to play in a famous band and now, taught spontaneous drawing. I came to his workshop. People were sitting and drawing at their tables and he began to explain to me how to draw in a spontaneous way.

Suddenly, a strong wind gust brought this drawing paper to my face and I realized it was the message from the world! The wind was drawing by me!

Being spontaneous means not only drawing on paper, but also awing together with the world, at the moment, accepting what the world is giving.

But Jake took out the paper and tried to make me to draw on it again. And my attempts to question what was spontaneous about it were rejected.

I met a lot of such people all over the world and at the MAPS conference. Many of them were friendly, nice, and childish. One of them told me a long story about how he got to Africa to use psychedelics there, how he lived there for a long time...  he was telling, and telling and telling, without any feedback from me.

He wanted to share the idea:  LSD - forever.

For me, it looked like those people wanted to get back to the 60s, but couldn’t.

    ADAPTATION

The people who neither chosen neither the first, nor the second path began to build a new social environment for themselves.

For many of them, it turned out to be transpersonal psychology. One of the main representatives of this path is David Lukoff, now president of the American Transpersonal Association. He told me about his LSD experience many times and said it changed his life:

The core of this experience was the fact that during his first LSD session, which happened in San Francisco in the 70s, he looked at himself in the mirror and found, that he was Jesus Christ and Buddha in the same time. He was Messiah according Judaism.

It was Absolute Truth and he was impressed by that. He was so inspired that he wrote a new Bible (Gospel), and spent a couple of months walking around California, giving his writings to people, dreaming of sharing the Truth with the world.

Then, his state of mind changed, he became ashamed of what had happened, what he had done, of Gospel, of being Jesus Christ.

He came back to his ordinary life, and became David Lukoff again. He fell into depression and which lasted for a couple of months. After that, he tried to find something which would help him to understand (comprehend) what had happened: he began to study different psychotherapy techniques, spiritual paths, lived and worked at the Ojai Foundation. As a result, he became a transpersonal psychologist. And now he is a professor at Sofia University, a leading university in the field, and president of the American Transpersonal Association.

 

At EUROTAS (European Transpersonal Association) in Milan, after David delivered his speech and told us about his psychedelic experience, as well as how he came to Transpersonal Psychology, I asked him,

“David, can it be that being Jesus Christ is something bigger being a transpersonal psychologist? Isn’t it (transpersonal psychologist) just a role? Maybe, if we, all those sitting here, were Messiahs, and there were be a conference of Messiahs, it would be more than the Conference of the European Transpersonal Association?

David listened to my question and answered, that he was okay to be a transpersonal psychologist.

And from my point of view, this is a typical phenomenon, the majority of the Messiahs here are playing the roles of professors, teachers, patriarchs. They create a social structure for their work; they rest on their laurels.

This is where this journey brought them.

But….

Is it really all?

Are those all variants of paths, which pioneers of psychedelic culture have gone through?

By observing it passionately, I found one more variant of the path.

    Breakthrough to Spirituality

Those seekers, who’ve gone beyond the limits of a regular social life, of spiritual traditions. An outstanding representative of those people is Ram Dass.

A professor at Harvard, he was kicked out of there because of his experiments with LSD. Ram Dass met a spiritual teacher in India – Neem Karoli Baba, and spent a lot of time traveling with him to learn. He also wrote books, sharing the wisdom he got from his Teacher.

But has Ram Dass achieved Perfection, Enlightenment? Has he gone beyond the limits of the playing reality? Has he embodied a new worldview?

Has he realized the message, which LSD gives to the world?

How can we understand that?

What shall we take into consideration, analyzing his path?

Ram Dass began to help people by creating organizations, operating 

in jails.  He worked with people who were dying, trying to make them happier. But is it enough to consider him an example of the new worldview and follow him?

I don’t know for sure, because I don’t know him personally yet. But one of the incidents from his book “Paths to God” has made me think.

This story is about how he decided to help a dying young man, and offered him a ride.  They were driving down California’s highway 1, passing by the cliffs and enjoying the view of the Ocean, when the poor man asked Ram Dass to let him drive the car. Ram Dass agreed, but began to doubt whether he could control the car on the sharp bends. His hands weren’t strong enough. He asked the man to give him the wheel back. In his book, he wrote about it as if it wasn’t his personal weakness, but the objective truth, that the guy couldn’t manage the bend, as if it was the real reality.

I had a question, “How did Ram Dass help that guy if he (Ram Dass) as the majority of the people was confident in the reality and “objectivity” of death?

How could he help this man?”

Having read this story, I became disappointed in Ram Dass. It seemed to me that if he decided to give the wheel to that dying man, if he decided to save him, it was just the way to do that. Ram Dass means God’s servant. If that man asked to drive the car, it means he had a hope to succeed. But Ram Dass chose to save himself, not the man. I think it happened because, the moment he was in the car, and the moment he wrote the book, he was still within the limits of the game reality*. Undoubtedly, he has been beyond the ordinary reality, and risen high above the usual games of mind, but to get out for the time being and find the way to freedom – these are two different things.

So far, I shall pay tribute to Ram Dass – he pointed out the direction, rose from the ordinary reality.

But maybe. someone else, who has gone into  spiritual traditions, can break through further? And come reached full Freedom?

May be, this is Andrew Cohen, who is the most) prominent Guru of America today? I knew him personally, and for several years I have worked as a Russian publisher of the Internet version of the EnlightenNext magazine, published in the U.S. for over 20 years already (formerly known as “What Is Enlightenment?”)

I visited his ashram in Massachusetts in 2009. I arrived late in the evening, right for the beginning of the retreat, and that was my second day in the U.S. But they postponed the retreat for a couple of hours. I had serious jetlag - I was tired, wanted to sleep, and had a headache.

Finally, the retreat began. Andrew was sitting at the center, was speaking and speaking, and speaking…

… for about two hours he attacked EGO, saying that, we had to not indulge it, but overcome its limitations. While he was speaking, I really wanted to sleep, but my fear to get up and leave in front of everybody stopped me. after a while, it dawned on me:   what kept me in that audience, that fear to look badly  was my Ego, while wanting to sleep was my real wish.

Since Andrew suggests to overcome Ego, that’s what I did. I came up and gone to the exit. Andrew was watching me and even asked,  “Something happened?” I said, “I don’t want to indulge my ego anymore.”

He didn’t respond and I left.

The next morning one of Andrew’s secretaries showed up in my room.

She said, “You shouldn’t behave like this! You can’t leave the room. All this is just your post-modern attitude (whims) and if you come to the retreat, you should stay and listen.”

I’ve gone through a very heavy crisis, listening to Andrew during the retreat. His language was very difficult to understand, there was a lot of theory. It seemed to me his words contradicted one another. To ask him a question I had to hold my hand up for ages, but he ignored me.

At the end of the retreat, he suggested the following practice:  we had to sit quietly,. I was sitting quietly, but my eyes were kept on the ceiling… The rest were sitting and pretending, that they were actually doing the practice. There was a heavy silence in the hall.

I was breaking it, but not by making a noise, but with my energy. I was acting in a relaxed way, but still followed all Andrew’s instructions.

Many years ago, as a result of my intense practices, especially Osho meditations, I realized that silence was inside, and trying not to move and being stressed by that disturbed the silence more than any natural movement.

Andrew was sitting not far from me. He couldn’t finish the practice.  I felt he couldn’t finish it because of me, but still continued living in my inner silence. Then I closed my eyes and decided, “to sit the way others did” and he stopped.

At the end of the retreat, I managed to ask him a question.

On the one hand, that question discharged the tension between us, but on the other hand, if you take a closer look at it, you will realize that with his answer Andrew disproved the theory of what he was saying during the retreat.

Under the seeming simplicity of my question was depth, which I like so much.

During the retreat, he insisted that personal stuff had to be disregarded. He said we had to avoid speaking about our personal life, giving names or telling about ourselves.

For me, it was difficult to follow his instructions, because talks between people led to abstract discussions of ego, Enlightenment, evolution and so on, and that was just theorization.

Thinking about my irritation, which appeared as a result of that rule, I realized that access to the transpersonal, to the deep levels of our consciousness, was possible only through the personal.

The path to trans-personal lies through transcending the personal.

And only to based upon my personal experience, I can go further, beyond… to what will be the experience of humanity.

So, only my experience of being hungry can bring me the memory of my grandfather who starved to death during the siege ofLeningrad. This will take me further, to the suffering of Jewish people during World War II, and further to the meaning of suffering on a scale of humanity.

But I have something to rely on  – my hunger.  If the meaning I find at the humankind level solves the problem of my personal hunger, it means that I’ve really gone all the way to the trans-personal and back. If I am just theorizing about hunger, it will not change my behavior or actions, which means my theories mean nothing.

 So, my last question was  “Andrew, my husband is having his birthday soon. And when I was leaving for the retreat, I asked him, ‘What do you want me to bring you from America?’ He said, ‘Bring me your picture with Andrew Cohen’. So, can you give me a favour - Can I hаve a picture with you?”

Grinning, Andrew agreed. After the lecture, he sent his secretaries to me, so they brought me to him and we took a picture together.

To make it clear, I have to explain it to you that he entered and left the lecture room using a back door. We have never seen him outside that lecture room. and it wasn’t disclosed  where he lived, so I didn’t have a clue where to find him after his lectures. 

And thinking about his answer, which was his consent to take a picture, I understood that it was disproof of his previous theory, because he had shown that yes, it was personal, and it was important. The audience also smiled and seemed to love me, also demonstrating the importance of personal relations in life.

In Russia, at the congress of Transpersonal Psychology, where Andrew came on my invitation, I also invited him to come to our center to talk to our spiritual seekers group (we held Talks with Remarkable People in an informal environment which allowed us  to think quietly and calmly about different subjects).

Andrew promised me to think about my invitation, but didn’t give me any answer. As his secretaries told me in the U.S., 

he delivered his speeches only in front of  big audiences, 50-100 people at least.

He was tired of talking to small groups of people. Even though,he came to Russia for the first time, he kept his attitude, which I would call avoidance of a dialogue, which is much more effective if carried on with a small group of people.

So, the impression Andrew Cohen produced on me is as follows: he is playing the role of Guru, confidently, with pressure, so it is easy to make a mistake, and believe him. But he isn’t Enlightened, he’s not free from the games*. Moreover, he is living in to Guru game. Even his intonation indicates that he’s telling the Ultimate Truth.

 Maybe, there are other options?

Are there representatives of other spiritual traditions, which approached the Truth? I met plenty of them in Russia and abroad: Swami Virato, Michael Barnett, Ole Nydahl… But they were even less trustworthy.

In 2005, I met Robert Frager at the EUROTAS congress in Moscow. Robert is a Sufi teacher and founder of Palo Alto’s Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now known as SOFIA). Besides, he is the only Westerner who has been given the 7th dan from Aikido, and was taught personally by Morihei Ueshiba.

The first time I listened to him, he was speaking on the Sufi model of human development: several levels of nafs (ego in Arabic). He was speaking beautifully, and it seemed to me that unlike other speakers, he knew what he was talking about.

After I attended his Aikido class, which was condcted thoroughly, and a seminar on sufism, I began to think that,  maybe, he had actually reached the state of Wholeness?

Maybe, Sufi Masters actually keep spirituality at the core of their tradition and can translate it?

During one of my recent conversations with Robert in ITP (Institute of Transpersonal Psychology), he said that Buddha hadn’t solved the problem of death, because people were still dying and perfection hadn’t been achieved yet. He said all people could do is endlessly try to approach it.

Having heard that again and again from Robert, I felt disappointed.

When our conversation was over, he invited me to participate in his Aikido class. We headed towards the park where his class was expected to take place.

I said I would be back in a minute and left. When I returned, he was gone. Disappointed, I felt being abandoned. I didn’t try to find the way to the park, but headed my own way.

When two weeks later I told about that conversation to my Master, I asked,

“Is it true that Buddha couldn’t solve the koan of illness, old age and death?” Master smiled at me with his deep blue eyes, radiating joy, and said, “MU”. My thickened disappointment was shaken and after a while gone.

And now it seems to me, that a single “no” from Robert (Buddha hasn’t found the solution) means that Robert hasn’t integrated Immortality (Infinity, Wholeness, Perfection) in his life.

So, I have to acknowledge that he is on the path. Possibly, he’s risen very high, maybe he’s close to the peak, but he hasn’t made it to the Supreme Pole/Goal (Supreme Ultimate/Great Absolute) yet, like the Gurus I mentioned above.

Part 4

POST FACTUM:

Yes, psychedelics have brought the idea of a new worldview to Western culture.

But, God’s initial break into the United States failed.

Timothy Leary was put to jail. Osho was kicked out. Werner Erhard left the  country himself.

Of course, we can fight for psychedelic legalization or recreate the EST training to get the message… but what if this is not the way?

In my opinion, LSD was forbidden because Gaia allowed it to be forbidden.

Maybe GAIA allowed it because the message had been already read, and evertything LSD could do had already been done?

Maybe, it is time to go further?

Not only to search for the methods of diving into the bliss of mystical experience again through one or another substance, but to create a new way of life, which will help find this bliss in the world?

And the basis for that may be not only the substance. On the contrary, the substance causes addiction to and dependence on this “easy” path.

In this case, even the concept of “basis” is not quite applicable. Maybe, we should talk about the idea, which we can move towards.

(Basis – usually means, that it is something to base on, to lean on…. But more adequate to use term, which will mean that we are intended to go there…(like idea toward which we can move)

Is it the next step?

To reach out to the idea that Enlightenment (Liberation, Perfectness) is possible as the highest stage of Human Being development!

Such a position creates a purpose, which lies beyond any local culture. In addition, a conflict with the social structure may take place and may not. , for the purpose is not destruction or changing of culture, but personal perfection.

It is not easy to adhere to this purpose. Old habits provoke deviation from the path. Misleading mind games often appear in the non-enlightened state of consciousness.

So reaching the purpose takes a living Guide who helps, lightening the path. 

 Maybe. The Guide is somewhere nearby, and if we glance back, we will see him in a new shape (image)?

I think it will hardly be MDMA, or Andrew Cohen, or Ken Wilber.

America kicks out Gods.

So he is in another place.

Somewhere he is notlooked for.

And he is not a typical Guru speaking the Truth from the tribune, or an Indian guy sitting in mud and deceiving western fools.

He is something More than LSD, and what LSD has brought to western culture.

He is a glance to Infinity.

Like Hodja Nasreddin, he is travelling around the world, changing his faces, his games, his ideas… But sometimes, you can meet him/her in the market place with empty hands and readiness to help.**

I am lucky in this life, I’ve met him!

And I know now that Enlightenment is possible!

Game reality - ... from the book “Psychedelic Experience”

** ENTERING THE MARKET PLACE WITH HELPING HANDS

 (from The Ox Herding Pictures of Zen Buddhism)
Barechested, barefooted, he comes into the market place.
Muddied and dust-covered, how broadly he grins!
Without recourse to mystic powers,
withered trees he swiftly brings to bloom!