Does the Tao speak through plant teachers?

[ralis]

Um... who or what are you arguing with? The thread is about plant teachers. I didn't offer a "point of view," I repeated verbatim what a plant teacher told me. If you want to shoot the messenger, fine, but this doesn't quite rid you of the fact that the plant teacher did give this messenger this message. And if you want to take it up with Mother of the Universe and explain to her how wrong she is, I can put you in touch with a shaman in Peru. The first thing he will tell you will be, if you are taking MAO inhibitors, you can't be here.

 

The stories like the one you told are made up by the dozen, but the funny thing is, they never provide the actual name of the purported victim. Not a single documented case. MAO inhibitors et al, in the meantime, kill about 3 million people worldwide every year. Or at least that was the statistics from some fifteen years ago when I read researcher Thomas Moore's "Prescription for Disaster." The figures must have changed for the worse by now -- the drugs (that's drugs, patented concoctions, not plants) have proliferated way deeper and wider since then.

 

 

Are you accusing me of fabricating a story, a lie? That therapist was well known here. The victim was taking prescription MAOI's. You attempt to discredit what I wrote by saying there are no documented cases of the problem that I stated?

 

To defer to the mythological mother of the universe is beside the point. The use of power has been debated for centuries among humans and I have yet to see the all encompassing mother, god or supernatural beings writing books on morality. Don't you read philosophy and history? I do.

 

The quote below indicates that the message is your creation. You wrote it in the first person. Then you attempt to defer responsibility to a supernatural being and not you who wrote it. That is why I challenged your account. Attempting to defer responsibility to a mythological being (in this case, a divine mother) and not taking responsibility for what you write is very troubling.

 

"Ayahuasca's main message (and she made me understand it's the main message to humanity, me personally being given it only in the context of my being a member of humanity, not because it's my personal issue to any greater or lesser extent than anyone else's... though of course to make any lesson sink in, it is made intensely personal by this deity, because we humans really get it only in this shape and form, as something intensely personal... comes with the territory of being human...) --"

Edited March 19, 2011 by ralis

[Taomeow]

Are you accusing me of fabricating a story, a lie? That therapist was well known here. The victim was taking prescription MAOI's. You attempt to discredit what I wrote by saying there are no documented cases of the problem that I stated?

 

Looking for yet another fight?.. Sorry, no time/inclination. When I "accuse" someone of something, I say so. (E.g., I "accuse" the archons of meddling in human affairs, as I mentioned in the initial post.)

 

I have no idea who made up the story, you or someone you heard it from. All I know is what I said: no names provided, hearsay with no documented proof. I don't "attempt to discredit" what you wrote, I successfully make the point I make: you didn't provide the name. This you can try to turn into a fight if you have nothing better to do, or take at face value, as a mere statement of fact. Fact: you didn't provide a name. Fact: I said I heard these stories by the dozen but the name was never provided. Impression: you often look for fights here no matter what the subject matter. Fact: I've no time/inclination to oblige. Sapientis sat.

[Dagon]

Wow, you are a sword aren't you.

 

[ralis]

 

I have no idea who made up the story, you or someone you heard it from.

 

You are accusing me of just making it up! I just did a quick Goggle search and since it happened around 10 years ago, it may not be available online.

[Taomeow]

You are accusing me of just making it up! I just did a quick Goggle search and since it happened around 10 years ago, it may not be available online.

 

No, not really, I may have worded it with insufficient clarity, so let me try again. I don't believe the story. I don't know who the source of the story is, and I don't think it's you. I think you believe what you want to believe, and that's your only role in the transmission of the story. But I have no reason to think you are its creator.

 

Even if it was true, which is something we have no proof of just as I said we don't, still we don't know the "whole" truth of the incident that may or may not have happened, for which we have no further information other than you heard it ten years ago. That's always too little info for me, nothing personal. However, even if there was one unfortunate accident in ten years with a sacred plant misapplied inappropriately, your choosing THIS story over any other is information in and of itself.

 

Anyway, gotta run. You weren't accused, and if you thought you were, consider yourself acquitted.

[Dagon]

It kinda reminds me of:

 

Jimi Hendrix - When the Power of Love Overcomes the Love of Power the World Will Know Peace.

[Ulises]

; )

Now seriously: Reading Aldous Huxley ("Moksha": a fascinating compilation of his letters to theologian, psychitriatists,etc) I took with me as a medicine - no different of a Dzogchen pith instruction - what he said about William Blake's phrase after him having taken mescaline a few times: "Now I understand completely the meaning of "Gratitude is Heaven itself"...

Gregory Bateson's experiences with LSD were fundamental in the development of his influential "Ecology of Mind":


"We never see in consciousness that the mind is like an ecosystem - a self-corrective network of circuits. We only see arcs of these circuits.

And the instinctive vulgarity of scientists consists precisely in mistaking these arcs for the larger truth, i.e., thinking that because what is seen by consciousness has one character, the total mind must have the same character.

Freud’s personified ‘ego’, ‘id’, ‘super-ego’ are, in fact not, truly personified at all. Each of his components is constructed in the image of only consciousness (even though the component may be unconscious) and the ‘consciousness’ does not resemble a total person. The isolated consciousness is necessarily depersonified.

The whole iceberg does not have those characteristics which could be guessed at from looking only at what is above water. I mean: the iceberg does - mind does not. Mind is not like an iceberg.

But the vulgar scientist talks and plans as if mind resembled iceberg. He plans and acts upon his plans. Invents atom bombs and feels hurt when a beneficient deity screws up international relations and sends fall-out.

Now you are ready to think about religion and magic.

The instinctive, innate barrier between consciousness and the rest of mind is very old (though its effects have recently become disastrous through the technological implementation of consciousness). Even before man chipped flint, it must have been necessary to correct for the murderous destructiveness which necessarily goes with conscious, calculating and common-sense policies. If bacteria, or Jews, or rats offend you - import mongooses to exterminate them. Of course. This is Nazism and the bacterial theory of disease. As they say of Skinner’s operant conditioning, ‘It works’. But this theory, even in the Stone Age, would not work between people.

Love is contrary to conscious common sense because love involves the total systemic mind.

Cain was, appropriately enough, an inventor. He invented agriculture. God (Cain’s total systemic mind or the systemic human ecosystem in which Cain lived) refused the cabbages, which Cain sacrificed. God then told Cain that Abel loved him (Cain). ‘His desire shall be unto thee and thou shalt rule over him.’(cf. the curse on Eve in previous chapter - ‘Thy desire shall be unto thy husband and he shall rule over thee.’) This was the last straw because love is precisely that to which the pragmatic, headstrong, purposive consciousness must always be allergic.

So Cain picked up a big stone and smashed Abel’s skull.

So Cain won.

As usual.

A more modern deity would have thrown a bucket of fall-out over the both of them.

But that’s only a parable. Of course! The point is that, even before modern technology, something had to be done about the innate split between consciousness and the rest of the mind, because the unaided consciousness would always wreck human relations. Because the unaided consciousness must always combine the wisdom of the dove with the harmlessness of the serpent.

And I will tell you what they did in the old Stone Age to deal with that split.

Religion is what they did.

It’s that simple, and religion is whatever they could devise to beat into man the fact that most of him (and, analogously, most of his society and the ecosystem around him) was systemic in nature and imperceptible to his consciousness.

This included dreams and trances, intoxication, castration, rituals, human sacrifices, myths of all sorts, invocations of death, art, poetry, music and so on.

And of course, they did not and could not really say or know clearly what it was they were doing or why. And, often, it did not work.

Darwin says somewhere in the autobiography that as he got more famous (or old or something), he became less and less able to read poetry.

Perhaps the attempt to achieve grace by identification with the animals was the most sensible thing which was tried in the whole bloody history of religion. Australian totemism makes a lot of sense. And the cave paintings of Altamira, and Konrad Lorenz drawing live animals on the blackboard.1

See also God’s rebuke to Job’s arrogance:

‘Dost thou know when the wild goats of the rock do calve? Or knowest thou when the hinds bring forth?’ And so on.

I was delighted by what you said about the morality of animals!

But magic is something else again.

You describe magic as the voluntary parent of religion, but this is surely wrong.

Magic is what the vulgar and purposive consciousness snipped out of religion. (Just as the viruses are DNA that came unstuck.) The use of quasi-Religion to bolster priesthood is, of course, an another vulgarity.

So, you see, my objections to the vulgar scientific theories of instinct and my view of the nature of magic both spring from the same philosophic roots.

(...)

"The SACRED (whatever that means) is surely related (somehow) to the
BEAUTIFUL (whatever that means)..."
Gregory Bateson"

http://www.oikos.org/batesleten.htm Edited March 20, 2011 by Ulises

[zerostao]

[sweeney]

Interesting debate. I suppose if you're ego dissolves then you really see. Psychotropics are part of the Tao but perhaps the wisdom they impart is useless unless you are in a specific region or place. Eating Giraffe marrow probably won't do you much good if you live in inner city London and are not a Marabout out in the desert regions of Sudan* My friends and myself when ingesting magic mushrooms in our youth were flooded with pop culture hallucinations: Bat Man, Space Invaders, Heavy Metal Demons. Had we taken them a 1000 years before we would have been communing with ancient Celtic or pre Celtic demi-gods. (I'm Scottish). I guess I feel that unless you are living in harmony with nature (the Tao) for example an Inuit or a Pygmy and totally uncivilised then yes these things may impart wisdom or intuition: Amazonian shamans are great chemists! Perhaps the idea for the I King came into realisation after stoned Taoists where looking at millfoil twigs or cracked turtle shells?

 

 

*Giraffe marrow is reportedly trippy perhaps due to the Giraffes diet of tryptamine rich Acacia leaves.

[manitou]

Perhaps the idea for the I King came into realisation after stoned Taoists where looking at millfoil twigs or cracked turtle shells?

 

 

 

I am really of this opinion. I think the hunters and foragers of course ate everything they found at some point in time. I believe these were the beginnings of thought bubbles that have evolved and continue to this day. The indigenous of old had time to stare at millfoil twigs and cracked turtle shells. Their observations were that everything is in alignment, that we follow the ways of nature.

 

The old Toltecs would stare at 'energy running through the universe' for hours. As one who loves the shamanic perspective, I have often pondered what this means. I had a flash, one day as I was staring at a reflection coming off a piece of chrome - you know, how you can see the energy circle out and away from the object? And if you look at it, sometimes you can see the energy reverse its flow. I imagine the only thing shiny enough for the ancients to see this type of energy flow would be off water! The same reflection idea, where you couldn't see it if you looked right at the sun, but you can see it in reflection.

 

Ah. We have lost so much.

[Birch]

"I suppose if you're ego dissolves then you really see."

 

I reckon we ought to get this "ego" word-reference thing right, if not collectively, then at least personally. Because IMO, if we let Freud have it, or Jung have it, or Buddha have it, or the ad-guys (mad-men) have it then we do not have it and therefore they can do whatever they want with it - because we gave it to them. No matter that one thinks by giving it up that one may be saved or enlightened or loved or avoid being kicked out or down or up for that matter.

 

In practice: My ego is the hard-covering over me, the necessary shell I grew to protect myself from the attacks of an incredibly insane culture- curls up but can't swim...y'know. Doesn't mean I have to keep it.

[Otis]

"I suppose if you're ego dissolves then you really see."

 

I reckon we ought to get this "ego" word-reference thing right, if not collectively, then at least personally. Because IMO, if we let Freud have it, or Jung have it, or Buddha have it, or the ad-guys (mad-men) have it then we do not have it and therefore they can do whatever they want with it - because we gave it to them. No matter that one thinks by giving it up that one may be saved or enlightened or loved or avoid being kicked out or down or up for that matter.

 

In practice: My ego is the hard-covering over me, the necessary shell I grew to protect myself from the attacks of an incredibly insane culture- curls up but can't swim...y'know. Doesn't mean I have to keep it.

How about a new topic: what is the ego?