How to Handle Doubters
...it's really quite simple. Whenever you hear anyone sounding off on
internal freedom and conciousness-expanding foods and drugs, whether pro or
con, check out these questions:
- Is your expert talking from direct experience, or simply repeating
cliches? Theologians and intellectuals often deprecate "experience" in
favor of fact and concept. This classic debate is falsely labeled. Most
often it becomes a case of "experience" vs. "inexperience".
- Do his words spring from a spiritual or mundane point of view? Is he
motivated by a dedicated quest for answers to basic questions, or is he
protecting his own social-psychological position, his own game investment?
Is he struggling towards sainthood, or is he maintaining his status as a
hard-boiled scientist or hard-boiled cop?
- How would his argument sound if it was heard in a different culture?
(for example, in an African jungle hut, a ghat on the Ganges, or on another
planet inhabited by a form of life superior to ours) or in a different time
(for example, in Periclean Athens, or in a Tibetan monestery, or in a bull
session led by any one of the great religious leaders - founders -
messiahs)? Or how would it sound to other species of life on our planet
today - to the dolphins, to the conciousness of the redwood tree? In other
words, try to break out of your usual tribal game set and listen with the
ears of another one of God's creatures.
- How would the debate sound to you if you were fatally diseased with a
week to live, and thus less comitted to mundane issues?...
- Is this point of view one which opens up or closes down? Are you being
urged to explore, experience, or gamble out of spiritual faith, join somone
who shares your cosmic ignorance on a collaborative voyage of discovery? Or
are you being pressured to close off, protect your gains, play it safe,
accept the authoritative voice of someone who knows best?
- When we speak, we say little about the subject matter and disclose
mainly the state of our own mind. Does your psychedelic expert use terms
which are positive, pro-life, spiritual, inspiring, opening, based on faith
in the future, faith in your potential or does he betray a mind obsessed by
danger, material concern, by imaginary terrors, administrative caution or
essential distrust in your potential? Dear friends, there is nothing in
life to fear; no spiritual gain can be lost.
- If he is against what he calls "artificial methods of illumination," ask
him what constitutes the natural. Words? Rituals? Tribal customs?
Alkaloids? Psychedelic vegetables?
- If he is against biochemical assistance, where does he draw the line?
Does he use nicotine? alcohol? penicillin? vitamins? convential sacremental
substances?
- If your advisor is against LSD, what is he for? If he forbids you the
psychedelic key to revelation, what does he offer you instead?
from The Politics of Ecstacy
Leary