Pseudo Mind-expansion Through Psychedelics and Brainwave-programming Versus True Mind-expansion Through Life Conditioning to the Absolute
Year: 1971
Type: article
Abstract: Our time of material insecurity, the danger of atomic annihilation, the pollution of our life space, and the de-humanization of man by the machine have been called an "age of anxiety."Like former generations, countless people cIamor for a quick, happy illusion.They seek to escape from an ugly, contemptible, war-convulsed, corruptible, meaningless world into a transcendental realm of mind-blessedness.Like children, alarmingly increasing masses, especially the young generation, acting on the pleasure principle, want to be transported into mystic bliss-now.So they seize upon what they think can procure instant mystic illumination.Psycho-pharmacolo"ical progress claims to make it possible to "turn on" instant mystic experience and rapture.To the users of psychedelic drugs it seems possible that mystical reward is attainable without mystical endeavor.Did nature provide us with ways of obtaining pleasure, happiness, and enlightenment directly, as ends in themselves?A look at the anatomy of the brain denies this.The "new brain," managing cognitive-volitional functions, towers over the "old brain," which registers the emotional outgrowth of the endeavor "above."Yet in our day, we can implant electrodes in the reward centers of animal brains, and can administer streaks of pleasure directly to these centers.And the animals will learn to turn on the electric current, which kicks off pleasure; and they will do so endlessly, forsaking foods and other incitements, until they are dead.In our push button civilization, machines perform a great deal of what earlier man had to strive for in a strenuous self-effort.As machines work for us, so psychedelic drugs procure us unearned, ready-made, pseudo-mystical experience and rapture. Mind-Alteration by LSDThe pharmacological industry produces a plethora of drugs for medical and psychedelic purposes.We are interested here in the latter, especially in LSD, a very potent drug, which allegedly produces "mind-expansion."We contend that it generates merely mindalteration.Cohen (1969, p. 11) describes psychedelics as "a diverse group of drugs which alter moods, perception, thinking, and ego structure.In small doses they tend to be euphoriants and do not cloud consciousness.In larger amounts a spectrum of reaction forms is possible, ranging from horror, ecstasy, from absence of thought to a manicky flight of ideas, from intensification of color and depth of illusions, and from minor depressions of the body-image to complete loss of egobounderies.This variety of effects is predetermined by the set prior to taking LSD, or the setting into which the LSD taker is placed.If he is to attain mystical experience, a Psychedelic Guide may make him wade through mystical writings and talk extensively mysticism with him.(Kopp, 1971).The subject's "mystical experiences" may then stem from the Guide's suggestion, rather than from the drug taker's own direct apprehension.Of course, if the aftereffect of LSD works out in the subject's seeking of mystical enlightenment through sustained self-effort, then LSD 11 deserves a limited credit for promoting a true mystical
Source: PSYCHOLOGIA
Author: Albin R. GILBERT
Institution: University of Dallas
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7130320161
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