The Psychedelic Shaman Briefings
The Entities of The Imaginal Realm
Sub-Figura vel Liber VIII

 

Excerptus Caeruleus:

"The former [native tribal discarnate] ally now 'speaks English,' which is to say that it expresses itself not in terms of plants, animals, etc. (the everyday artifacts of subsistence agriculture and hunter-gatherer cultures) but in quasi-scientific terms which appeal to contemporary Western minds."

"...The point here is not to assume a superior stance by observing how the [tribal] Mazatec world view is different from ours, but to show how the mushroom uses the belief systems of its hosts to push its agendas..."

"...Certainly, the basic exhortation here is to accept a passive and obedient child's role in relationship to the inner voice. This is arrested development; the healthy outcome of any growth process is maturation, and entities demanding childish, subservience seem to be hindering our natural processes to further hidden agendas of their own."

"...The consistently overblown language broadcast through these channels suggests the existence of incorporeal forces infesting human awareness which are primarily concerned with impressing us with their importance. This is hardly "godlike" behavior -- rather the opposite, in fact. What truly supreme being is so insecure as to need let alone demand human worship and subservience? Or, more to the point, what mature adult needs deities like that in his or her life?"

"...The gnostic Archons, then, are intelligences existing in the imaginal realm in 'bodies' consisting of thought and feeling. They are able to tune into our awareness through our affinity with their wavelength, that is, our beliefs. They feed off of our allocation of energy to their dimension, and compete with other Archons on other levels in the overall hierarchy for their nourishment."

"...What may be a belief in the Christian Trinity or Islamic Jihad [or flying saucers!] to humans, may be the equivalent of a T-bone steak to entities of the imaginal realm who depend upon that belief for their existence. A hungry Archon will apparently do anything to convince you to feed it. The psychiatric literature is saturated with examples of 'inner voices' demanding absurd levels of obedience to highly questionable belief systems."

"...This book holds to the shamanic model of multiple dimensions, accessed via human consciousness, in which dissociated intelligences feed off of human belief systems the way that we eat hamburger. It is to these entities' advantage to keep us ignorant of their agendas; they would forfeit independent existence if we chose to become gods ourselves by devouring their energy instead of vice-versa. As it is written in the Upanishads, and emphasized here for the third time: 'it is not pleasant to the Devas that men should know this.'"

---

And so, my Brethren, let us begin our memetic journey:

If the history of psychic research tells us anything at all, it is that we are surrounded on all sides by nonhuman intelligences who habitually lie to us for no discernible reason other than to amuse themselves. These entities are at least as old as human consciousness (hence the near-universality of the Trickster motif in legend and folklore) and seem curiously dependent on us for their continued existence... John Keel, writing in 1983, speculated on the possibility that "We are the intelligence which controls the phenomena." The corollary is obvious: Only when we have arrived at a fuller and more balanced understanding of ourselves will we begin to understand the latent forces that seek to manipulate us. (1)

To understand the entity phenomenon it is Useful to lay aside the concept of monotheism in general and of universally benevolent, well-intentioned deities in particular. Popular Christianity has generally conditioned Westerners to the idea of a single, all-loving Father-God. Based on empirical facts, it may be more productive to reexamine the ancient notion of a pantheon of "gods" coming in as many kinds and dispositions as we do. Indeed, in conformance with our hypothesis of dimensional progression (i.e., that higher dimensional entities can perceive lower dimensions more easily than lower dimensional entities can perceive higher dimensions), it logically follows that they appear inextricably linked with our own awareness.

Senses more refined than ours would show us worlds of atoms, of light, of energy, where now we think we see tables, buildings, individuals. Subtle beings, whose substance escapes our perception, can exist around us, penetrate us, play with us, act on our thoughts and our senses, without our having the least awareness of it. (2)

That human beings hear the paranormal voices of "others" under certain circumstances has been well established for millennia. Schizophrenia and mystical rapture are probably the most common catalysts, but the ingestion of psychedelic substances consistently produces comparable phenomena. Psychedelic shamanism has traditionally attributed these inner voices to "teachers" residing within the substances themselves. The obvious question is: do hallucinogenic plants actually embody "entities," or do they elicit aspects of the unconscious psyche which present themselves in this guise? Most importantly, can we believe what they tell us? Terence McKenna has said: "It is no great accomplishment to hear a voice in the head. The accomplishment is to make sure that it is telling you the truth." (3)

These questions may be unanswerable, but they are fascinating subjects to explore. One recent development within the shamanic tradition is that often the plant allies no longer communicate with their indigenous hosts the way they did previously; that is, a change seems to have taken place in the relationship between some tribal cultures and their psychedelic "allies." Here is the now-famous Mazatecan shaman, Maria Sabina, observing a change in her relationship with the teachers residing in the psilocybin mushroom:

Before Wasson, I felt the saint children [entities in the mushroom] elevated me. I don't feel that anymore. The force has diminished, If [the foreigners hadn't come] the saint children would have kept their power.... From the moment the foreigners arrived, the saint children lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won't be any good. There's no remedy for it. (4)

For the moment, let us take this at face value and interpret it as a shift in the interface between the plant allies and their aboriginal users, perhaps a mutation in consciousness analogous to what may have occurred when the Delphic Oracle stopped speaking to the Greeks. If we can hypothesize sentient plants, then it's not much of a step to theorize that their recent encounter with modern left-brain human consciousness may have altered their perceptions as much as our own.

One must acknowledge that there is a great difference in the psychological reality of a traditional Mazatecan Indian from rural Mexico, and a modem Westerner. Intercourse between humans and mushrooms was confined for millennia to hunter-gatherer and subsistence agricultural tribal cultures -- people whose awareness was of necessity focused on a quite different reality than our own. Conceivably, because there was no survival value in the differentiating left brain function evolving the way that it has in the modern West, these people have arguably developed a form of awareness more appropriate to their specific surroundings. Since the mid-fifties, however, the Mazatecs' mushroom allies have been exposed to a different kind of consciousness, and have possibly evolved accordingly:

The author's interview in 1969 with old Apolonio Teran, who was considered in the community to be a powerful Wise Man, documented a series of ideas that parallel what Maria Sabina has told us:

"...What is terrible, listen, is that the divine mushroom no longer belongs to us. Its sacred language has been profaned. The language has been spoiled and it is indecipherable for us..."

"What is this new language like?"

"Now the mushrooms speak English! Yes, it's the tongue that the foreigners speak..."

"What is this change of Language due to?"

"The mushrooms have a divine spirit; they always had it for us, but the foreigner arrived and frightened it away..."

"Where was this divine spirit frightened to?"

"It wanders without direction in the atmosphere, it goes along in the clouds. And not only was the divine spirit profaned, but that of ourselves [the Mazatecs] as well." (5)

It is significant to note that the old shaman identifies his tribe with the spirit of the ally, both are "wandering without direction," a highly accurate image of what happens to indigenous cultures when they are exposed to Western "civilization." This may be simple projection, however, and say more about the situation of his tribe than that of the mushroom spirit. The former ally now "speaks English," which is to say that it expresses itself not in terms of plants, animals, etc. (the everyday artifacts of subsistence agriculture and hunter-gatherer cultures) but in quasi-scientific terms which appeal to contemporary Western minds. Here's a message from the mushroom received by Terence McKenna, writing under the pseudonym O.T. Oss:

"I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages I am from the stars. My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered through the shining disc of the galaxy have conditions which allow my spores an opportunity for life... Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both of the species involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own. To secure an eternal existence down the long river of cosmic time I again and again offer this agreement to higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble [sic] mushroom teacher to the million worlds to which all citizens of our starswarm are heir." (6)

This kind of language is a far cry from one of Maria Sabina's chants, translated from the Mazatec into Spanish, and from thence into English. In a session recorded in 1956, the mushroom appeared to her in this guise:

Father Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
You Mother, Mother, my Mother who art in the house of heaven
You Mother who art in the house of heaven
In your beautiful world, says
In your fresh world, says
In your world of clarity, says
I am going there, says
I am arriving there, says...
Because I am speaking poorly and humbly says
I speak to you, you are the only one, you my Mother, to whom I can speak with humility, you my Mother who art in the house of heaven, says My Father who art in the house of heaven, says
I am going there, says...[etc.] (7)

Observe that although the language is very different, the content of the experience seems to be identical: a promise that the mushroom spirit will transport its host to a transcendent world. The significant difference is that despite its rather inflated rhetoric, the Western message is an offer of a kind of partnership:

Animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble [sic] mushroom teacher to the million worlds to which all citizens of our starswarm are heir. (Emphasis mine)

For modem Westerners however, even a junior partnership is a better deal than childlike subservience; notice how Maria Sabina's message is couched in parental terms:

Father Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
You Mother, Mother, my Mother who art in the house of heaven
You Mother who art in the house of heaven [etc.]

Apparently in the Mazatec view the only way one can transcend the material plane (get to "the house of heaven") is not via one's own mature accomplishments, but through the intercession of cosmic parent figures. The point here is not to assume a superior stance by observing how the Mazatec world view is different from ours, but to show how the mushroom uses the belief systems of its hosts to push its agendas, and in this instance has cruelly abandoned its old Mazatecan "allies." That's not very godlike behavior, nor is it the way any responsible parent would treat his children. These qualities, alas, are utterly typical of the voices heard by schizophrenics. It is almost a defining characteristic of these inner voices that they are arrogant, patriarchal, pompous, and often cruel. Here is a first-person description of an inner voice taken from the literature of schizophrenia:

The voice uttered only a sentence or two on each occasion that it appeared. The voice claimed to originate from God....The verbal production of the thoughts-out-loud (i.e. inner voice) usually takes the form of monologues attempting to persuade the ego to adopt a belief in the authority of the agent behind the thoughts-out-loud, and to accept a messianic fixation....It is impossible not to be influenced by the experiencing of such phenomena. Regardless of their social evidential value, they represent to the person who experiences them, proof of contact with some agent possessing sources of information broader than those of any factor of the human organism. [Emphasis mine: the author is referring to paranormal true predictions of future events by the voice on four separate occasions.]

There has been an intricate interrelationship between the hallucinatory pains and the thoughts-out-loud. The hallucinatory pains first appeared at a time when the ego was developing a doubt of the claim of divine authority made by the thoughts-out-loud, and their occurrence was explained by the thoughts-out-loud as a penalty for the doubt. On several occasions since, pains have occurred following threat by the thoughts-out-loud that they would take place if commands made by it were not obeyed. (8)

These voices heard by schizophrenics are often indistinguishable in tone and content from those evoked by psychedelic plants. Note the self-aggrandizement in this message from a "mushroom entity" speaking to another Westerner in 1982.

My magical and mystic powers have been known by your kind since before Christ. Societies that have obeyed my rule have lived with nature and realized themselves. I give laughter, and I can also bring about the mightiest wars before your eyes. Showing the future to those who understand and can record, is nothing. I can place you with the Gods. Once you have stepped aboard hiper [sic] light drive transition, you are never again the same person. As you learn to reproduce my growing environment, you will come to love me. Later, as you learn thy way, you will look upon me with awe and amazement. I am respected with the highest regards. For I am the flesh of the Gods. (9)

Whatever may be the source of this communication, it differs considerably from the sophisticated rhetoric received by McKenna. This suggests the possibility that at least some portion of the inner voices may be more artifacts of each individual's unconscious psyche than a bona fide communication between plants and people. If the entities generally use the vocabularies and syntax of their hosts, the truly important question is: how many of the host's personal belief complexes also bleed through as the "Word of God?"

Far from being an artifact of mental aberration, the paternalistic rhetoric of the "gods" is utterly typical of mystical religious writings worldwide. Here's one from the gnostic gospels (circa 350 C.E.):

I was sent forth from the power, and I have come to those who reflect upon me,
and I have been found among those who seek after me.
Look upon me, you who reflect upon me, and you hearers, hear me.
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
And do not banish me from your sight.
And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.
Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!
Do not be ignorant of me. For I am the first and the last.
[Etc.] (10)

The effect of these communications is usually an implicit threat -- "You'd better accept my authority, or you'll regret it!" If this strategy doesn't work, let's not forget that the flip side of intimidation is condescension; compare the above quote with a channeled message of the patronizing type:

Listen!...Put me first in everything, then shall all be added unto you...Listen!...Be at peace. Striving gets you nowhere. It simply leaves you exhausted and frustrated because you never seem to be nearer the goal. Just learn to be. When you have ceased striving, crawl into my loving arms like a weary child. Encircled in those arms, feel the peace, comfort, and complete oneness with me. Feel yourself melt into me...Listen! Walk my way and do my will. Let me show you my wonders and glories. If you seek happiness in the wrong way, it cannot be found. Seek me first and find me. That is the simple answer. Put first things first, no matter what the cost or sacrifice. Love me with ail your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind. (11)

While not overtly threatening, the essence of this message is insultingly parental. (That prose like this is typical of much modern channeled writing is an insight that maybe the real task of the New Age is for human awareness to grow up and accept adulthood.) Certainly, the basic exhortation here is to accept a passive and obedient child's role in relationship to the inner voice. This is arrested development; the healthy outcome of any growth process is maturation, and entities demanding childish, subservience seem to be hindering our natural processes to further hidden agendas of their own.

Another hint that we may be dealing more with a function of human awareness than with true "plant teachers" is that one can receive identical messages from synthetic chemical compounds made in a laboratory! Here it's the DET "spirit":

Quoted in Peter Stafford's Psychedelics Encyclopedia (1982), [Temple of the True Inner Light founder Alan] Bimbaum states, "DET (DiEthyl Tryptamine) is the first psychedelic which convinced me that the psychedelic is a Primeval Light Being which is God, the Creator. We smoked it in a large hookah and it was so clear and bright -- unmistakable -- it was a Being." ...The Temple of the True Inner Light relies on "the word" coming from direct -- vocal or heard communication with spirit forms manifested from [DET] ingestion. (12)

I offer this material to illustrate the idea that if you accept the hypothesis of plant teachers then you have to accept the hypothesis of synthetic chemical teachers as well. This, it seems to me, opens up a can of worms. Wouldn't it be more elegant to hypothesize entities emerging from our own unconscious when stimulated by certain chemical molecules? Why deify the catalyst?

The consistently overblown language broadcast through these channels suggests the existence of incorporeal forces infesting human awareness which are primarily concerned with impressing us with their importance. This is hardly "godlike" behavior -- rather the opposite, in fact. What truly supreme being is so insecure as to need let alone demand human worship and subservience? Or, more to the point, what mature adult needs deities like that in his or her life?

Reality presents itself in hierarchies, or at least human consciousness seems structured to perceive it that way. Hierarchies can be thought of as a kind of sedimentation of value. Jung's four psychological functions -- Intuition, Thought, Feeling and Sensation (fire, air, water and earth) -- naturally arrange themselves in a hierarchy of abstraction which reflects their relative "densities." That is to say, sensation (earth) is "denser" than emotion (water), just as water is denser than air, and thought (air) "denser" than intuition (fire). The ancient earth, water, air, fire metaphor symbolizes a profound psychic hierarchy which Jung clearly recognized as an archetypal description of human consciousness.

The Kabbalah goes even further and describes each of Jung's functions as an actual dimension; specifically, Assiah (earth), Yetzirah (water), Briah (air) and Atziluth (fire). Indeed, each realm is conceived to be spatially at least as infinite as the physical multiverse. It follows that if Jung's psychological functions correspond to four "spatial" dimensions within the collective unconscious, then the human body can be defined as a vessel containing the hierarchy. All of this, of course, fully supports the shamanic world view as previously outlined.

Empirical evidence shows that each dimension within the imaginal realm is inhabited by monads of sentient energy. Like all living organisms, these entities seek to preserve, nourish and promote themselves. The closer the perception of the entity matches our own, the more appealing will be its arguments to our awareness, and the more likely we will feed it with our belief. The dynamics of this exchange are explicitly described in the Upanishads:

Now if a man worships another deity, thinking the deity is one and he another, he does not know. He is like a beast for the Devas. For verily, as many beasts nourish a man, thus does every man nourish the Devas. If only one beast is taken away, it is not pleasant; how much more when many are taken! Therefore it is not pleasant to the Devas that men should know this. (13)

In Hinduism and Theosophy, the Devas are disembodied spirits which are identical to angelic beings, gnostic Archons and the like. The clue that they are dependent upon our own thought processes and belief systems is found in the first sentence: "Now if a man worships another deity, thinking the deity is one and he another, he does not know." This is a Quintessential gnostic statement; not to "know" is to be a slave to the Deva-Archons, to be a slave to our own beliefs. To be a "beast for the Devas" is to feed them, nourish them, keep them alive. Since such beliefs are sentient creatures, out for their own welfare, "it is not pleasant to the Devas that men should know this."

The gnostic Archons, then, are intelligences existing in the imaginal realm in "bodies" consisting of thought and feeling. They are able to tune into our awareness through our affinity with their wavelength, that is, our beliefs. They feed off of our allocation of energy to their dimension, and compete with other Archons on other levels in the overall hierarchy for their nourishment. Like any differentiated organism, they will instinctively seek to maintain their identities and to resist any attempts at integration into a larger whole. In the simplest terms, all organisms strive to preserve themselves and to avoid death -- to eat to live and to avoid being eaten -- just like we do. Again, we can look to the insights of the psychedelic experience for support of this notion:

G.I. Gurdjieff (1950) formulated [the] interesting idea... that everything in the universe "reciprocally maintains" every other thing in the universe. In other words, everything eats and is eaten; physically, psychologically, and spiritually. Just as one must eat to maintain oneself at a point far from equilibrium, e.g., as a dynamic, ongoing life process, so are there structures which eat oneself for the same purpose. The central question...is what is one feeding with one's behavior, thoughts, emotions, or: What's eating you? ...The notion of everything eating and being eaten is a useful metaphor in attempting to understand the relation of ourselves to higher level structures, including values. We are what we feed, as well as what we eat. The relationship which one establishes with the [psilocybin] mushroom epitomizes this particular quality of the universe: when one eats the physical body of the mushroom a strange symbiosis is initiated. Soon after one ingests the carpophores, the mind of the mushroom begins to ingest your mind. (14)

The out-of-body experiences of Robert Monroe provide further insights into this concept. Here he describes some encounters with typically Archonlike entities, which he refers to as "intelligence forces":

The same impersonal probing, the same power, from the same angle. However, this time I received the firm impression that I was inextricably bound by loyalty to this intelligence force, always had been, and that I had a job to perform here on earth. The job was not necessarily to my liking, but I was assigned to it. The impression was that I was manning a "pumping station," that it was a dirty, ordinary job but it was mine and I was stuck with it, and nothing, absolutely nothing could alter the situations..I got the impression of huge pipes, so ancient they were covered with undergrowth and rust. Something like oil was passing through them, but it was much higher in energy than oil, and vitally needed and valuable elsewhere (assumption: not on this material planet). This has been going on for eons of time, and there were other force groups here, taking out the same material on some highly competitive basis, and the material was convertible at some distant point or civilization for something very valuable to entities far above my ability to understand.

Again, there was the feeling of being the pumping station attendant, the approach of the entity down the beam the search of my mind I mentally (orally also?) asked who they were, and received an answer that I could not translate or understand. Then I felt them beginning to leave, and I asked for some actual indication that they had been there, but was rewarded only with paternal amusement. Then they seemed to soar up into the sky, while I called after them, pleading. Then I was sure that their mentality and intelligence were far beyond my understanding. It is an impersonal, cold intelligence, with none of the emotions of love or compassion which we respect so much, yet this may be the omnipotence we call God. Visits such as these in mankind's past could well have been the basis for all of our religious beliefs, and our knowledge today could provide no better answers than we could a thousand years past. By this time, it was getting light, and I sat down and cried, great deep sobs as I have never cried before, because I knew without any qualification or future hope of change that the God of my childhood, of the churches, of religion throughout the world was not as we worshipped him to be -- that for the rest of my life, I would 'suffer' the loss of this illusion. (15)

This modern, twentieth century impression of "something like oil" as a valuable commodity which is being pumped to ultraterrestrial entities (Archons) was perceived by the ancient gnostics as "dew":

"What then is the interest of the Archons in opposing the exodus of the soul from the world? The gnostic answer is thus recounted by Epiphanius:

They say that the soul is the food of the Archons and Powers without which they cannot live, because [the soul] is of the dew from above and gives them strength. (16)

As monads of the imaginal realm, each Archon seeks to maintain itself, and will conceivably say or do whatever is necessary to gain our attention and worship. This is the origin of the "gods," entities demanding worship which they need in the same way we need food in order to exist. Without worship, a god starves and is absorbed (eaten) by some other entity. The loveless paranoia found in many modem fundamentalist sects can be explained from just this perspective -- any deity that demands worship is unworthy of it on the face of it.

This cruel and arrogant (from our point of view) attitude of the Archons is only natural from their point of view if we compare their behavior with the way that we treat the animals and plants we use for food in our own dimension. No one I know of considers the "feeling," or ultimate welfare, of the chickens, steaks or carrots they eat to stay alive. From a potato's point of view, even a peaceful vegetarian is an arbitrary predator on its right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

However, from a human point of view, the entelechy of a potato is to be eaten, digested and ultimately transformed by humans. What was potato last week is me today. In theory, the potato has attained a higher level of awareness, though the potato may be forgiven for not seeing it that way.

The competition for food is arguably the predominant cause of strife on this planet. Such a system mandates the production of psychic energy in the form of stress, pain, fear and aggression. If the physical body can only survive by eating physical food, the subtle bodies conceivably also require nourishment consisting of the same stuff they are made of, i.e., thoughts, emotions, drives, etc. This is presumably the "food" that we produce for the Archons. What may be a belief in the Christian Trinity or Islamic Jihad to humans, may be the equivalent of a T-bone steak to entities of the imaginal realm who depend upon that belief for their existence. A hungry Archon will apparently do anything to convince you to feed it. The psychiatric literature is saturated with examples of "inner voices" demanding absurd levels of obedience to highly questionable belief systems. These are often qualitatively very little different from some of the more bizarre forms of dogma in the world's religions.

Who can say that belief is not a form of energy, is not food or fuel used in more abstract realms of existence by entities we have always perceived as gods? Whoever or whatever these entities may be, it is essential for the shaman to realistically come to terms with them. If "they" in some strangely dissociated way are "us," then we should integrate the parent/child polarity within us and embrace our destiny as adults. If they are truly "others," then we need to learn how to negotiate with them, if not exactly as equals, then at least with respect on both sides. Presumably any effective shaman has learned how to attain this balance.

We know so little about the mysteries of consciousness that it is premature, if not arrogant, to make definitive pronouncements about the identities of these inner voices. It is certainly possible that we are encountering true plant teachers as well as other discarnate intelligences, in addition to dissociated fragments of our own personalities! The psyche is nothing if not a multiverse containing a multiplicity of forces -- all the more reason to skeptically evaluate each of their messages.

Only a very small child would uncritically accept the rap of someone he just met on the street. It is a New Age truism that many are playing precisely that role; the literature is replete with examples of would be "shamans" surrendering their will and discrimination to any strange force pontificating parental guidance. An insight from the Magickal tradition (Western shamanism) offers directions for proceeding in these realms of the psyche:

The testing of the spirits is the most important branch of the whole tree of Magick. Without it, one is lost in the jungle of delusion. Every spirit, up to God himself, is ready to deceive you if possible, to make himself out more important than he is; in short, to lay in wait for your soul in 333 separate ways.... Let [the Magician] be aware of the thousand subtle attacks and deceptions that he will experience, carefully testing the truth of all with whom he speaks. Thus a hostile being may appear clothed with glory; the appropriate pentagram will in such case cause him to shrivel or decay. Practice will make the student infinitely wary in such matters. (17)

This book holds to the shamanic model of multiple dimensions, accessed via human consciousness, in which dissociated intelligences feed off of human belief systems the way that we eat hamburger. It is to these entities' advantage to keep us ignorant of their agendas; they would forfeit independent existence if we chose to become gods ourselves by devouring their energy instead of vice-versa. As it is written in the Upanishads, and emphasized here for the third time: "it is not pleasant to the Devas that men should know this."

It follows that the wisely intentional use of any psychedelic drug is as a self-integrating, self-empowering catalyst. In this way the gods (Devas, Archons, spirits, belief complexes, etc.) cannot coerce our worship -- we coerce theirs in the form of enhanced personal power. Obviously it behooves all psychedelic explorers to prudently evaluate the kinds of "allies" they choose to integrate into their psyches in this way. The higher the level of unification the better; otherwise it is seductively easy to become entrapped within dimensional [blue] resonances of dubious ultimate value.

---

Notes:

1. Blake, Ian (1993). "A question of ethics," Crash Collusion #3, Austin, TX, Spring, p.13.

2. Danielou, A. (1966). "The influence of sound phenomena on human consciousness," Psychedelic Review, No. 7, p.20.

3. McKenna, T. (1991). The Archaic Revival, Harper, S.F., p.35

4. Maria Sabina, quoted in Estrada, A. (1981). Maria Sabina: Her Life and Chants, Ross-Erikson Inc., Santa Barbara, pp.90-91.

5. Ibid., p.205, passim.

6. (Channeled communication from mushroom spirit to): Oss & Oeric (1976). Psilocybin Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, And/Or Press, Berkeley, pp.8-9.

7. Estrada, op. cit. , P. 110.

8. J. Lang, (Pseudonym) (1938). "The other side of hallucinations," American Journal of Psychiatry, 94:1087-97

9. Prefatory quotation (presumably from the mushroom "Deva") in: Peele, S.L. (1982). Lepiota Peele -- a newly discovered hallucinogenic mushroom, Xerox sheet, Florida Mycology Research Center, Pensacola

10. "The Thunder, Perfect Mind," in Robinson, J.M., ed. (1988). The Nag Hammadi Library, Harper & Row, S.F., p.297.

11. P. Hawken (1976). The Magic of Findhom, Bantam, NY, p.138.

12. Thomas Lyttle (circa 1987). "Drug Based Religions and Contemporary Drug Taking," Journal of Drug Issues

13. "Brihadaranyaka Upanishad," in Yutang, L., ed. (1942). The Wisdom of China and India, Modern Library, NY, p.36.

14. Billings, R.L. (1989). The Way of the Little Clowns, pp.13-15. (Unpublished monograph; no further data available.)

15. Monroe, R. (1977). Journeys Out of The Body, Anchor/Doubleday, Garden City, NJ, p.261.

16. Jonas, H. (1963). The Gnostic Religion, Beacon Press Boston p.169

17. Crowley, A. (1976). Magick in Theory and Practice, Dover, NY, pp.147,388.

---

Excerptus Caeruleus:

"The ancient myths and religions of humankind seldom reflect current experience anymore. They've been replaced by the harsh new standards of science which condescendingly proclaim all other ways of knowing to be illusory. It is hardly surprising then that the "gods" now encountered are often decked out in the trappings of science fiction; that art form which is perhaps the closest thing we have to an unus mundus encompassing both contemporary Techno-Logic and the imaginal realm. Extraterrestrial themes are a firmly established motif of our evolving mythos.

"...It is significant that many of these [shamanic] explorations have amazing similarities with what has come to be known as the 'Alien Abduction' syndrome, experiences which do not typically involve drugs of any kind. Whitley Strieber, a multiple abductee, has written of the almost overwhelming terror that always accompanies these events, and anyone who has experienced the full effects of a tryptamine hallucinogen, such as DMT, will quickly empathize with his descriptions. The UFO contactee/ abductee phenomenon manifests too many themes analogous to psychedelic states and shamanic initiation to be regarded as unrelated."

---

And so, my Brethren, let us now continue our memetic journey:

Some ufologists...are writing of the penetration into our reality of parallel worlds, even other universes. Jacques Vallee, for example, now states, "I believe that the UFO phenomenon represents evidence for other dimensions beyond spacetime; the UFOs may not come from ordinary space, but from a multiverse which is all around us." Interestingly, the [UFO] abductees themselves speak, including under hypnosis, of the sense that they have of the penetration into their consciousness of other dimensions beyond our familiar space/time reality. (1)

What's it like to encounter an entity from mindspace while under the influence of a psychedelic substance? More specifically, how does a modern Westerner process such an adventure in the absence of any culturally sanctioned framework to give it meaning? The ancient myths and religions of humankind seldom reflect current experience anymore. They've been replaced by the harsh new standards of science which condescendingly proclaim all other ways of knowing to be illusory. It is hardly surprising then that the "gods" now encountered are often decked out in the trappings of science fiction, that art form which is perhaps the closest thing we have to an unus mundus encompassing both contemporary Techno-Logic and the imaginal realm.

Extraterrestrial themes are a firmly established motif of our evolving mythos. The UFO contact is now seen by many investigators to be an interface between inner and outer dimensions, analogous to a kind of involuntary shamanic encounter. It is a significant fact that psychotropic drugs, proven catalysts for accessing the mythic realms of the psyche, frequently evoke alien contact experiences. Terence McKenna describes extraterrestrial and UFO themes as typical psychedelic events:

UFO contact is perhaps the motif most frequently mentioned by people who take psilocybin....They encounter another space with UFOs and aliens -- classic little green men ... The UFOs come from another dimension; one could almost say they come from beyond death. They come from a dimension somehow totally different from our own, but tied up with the human psyche in a way that is puzzling, alarming, and reassuring -- and shamanic. (2)

The following is an account of an "alien contact" experience of my own. I believe it is fairly typical, and I will later compare it with some quotations from other contexts. This adventure took place as part of a scientific DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) study at a major university. The protocol called for two administrations of the drug. The first was a threshold dose to acquaint me with its effects; the second was a maximum safe dose for my body weight to provide full scope for the DMT experience. Here are my notes from the second administration:

Thursday, January 14,1993,9:15 AM to 9:30 AM

Set: Continuation of protocol from yesterday. Now 0.4 mg/kg = 26.56 mg DMT i.v. A "maximum dose."

Setting: UNM hospital, Room 529, East Wing.

The initial come-on was similar to the sound and lights of one of those brain wave machines, but it reached a climax almost instantly and "sonic boomed" me into another reality. Despite "knowing better," my gut reaction was still one of disorientation and shock. There's nothing you can read that will prepare you for what it feels like to go from zero to 100 Mph in 1.3 seconds -- catapulted from "normal" consensus reality one moment into a totally bizarre, profoundly alien space the next! Nothing written here can convey either what it was or even what it was like.

Crudely, approximately, I found myself approaching a "Space Station" (a long, beige colored, triangular-shaped "landing platform") which was below and to my right. There were at least two entities (one on either side of me), guiding me to the platform. Although I didn't actually "see" them, their presences were clearly felt. I was aware of many other beings inside the space station -- automatons: android-like creatures that "looked" (all this transcends ordinary visual description) like a cross between crash dummies and the Empire troops from Star Wars, except that they were living beings, not robots. They were doing some kind of routine technological work and paid no attention to me. Again, everything was speeded up -- compared with time as experienced in "consensus" reality, things happen at least twice as fast in the DMT realm. The imagery was pouring in too rapidly to process and integrate; that, and its profoundly alien content was what initially threw me off.

But this was paltry compared with what happened next. In a state of overwhelmed shock and confusion, I opened my eyes to see the doctor's nurse-assistant horribly transformed into a grotesque "clown," with huge, protrubant red lips maybe 20-times enlarged from normal that's the predominant image: most of the rest is now mercifully repressed. The impression was that she had been replaced by an alien entity. On LSD, I've seen people's faces distorted, but the distortions were based upon the person's "real" face -- I could still recognize them. What I saw on DMT had no connection to anything I could remotely associate with this woman.

At this point I became suddenly nauseous, and asked for something to vomit into (I still had enough awareness of who and where I was not to want to puke on myself). A receptacle was not available, so I was handed a wadded up hospital gown. When I opened my eyes, I couldn't recognize what I'd been given (thus further disorienting me): I was holding what I imagine "ectoplasm" is supposed to look like: a weird, other worldly substance: "etheric cotton." It seemed to be all aura, without substance perhaps the visible vibrations of everyone who had ever worn that gown: sick people, dying people: Total Mystery. Although terrified, I didn't actually panic, but I was aware of wanting the experience to stop right now, and feared being in the state indefinitely. Soon after this it diminished rapidly. I was firmly down after fifteen minutes, in normal awareness within half an hour. Amazingly, the subjective experience felt like no more than two minutes -- maybe even less!

This experience took place in a "scientific" context utilizing pure synthetic DMT, a drug famous for the extremely brief duration of extremely bizarre, yet amazingly consistent effects. Compare the following DMT encounters with the general content of my own experience:

...I was in a large space and saw what seemed to be thousands of the entities. They were rapidly passing something to and fro among themselves, and were looking intently at me, as if to say "See what we are doing!" ... Subject V

...I passed abruptly through to another realm, losing all awareness of my body. It was as if there were alien beings there waiting for me, and I recall that they spoke to me as if they had been awaiting my arrival, but I cannot remember exactly what was said ... Subject M

...Not only did I have what I can only call a close encounter, I was left with two thoughts. First, they were waiting for me, and they were not "friendly." ...[On the] third attempt [it] seemed like they could not wait for me to experiment. In this event, I did not have actual contact, but rather "felt" them wanting to get into my consciousness. The actual experience was far more frightening than any major "trip" previously experienced ... Subject S (3)

While not true in every case, DMT explorers consistently report high levels of fear associated with their intrusions into the imaginal realm. Although the brevity of the experience enables one to manage one's terror fairly well, it is difficult to imagine what it would be like to endure such fright for longer than a few minutes. Here's the way another investigator describes this state:

It is not a trip I can take such as I would take a trip with LSD, peyote, or mushrooms, it is a trip which unequivocally takes me. ...I was humbled and awed by the terrifying glory of it all. Terrifying? I was scared shitless with no place to shit. ...Can we ants, who call ourselves human, presume to know anything about the capabilities of God or what he has in store for us? (4)

Assuredly, psychedelics can provide access to realms far removed from anything we would identify as "consensus reality." These quintessentially shamanic catalysts evoke shamanic states of consciousness and any would be explorer of such realms must be willing and prepared to endure what can only be called the terror and stress of a shamanic initiation. Obviously, this is not for everyone, or even very many of us.

It is significant that many of these explorations have amazing similarities with what has come to be known as the "Alien Abduction" syndrome, experiences which do not typically involve drugs of any kind. Whitley Strieber, a multiple abductee, has written of the almost overwhelming terror that always accompanies these events, and anyone who has experienced the full effects of a tryptamine hallucinogen, such as DMT, will quickly empathize with his descriptions. The UFO contact/abductee phenomenon manifests too many themes analogous to psychedelic states and shamanic initiation to be regarded as unrelated:

Fear confuses us and holds us back. It is our primary obstacle. Successful confrontation with it is the breakthrough that leads to understanding. Whether by accident or design, the visitors took me on a fabulous and terrible journey through my fears. Whatever my worst imagining, actual experience intensified it a hundred times. Learn to live at a high level of uncertainty. Only by doing this will we begin to gain the rigorously clear and objective outlook we need to perceive what is happening correctly ...[The visitors] have the ability to enter the mind and affect thought, and can accomplish amazing feats with this skill. ...Suppressing and denying fear are useless. I discovered how to accept my fear and not be surprised by it. ...The more frightening they got, the stronger I became. ...They never sought to destroy me with an assault beyond my strength. Thus they can hardly be called evil. Based on the actual outcome of what they did to me, they must be counted the allies of our growth. ...The whole point of it seems to me to involve strengthening the soul. Certainly this has been central to my relationship with them. ...Really facing the visitors means accepting that one may also endure great fear ... and become free of all fear. (5)

This is as good a contemporary description of shamanic will and intent as I've come across, and may be used as a guiding principle when exploring the imaginal realm. The fact that the "aliens" are able to enter our three-dimensional world, seemingly at will, suggests that they utilize shamanic principles analogous to our own when we project into their space. In other words, it appears that the way of the shaman is a two-way street and that the ideal of living in the unus mundus or One World appeals impartially to the denizens of any dimension. The "shamans" of all worlds have probably always known this, and the principle suggests the possibility of true interdimensional alliances for those powerful and knowledgeable enough to create them. In the present context, whatever the UFO encounter may be, it represents at least the possibility of an ally relationship; a traditional shamanic connection with a hidden power for the purpose of healing the ills of the tribe.

When a DMT-containing substance is combined with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, such as harmaline (a concept to be described in Part II of this book), one has the basic formula for ayahuasca, the beverage used by South American shamans to access and manipulate hyperspace. In contrast to pure DMT, ayahuasca experiences typically last several hours. Although very strange and frightening by consensus-reality standards, an ayahuasca trip is not usually quite as overpowering as DMT taken all by itself. The following is a different kind of entity contact described by a Westerner who ingested ayahuasca in the Amazon:

It was always frightening to drink ayahuasca. The visions it produced were rarely the visions one wanted to see, and even wonderful visions were difficult to reconcile with ordinary reality ....

Then, another voice spoke. "HeIlo," it said.

There was no one I could see, just a voice, but not one I recognized.

"Hello," it said again.

"Who are you?" I asked, hoping it was just a voice I was inventing.

"You know who I am," it said plainly.

I did. I sensed it was the spirit of ayahuasca. It wasn't just an image or a vision. ...It felt like I was in the presence of something unfathomable. The idea seemed crazy to me, even at that time, but I also knew it was true. I was awestruck. I believed in the spirits of things, and I knew the power of ayahuasca, but I'd never imagined anything like that disembodied voice.

I opened my eyes, hoping it would go away if I ignored it. It didn't. It was just waiting me out. "What do you want?" I asked, finally.

"You're the one who called me," it said. "You're the one who keeps calling me."

"I didn't mean to. I just wanted to ... see things..."

The voice said that wasn't true. It said I had called because I needed to confront my desires and fears, and my immense sorrow, and I was getting what I needed. The voice said that it was a time for cleansing...

I knew what it said was true, and my initial fear of its presence began to subside. Then it asked me if I would let it enter. It seemed such a strange request that I was taken aback. The ayahuasca was already inside me, I said. The voice said no, that wasn't what it meant.

Immediately I had the vision of a snake wrapping itself around my head. I saw my head open, as if my brain had been cut in half. It looked like the honeycombs of a beehive. Dozens of snakes appeared and began sliding into the tunnels of my brain. At first it felt wonderful, as if an immense power was entering me, but then I wasn't sure that I should let it in. I remembered Julio's warning that some spirits are good, others are evil. I was afraid I was dealing with an evil one. What if it wasn't the spirit of ayahuasca; or if it was, what if it was an awful, dark aspect of it?

I asked the voice what the snakes meant why they had to enter me -- but I didn't get an answer. Part of me thought it was a test. Another part knew that if the snakes disappeared into my brain, I would never get them out. The thought was horrifying.

Suddenly, I knew I had to get those snakes out of my brain. I began pulling them out by their tails. They were strong and hard to dislodge, but the more I fought them the more certain I became that the voice wasn't the real spirit of ayahuasca. It wouldn't have asked to enter me in such a disturbing way. I was fighting for my life. I feared that if I lost I would be enslaved forever.

The moment I got the last snake out, I began to doubt my decision ... I felt that I had failed a test and missed an extraordinary opportunity. I asked the voice why it seemed to be testing me. The voice answered that it had already given me so many gifts that I should have some faith and trust. The voice didn't sound angry or disappointed. It just said I shouldn't ask for so much without giving anything in return. Then it disappeared, and I knew my visions were over for that evening. (6)

In the context of the preceding discussion, what seems to be described here is an aborted potential ally relationship. The author may surely be excused for rejecting something he didn't understand; any prudent explorer of hyperspace is well-advised to do the same. With sufficient knowledge and experience, however, it is possible to imagine a mutually advantageous affiliation, a true shamanic alliance for the attainment of knowledge and power.

What sort of knowledge? What sort of power?

Consider this: when on my DMT trip, I observed the wadded-up hospital gown as "etheric cotton" or ectoplasm." I believe I was seeing what shamans see in their curing trances. Had I known more about this state of consciousness, I feel I might have been able to shamanically influence a material object from hyperspace. The principle is not as fantastic as it sounds once one realizes how much habit and belief coerce our perception. This is the tyranny of consensus reality -- anything outside of it is automatically defined in our culture as madness or deliberate criminal deviance from social norms.

Sorcerers describe their knowledge, their pursuit, as the capacity to see energy directly, see the essence of things. What we do in the world of everyday life is to perceive only what we already know. We revalidate the world. Socialization gives us the concepts of what things are, and thus, we never really perceive what is actually there. We know "truth" a priori and all we do from then on is validate it. Sorcery is the act of erasing the a priori. Our world is real because, collectively, we have all agreed to it ... Sorcerers know that something far more vast exists than what we have agreed to let our senses perceive. (7)

A concept from Jivaro shamanism further illustrates this general idea:

These tsentsak or spirit helpers are the main powers believed to cause and cure illness in daily life. To the non-shaman they are normally invisible, and even shamans can perceive them only in an altered state of consciousness... Each tsentsak has an ordinary and nonordinary aspect... The ordinary aspect is an ordinary material object, as seen without drinking ayahuasca. But the nonordinary and "true" aspect of the tsentsak is revealed to the shaman by taking the drink. (8)

Now, the hospital gown was hardly a power object or spirit helper, but, like Peter's Tibetan cup in Chapter One, it was charged with energy which could be clearly seen while in a psychedelic trance. Anyone having a similar experience would immediately understand the rationale behind shamanic curing practices -- given the proper state of consciousness, it is totally plausible that normally invisible forces can be manipulated "from the other side" to create consequences in the material realm. This, of course, is the essence of shamanism.

It is also the essence of shamanism to acquire helpers (allies, teachers) who instruct one how to manipulate the artifacts of non-ordinary reality. In traditional cultures these entities are often seen as the resident spirits of the hallucinogenic plants. Here is a contemporary Western description of an encounter with such a mentor:

On both occasions, we contacted a "teacher" who identified himself with the Syrian Rue plant. During our discussions with him (which were out loud; subvocalizing was ineffective) the plant teacher showed us visions, answered questions and provided specific health, emotional and psychological advice. The "voice in the head" phenomenon was not as strongly constituted as on high dose mushrooms. However, the vividness, clarity, and understandability of the visionary illustrations which often accompanied the conversations were striking. Intense feelings (which shifted with the visions), changes in tone of voice and manner of speaking, including glossolalia (as recorded on tape) and strong contact highs were additional phenomena noted. The plant teacher had a definite personality which was strongly male, very friendly, humorous, with an interest in storytelling bordering on the garrulous. (9)

The Syrian Rue plant (Peganum harmala) is a fascinating species which will be discussed at length in the chapter on ayahuasca and its analogues. Suffice it to say here that this botanical offers a significant potential for modern shamanic experimentation. Some scholars have hypothesized that Syrian Rue is the mysterious Soma praised in the Aryan Vedas, though in the absence of a DMT-containing admixture plant, such conjectures are not entirely convincing. In the above experiment, a homemade P. harmala extract was combined with synthetic DMT to create a novel blend chemically comparable to the Amazonian ayahuasca brews. The "ally" elicited from this unique combination provided a wide range of information in its visions:

• Plant diagrams and information on watering, plant diseases and placement of the Syrian Rue plant in our garden.
• A diagram of a human heart, showing the auricular node and the neurology of the heartbeat.
• Art and artifacts from the Old European civilization c. 10,000 B.C., e.g., Catal Huyuk; including pottery and statuary.
• A vision of the Goddess, holding the plant teacher and the human contactee intertwined in her hands.
• Various pieces of psychological and relationship advice, including insights into both our childhoods. (10)

For the average Westerner, such data are incredible, yet any shaman would regard experiences like these as par for the course. Obviously we have barely scratched the surface of an unknown (to us) reality and have a great deal of catch-up learning to do. As previously noted, it is impossible to say at this time who these entities are, or how much the neophyte should trust the information they provide. These are all realms to be explored in the coming years by pioneering psychonauts. It is hoped that this book will provide an initial, if incomplete, reference point for the explorations that lie ahead of us.

Excerpt from:
Psychedelic Shamanism:
The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants
by Jim DeKorne
ISBN: 1-55950-110-3

Notes:

1. Mack, J.E., MD (1993). '"The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon,"Venture Inward, March/April, p.38.

2. McKenna, T. (1991). "A conversation over saucers," in TheArchaic Revival, Harper, S.F., p.62.

3. Meyer, P. (1993). "Apparent communication with discamate entities induced by dimethyltryptamine (DMT)," Psychedelic Monographs and Essays #6, p.40. passim.

4. Williamson, D. (1985). "Recreational and sacramental use of 5-Meo-DMT," The Psychozoic Press #10, Summer.

5. Strieber, W. (1988). Transformation: the Breakthrough, William Morrow, NY, p.11, passim.

6. Gorman, P. (1992). "Journeys with ayahuasca, the vine of the little death," Shaman's Drum, Fall, pp.49-57.

7. Donner, F. (1992). "Being in Dreaming," Body Mind Spirit, Nov./Dec.

8. Harner, M. (1980). The Way of the Shaman, Harper & Row, NY, p.16.

9. Gracie and Zarkov. (1986). "An Indo-European plant teacher," Notes From Underground, Number 10, Berkeley.

10. Ibid.