Exploring the Illegal aspects of Consciousness

Posted on February 7, 2008
Filed Under Awareness, Fake Culture, Society, Consciousness |

Consciousness altering devices are often frowned upon, whether they be in the form of modern digital devices or more traditional forms such as psychoactives. In most cases these things aren’t illegal in terms of the law, however they are viewed as an oddity, ‘eccentric’ even. When thinking about this, Brainwave Entrainment is a good place to start; the consciousness altering ability of audio synchronization, whereby the brain synchronizes with the frequencies of sound. Such audio is an ancient technique employed by traditions such as the tribal drum dances. Robert Monroe developed an entire new understanding of this during the twentieth century when he founded the Monroe Institute.

Now the use of such audio is becoming increasingly commonplace, yet it is having to move under the guise of a ‘lifestyle product’. Using sound to relax or de-stress is accepted, whilst using it to enter altered states could be viewed as somewhat odd. This is a blockage in the western mind that fails to understand the nature of consciousness; after all how can it be understood without fully experiencing it?

Aware of this fact many cultures chose to explore their consciousness - which after all is the defining aspect of humanity. So there is a rich awareness to be found in those old ways - which for the last 60 or 70 years has slowly been seeping into the western world view.

Yet, whilst it’s true that a lot of progress is being made in our understanding of consciousness as science merrily learns to understand it from a third person point of view, it is quite another thing to undertake any personal experimentations from the first-person. It seems there is something profoundly missing in the notion of analyzing consciousness in the third-person when you yourself are a conduit of consciousness.

But there is a lot of resistance to this idea, simply because it marks a change in how we view the world. Put simply, one cannot explore their consciousness without then coming to certain conclusions about society. And it is this reason alone which causes such controversy to arise.

In regards to this I leave with a quote:

In the 16th century medical students had to steal corpses off the gallows and from battlefields in order to do dissections because the church would not allow dissection of corpses to take place. So medical students of that era risked imprisonment in order to obtain corpses so that they could find out how the human body worked. This is the kind of situation that we’re in–constipated patriarchal institutions are standing directly astride the forward progress of the human race….

We call these substances consciousness expanding agents, well now, if consciousness does not play a major part in the future history of our species, then what kind of a future history are we talking about? Are we going to become stupider? duller? more animal-like? I don’t think so. Consciousness is our defining quality and it must be nourished, encouraged, catalyzed–never more so than now because we have a planet in peril. The entire evolutionary enterprise may rest on the kinds of decisions we make about how we order and carry out our priorities over the next 50 years.

We need all the help we can get, and these plants have always been there to render council and give advice to evolving human populations that would humbly and reverently seek their input.

Terence McKenna