Path: shell.portal.com!svc.portal.com!sdd.hp.com!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!nntp.crl.com!tzimon From: tzimon@crl.com (Tzimon Yliaster) Newsgroups: alt.magick Subject: Re: LSD-25 and magick Date: 7 Dec 1995 03:55:41 GMT Organization: BBZ Broadcasting, Inc. Lines: 70 Message-ID: <4a5ojt$901@nntp.crl.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: crl3.crl.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Lint (lint@omni.voicenet.com) wrote: @ I was wondering if anyone out there has done any research on the use of @ LSD and the enlightenment of magick and how the two might be connected or @ how one could enhance the use of the other. My own experience of it is that it relies largely on the psyche of the individual using it. For some, it's a good all-around aid that they've used freely and with great success. For others, it becomes a trap that utterly prevents progress in *any* direction. The circle of people I did a lot of experimentation with years ago refered to such individuals as "bliss-ninnies"... very affable, totally mystical, and of no use to anyone (including themselves) anymore. They may well have been off astrally wandering some "plane" or another, but they also tended to occasionally resort to eating garbage to keep their bodies alive. @ I know Timothy Leary and shit @ already did extensive research on the psychology of LSD use and how it can @ be used as an ego destroyer. LSD is not an ego destroyer, and Leary has an ego. He'd be a rather poor author without one. If he had no sense of identity, he'd have no perspective from which to write. He might have become a writer of software technical manuals instead of philosophy and social observation. @ It, as well a magick, destroys the old self @ so that a new self can be born, an enlightened self. Destroying the self doesn't necessarily lead to enlightenment. It can also lead to nothing at all. LSD by itself has never enlightened anyone; it has no lessons to teach (nor traps to set) until it comes into contact with a psyche in a very specific way. The enlightenment it *does* offer is most often self-enlightenment. It is, I think, a kind of mirror that reflects a much larger portion of the whole mind back to the conscious mind and reflects the conscious, rational mind as well. It may distort them as well; it's impossible for me to really say, since the only trip I've ever known was my own. You may well see God while on acid, and you may even be aware that it's God you're seeing, but it's your God, and not necessarily anyone else's. In my experience with LSD (which admittedly ended some time ago), I found that it was always the most secure people who got the most out of using it. Security comes from a knowledge of the self and an understanding of "where one is at" at a particular moment. This is, oddly enough, ego itself! Note that this security needn't even have been a true one; the individual in question might have even been a bit deluded about hirself, but there's a certain power in faith, even false ones. If he/she believed in hirself and hir abilities, etc., they could take it or leave it in conjunction with magick. These, it seemed to me, were the people who used LSD as a "sacrament", rather than as a crutch. I've found LSD useful in evocative and visual magick, ill advised in any sort of magickal battle (it can become so "reflective" of the self that one may miss critical points of an adversary), and pretty much neutral in divination (other than divination about the diviner). I've sometimes thought it ironic that, in our culture, LSD is used largely by people who haven't established themselves fully in their own self and the world they inhabit, and is then touted as a tool for "transcending the ego". I think, in the end, the people who use it don't have that much to transcend in the first place. Perhaps it would be better approached as the study of Qabala or the asceticism of some Hindu religions. By the way, you mention "Timothy Leary and shit". What constitutes the "and shit" part?