← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · toddbrendanfahey
Thread ID: 16816 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-02-17
2005-02-17 23:56 | User Profile
Just prior to the popularization of the World Wide Web lay active a private news list pertaining to psychedelic drugs. The Visionary Plants List--or "VPL," as it was called by by its posters--was a by-invitation-only forum wherein could be discussed ones psychedelic experiences; recipes for the creation of psychedelic drugs; comparisons of said substances; discussions of state-by-state drugs laws and methods by which not to get caught, as well as real-time Q&A with persons of esteemed reputation within the psychedelics community. The only thing not allowed was any offering for sale or distribution of psychedelics. If you had 'em, great. Keep it to yourself. Late-1994 through late-1996 were some some heady months. Within VPL were attendants who are household names in broadcast media-, writerly-, rock'n'roll-, and scientific circles. Gaining entry into VPL required a core group of site administrators to listen to input of the sum-total of the site's existing membership, and then it was put to a vote. I passed the "background checks" and, during publication of my CIA/LSD novel Wisdom's Maw, as I always seem to do, pushed the envelope of Administrators' patience at VPL, by insisting that the Forum become a little more active and vocal toward reasserting the 10th amendment (that prickly and forgotten thing called "states' rights") within the United States of America. e.g., that FedGov/D.C. has 0.00 business dictating "drug laws" on the 50 states. My zeal was well understood and empathized with; but, let's face it--This was a crew who had a whole lot to lose by "coming out," as it were; and my drive was voted down overwhelmingly. I continued to stay active within VPL through its demise in early November 1996, when a member named "donut" got picked up by Florida cops carrying a massive load of LSD. He was reckless in that he had not compartmentalized his hard drive and cordoned off incriminating materials to an encrypted file; and, also, that he'd left his computer on and fully open to the cops who then stormed his house and who had easy pickin's as his access to VPL was still open and running while he was sweating it out in county jail. VPL was instantly closed down by the Administrators, with its membership quite literally yanking out hard drives and placing them into microwave ovens, and burning whatever printed documents had been filed away. It was a day from Hell. I was in Amsterdam during this time, and when I couldn't access VPL, I began to get "the Fear." Within hours of its shut-down, I received e- from a friend that I might, ...uh, want to call someone in Lafayette, Lousiana (where I then lived) and, mebbe, have him remove my computer from my house. That was a nasty phone call. A lot of friends would pass by my house while I sweated out the next week in Amsterdam (though the cops never came). Apparently, and as it's now known, "donut" was a stand-up guy and didn't say shee-it. Served some hard time for the privilege, too. (Whereever you are, "donut": THANK YOU.) During this time, and as I was the most-prolific user of LSD to have ever trod the VPL, I began to answer questions put to me very deliberately and thoughfully by someone on the list. As I knew the list owner and several notable figures within VPL, I knew that it was not a trap. & so I submitted to an interview that would span 48 or more months. Every so often, and even after VPL had shut up shop, I'd receive e-mail with certain questions as to things I'd stated previously. In year 2000, I got an e-mail message from Dan Merkur, who told me that his "book was out," and that I'd probably want to take a look at it. This book is titled, Unconcious Wisdom: a superego function in dreams, conscience and inspiration; its publisher, State University of New York (SUNY) Press. Stunned wasn't the word for it. Doctor Merkur had used me as a case study on one element of the psychedelic experience, and has ensconced me into five of the nine pages of the book's Introduction: This is what is published:
"Consider the following self-report of a unitive experience that was induced through psychedelic drug use: 'Over the past eight months, and very intermittently, I've been experiencing something like a "presence"--a spiritual "fullness" or "outswelling of the spirit"...The zenith, thus far, of this Experience, occurred while I was on magazine-assignment in Amsterdam, this past November. I had partaken of some chemicals (but, truth be known, that is not an atypical occurrence with me, and the quantity of medicaments was in no way substantial enough to have produced the effect that I am about to put succinctly before you): As I lay back on my cot, there was a way in which I could simultaneously relax my vision and gaze into a mirror across the room and have he light directly above the mirror refract back into my eyes...and
But not just that. Suddenly, there was an energy component to the Experience--not just a buzzing or a humming, but a driving, all-consuming Energy. The world fell away, and suddenly I found myself in what I can only call "an energy chamber," whereupon my brain, the physical mass of my brain, felt as if it were connected to the Great Cosmic Overmind. "I" was privy to All-Knowledge. But that wasn't all, either. Just as suddenly, there came a spiritual infusion, which literally took my breath away. I understood then, that the Mind is one thing, and that the Spirit is another. What rushed through me and filled me and continued to fill me for some three hours, was simply Bliss. The energy that I felt--in that Energy Chamber--was my one. This is crucial. I was given a look at my own Life Force--and in this Energy Chamber, I saw several of my faces, corresponding to "me" at different ages. That is what it was, an Energy Chamber, wherein the Energy was mine own (as if, I were being "told": "You are enough. This is it, & Now is All there is"). I remember that I was comforted to no end, knowing that the Path I was on, have been on (am on?...not too sure now) was/is the Right One (for me). (Prior to going to Amsterdam, doing this article, I had struggled much with "Am I lifing the Life I should be living?") There came a point in this Experience, where I was prompted to ask: "Who am I?" And the reply that came, fairly put me on my knees, weeping, for a good forty minutes. Bawling, actually. (At one point, I was sure I was going to wake up the whole hotel, and I became kind of embarrassed, and I think that is when It went away.) What came in response to my query was this:
And I understood, intrinsically, what it meant to be Holy. And I was, then. This was in November of last year. I knew not where to turn: I told very few people about this Happening. I felt as if I were Supposed to be Doing something; but knowing not what, or in what direction, I continued on my present course (which is the marketing of a first-novel of mine, along with teaching Creative Writing at U of Louisiana-Lafayette). Lately, I have been plagued by dreams involving my (still-living) parents. There is much tension between us (my brand of prose--satire/black-humor--does not sit well with them) and I feel that unless some real and meaningful resolution is found, that I will forever be in a Limbo-land... Two tarot card readers and a shaman have all three said, in their report of my Condition: "You are on the brink of a transformative Awakening, which will bring to you money, will involve you in politics, and will ask of you greatly your Leadership skills; but something holds you back; you are holding yourself back," or words to that effect. This is the long of it. Now, months away from that Experience, I do not know how to regain that sense of Rightness and Bliss. Will it come (back) to me? Is it wrong to seek it in the first place? Or, alternately, should I quit my bitching & live the life of a "holy man" (I assume that means, one dedicated to helping/aiding others, as opposed to striving after fame and material success...But, here again, I don't know that, for me. Maybe the Toddmonster of letters, the social satirist, the black comedian is precisely what is necessary, here, in the waning hours of the 20th century....Maybe I am doing vital service toward the ushering in of an Enlightenment of some stripe...& if I believe that, I run the risk of being called "megalomaniacal" & "full of myself"... It seems like a no-win proposition. How to proceed? This is the question that plagues me daily.' The subject reported an experience of mystical union with "the Great Cosmic Overmind." During the experience, he found himself thinking, "You are a holy man," and "You are enough. This is it, & Now is All there is." His experience of a union of energy, rightness and bliss can be treated as a metaphoric expression of the same ideas. The spiritual insights manifested first in the form of bodily sensations and mental images, and only afterward in the form of verbal ideas. Overall, the mystical union validated the subject's sense of self through a powerful and prolonged experience of self-esteem. Eight months after the experience, its memory continued to serve the subject as a high-water mark and an ideal for aspiration. The subject reported uncertainty whether and, if yes, how to act on the ideal. A second eight months later, the subject reported that he eventually chose to be guided by his awakening: 'Truly, since then, my life has not been "the same," and I am slowly, painfully, but meaningfully, coming to an understanding of what it is to be aligned with Goodness....what transpired in Amsterdam for me--which ...[a friend] called properly "Grace"--was shattering, life-affirming, in every way a magical awakening.' In The Ecstatic Imagination (1998) and Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking (1999), I suggested that unitive experiences articulate unconscious ego ideals. The manifest content of the experiences represents the self as ideal. An experience of mystical union is the waking equivalent of a dream symbol by whose means ego ideals are expressed. Because the unitive ideas manifest in the symbolic form of an experience, the values that are conveyed by the experience are not articulated as cognitive data that happens to be known by the self. They are not merely thought about, disinterestedly, as ideas. The values are not impersonal. The symbolism portrays the values as the self's own interests, motives, and goals. They are heartfelt, personal ideals. The novelty of the ideals is indicated, in the above self-report, by the subject's uncertainty regarding how to act in response to them. The subject perceived the inadequacy of his existing values to direct his behavior toward the goals that he found himself desiring. He found himself to be called upon to be more creative than ever previously--and specifically in the domain of what he termed "Goodness." ...Philo, Paul and Maimonides believed that the cultivation of the human spirit was both possible and religiously desirable. In the practice of mysticism, no differently than in psychotherapy, "ones model...has an organizing effect, it selects our responses and interpretations; our theoretical preconceptions determine how we conduct an analysis (Modell, 1987, p. 233; cf. Meissner, 1982, p. 27). What is at issue in this book is a point of theory. What is at stake are its consequences for both spirituality and psychotherapy."
Dan Merkur, Unconcious Wisdom: a superego function in dreams, conscience, and inspiration; SUNY Press, 2000
--- ### weisbrot *2005-02-18 04:42* | [User Profile](/od/user/151) [url]http://www.newworlddisorder.ca/issueone/interviews/faheyinterview.html[/url] [QUOTE]It was about that time that, while listening to John Coltrane's Giant Steps, with a headfull of Ketamine, laying on my bed, earjacks firmly implanted into the skull, and really grooving to Coltrane's genius, I was literally JERKED RIGHT OUT OF MY BED by a force. I found myself being dragged first through my bedroom, then into the livingroom, my legs and spine stiff and seizing to a feeling that I was not in control of mine own movements. I've been whacked before, on many chemicals, but nothing came close to this. Then I started to perform some ritualistic dance that included savage kicking motions and very orchestrated finger movements. It all seemed quite logical, for a few moments, and for a little while I "understood" why I was doing what I was doing, but my capacity to explain it now is no longer. But after a few minutes, some part of my brain recognized that this was not the "[COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Century Gothic]Todd Brendan Fahey known unto Todd Brendan Fahey[/FONT][/COLOR]," and I began to experience The Fear. I had no control whatsoever over that which it was I was doing. I was like a marionette puppet. And it was apparent to me then (this has happened on at least four other occasions that I can remember; the weirdest thing was, I remember doing this same thing, or having this same thing done unto me while as a child) that an electromagnetic pulse were being utilized from space (or from a spook-van in the parking lot of my apartment, who knows) to lead me to jump out my livingroom window. This sounds insane, it is insane, but it happened. I "came to," with some measure of recognition of who I was (in consensus reality), and I resisted whatever it was was possessing me; when I finally regained control of my musculature, I immediately collapsed on the floor, grabbed the phone, and dialed the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, who forwarded me to the State Department, where I inquired of any NSA (National Security Agency) operations over (name of town deleted for security reasons) Korea. I was coherent, composed, and the officer seemed to take me seriously. (He could "neither confirm nor deny," and took down my statement, cordially.) [/QUOTE] ---