Extract from The Psychedelic Master
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My brain is a huge biocomputer. I am the self metaprogrammer in this biocomputer. The brain is housed in a body. The mind is the software of the computer.
– John C. Lilly
It would be immensely beneficial to be allowed to enjoy psychedelics from childhood. It might obviate waking up early in adult life – for the more intuitive – and having to reprogram ourselves because we had let others do it for us for so many years. With a nervous system still open and unconditioned, children could taste small doses at community ceremonies conducted by adults. In this way, they would safely access the subtle reality and the sacred under the watchful eyes of caring guides. Children would feel an integral part of the community, and spiritual emergency could happen smoothly. Today, the majority of indigenous cultures that still use psychedelics proceed this way – ceremony being an opportunity to feast, heal and receive guiding visions for the benefit of all.
Psychedelics reinforced in me the desire to question authority and think for myself because they offer a simple way to turn inward and see more clearly and without distortion. They disable mental programs long enough to access and change metaprograms consciously. Metaprogramming is the writing of programs that manipulate the data describing programs (others or itself). I am thus able to change myself – recreate myself – directly from my psyche so as to be able to stay close to my being. My psyche has its own agenda based on very subtle psychic phenomena that do not necessarily take into account restrictions imposed by morality, consumer society or emotional ties. This aspect of my being is not concerned with competition, the economy, political agenda or anything that has an expiration date.
“The brain,” writes Timothy Leary, “is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don’t take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environment.” There were too many programs in me that were not wholly mine and prevented me from blossoming. So I rebelled and decided to reprogram myself to my standards with the understanding that a blend of meditation and psychedelic experiences would facilitate the process.
Meditation is a fundamental and effective long-term deprogramming technique, but patience and discipline are required to devote oneself seriously enough to garner tangible results. This spiritual practice is effective in that progress is methodical and nothing is ever lost. Psychedelics, on the other hand, provide access to transpersonal and mystical states very quickly, but can be lost just as quickly. It is often difficult to integrate revelations induced by psychedelics, unless you know the code to decipher this type of experience, or know a spiritual master who can enlighten you. Psychedelics can even bypass entirely the steps that lead to enlightenment and project us directly into the white light by turning off the mind and the basic programs that keep us firmly rooted in the physical/rational plane. But though we can very well achieve a non-dual state during a psychedelic ceremony, we can also forget it soon after for lack of references. This is why it is important to study and to practice meditation in order to have reference points to better understand what is happening and incorporate them into our voluntary reprogramming process.
It is beneficial to use the two techniques in conjunction to get the most out of each. If psychedelics give direct, objective and clear access to programs and metaprograms in order to rewrite them, meditation helps to integrate and fix the new ones in our daily lives.
We must not believe, however, that having a few psychedelic experiences will rewrite all our programs and metaprograms at once. Some habits cannot be changed overnight without putting us in danger and destabilizing the subtle balance our being needs to function harmoniously. It is all in the art of not wrecking anything. Some programs are required to live in society – at least until the awakening, that state of being where all programs are broken. Because to reprogram ourselves intelligently, we must take into account the place we want to occupy in the community. We must be active, creative and have a bulletproof will to come to think for ourselves. A healthy dose of discrimination is necessary just to know which codes to erase and which others to rewrite partially, since each new algorithm watermarked on our being must be invested with consciousness.
I observe impassively the constant bombardment of the media that conveys the perverse propaganda of the plutocratic manipulator machine. Entheogens can help replace the stultifying schooling children receive with an education that would make them intelligent and creative. The handicapped would be fewer on the planet. The harmonizing work would begin earlier, and by staying close to our essence, we would be better able to regularly deal with the programs that tend to trap the experience of Being behind a wall of Doing.
LSD, wisely used by professionals, could reprogram enough nervous systems to accelerate consciousness and intelligence before we laid ourselves and our planet waste.
– Timothy Leary
In most countries the prohibition of entheogens remains vicious and oppressive. Prison sentences for consuming psychedelics – let’s be clear: for daring to reprogram – is longer than for committing murder. We shower astronauts with praise who go into space in giant tin cans, but make life difficult for psychonauts wishing to honestly explore their own psyche. The plutocratic manipulator machine cleverly programs the masses to disregard what matters most, like intuition, intelligence, spirituality, consciousness, and anything that might make them individuals, by making those things illegal or taboo. Our leaders prefer us to be mentally inferior, lobotomized workers and docile sheep, so they carefully omit to tell us that psychedelics may help us be free, original, creative, honest and ethical… because if this were the case, we would need neither the plutocrats, nor the pontiffs.
Mass media are the programming tools of the dictatorship. The situation is critical. Every day we are bombarded with vicious algorithms that surreptitiously infiltrate our programs and metaprograms. They create fictitious needs and bad habits, while numbing us to distract us from the essential. In short, if you do not program yourself, someone else will do it for you, and it certainly won’t be in your best interest.
“Do you think someone else than you should have the right to experiment on your nervous system?” Think about this. To this question posed by Robert A. Wilson, I say an emphatic NO. If you love me, follow me, and he who follows me is self-programmed!
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Extract from The Psychedelic Master
