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Pericopes

Pericopes
last updated 12/12/2000

Those who would wait
Jeffrey
Hung Mung
Lightening the Load
Psychedelics as Gnostic Catalysts

Those who would wait

Because we don't expect to overthrow governments, abolish world capitalism, make civilization vanish, or turn everyone in the world into walking buddhas, we don't have to wait for anything. But I have to warn you that many people will tell you the opposite, that we have to wait until we have a world that is already perfect. They feel absolutely nothing should happen until we've banished social inequality, racisms, sexism, poverty, and every other bad thing you can think of.
I've had people tell me we have to wait till everyone "respects" everyone else. I've had people tell me we can't do anything till everyone's "consciousness" has been raised. People who think like this would wait for the cut to heal before applying a bandage, would wait for the sinking ship to rise before getting in the lifeboat. They're way past my comprehension, and beyond offering the opinion that they're going to have an awful long wait, I can't think of a thing to say to them.

Source: Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization

Jeffrey

In My Ishmael I recounted the life of a young man named Jeffrey, loosely based on Paul Eppinger, whose journal was published by his father under the title Restless Mind Quiet Thoughts. Jeffrey was attractive, intelligent, personable, and multitalented, but he couldn't find anything he wanted to do, other than hang out with friends, write in his journal, and play guitar. His friends were forever urging him to find a direction, get some ambition, and care about something, but of course none of these things can be done at will. He came to believe his friends when they told him he was unusual--peculiar, even--in his aimlessness. In the end, despairing of finding the purposefulness that seems to come so easily to others, he quietly and without fuss took his own life.
I wasn't surprised to hear from many youngsters who feel exactly like Jeffrey, who know the world is full of things they should want to do--and who imagine that there must be something dreadfully wrong with them for failing to want it. Because I've taken the trouble to study cultures different from our own, I know there's nothing innately human about wanting to "make something" of yourself or to "get ahead" or to have a career, a profession, or a vocation. Notions like these are foreign to most aboriginal peoples, who seem perfectly content to live just the way Jeffrey wanted to live--and why shouldn't they be?

Source: Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization

Hung Mung

     Yun Chiang was traveling east, carried along upon the wings of a whirlwind. Suddenly he met Hung Mung, who was jumping around, slapping his thighs and hopping like a bird. Yun Chiang saw this and stopped dead, standing still in respect, and said, 'Elderly man, who are you? What are you doing?'
      Hung Mung continued to slap his thighs and hop like a bird, then replied, 'Enjoying myself!
      Yun Chiang said, 'I would like to ask a question.'
      Hung Mung looked at Yun Chiang and said, 'That's a shame!'
      Yun Chiang said, 'The very breath of Heaven is no longer in harmony. Earth's very breath is ensnared, the six breaths do not mix, the four seasons do not follow each other. Now I want to combine the six breaths in order to bring life to all things. How do I do this?'
      Hung Mung slapped his thighs, hopped around and said, 'I don't know, I don't know!'
      Yun Chiang could go no further with his questioning. But three years later, traveling east, he passed the wilderness of Sung and c ame upon Hung Mung again. Yun Chiang, very pleased, rushed towards him, stood before him and said, 'Heaven, have you forgotten me? Heaven, have you forgotten me?' Bowing his head twice, he asked for teaching from Hung Mung.
      Hung Mung said, 'Wandering everywhere, without a clue why. Wildly impulsive, without a clue where. I wander around in this odd fashion, I see that nothing comes without reason. What can I know?'

Source: The Book of Chuang Tzu, trans. Martin Palmer with Elizabeth Breuilly

Lightening the Load

Ship captains pay careful attention to a marking on their vessels called the Plimsoll line. If the water level rises above the Plimsoll line, the boat is too heavy and is in danger of sinking. When the line is submerged, rearranging items on the ship will not help much. The problem is the total weight, which has surpassed the carrying capacity of the ship.
This analogy points out that human activity can reach a scale that the earth's natural systems can no longer support. In 1992, more than 1600 scientists, including 102 Nobel laureates, underscored this point by collectively signing a "Warning to Humanity." Their warning stated in part that "a new ethic is required, a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. . . .This ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes."
Such a new successful global effort to lighten humanity's load on earth would need to directly address three major driving forces of environmental decline: the inequitable3 distribution of income, resource consumptive economic growth, and rapid population growth.

Source: Environmental Science: A Study of Interrelationships by Eldon Enger & Bradley Smith

Psychedelics as Gnostic Catalysts

    In the field of consciousness research, the "set-and-setting hypothesis," which was first formulated by Timothy Leary in the early sixties, helps us understand psychoactive drugs and plants as one class of triggers within a whole range of possible catalysts of altered states. The theory states that the content of a psychedelic experience is a function of the set (intention, attitude, personality, mood) and the setting (interpersonal, social, and environmental) and that the drug functions as a kind of trigger, or ctalyst, or nonspecific amplifier or sensitizer. The hypothesis can be applied to the understanding of any altered state of consciousness, when we recognize that other kinds of stimuli can be triggers--for example, hypnotic induction, meditation techniques, mantra, sound or music, breathing, sensory isolation, movement, sex, natural landscapes, a near-death experience, and the like.
    An important clarification results from keeping in mind the distinction between a state (of consciousness) and a psychological trait, between state changes and trait changes. For example, psychologists distinguish between state anxiety and trait anxiety. William James, in his classic Varieties of Religious Expierince, discussed the quesiton of whether a religious or conversion experience would necessarily lead to more "saintliness," more enlightened traits. This distinction is crucial to the assessment of the value or significance of drug-induced altered states. Only by attending to both the state changes (visions, insights, feelings) and the long-term consequence, or behavioral or trait changes, can a comprehensive understanding of these phenomena be attained.
    Having an insight is not the same as being able to apply that insight. There is no inherent connection between a mystical experience of oneness and the expression or manifestation of that oneness in the affairs of everyday life. This point is perhaps obvious, and yet it is frequently overlooked by those who argue, on principle, that a drug cannot induce a genuine mystical experience or play any role in spiritual life. The internal factors of set, including preparation, expectation, and intention, are the determinants of whether a given experience is authentically religious. Equally, intention is crucial to the question of whether an altered state results in any lasting personality changes. Intention is the bridge from the ordinary or "consensus reality" to the state of heightened consciousness; and it also provides a bridge from the heightened state back to ordinary reality.
....
The drug is only a tool, a catalyst, to attain certain altered states; which altered states depend on the intention. Furthermore, even where the drug-induced state is benign and expansive, whether it leads to long-lasting positive changes is also a matter of intention or mind-set.

Source: Green Psychology by Ralph Metzner

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