“I found myself back exactly where I had started when I came to town. I was still a good mechanic and could always get a job as an hourly rated machine operator. This seemed to be the only thing which offered and once more I discarded the white collar for the overalls and canvas gloves. I had spent more than half a dozen good years and had got exactly nowhere, so I did my first really serious drinking. I was good for at least ten days or two weeks off every two months I worked, getting drunk and then half-heartedly sobering up. This went on for almost three years. My wife did the best she could to help me at first, but eventually lost patience and gave up trying to do anything with me at all. I was thrown into one hospital after another, got sobered up, discharged, and ready for another bout. What money I had saved dwindled and I turned everything I had into cash to keep on drinking.

In one hospital, a Catholic Institution, one of the sisters talked religion to me and had a priest brought in to see me. Both were sorry for me and assured me that I would find relief in Mother Church. I wanted none of it. “If I couldn’t stop drinking of my own free will, I was certainly not going to drag God into it,” I thought.

During another hospital stay a minister whom I liked and respected came to see me. To me, has was just another non-alcoholic who was unable, even by the added benefit and authority of the cloth, to do anything for an alcoholic.

I sat down one day to figure things out. I was no good to myself, my wife, or my growing boy. My drinking had even affected him; he was a nervous, irritable child, getting along badly at school, making poor grades because the father he knew was a sot and an unpredictable one. My insurance was sufficient to take care of my wife and child for a fresh start by themselves and I decided that I’d simply move out of the world for good. I took a killing dose of bichloride of mercury.

They rushed me to the hospital. The emergency physicians applied the immediate remedies but shook their heads. There wasn’t a chance, they said. And for days it was touch and go. One day the chief resident physician came in on his daily rounds. He had often seen me there before for alcoholism.

Standing at my bedside he showed more than professional interest, tried to buoy me up with the desire to live. He asked me if I would really like to quit drinking and have another try at living. One clings to life no matter how miserable. I told him I would and that I would try again. He said he was going to send another doctor to see me, to help me.

This doctor came and sat beside my bed. He tried to cheer me up about my future, pointed out that I was still a young man with the world to lick and insisted that I could do it if I really wanted to stop drinking. Without telling me what it was, he said he had an answer to my problem and condition that really worked. Then he told me very simply the story of his own life, a life of generous tippling after professional hours for more than three decades until he had lost almost everything a man can lose, and how he had found and applied the remedy with complete success. Day after day he called on me in the hospital and spent hours talking to me.

He simply asked me to make a practical application of beliefs I already held theoretically but had forgotten all my life. I believed in a God who ruled the universe. The doctor submitted to me the idea of God as a father who would not willingly let any of his children perish and suggested that most, if not all our troubles, come from being completely out of touch with the idea of God, with God Himself. All my life, he said, I had been doing things of my own human will as opposed to God’s will and that the only certain way for me to stop drinking was to submit my will to God and let Him handle my difficulties.

I had never looked on my situation in that way, had always felt myself very remote indeed from a Supreme Being. “Doc,” as I shall call him hereinafter, was pretty positive that God’s law was the Law of Love and that all my resentful feelings which I had fed and cultivated with liquor were the result of either conscious or unconscious, it didn’t matter which, disobedience to that law. Was I willing to submit my will? I said I would try to do so. While I was still at the hospital his visits were supplemented by visits from a young fellow who had been a heavy drinker for years but had run into “Doc” and had tried his remedy.

At that time, the ex-alcoholics in this town, who have now grown to considerable proportions, numbered only Doc and two other fellows. To help themselves and compare notes they met once a week in a private house and talked things over. As soon as I came from the hospital I went with them. The meeting was without formality. Taking love as the basic command I discovered that my faithful attempt to practice a law of love led me to clear myself of certain dishonesties.

I went back to my job. New men came and we were glad to visit them. I found that new friends helped me to keep straight and the sight of every new alcoholic in the hospital was a real object lesson to me. I could see in them myself as I had been, something I had never been able to picture before.

Now I come to the hard part of my story. It would be great to say I progressed to a point of splendid fulfillment, but it wouldn’t be true. My later experience points a moral derived from a hard and bitter lesson. I went along peacefully for two years after God had helped me quit drinking. And then something happened. I was enjoying the friendship of my ex-alcoholic fellows and getting along quite well in my work and in my small social circle. I had largely won back the respect of my former friends and the confidence of my employer. I was feeling fine – too fine. Gradually I began to take the plan I was trying to follow apart. After all, I asked myself, did I really have to follow any plan at all to stay sober? Here I was, dry for two years and getting along all right. It wouldn’t hurt if I just carried on and missed a meeting or two. If not present in the flesh I’d be there in spirit, I said in excuse, for I felt a little bit guilty about staying away.

And I began to neglect my daily communication with God. Nothing happened – not immediately at any rate. Then came the thought that I could stand on my own feet now. When that thought came to mind – that God might have been all very well for the early days or months of my sobriety but I didn’t need Him now – I was a gone coon. I got clear away from the life I had been attempting to lead. I was in real danger. It was just a step from that kind of thinking to the idea that my two years training in total abstinence was just what I needed to be able to handle a glass of beer. I began to taste. I became fatalistic about things and soon was drinking deliberately knowing I’d get drunk, stay drunk, and what would inevitably happen.

My friends came to my aid. They tried to help me, but I didn’t want help. I was ashamed and preferred not to see them come around. And they knew that as long as I didn’t want to quit, as long as I preferred my own will instead of God’s will, the remedy simply could not be applied. It is a striking thought that God never forces anyone to do His will, that His help is ever available but has to be sought in all earnestness and humility.

This condition lasted for months, during which time I had voluntarily entered a private institution to get straightened out. On the last occasion when I came out of the fog, I asked God to help me again. Shamefaced as I was, I went back to the fellowship. They made me welcome, offered me collectively and individually all the help I might need. They treated me as though nothing had happened. And I feel that it is the most telling tribute to the efficacy of this remedy that during my period of relapse I still knew this remedy would work with me if I would let it, but I was too stubborn to admit it.

That was a year ago. Depend upon it I stay mighty close to what has proven to be good for me. I don’t dare risk getting very far away. And I have found that in simple faith I get results by placing my life in God’s hands, every day, by asking Him to keep me a sober man for 24 hours, and trying to do His will. He has never let me down yet.”

From The Back-Slider, a personal story in the original 1939 edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, “The Big Book”

The thing that make people shed tears in therapy or on psychedelics is the realization that they weren’t loved or that they didn’t love enough. The unloved child neglected by messed up parents is flooded by waves of self-compassion. The unloved parent neglected by a messed up child is sent waves of love, grief and sorrow. “I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you.”

It may be a present or past romantic partner, an ex or a spouse, or a friend, or an enemy. “I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you.”

The only love that truly heals the human heart is the love that forgives, that is, unconditional love. Parental love is unconditional. It is more than storge, affection, philia, friendship, or eros, erotic love. It is agape, unconditional love, love that rains on the just and the unjust. It is an expression of the universal love that binds the universe, in religious language, the love of God.

An earthly father should channel the unconditional love of our heavenly Father. As should an earthly mother of course. (Please don’t get hung up on gender issues – I won’t go into that here). But the love of a good father (and mother) is paradoxically both conditional and unconditional. Otherwise there would be no guidance and no correction. Sometimes tough love is what is called for.

In any case, when our connection to the source of all love, conditional and unconditional, at the apex of the soul, where the human meets the divine, is broken, things fall apart. This is the Fall, when we are banished from the Garden of Delight, when Babylon system rushes in to enlist the lost, loveless souls into its army of producers and consumers of sugar water.

Babylon system is and always has been run and maintained by an army of addicts, hungry ghosts who can never satisfy their craving for love, because they are looking in all the wrong places.

But a broken and contrite heart God will not despise. That’s how the light gets in.

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.”

John 6:51

What is a Psychedelic Christian?

A fallen soul who eats the bread of life alone before God in absolute faith.

The conversational styles of the “worldly types”, ceaselessly turning on the Wheel of Babylon, are: preaching/holding court/waxing lyrical (Diva); cursing (Demon); moaning (Victim); babbling (Addict); ranting (Muppet); chatting (Muggle).

In contrast, the conversational style of the “holy one” who has stepped off the Wheel of Babble-on is calm and collected, kind and considerate, cheerful, witty and wise.

We will continue to be slaves in Babylon as long as we continue to be addicted to physical, emotional, mental and spiritual masturbation and fornication.

Everyone’s trying their best. There is no Us and Them.

The lynchpin of the human ego system is the Diva, a sense of specialness, even superiority, over everyone who isn’t me. If not the master of the universe, I am at least the centre. Narcissism, whether overt or covert, is inevitably baked into the fabric of the human ego.

Babylon is what you get when you have a family, tribe, village, city, nation, world of egos living together. To accommodate each other, and co-exist with some degree of stability, however, people must take different roles. Obviously, not everyone can be a Diva all the time. The cat fights would be spectacular.

So we end up with all sorts of ego contortionists rubbing up against each other. Somehow, the wheel keeps on turning. It’s not ideal of course. People suffer from all sorts of physical, mental and emotional abuse and neglect, from other egos as well as their own. We put a brave face on it all, but are dimly aware that our self-centredness poisons everything, including our so-called happiness.

Is it possible to start again and establish society on a different basis, as the Israelites tried to do when they fled from Egypt and followed Moses into the wilderness in search of the Promised Land? As Buddha’s followers tried to do when they fled Samsara in search of Nirvana and the Pure Land? As Christ’s followers tried to do in search of the Kingdom of God? Is it possible to base your life, not on ego, but on no-ego?

Just as the Diva archetype is the lynchpin of the human ego, so is the Mystic archetype the lynchpin of the human no-ego. The very definition of a mystic is someone who has transcended their ego. Nobody has a monopoly on egolessness, and nobody has a monopoly on mysticism. As soon as you claim it as “yours”, the ego has slipped back in and you’ve lost it.

The egoless state can be expressed in different ways, whether theistically or non-theistically. The God Idea is very useful, but not essential. You can say “let go and let God” but you can equally say “let go and let Be”. If you insist on one or the other, you’ve lost it. Egolessness transcends all ideas and concepts.

To be a mystic, the important thing is not what you say, or even what you do, but what you are, which is nothing. To “be nothing” is to be a soul rather than an ego. The Soul Idea is very useful, but again, not essential. Buddhists prefer to stick with the idea of no-ego, anatta.

All the qualities and archetypes of the human soul system flow from this mystical state of no-ego. If they are well developed enough to outweigh their ego counterparts, so that the Mystic is stronger than the Diva, the Shaman stronger than the Demon, the Warrior stronger than the Victim, the Monk/Nun stronger than the Addict, the Philosopher stronger than the Muppet and the King/Queen stronger than the Muggle, you are technically a saint.

Sanctity must start with ego-dissolution. Some achieve this through prayer and meditation, spiritual practices and religious faith. Others need a little help from our mushroom friends. Either way, it’s not easy. You have to want it, for a start. But in peak Babylon, who wants to be a saint?

11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

¹² He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.

¹³ And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.

¹⁴ But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

¹⁵ And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

¹⁶ Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.

¹⁷ And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

¹⁸ And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds.

¹⁹ And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities.

²⁰ And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin:

²¹ For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow.

²² And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow:

²³ Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?

²⁴ And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.

²⁵ (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)

²⁶ For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.

²⁷ But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

Luke 19: 11-27

Health warning: Before taking a substantial dose of any classic psychedelic please be aware that your metaphysical beliefs and commitments may be radically altered.

My mushroom metaphysics are summed up in this simple four-part mantra:

Remember God.

You are not Him;

He is all of you.

Parashiva-Shiva-Shakti.

Amun-Ra-Atum-Ka-Ba-Gaia-Jah.

1. “Remember God” implies monotheism.
2. “You are not Him; He is all of you” implies panentheism.
3. “Parashiva-Shiva-Shakti” implies trinitarian idealism.
4. “Amun-Ra-Atum-Ka-Ba-Gaia-Jah” implies evolutionary panpsychism.

You’re waiting for your bride-to-be at the Arrivals terminal; you’re the paparazzi waiting for Johnny Depp to come out of the club; you’re a sniper waiting for the President’s cavalcade to turn the corner; you’re a soldier waiting for the order to charge; you’re a goalkeeper waiting for the penalty to be taken; you’re a sprinter waiting for the starter gun.

You watch and wait. You are awake and ready. You’re poised. You’re filled with charged expectation. You are in a state of heightened alertness and focus. You don’t daydream or ruminate or look at your phone. Your mind is empty. You are all attention, fully in the here and now.

This quality of attentive, mindful waiting is also present when you wait for a big life event, a birth, a death, a marriage, an important job, an award ceremony, an initiation ceremony. The best preparation for death, and the best preparation for a ceremonial psychedelic journey is to enter as much as possible this kenotic state of expectant waiting. Kenosis comes before a psychedelic ceremony.

Gnosis is the gift of the psychedelic ceremony itself; pistis is the post-trip process of integration; and kenosis is the self-emptied expectant waiting for the next one. For you never know when the next one will be the big one, the breakthrough, the unveiling, the apocalypse.

“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” (Matthew 24:42)