bread of life

Forty days and forty nights

Thou wast fasting in the wild,

Forty days and forty nights

Tempted and yet undefiled.

.

Sunbeams scorching all the day,

Chilly dewdrops nightly shed,

Prowling beasts about thy way,

Stones thy pillow, earth thy bed.

.

Let us thine endurance share,

And awhile from joys abstain,

With thee watching unto prayer,

Strong with thee to suffer pain.

.

And if Satan, vexing sore,

Flesh or spirit should assail,

Thou, his vanquisher before,

Grant we may not faint nor fail.

.

So shall we have peace divine,

Holier gladness ours shall be,

Round us too shall angels shine,

Such as ministered to thee.

.

Keep, O keep us, Saviour dear,

Ever constant by thy side,

That with thee we may appear

At the eternal Eastertide.

Recreational psychedelic use is social; therapeutic psychedelic use is personal; sacramental psychedelic use is transpersonal.

The shift from the social to the personal is an inward movement away from superficial social relations and occasions towards greater psychological depth and maturity. This involves individuation and self-actualisation, and the clarification, revision and refinement of personal goals and values. It is a genuine and sincere response to the Delphic call to “know thyself”.

This personal psychological journey can be undertaken alone or with the aid of a psychotherapist, counsellor or life coach. It will invariably involve confronting family issues, relationship issues, self-esteem issues, and a host of other related issues. Personal psychological work can also be facilitated by psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP), which helps plumb the depths of the psyche more powerfully and effectively than other modalities.

However, there is a class of issues which go beyond the personal and cannot be properly addressed in a purely therapeutic context. These are commonly referred to as “existential” or “transpersonal” issues. Here we must move beyond the domain of the psychological into metaphysical, theological and mystical realms.

The shift from the personal to the transpersonal is a movement away from self-concern and the pursuit of personal happiness and fulfillment towards a deeper sense of connection and alignment with a Higher Power, however conceived. For most people, this shift occurs later in life, if at all. Where it does occur, it is also a genuine and sincere response, this time to “a serious call to a devout and holy life”.

Spirituality can be of the personal or the transpersonal kind. If it is in the service of the personal self, that is, if it is primarily of therapeutic interest, then it is personal spirituality. If it is in the service of a higher power or principle, “for the glory of God”, then it is transpersonal spirituality.

The sacramental use of psychedelics has social and psychological benefits, but it is ultimately rooted in the transpersonal rather than the personal. It is about re-connection with the source and of existence, life and consciousness, not for our own personal benefit, but in order that we may be become channels of peace and love for the benefit of all. It is not just psychology or spirituality. It is religion.

To the rational mind, mystery is madness.

But to body and soul, it’s medicine.

There are three great mysteries in the life of the spirit:

The mystery of zen, the mystery of psychedelics and the mystery of faith.

The first is presence, here and now, beyond space and time, body and mind.

It is the still, small voice of the self which is no-self in the boundless field of nonduality.

The second is encounter with the numinous, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

It is the wholly other, the alternating wrath and grace of the unapproachable divine source of all.

The third is the divine logos, the peace which passes all understanding, the love which never fails.

It is the covering atonement, the propitiation, absolution, reconciliation and redemption.

These three great mysteries of kenosis, gnosis and pistis are mutually reinforcing.

Each precedes and succeeds the other two, preparing the soul to receive the holy mysteries in ever greater fullness.

Great is the mystery of zen.

Great is the mystery of psychedelics.

Great is the mystery of faith.

The Way of the Holy Mushroom depends on three elements: kenosis, gnosis and pistis.

Kenosis is all about self-emptying and not-knowing. It is the recognition that the honest answer to the perennial questions, “who am I?”, “what is the nature of reality?” and “what is God?” is I don’t know. Kenosis is rooted in radical humility before the fathomless mystery of existence. Any glib answers to these questions, whether theistic or atheistic, are ultimately dishonest and worthless – the facile pretensions of an arrogant human mind. As Einstein put it, you cannot understand “that which the mind cannot grasp”.

Gnosis is about being filled with the spirit (the mushroom spirit) and intimate knowing. However, gnostic knowing is not the same as ordinary, rational knowing. It is supra-mundane, super-natural, transcendental knowing. It is “out of this world”. It carries profound conviction, known in the trade as “noetic quality”, but is at the same time strangely intangible and “ineffable”, impossible to communicate in ordinary language. This is why it is so difficult to “integrate” it, that is, to transfer it to the ordinary human world and human mind.

The mode of expression best suited to the translation of this supra-mundane gnosis into human understanding is not the rational, logical, propositional mode. It is the mytho-poetic mode, which is not irrational or illogical, but non-rational. It blends truth with beauty and goodness, story-telling with poetry, architecture with music, art with artlessness, revelation with tradition, reason with faith. This is pistis, or religion. Without it, we are left with dry philosophy or moist emotivism.

When it comes to the ritual use of psychedelics, human reason has its place, but it is essential that it know its place. It must give way to these three other types of knowing: the not-knowing of kenosis, the psychedelic, super-natural knowing of gnosis and the religious knowing of pistis. However, because we are proud and lack humility, we cannot enter fully into kenosis, gnosis and pistis, and develop the docta ignorantia or “learned ignorance” necessary to progress in holiness, virtue and wisdom. Instead, we fall back on the conventional wisdom of the world, which is foolishness with God.

A Christian is a follower of Christ, who “overcame the world”. (John 16:33)

Therefore a follower of Christ must strive to overcome the world.

To overcome the world is to overcome conventional society, or “Babylon”.

Three things necessary to overcome Babylon are “Heaven”, “Earth” and “the Word”.

Heaven is reached in the gnosis of psychedelic mystical experience.

Earth is reached in the kenosis of mindful presence and zen.

The Word is reached in the pistis of religious contemplation.

Psychonauts who believe in Heaven but not Earth or the Word are defeated by Babylon.

Neo-Pagans who believe in the Earth but not Heaven or the Word are defeated by Babylon.

Christians who believe in the Word but not Earth or Heaven are defeated by Babylon.

One out of three is not enough. Two out of three is not enough.

The only way to overcome the world and defeat Babylon and extract yourself from the Matrix

is by fully engaging mind, body and spirit with the Word and with Heaven and Earth.

This is the Way of Psychedelic Christian Zen.

This is the Way of the Holy Mushroom.

I believe in healing the past through forgiveness of sins in unconditional love, redeeming the present through the mind, body and spirit of Christ in absolute faith and waiting on the future kingdom of God in fervent hope.

The “God of the philosophers” is the God of metaphysical speculation, traditionally associated with Aristotle and his Metaphysics. In modern times, it would probably be associated with big names in Transpersonal Psychology such as Stanislav Grof and Ken Wilber or advocates of The Perennial Philosophy such as René Guenon, Huston Smith and Aldous Huxley (who wrote a popular book of that name), not to mention theologians of all persuasions trained in the Analytical philosophical tradition and others.

Nothing wrong with all that. But there is, as there has always been, a “living God” of wild power and might, of the numinous, the uncanny and the weird, alongside the polite, rational, moral God of the lecture theatre, pulpit and drawing-room. Jesus may have been alluding to this God when he said, “he is not a God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38)

In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as “son of God”, “son of Man” and “son of David”. In Luke’s gospel, his genealogy is redacted all the way back from his “biological” father Joseph via King David to “our first father” Adam, concluding the long list with: “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (Luke 3:38)

The “living God” is not just the first name in a family history, however, spiritual father of the first human, Adam. As “the son of Joseph … the son of Adam, the son of God”, through descent, Jesus is “the son of Man”. But through direct contact with the Divine Source in the here and now, “eternally begotten of the Father”, Jesus is “the son of God” directly, without intermediary. There is a horizontal connection in time and space and there is a vertical connection beyond time and space.

Jesus was plugged directly into the Source, but also into a particular history of “the living God”, that of the Jewish people as recounted in the Old Testament:

The living God of All Creation;

The living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob;

The living God of Moses and Aaron;

The living God of David, Solomon and the Kings of Israel and Judah;

The living God of Elijah, Elisha and the Prophets.

Christianity is of course built on the living God of Jesus Christ, understood as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which in essence is the same living God that walked with Adam in the garden.

Psychedelic Christianity is also grafted onto the same vine, connected by a million threads of mycelium to the same living God, the living God of the Mushroom Christ.

A psychedelic priest must live a psychedelic life. That is to say, they must walk the walk and practice what they preach.

What is psychedelic practice? What is the psychedelic life? In the ceremonial, which is to say, “religious” context, as opposed to the recreational, “hippy” context, psychedelic life and practice is sober and disciplined. It consists of three elements: preparation, communion and integration.

The psychedelic priest administers the sacrament and conducts the ceremony. This is the heart and soul of the practice: an act of communion with the psychedelic spirit of the holy mushroom and with whatever numinous contact with divinity that affords. But there is also the before and after, the preparation and integration, to take into account.

For the psychedelic priest, kenosis (meditation) is the preparation and pistis (prayer) is the integration. The communion, that is, the psychedelic experience itself, is gnosis (revelation). This is the basic model for all serious practitioners.

The true psychedelic life is a life of meditation, revelation and prayer.

A high dose of magic mushrooms takes you to the paradoxical heart of reality, which is neither solid nor liquid. Too solid and there is only dry land; too liquid and there is only sea; too muddling and there is only mud.

There are no absolutes here: whether life or death, day or night, light or dark, waking or sleep, present or past, summer or winter, hot or cold, wild or tame, loud or quiet, naughty or nice, messy or tidy, forbidden or accepted, perfect or flawed, open or secret.

It’s an open secret: a sacred sensual dance in the half-light at the still point of the turning world.

AΩM

(The T’ai Chi symbol represents a dynamic system of rotating antinomies. Imagine the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet lined up on a ruler with Alpha at one end and Omega at the other. Now imagine that the ruler is attached to a fixed point at the twelfth letter, Mu (M). This acts as a fulcrum around which the ruler turns. Notice that the mid-point between 1 and 24 is 12.5 (in the Latin alphabet there are 26 letters so the mid-point is 13.5 and the letter M is the thirteenth letter). This means that the axis around which the ruler turns is slightly off-centre in favour of Alpha, where Alpha represents the positive pole (life/generation/the beginning) and Omega the negative pole (death/destruction/the end). Therefore the T’ai Chi is weighted in favour of life, and spins clockwise. Now imagine that this is a sliding rule so the fulcrum can be positioned at any of the 24 points marked on it according to the Greek alphabet. The most harmonious yin/yang balance is at M. Any deviation from this (slightly asymmetric) golden median will create imbalance and an irregular turning of the ruler, making for a bumpy ride, as with a misaligned wonky wheel. If the fulcrum is at Omega, the ruler cannot turn but must simply hang vertical and inert. This is death. The same is true at the other end at Alpha. Birth and death are two sides of the same coin. The middle way of balance and equipoise is at M. And what is the letter M but three points on a baseline, representing the beginning, the middle and the end, connected by two mountains (M) or two hills (m)?)

AΩM

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come.