The book of Enoch

[sh]

Chapter 14

8 And the vision was shown to me thus: Behold, in the vision clouds invited me and a mist summoned me, and the course of the stars and the lightnings sped and hastened me, and the winds in
9 the vision caused me to fly and lifted me upward, and bore me into heaven. And I went in till I drew nigh to a wall which is built of crystals and surrounded by tongues of fire: and it began to affright
10 me. And I went into the tongues of fire and drew nigh to a large house which was built of crystals: and the walls of the house were like a tesselated floor (made) of crystals, and its groundwork was
11 of crystal. Its ceiling was like the path of the stars and the lightnings, and between them were
12 fiery cherubim, and their heaven was (clear as) water. A flaming fire surrounded the walls, and its
13 portals blazed with fire. And I entered into that house, and it was hot as fire and cold as ice: there
14 were no delights of life therein: fear covered me, and trembling got hold upon me. And as I quaked
15 and trembled, I fell upon my face. And I beheld a vision, And lo! there was a second house, greater
16 than the former, and the entire portal stood open before me, and it was built of flames of fire. And in every respect it so excelled in splendour and magnificence and extent that I cannot describe to
17 you its splendour and its extent. And its floor was of fire, and above it were lightnings and the path
18of the stars, and its ceiling also was flaming fire. And I looked and saw therein a lofty throne: its appearance was as crystal, and the wheels thereof as the shining sun, and there was the vision of
19 cherubim. And from underneath the throne came streams of flaming fire so that I could not look
20 thereon. And the Great Glory sat thereon, and His raiment shone more brightly than the sun and
21 was whiter than any snow. None of the angels could enter and could behold His face by reason
22 of the magnificence and glory and no flesh could behold Him. The flaming fire was round about Him, and a great fire stood before Him, and none around could draw nigh Him: ten thousand times
23 ten thousand (stood) before Him, yet He needed no counselor. And the most holy ones who were
24 nigh to Him did not leave by night nor depart from Him. And until then I had been prostrate on my face, trembling: and the Lord called me with His own mouth, and said to me: ' Come hither,
25 Enoch, and hear my word.' And one of the holy ones came to me and waked me, and He made me rise up and approach the door: and I bowed my face downwards.

-f

[sh]

If this isn't a description of a psychedelic experience, then I don't know what it is.

-f

[karlsie]

I often wonder why it was okay to have visions three thousand years ago but it's not okay to have them now.

[sh]

I believe it's possible to be led to aberration by psychedelics. I believe this is exactly what happened to the Aztecs.

-f

[karlsie]

I'm not sure what happened to the Aztecs. By their own admission, they were an aggressive,war-like race. They stole the technology of the tribes they conquered without developing anything uniquely their own. They practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale, and weakened their own gene pool by sacrificing the most beautiful and intelligent of their own children.

This is unusual for North American tribes. Most of them were generally quite peaceful. Even the tribes that practiced raiding did so to steal women and children to add to their gene pool and did not entertain themselves with whole scale slaughter.

Traveling north from modern day Mexico City, nearly all the Native American tribes are peaceful. Most are familiar with psychoactive drugs; marijuana, peyote, psilocybin mushrooms; even in the far north, as their grapevine connection between each other has always been strong, yet they use these drugs ceremonially, spiritually, often in conjunction with sweats, spirit quests and self discipline.

However, once you begin traveling south, you begin entering a land of voodoo, witchcraft and strange phenomena. If you don't immerse yourself with the indigenous people, it's best to go stay at a hotel or live in a westernized colony. You are not safe without a guide. To venture on your own without a pass, means slipping into illusions, trickery and deceit. The entire state of Veracruz is filled with towns that harbor cut throats, thieves and murderers. Yet at the same time that you see the worst that humankind can produce, you also see the best of what it can produce.

Oddly, these cut throats respect the boundaries of the more peaceful villages. They don't try to invade them. These villages are primarily Zapotecan, who appear to protect the Mayans and spiritual seekers. It seems even the cut throats suspect the Zapotecans have some very strong voodoo and are reluctant to engage in hostilities against them.

Is this the influence of the Aztecs or the first conquering Spaniards? Maybe it's a little of both. The modern day Aztec consists primarily of a working class with its most professional thinkers, a little eccentric. A fantastic mural in Tehuacan, Puebla, painted by an Aztec artist, depicts the story of creation and the development of Mexico's indigenous people, but the history is a shared one with both the Maya and the Zapoteca, without any direct reflection on their own roots and influence.

Was their aberration a result of psychedelic abuse? I'm going to fall back on the philosophy of free will. According to the ancient stories, after the great calamity, the survivors were instructed to never again live in their cities. The early Mayans built great structures, town halls, market places, academies, etc., but they did not live in their city centers. At the end of a business day, they returned to their rural homes. Over time, more and more people gravitated toward these city centers and began living within them. This was the first sin of the new age.

When the Aztecs conquered the Mayans, they also began living in cities, contrary to the other tribes that kept their villages small, the overflow traveling to new locations. But just as their cities caused the downfall for the Mayans, the Aztec cities fell under the hand of the Spaniards. Now, here we are, a globe full of cities, which is why i strongly suspect the cycle is about to start over again.

[sh]

Hmm... Are you sure there is such a thing as free will?

Consider this.

Let's assume that our perception and our selves are two independent, yet entwined entities.

Our life then, as people, would consist of perceiving what the self does, thinks, feels and sees.

How can we prove that we are in fact free to make choices for our selves? That it isn't actually the self that is making choices for us?

On the other hand, If we don't distinguish between perception and the self, then we could say that our lives consist of an endless chain of decisions, choices, dictated by our circumstances.

If we define free will as the freedom of decision; and as our "options" from which to choose are presented to us from outside; then free will is in essence, the freedom to acquiesce to our fate.

As for the Aztecs, consider this: A man or woman eats a large dose of Psilocybin mushrooms and suddenly finds him/herself in a one-to-one meeting with a supernatural entity, who seems undeniably real. As real as any man or woman.

This entity then proceeds to outline precise instructions on human sacrifice, and the gifts it is willing to give in exchange for such an act.

Considering how addicted the Aztecs were to human sacrifice, I believe they must have felt, in the very least, some sort of "high" from such an act.

This is, I believe, a clear example of aberration brought on by psychedelics.

Of course, there were also those among the Aztecs who in spite of using the same psychedelics, never felt the need to feed human life to their god-masters. But I don't think this has anything to do with free will.

-f

[sh]

And to clarify, so there is no confusion, I believe "god" is an Ariyan word for a Semitic concept that today we simply don't perceive, and as such have no comprehension of.

For us, god is just a mental construct, with no parallel in reality.

I believe, to the Aztecs, 'gods' were actual beings, that all people could see and interact with.

I believe, the Spaniards, like today's Anthropologists, simply couldn't understand Native American culture, because the Native American's reality included another realm of experience alongside the day-to-day life, namely, the realm of "psychedelic" experience.

They had divided their lives into two unarbitrary realms; the day and the night.

The day was associated with waking reality, light, the known. The night was associated with dreams, darkness, and the unknown.

During the day, they behaved essentially like us. But at night, they entered the "other world," and they became something entirely different than their daily counterparts.

This kind of behavior can still be observed in certain tribes in the Amazon. Although, contact with the white man and his missionaries has limited it exclusively to tribes living deep in the jungle, and away from big rivers.

So, as you can understand, there are only a handful of tribes on earth today, who still practice a relatively pure form of man's "religion." (or woman's)

Everyone else is unaware of the unknown. We are unaware of our other side.

-f

[grainnerhuad]

There is so much here to take in, and much that I simply do not know about except from storied fables and minimal reading.

However I would like to add that I find it shortsighted to think that the only way the brain could reach a state ready to percieve "mysteries" is through the use of psychedelics. Enoch's vision itself could be easily translated to modern day things we know of and see on a regular basis. Gleaming and crystalized marble floors. Lighting that shines to his eyes like lightning, etc.

But back to point, our minds have the ability to enter the state created by psychedelics through meditation, fasting, even extreme stress. Some people claim to have these types of experiences without any prompting,mostly children and youth; leading me to believe it has something to do with the release of brain chemicals as they grow.

I am not trying to discount at all the usefulness of psychedelics in achieving this state, only to point out there are ways of getting there without them.

[The Late Mitchell Warren]

I tend to think that the Book of Enoch was fiction, just imagination, a bit ahead of its time.

I suppose anything could have been a psychedelic experience, even Revelation....but bizarre imagination doesn't automatically mean drugs.

[sh]

I think you guys might be underestimating the power of these plants, a little bit. It's understandable, though.

Just believe me when I say, I really don't want to come off as sensationalizing psychedelics. Nor do I feel it is my responsibility to advertise them. I do understand that this is exactly what I have done, however.

I honestly couldn't tell you what I'm doing here or why I'm saying the things I'm saying..

Please, don't think that I'm trying to "push" drugs on you.

Grainne, the power of certain psychedelics is far beyond some effect on the brain, IMO. They have taken me to places where there is no trace of humanness; where the brain becomes just a meaningless word; where language stops working altogether.

It is from the view I am afforded in those places that I have seen how meaningless the physical self is.

I will be blunt. Everything that we believe we know about the world; every single concept we have of existence, is absolute nonsense.

The immensity that I have seen out there, simply does not lend itself to understanding by words, by thought. IMO, the human brain can never grasp the true nature of our being.

-f

[The Late Mitchell Warren]

LOL no, I don't think that at all. I am merely saying this as one person who has thought about using drugs (and longed to see evidence of the supernatural), and who occasionally tries them, but who ultimately has decided to separate the two worlds. It's an interesting perspective though, I do give you that.

[sh]

Mitch, my perspective is really all I am offering. And I hate to feel like I'm preaching.

I guess what I'm doing here is taking advantage of the free speech zone you are offering, and learning to write, mostly.

I really hope you guys don't mind my incessant babbling. I don't plan on doing this indefinitely. I'm in the city waiting, and I'm stuck here all winter.


-f

[grainnerhuad]

Sh-
I don't mind it at all. However I do maintain that there are other, mostly untapped ways of getting to that state. Having used pychedelics myself I understand what you are getting at. It is something that is not easily explained.

However it's not the only way and my feeling is there is a danger of people discounting others who have insights/visions/spiritual happenings that don't involve anything other than daily life.

Keep the thoughts coming, it is very interesting.

[grainnerhuad]

P.S.- as a cross-over to another thread. I do believe there is magick in the world and the worlds we don't easily percieve and these types of things are what make this magick up.

[karlsie]

Most people have a tendency to shy away from the subject matter of drugs, other than for debates over legalization or discussions of a drug addiction. There is no doubt that chemically altered and man made drugs are a serious problem. Whatever benefits could be gained are usually outweighed by severe addiction and a warping of the mental processes so that the drug alone becomes the top priority.

However, during my years of taking natural, psychoactive drugs, which i haven't used in over twenty years, there is one thing i notice. Nobody ever really becomes addicted to psycho-active drugs. They have the opposite effect of suppressive and pain killing drugs. Instead of dulling the five senses, they heighten them. Especially notable is the cones in the eyes, which expand, giving them more depth perception. Not only is the mind processing information its conscious state had not observed, heard, smelled, felt and tasted before, it's doing it at a much faster rate as psychoactive drugs also stimulate the mind to process quicker.

This can be an overwhelming experience for first time users trying to make sense of this new information. Some people panic, so the images they see begin to become twisted and deformed, reflecting the fears accompanying these new sensations. Other people explore these new sensations, digesting them internally, analyzing them, and sometimes becoming interactive with them. First time users often become fascinated with the traces they can see of their hand by waving it in front of their faces, or become aware that the dark area in their wood desk has a deeper texture than the surface layer. While their minds are processing rapidly, time itself, seems to have slowed down. They become conscious of the space between each tick of the clock.

I don't believe psychoactive drugs cause personality changes in the manner of addictive drugs. The personality becomes enhanced, accentuated. The god inside becomes the god outside. The spiritual becomes the supra spiritual. In the case of an aggressive personality, the aggression takes on a more fundamental form. The Aztec society, i think, could be used as an example of this. Another example was the ergot fungus in rye which caused Germany to decimate their population during the middle ages. The Huns, already an extremely aggressive people, steeped in superstition, decided witchcraft had driven them to madness and began slaughtering each other.

I believe that the clairvoyance often attributed to psychoactive drug use is there because of an already existing condition. The psychoactivity does not produce anything that isn't already there, locked somewhere in the recesses of the mind. I believe that the potential for clairvoyance, telepathy, even hands-on healing arts are in everyone, but that it is generally a very underdeveloped region (depending on demographics) because of a Western persuasion to view these abilities as superstition, schizophrenic or as a possibility, but not a very likely one. Whatever might be presented as proof is shrugged off as coincidence or mass hysteria.

I believe this closed attitude has hampered people's ability to use this region of their minds, which becomes more attuned with exercise. I also believe it has hindered their ability to use psychoactive drugs beneficially. The first step of growing awareness is to accept our psychic selves and examine the messages these selves give us.