Ritualistic or Reverent Use of Psychedelics in Indigenous Societies: Cognition Effects - Thesis Example

Ritualistic/Reverent Use of Psychedelics in Indigenous Societies: Cognition Effects Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Discussion III. Integration Works Cited I. Introduction This paper explores the cognition aspects (world perception, comprehension and learning) of the ritualistic or reverent use of psychedelics among indigenous societies, as reflected in the works of a group of thinkers that includes Terence McKenna, Carlos Castaneda, Jim DeKorne, John Perkins, Angeles Arrien, and Sandra Ingerman. This paper takes an objective and neutral position that respects the personal, subjective experiences, thoughts, and experiential interpretations of the indigenous societies and thinkers in the chosen works, and attempts to arrive at equally objective integration of all those into a cohesive picture of the cognitive effects of such reverent use of psychedelics. The treatment in other words is akin to the way the work of Sandra Ingerman on soul retrieval is treated, and that is with a measure of respect and seriousness as befits a work by a woman who has the clinical and scientific credentials of a counseling psychologist and therapist (Ingerman). On the other hand, the treatment is also akin to the way Carlos Castaneda himself treated the more fringe and mind-blowing experiences he had being with the mystic and Yaqui shaman Don Juan, with an eye to being as exact and as respectful of those experiences, treating them with the kind of regard that serious anthropologists do any fantastic artifact, knowing that in each of those experiences lie minefields of insights into the nature of psychedelics’ impact on human cognition as well as insights into the deep aspects of the culture and people that Don Juan represented. The treatment is also akin to taking the accounts of McKenna for instance with the kind of respect that one gives a person who deserves the benefit of the doubt, and who at the very least deserves to be heard for what he has to say about an experience that is deeply personal and in many ways inaccessible to more ordinary minds living in more ordinary states of consciousness. The rest of the paper pursues this aim and applies the same kind of respect, impartiality, and presence to the works and thoughts of the other writers and their books (Castaneda; McKenna). II. Discussion DeKorne discusses the nature of shamanism and goes right into the nature of shamanic work as essentially work that alters cognitive processes as the byproduct of altered states of consciousness that shamans are well-versed in, and from which perspective they are able to peer into the ultimate reality of things. In DeKorne we have a proponent of the use of psychedelics as a means to resolve modern psychological and physical conditions, and traces those to more ancient shamanic practices that were also avenues to connection with more primal and more direct sources of knowledge and wisdom about who we are. In other words, touching off the discussion on the cognitive effects of ritualistic uses of psychedelics on indigenous societies, we have shamans and shamanism as heads of rituals and as the primary users of those psychedelics making use of such substances to cure themselves and members of their groups, via that direct channel into a deeper reality that DeKorne discusses. Distilling the wisdom of the shamans therefore means using the psychedelics that the ritualistic heads used in order to rediscover the paths that they took and in the process also gain access to their direct channel to wisdom, healing, and a truer vision of things. In DeKorne therefore the cognitive effects of psychedelic use relate to greater knowing, to gaining access to a higher wisdom and the understanding of the use of that knowledge to heal oneself and others on several levels, from the physiological to the psychological. Put another way, the present condition of humankind according to DeKorne is one where people are deprived access to a needed avenue for self-transcendence, that psychedelics were able to provide shamans and the indigenous tribes that they led. As a result, modern -day people resort to chemical means to induce the same, and fail, leading to psychological and physical malaise. The cognitive impact of psychedelics then is to open up that lost channel of transcendence in a direct, personal and powerful way (DeKorne 7-13). In Ingerman’s work on the other hand the shamanic function is one of soul retrieval,and while the book itself is about the soul retrieval process the direct and irreplaceable role of the shaman naturally implies the ritualistic use of psychedelics as a routinary aspect of undertaking soul retrieval and other such related work that heals a person’s soul via stories, words, and gestures that restore a person’s soul back to wholeness, in other words. The role of psychedelics here, as implied in the essential work of the shaman, again is to aid the shaman in accessing direct channels of healing to benefit the impaired person, in this case by going back to parts of a person’s history to retrieve aspects of soul that were lost due to major psychological and emotional traumas. In the words of Ingerman, the shamanic work here remains relevant because even in the modern contexts, there is space for such vital work that cannot be done without recourse to the old shamanic practices tied to soul retrieval. The shaman’s soul retrieval work remains relevant, and the job of the current soul retrieval practitioner is to channel the shaman’s role and to internalize the wisdom of the shaman for such work. While it is true that psychedelics are not explicitly mentioned in the book, it is nevertheless clear that the soul retrieval work is shamanic work and thus this paves the way for an implicit role for psychedelics as aiding the cognition work of the shaman and individual members of tribes who have lost aspects of their soul (Ingerman 1-12). In Don Juan on the other hand the focus is on the import or the significance of altered states of consciousness of those who entered into those altered states with the help of psychedelics. Those psychedelics included mushrooms, datura and peyote. The emphasis is not on the psychedelics themselves, but on the altered consciousness states, the morphing of cognitive processes from hallucinations that were in turn the gateway to a deeper understanding of the nature of reality, under the guidance of Don Juan. Don Juan was the navigator of the tribe in this way, as the head of the ritual of which psychedelics were the mode of entry. Being a master of the altered consciosuness states thattthe psychedelics induced, Don Juan was thenin a position to guide others in his community through the process. It is important to note that the author himself was a kind of disciple of truth in the fashion of someone who wanted to figure out Don Juan’s brand of wisdom and vision of the truth. That vision of the truth is the sorcerer’s vision as Don Juan was, a sorcerer of the tribe of the Yaquis. The ritualistic use of psychedelics then for Don Juan and for the Yaqui people had the cognitive impact of introducing younger people into an important “ground” on which the tribe could as mature people live, in communion with a fantastic ground of being that is at once the inheritance of all Yaquis at the end of rites of passage for instance, and something that an outsider like Castaneda also could access with lots of faith in the power of the pschedelics and of the shaman and the power of Don Juan to chart a course for the initiate. That reality that the psychedelics opened up had a logic, Don Juan was adamant to point out, and he was able to prove that to the initiate like Castaneda who was willing to undergo the process and to be led by the master (Castaneda vii-viii). The notes by Castaneda show that Don Juan and the psychedelic terrain that he mapped for everyone not only made sense, but that it included a belief system and a system of direct seeing that Castaneda was able to piece together. This latter is also the heritage of the entire Yaqui people (Castaneda 1-10). Those were then discussed in detail in the section on Don Juan’s teachings about the nature of consciousness and the lessons to be had from the psychedelic cognitive processes that emerge from such ritualistic use of substances like peyote (Castaneda 13-130). Perkins meanwhile talks about the way the reality that we experience is in fact the manifestation of our individual and collective dreams, so that as Numi the shaman is quick to point out, the forces that have led to the creation of environmental destruction from oil mining and burning are in fact born out by the creative forces that have emanated from the dreams of some people, and forced unto the rest of humanity. The goal is not enlightenment and a better future for all but the satisfaction of the greed of corporations and their shareholders. The result is this massive damage to the environment. Numi, as a shaman of course, is again able to see into the hidden meaning of things, and in this process he is aided in some part for some of his explorations by psychedelics. The idea is that to change the world we have to change the stuff, nature, and intent of our dreams, from an individual level all the way to the level of the communities. There are alternative ways of living in the world, and of crafting the world that we inhabit, and the shaman shows the way. In Castaneda as in Perkins, the idea is that there is this vision of an alternate reality that is as solid and as real as the one that now exists, shaped by the large corporations and transnationals. The creative task left to the tribes and the shamans here is to reclaim the dreaming process so to speak (Perkins; Perkins (b)). Finally in the works of McKenna we see the use of psychedelics as expanding one’s horizon that is severely curtailed and regulated by conventional society and its police, the government authorities. McKenna can be likened to a shaman whose tribe is that segment of the American population that is on the verge it seems of opening up to something bigger than what was given them. McKenna can be then said to introduce psychedelics as something that will break the barriers to new cognitive worlds. The point in McKenna too is not in the psychedelic drugs themselves, but in the way their use is able to subvert conventional processes that keep people shackled into a commonplace version of reality. In place of Don Juan initiating others into the process, McKenna is a kind of explorer of consciousness who in his key works mapped the cognitive terrain for others to read and to gain familiarity with. Starting with psilocybin mushrooms and its impacts on cognition, McKenna goes on to explore the psychedelic world in general. As a prophet the strength of his message lies in his passion for psychedelics as a way to expand one’s conscious horizon and his walking the talk so to speak in using them extensively to compose a book on those experiences (McKenna 10-21; McKenna (b)). What is clear from the above discussion, by way of integration, is that there are profound cognitive processes that are triggered by the ritualistic use of psychedelics through the ages and across different indigenous peoples. Shamans, as the heads of the rituals, do the tribes the service of going ahead so to speak and mapping the terrain of those altered worlds and universes, so that they may be able to help other navigate their way through them and to gain important life-altering perspectives of themselves and their places in the universe (McKenna; Perkins; DeKorne). 1 Works Cited Castaneda, Carlos. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. California: University of California Press, 1972. Print. DeKorne, Jim. Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants. WA: Loompanics Unlimited, 1994. Ingerman, Sandra. Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Print. McKenna, Terence. True Hallucinations. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Print. McKenna, Terence (b). Salvia Divinorum. YouTube. 2008. Web. 22 March 2015. Perkins, John. The World As You Dream It: Teachings from the Amazon and the Andes. Inner Traditions/Bear, 1994. Perkins, John (b). “The World As You Dream It”. The Huffington Post. 2010. Web. 22 March 2015. Read More