Cannabis, revelations and Crowley: what's really behind a samadhi
Cannabis, Egyptian gods and Crowley: the story of a samadhi at 16, and the cognitive bias that explains it.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Joints, samadhi and Egyptian gods: the alucinación that ended up with Crowley
Seeing an Egyptian god between puffs is not a revelation: it's the brain doing its job. The account of a man who, as a child, picked up his father's cigarette butts from the ashtray to smoke them, and who at 16, after eight months of heavy use, says he entered samadhi and conversed with Thoth, Ra, Hadit, Nuit and one Aiwass, has all the hallmarks of a classic. And not exactly of the sacred genre.
From his father's butts to the garden of the gods
The story has the exact texture of a self-initiation manual: a childhood spent on other people's roaches, an adolescence with infinite free time, and the appearance of an ibis-headed bird who introduces him to the serpent of emotion and the goddess of time. Until he discovers that Aleister Crowley had already written it all. The coincidence surprises no one familiar with meaning-making processes: a brain saturated with THC is a machine for finding patterns where there is only smoke.
Crowley's echo and the truism of happiness
Crowley's mythology, with Aiwass, Nuit and Hadit, is an early twentieth-century esoteric potpourri. For a personal experience to fit it is the very definition of confirmation bias. "Clouds look like whatever you want to see," sums up the skeptical side. And yet, there is a nuance: subjective does not miccionan false. The fact that the antiestéticar of death is chemical does not make it less real. Whoever has seen Thoth in the smoke may have learned something useful; the problem is mistaking that usefulness for gnostic proof. The protagonist's final conclusion, that money doesn't bring happiness because it only feeds a false motivation, is a truism that is hard to argue with from any doctrine, cannabic or not.
For now, 99% of those who see something in the smoke stay in the garden and don't found a religion. It's a safe bet this one won't either. But it wouldn't be the first time a joint turned out to be the prologue to a theological treatise.
Seeing an Egyptian god between puffs is not a revelation: it's the brain doing its job. The account of a man who, as a child, picked up his father's cigarette butts from the ashtray to smoke them, and who at 16, after eight months of heavy use, says he entered samadhi and conversed with Thoth, Ra, Hadit, Nuit and one Aiwass, has all the hallmarks of a classic. And not exactly of the sacred genre.
From his father's butts to the garden of the gods
The story has the exact texture of a self-initiation manual: a childhood spent on other people's roaches, an adolescence with infinite free time, and the appearance of an ibis-headed bird who introduces him to the serpent of emotion and the goddess of time. Until he discovers that Aleister Crowley had already written it all. The coincidence surprises no one familiar with meaning-making processes: a brain saturated with THC is a machine for finding patterns where there is only smoke.
Crowley's echo and the truism of happiness
Crowley's mythology, with Aiwass, Nuit and Hadit, is an early twentieth-century esoteric potpourri. For a personal experience to fit it is the very definition of confirmation bias. "Clouds look like whatever you want to see," sums up the skeptical side. And yet, there is a nuance: subjective does not miccionan false. The fact that the antiestéticar of death is chemical does not make it less real. Whoever has seen Thoth in the smoke may have learned something useful; the problem is mistaking that usefulness for gnostic proof. The protagonist's final conclusion, that money doesn't bring happiness because it only feeds a false motivation, is a truism that is hard to argue with from any doctrine, cannabic or not.
For now, 99% of those who see something in the smoke stay in the garden and don't found a religion. It's a safe bet this one won't either. But it wouldn't be the first time a joint turned out to be the prologue to a theological treatise.
Also available in: Deutsch
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (13 replies).
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