There is a door within the self. When this door is opened, a unity is revealed that
encompasses all beings and transcends all boundaries. Mystics in every religious
system in every culture and in every age have reported this to be the highest
truth. Those who have had such an experience agree that the state is elusive and
usually recalled only in fragments. However, those who have achieved even a
moment of this visionary understanding consider it of incalculable value.
Cultures have developed dozens of ways to apprehend this unitive state. Paths
include physical austerities, cycles of prayer, meditation, devotions, breathing
rituals, and physical postures. A significant number have used plants in
combination with other practices. For some, the use of a psychedelic makes the
experience suspect. But there are those of us who believe that however one
ascends the mountain, the view from the summit is the same. What one gains
from that vista and from the climb will depend, as it always has, on how one
incorporates such moments into one’s life.
$3.99
If shamanistic reports—similar over continents, cultures, and eons—are to be
seriously considered, it appears that certain plants have the capacity to induce
specific states of awareness in humans to transmit information deemed necessary
to retain and restore the natural harmony of the biological kingdoms. The
ethnobotanist and entheogenic researcher Terence McKenna
and others
speculate that to some degree civilization evolved or was developed by those
who ingested these substances.
Today, the harmony that once existed is in tatters. The disruption between our
species and the rest of nature has never been wider, its effects never more
pronounced. “By having disconnected ourselves emotionally from the Earth and
plants we have lost our understanding of those links and mutual relationships,”
writes Stephen Harold Buhner.
