The Mushroom Goddess and the Truth about Hallucinations: by Michael Kinder
It is funny how one Psilocybin mushroom trip can teach you more about Zen, more about the Tao, more about Eastern Wisdom than countless hours of thumbing through Hindu scriptures, the Baghavad Gita, Buddhist texts, etc. This weekend I went to the redwood forest and imbibed the flesh of the sacred Goddess with my friends; and as I basked in the Bio-Phillia of the forest and embraced my symbiosis with the mushrooms, friends, and wilderness, watching Shiva dance and mother nature constantly changing in front of my eyes, I felt the Divine Mother emanating through the cave of my heart—incidentally, the message you communicate with other beings come from the vibrations that emanate from your heart. As she reverberated through the core of my soul with her presence she opened up the valve of my brain and de-clogged my ego filter, clearing my mind from the mental spam. Her lovely presence was so rich that I began to weep; yet, I was neither happy nor sad. To clear up any misunderstanding, I would like to say that I am not necessarily advocating that one ought to take psychedelics such as mushrooms, but I do believe there is an inherent wisdom to be gained from them, a gnosis if you will, that is very beneficial, and that is what I would like to explain.
Originally, natural plant based psychedelics were referred to by the ancients as catalysts for cultivating God like vision, helping you to remove your ideological lenses and wake up from your cultural day dream so that you may see from her perspective. This is how we got the word Entheogen: En—inside, or within; Theo—which means God (like Theology); and Gen—to generate. Thus the word entheogen means to generate God within. To be perfectly honest, I am not actually sure as to whether the term hallucinogen came before or after the term entheogen, but in any case, hallucinogen means to generate a lie within. I definitely feel that the former term is far closer to the truth than the latter. For in reality I have been lied to by alcohol, cocaine, and speed many of times, but the mushroom Goddess has never lied to me ever—not once! However, I also do not think that she generated God within my either, well at least I do not think that is a correct way of thinking about it. Rather, the mushroom Goddess experience is an unveiling and removal of the blindfold that (hides) masks our true nature; it is like a splash of water on the face; like a baby who gets their ass spanked after conception; like the sudden whack of a stick from a Zen master when you ask the ridiculous question ‘who is God?’—it says HELLO!!
The truth, quite frankly (if ever there were such a thing), is that you are God. The mushrooms do not generate God within you, rather they are a reminder that God is within you—the only real hallucination is that you won’t admit you’re God, or that you forget it.
Thus, the real hallucinations stem from and include: television, philosophy, religion, your name, career, your ego, politics and politicians, language, and the fear and anxiety that stem from taking life too seriously, and the illusion and myopic misunderstanding that you have a binary existence and live in a world of polarities; moreover, that which distracts you from your natural essence, anything that distracts you from the present, from the eternal Now, from the fact that you are pure consciousness and divine bliss, always have been and always will be. When we fail to love ourselves unconditionally we are hallucinating, when we fail to love others unconditionally, whom by the way are in reality also ourselves—then we are hallucinating. Anyone how tries to tell you that Jesus, Krishna, Shiva, Buddha, Yahweh, or whatever metaphysical trope you would like to use is something outside of yourself, something ‘otherly’, and not something that is in reality your inner most nature is a liar and a thief—and are hallucinating themselves.
To know that one is God is the real meaning of enlightenment; and the becoming of Buddha-hood or BodhiSattva (an awakened one); to reach Satori (understanding), and Nirvana. For a person in this state knows the truth that when they walk into a room they are the fire burning in the fireplace, they are the other minds who are around them. They are the ocean and the sand when they go to the beach, they are the trees and insects in the forest, and when they gaze off at the stars from the shores of the cosmic ocean, they know as the saying goes in Hinduism, ‘Tat Tvam Asi” Thou art that!
Babies, Children, and people who are truly Holy know this, and this is why they have that uncanny glint in their eyes, for their eyes are Gods’ mirrors. (Holy people are not necessarily good, but whole; they are people who have reconciled their differences between good and bad) They are angelic because they take themselves lightly, but we all have this potential and ability to fly as well—it’s harboring within.
Unfortunately, I fear, the spiritual eyes that we once had as a kid can become materialized as we become adults, and for most of us, we live in a constant state of hallucination. This is why Jesus says, unless you turn and become children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Yet, far too often we mistake the finger for the moon, the finger being the philosophy or religious doctrine, and the moon being reality. As Allen Watts says, many of us suck the finger of religion for comfort, never seeing what it actually points to. This is why language is also a hallucination. For God trying to divine herself is like a tongue trying to define itself, it only results in tongue twisters such as poetry, the Tao Te Ching, and other scriptures. When you try to define the Tao or (Way) you presuppose that there is a difference between you and the Tao; this is as hopeless as a tooth that tries to bite itself or an arrow that tries to shoot itself. To quote Allen Watts some more, “A symphony is not explained by a mathematical analysis of its notes, the mystery of a woman’s beauty is not revealed by a postmortem dissection; and no one ever understood the wonder of a bird on the wings by stuffing it and putting it in a glass. To understand these things you must move with them as they are alive. [You must listen to the cosmic symphony, musical, and dance with Shiva along the way] The same is true of the universe: no amount of intellectual analysis will explain it, for philosophy and science can only reveal its mechanism, never its meaning or, as the Chinese say, its Tao.”
Hence, mushrooms are not a hallucinogen, but the exact opposite—they are a tool and a catalyst to help remove you from your daily world of hallucinations. However, there are other means of waking up from your hallucinations besides taking psychedelics, namely, meditation. Silence truly is golden, and there is and inherent value and benefit that we receive when we take moments to be quiet; to focus our attention; and to listen. Because, it is when we a take a break from our incessant drivel, a break from the verbal diarrhea of the media, when we stop talking to ourselves, and the tongue stops trying to define itself—then and only then does the dog of reality quits chasing its own tail in vain. To settle one’s mind into silence is the fundamental core of Yoga, or yoking oneself with the Tao, God, your true nature, whatever the hell you want to call it. This is why Jesus says my Yoke is easy—for he is basically saying that his yoga is easy. It’s so damn easy that for many people it’s hard—it’s so ‘right in front of you’ that if it was a snake it would bite you. Incidentally, this is also why meditation is the hub of many Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, etc.
The mushroom goddess also told me one more thing before I left the forest which was this. MEDITATE!!, MEDITATE!! Take psychedelics, or do both at the same time, but don’t forget your true essence, and don’t forget to spread my love. 2012 will not be the death of the world; instead it will be the beginning of the death of our old ideologies and a shift into a new paradigm, which will in turn be a birth of a new global consciousness, a self realization of the overarching Meta-Consciousness, of the pure consciousness that is our true nature as it begins to pupate from our primate material hallucination—our inevitable moth to flame metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly so to speak.
