Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Red Road
(3)
I borrowed the concept of 'Personal Power' from Carlos Casteneda, of course, and expanded it a bit... I loved his first three books, but it seemed to me that the subsequent books descended into obvious fictionalism. I was in a position to evaluate 'Carlos'' Mescaline trips' (having done LSD)and could find no clear contraindications, but the subsequent books turned me off with their obviously contrived confabulations. Carlos became an obvious phoney who had parlayed his knowlege of Eastern Mysticism into a new and phoney Southwestern Mexican version of Zen! It is certainly true that the Southwestern Mexican Tribes formed a religion around Peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus. Indeed, 'religion itself' has been the prime benefactor of the ingestion of psychotropic substances throughout history, and probably owes its very existence to the many chemicals which human beings have ingested over the ages. Indeed, my personal LSD experiences shook my Atheism to the point that I eventually embraced the 'Wonderously Agnostical Point of View' to which I now subscribe.
I borrowed the concept of 'Personal Power' from Carlos Casteneda, of course, and expanded it a bit... I loved his first three books, but it seemed to me that the subsequent books descended into obvious fictionalism. I was in a position to evaluate 'Carlos'' Mescaline trips' (having done LSD)and could find no clear contraindications, but the subsequent books turned me off with their obviously contrived confabulations. Carlos became an obvious phoney who had parlayed his knowlege of Eastern Mysticism into a new and phoney Southwestern Mexican version of Zen! It is certainly true that the Southwestern Mexican Tribes formed a religion around Peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus. Indeed, 'religion itself' has been the prime benefactor of the ingestion of psychotropic substances throughout history, and probably owes its very existence to the many chemicals which human beings have ingested over the ages. Indeed, my personal LSD experiences shook my Atheism to the point that I eventually embraced the 'Wonderously Agnostical Point of View' to which I now subscribe.
