The Myth of Mental Illness and The War on Entheogens

The myth of mental illness is propaganda, and is the myth that what are being called by this culture, 'mental illnesses', or 'conditions', or 'disorders', are actually biological diseases of the brain. There, however, do not exist any medical scientific tests to support this supposed 'medical science', so they try and use observation of behaviour, rhetoric, and coercion, to beguile the visionaries, sensitive people, the gullible, and the vulnerable.

By 'myth' of mental illness, I am not meaning that people do not feel many various forms of psychological, and/or psychosomatic distresses, and sense of feeling 'not normal', and so on, but rather the myth is the demand to believe - scientifically - that 'mental illness/disorder', as they call it, is biologically caused by 'chemical imbalance', genes, brain abnormalities. But as there exist no definite medical tests to prove what they state, and diagnose, then all we have is subjective opinion from 'experts' who checklist behavioural 'symptoms' as being 'mental illnesses' needing medical 'treatment'.

Drug companies have now created microchipped medication, or 'smart pills', which they are pushing. The danger for people already pressurized to take psychiatric medication will be immense with 'Big Brother' inside their bodies making sure they don't miss one of 'his' tablets!

“Bio-psychiatry theorizes that emotional distress is a result of a defect in the brain. Yet, it does not understand the brain and its methods are to suppress the functioning of the brain. We must differentiate between the brain and the mind. Of the mind, it knows nothing and offers nothing.” – Dr Dan L. Edmunds

We are being seen as machines, and our brains are meant to be functioning according to mechanistic principles that suit the established norms of this consumerist culture. This is based on a mechanistic philosophy and psychology, and I would like to point out the influential 'thinkers' who have been chosen by the rich to implement this paradigm to suit their purposes - as usual as more profit for them.

The 'Thinkers'

One of these underlying myths supporting the myth of mental illness is that we are mechanical, and exist in a mechanical environment, with other mechanical species, in a mechanical world, and that the only meaning to life is financial success, productivity and conveyor-belt consumerism.

In the timeline of 'thinkers', and their ideas that still fuel the myth of this mechanistic paradigm, we can begin with Rene Descartes, who presumed that our true human essence is as 'thinkers', and because animals couldn't 'think', according to him, they were thought of as machines, and when he thought this thought he, and his fellow-thinkers, influenced by his ideas, acted on this thinking to torture and murder animals, and pay no heed to their cries of pain and suffering, because, it was thought, they were only the 'squeaks of an engine'!

"We should have no doubt at all,” Descartes wrote, “that the irrational animals are automata." [source: Letter to Marin Mersenne, 13 July 1640, cited by Margulis, L., and Sagan, D. (1995/2000). What Is Life?, Berkeley: University of California Press, 37-8.]

Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly. A crying dog, Descartes maintained, is no different from a whining gear that needs oil.

Later in 19th century Germany, at Leipzig University, another philosopher, and professor of psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, who was influenced by the philosophical writings of Descartes, claimed that humans were like animals, and thus 'machines'. Whereas before, psyche~ology was supposedly the study of the psyche or soul, with Wundt's emphasis on his 'experimental psychology' which he rigorously wanted to be a science, the understanding of, and attending to, soul or mind was 'not needed'. Science, and Wundt, were only concerned with what could be measured, and seeing that the soul and mind cannot be measured 'they' ceased to exist for Professor Wundt, and for those influenced by his, and Descartes' mechanistic theories, such as were the Behaviourist Psychologists, Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and so forth.

Like any propaganda, the rich managers, with help from the many needy helpers on their payroll, look for ways to inculcate the disinformation they choose to impose for their own purposes, and an enforced 'education' system was the perfect device for this enterprise where the empty child, seen as a machine, and taught to feel like a machine, could be moulded according to the State Machine's specifications. Yes! You were right - those of you who hated school, something was most definitely not right, though as a child it is not easy to put our finger on it when the whole school experience is made to seem the necessary part of the given reality around you!

The great energy that drives modern schooling owes much to a current of influence arising out of the psychology laboratory of Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in Saxony. With a stream of international assistants, Wundt set out to examine how the human machine was best adjusted. By 1880, he laid the basis for Pavlov's work and the work of Watson in America, for the medical procedure of lobotomy, for electroshock therapy, and for the scientific view that school was a ground for social training, "socialization" in John Dewey's terminology.

In the 'world' this mechanization is all happening in, and where all these pills are being pushed by the State so as to suppress any feelings of dis~ease, dissent, and visionary experience, however knowingly or unconsciously, there also exists a so-called war on drugs! It is clear that what is going on is a war rather on the body, nature, and the soul and mind. It is worthwhile then for us to examine the underlying religious roots from which mechanistic philosophy and science will emerge.

Kicked Out of Paradise

The religious roots of the mechanistic paradigm are very important to explore and understand because this is where the fledgling science generation got their idea of the ‘spiritual’ as being disconnected from earth, and bodies, energy, and nature, and even this dissociative idea of the spiritual they were eventually to leave out of their equations!

The western myth, from which understanding of God and the spiritual derives from, begins in the biblical tale of the Garden of Eden. The key to understanding the patriarchal biblical creation myth in the Garden of Eden is that the taboo is about not even knowing about entheogens, as well as their inspirational awareness, and the Goddess earth~based sense of spirituality which is interrelated with the body and nature, all species, and community.

The Garden of Eden list of characters: in brackets the propaganda.

God: (the transcendent creator of the universe, world, and all creatures including us. All-good, omnipresent, and the Bible is his Word)

‘Brutal War ‘God’; invention of patriarchal desert nomad warriors who composed the myth from ancient pre-existing myths, and using propagandist techniques to try and undermine earth-based indigenous paganistic imagery, symbolism, and sacred ritual.

Garden: (Paradise’ which is dualistically separate from natural 'Fallen' world , and only those who obey God’s Word are allowed into paradise)

Paradise is understanding nature as sacred, and can be experienced by anyone who eats the entheogenic fruit which is enlightenment, and/or is naturally inclined to realize this.

Tree: (disobeying God, and eating the fruit of knowing good and evil bars you from immortality)

The entheogen can open eyes to seeing directly what is good and what is bad. George Orwell said how the propagandists want us to believe freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength, and they can only do this when they manipulate us with propaganda. As it was then so it is now. To know nature is sacred and we are nature is good. To divide us from this knowledge and feeling and ecstasy so as to enslave and expolit us is bad.

Serpent: (The serpent is evil because s/he tells Eve to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil)

The serpent has always been associated with the Goddess, and guards the Tree of Enlightenment. Serpents also were associated with magic mushrooms, and are often seen in entheogenic experiences, especially with the entheogenic brew, Ayahuasca. The serpent represents the sacred eternal cyclic nature because of its shedding old skin, and having new skin underneath.

Adam & Eve: (Mortal woman created from Adam’s rib as a partner for him. Woman comes from man, man from creator)

Eve, is really the Goddess of the original Garden but is 'demoted' by the patriarchal writers of this tale to ‘mortal’ status, and made to come from the male, which goes against the natural order of life for it is women who birth. Eve is also blamed by for the 'Fall of Man'.

(Adam, our first male ancestor created by God in his image who is given dominion over all nature, and species, so sayeth the Word of God)

Adam is also demoted in this myth from being the ever living, ever dying ever regenerating Son/Lover of the Goddess, and who also is associated with the phallic-looking entheogenic mushroom, the inspirer of enlightenment.

The War on Some Drugs

On June 17th 1971 President Nixon declared a "war on drugs". Of course this 'war' is deadly ironic, because American culture, particularly, is steeped in drugs - both allopathic and psychiatric - which the drug companies spend millions and millions to promote, and alcohol, and tobacco of course, but these drugs have 'God on their side', or the 'Machine' on their side, apparently, whilst drugs that are natural like marijuana, opium, and the entheogenic mushrooms, plants, and cacti are 'controlled'. This 'war' continues through the superficial changes of U.S. administrations and is imposed on the whole 'world'.

I am focusing on the war on entheogens, because of all the drugs, these are deeply connected with our very ancient past as a species, and with healing ~ not only to be understood as physical healing, but also spiritual healing, as in regarding our relationship with our inner being, body, and community, and our soulful interrelationship with the natural living world.

Many indigenous peoples do not call entheogenic plants and substances 'drugs' in the western sense, but rather 'plant teachers', and 'sacred medicine', and have sacred names for their native entheogenic vegetations. A Mazatec term for their entheogenic mushroom is Teonanacatl meaning "divine, or wondrous mushroom". In South America there is an entheogen, used anciently by indigenous peoples, named Ayahuasca which is translated into English as, "Spirit vine" or "vine of the souls"

Dan Russell, author of Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda: The Birth of Patriarchy and the Drug War says: "To pretend that whole herbs are "drugs" (a medieval French inquisitorial epithet) is to criminalize the traditional herbal sacramentalism of my ancestors, and yours... In my experience entheogens, or psychedelics, help me see directly into things."

I am going to point out three significant set and settings for psychedelic experience:

* When you take psychedelics and are in nature, and have eyes mostly open and look at and feel the wonders of nature. Look into a river and see the amazingness of water and light on water, and life in water, textures. Look at a tree, animals, birds, the wind (I have actually seen the wind swirling ) Feeling this inside and out.

* A more introspective kind of tripping favoured by the therapeutic community - especially Stan Grof which is based on the psychoanalytical model of 'looking within', and experiencing fears, desires, past memories - and this can involve feeling you are becoming others, and groups, and animals, and nature and even the universe. This form of psychedelic experience is ancient as well of course, and was called 'Incubation', where the experiencer would take the magic vegetation or potion in a cave in total darkness, etc. This set & setting contrasted with the 'Field' mode of experience which would be more ritualistic - dancing , and orgiastic, in a communal and natural set and setting.

* Observing people who aren't tripping, and looking at mass media in a way of seeing through social personas and propaganda. The mechanistic propaganda as supported by their 'priests', the behaviourist psychologists, and bio-psychiatrists, will claim that entheogenic experience is merely a 'chemical ride' or that it 'distorts reality', and has no real meaning, their premise being that they know what real 'reality' is, and they have ways and means to reality-test you to see if you are 'normal' and 'adjusted'. So if anyone claimed to 'see through propaganda' whilst inspired with entheogens or visionary experience when called 'mentally ill' this would place both types of insight as being mental illness.

This is not saying that psychedelic experiencers, and those deemed mentally ill, cannot be deluded. But when you really look at this world, you have to look at the big picture and not just at the 'scapegoats' this 'world' creates so as to divert attention away from its own imposed worldview and deluded doings. Are the appointed and self-appointed 'managers' who entice wars, and commit genocide on people, and cause untold destruction and contamination to all ecosystems not deluded? And yet this behaviour is accepted by many people as a 'normal' part of our reality. The 'real world' as warfare and corporate greed, and immorality. And it will be argued by the proselytizers of the 'mental health movement' that not accepting this 'reality' is irrational, and mental illness! This is why this is the central social controlling myth of our time.

This ugly scenario affects all our lives, and how our families are, and how members of the family will be treated, and how we think of ourselves. From the top to the bottom the mechanistic and brutal paradigm influences our every moment, and that is the idea behind enforced 'education' and other forms of propaganda, that this system 'must' do this so that we will keep ourselves and others in line.

The 'managers' have been very thoughtful about this and realizing they couldn't possibly police all of us all the time, have created the scenario where we police each other, a divide and rule strategy, and we accept this by not being aware what is being done to us through their propaganda, which is why it is vitally important we begin exploring it through every avenue ancient and modern.

I believe a big part of the irrational fear and proscription against entheogenic experience and 'mental illness', on the part of the ones who believe they have the right to dictate to us what reality is supposed to be, is the fear that the modus operandi of the mechanical model of reality which sustains this paradigm, and its oppression against people, animals, and so on, will be threatened and exposed, and resolved if seen through, questioned, and its author~ity challenged.

To understand this connection, between so-called mental illness or madness, and entheogenic insight which can also involve hellish experiences, I feel the necessity is to really grasp the unfathomable brutality of our civilization which is based on war and more wars, and exploitation of animals, the natural world, and people, solely for profits and power. How can the average person fathom this ignore~ance and evil?

It is true that power can very well dehumanize people, and this culture breeds dehumanization throughout, causing human and environmental degradation on every level. And degradation very much includes dis-informing people from childhood they are machines (and this of course includes computers now ~ and claiming reality is a virtual computer simulation ~ called Computationalism ~ "that if physicalism is true then the human mind can be modeled, simulated and explained by a computer." So-called Transhumanists are all into this idea), and believing this propaganda, leading often desperate lives under an oppressive weight, many not even aware of what has been and continues to be done to their bodies, minds, and souls, of themselves and their children.

Psychedelic experiencers, and people who are classed as 'mad' by this culture, can often directly see deep into the insanity of the culture, and 'world' we are constantly being told is 'normal' and 'sane', and the purveyors do not want that perception, insight, and feeling because it does not serve their purposes of exploitation, war, and profits! They therefore create propaganda to protect their prison from being found out, at least by too many people. And this is why they depend that we are not aware of their propaganda, their sorcery, because as soon as we begin becoming aware of it we simultaneously undermine it. Seeing propaganda disempowers it.

True, the brutal structure is all around, the wars, more and more liberties being taken away, paranoia-inducing mass media, enforced 'education', and so on, and this doesn't just disappear by thinking it so. Prison cells are being built to house more and more 'dissenters', new 'disorders' are being thought up by the new 'priests' of the pharmacracy to add to their growing list in their DSM mental 'health' 'Bible', and thus will cometh more drugs, and new ways of invasive abuse, but there is a great re~empowerment coming from realizing that neither you, nor others, nor the animal, nor nature, nor the universe, nor reality, is a machine without inner life and interelated feeling, and this will dissolve the inner prison they have tried to build us into since being small children which suppresses feelings and love.

When enlightened as to what they have been up to, and continue maintaining, via ever more sophisticated techniques of propaganda, we will re~awaken the energy and spirit, which for many of us has been suppressed, to create radical change in our communities which benefit body soul, all other species well being, and nature. The deeper we feel and there is no limit, the deeper we feel…

~Muzuzuzus