Metachamanism: Entheogens from the Prism
Open Learning
Live
Nov 16, 2024
150
EUR
Online
6 Hours
Focus:
Psychedelics
Description
Psychedelics have been in vogue in the West since at least the 1960s. Initially, however, their use was not truly liberating. The hippies were looking for transient transcendent experiences that could not be integrated into the ordinary experience of individuals. Others sought to learn how to use them in the so-called "shamanism" of various regions of the Americas, but there they start from the axiom according to which the reality accessed in the "shamanic" sessions is the true reality, while the reality ordinary is an illusory reality. Therefore, you run the risk of putting yourself in the hands of beings whose whims can be unpredictable.
A third approach is currently being developed that claims to use psychedelics as an aid in psychotherapy. This approach has proven to give very good results on a relative level, but it is not focused on achieving transcendence, and thereby freeing oneself from all determining influences: both ordinary and shamanic reality.
The approach that I call “metachamanic” can be illustrated by the Tibetan practice of chö (gcod): the practitioner induces in his experience visions of the beings that inhabit the other world to offer them his own body as food and thus trigger an experience of absolute terror. Then, at the height of this experience, a way of looking at the mind is applied that allows, if the practitioner has the proper capacity and receives the blessings of our true nature, the visions dissolve instantly, making it evident that neither reality " shamanic" nor the ordinary are objective or absolute. Each time they dissolve, the practitioner is temporarily freed from conditioning by both realities —the “shamanic” and the ordinary— and, in the long run, the constant repetition of this dissolution neutralizes the propensity to take any of these realities as absolutely true and substantial. This last practice will not be applied in this course, but its principles will be elucidated, which is intended to free us from conditioning by any of the realities that can manifest in human experience
A third approach is currently being developed that claims to use psychedelics as an aid in psychotherapy. This approach has proven to give very good results on a relative level, but it is not focused on achieving transcendence, and thereby freeing oneself from all determining influences: both ordinary and shamanic reality.
The approach that I call “metachamanic” can be illustrated by the Tibetan practice of chö (gcod): the practitioner induces in his experience visions of the beings that inhabit the other world to offer them his own body as food and thus trigger an experience of absolute terror. Then, at the height of this experience, a way of looking at the mind is applied that allows, if the practitioner has the proper capacity and receives the blessings of our true nature, the visions dissolve instantly, making it evident that neither reality " shamanic" nor the ordinary are objective or absolute. Each time they dissolve, the practitioner is temporarily freed from conditioning by both realities —the “shamanic” and the ordinary— and, in the long run, the constant repetition of this dissolution neutralizes the propensity to take any of these realities as absolutely true and substantial. This last practice will not be applied in this course, but its principles will be elucidated, which is intended to free us from conditioning by any of the realities that can manifest in human experience
