The Entheogen Journey

“The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious–fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance.”

• Thomas Huxley, The interpreters of Genesis and the interpreters of Nature (1885)

When I was quite young, I witnessed what drug abuse can do to one, so there was no need for anyone to tell me to stay away from drugs. I loved to party, but when it came to experimenting with recreational drugs, I let the others do their thing. As I grew older and my interest in spiritual plane started to emerge and crystallize, I kept meeting people who claimed great leaps in personal and spiritual growth from having had entheogenic experiences.

They were talking about the ancient practices of using native plants to induce altered states of consciousness for the purpose of spiritual growth and enlightenment.

And this I wanted to experience.

I put a great effort into learning about these ‘plant teachers’. The more I learned about them, the easier it became to acquire them.

Over the past years I’ve had several such experiences which have transformed me immensely. My life now is healthier and I am more balanced due to the wisdom I received from the plant teachers. They work by increasing one’s awareness and letting in profound insights. Usually those are the insights that are too simple to consider otherwise.

I would like to emphasize two things. First, these experiences are not pleasurable at all. In most cases, you are likely to feel nauseous and may vomit. Sometimes you’ll have diarrhoea. This is a part of the cleansing process, at the beginning of the trip, just before you face ‘the Teacher’. Which brings me to the second point. The plant teachers’ power lies in the fact that they completely open you up to the infinity of the spirit, increasing your awareness to unimaginable hights, and making it possible for you to learn by erasing all traces of ego consciousness.

The impact of such experiences on one’s mind is impossible to put into writing. Sometimes an hour of profound revelation gets cut down to one sentence. Entheogens teach through first-hand experience and their teaching cannot be put into words. Pathetic attempts to do so have been undertaken by loony enthusiasts like me, but so far, they have all been classified as science fiction… The Matrix, for instance…