The History of Western Consciousness is a Huge Acid Trip

[pancreas_guy]

Well, not literally...but I just read an article from some professor at the Integral Institute in California, Richard Tarnas, that pointed out how the Western world-view and intellectual history from Ancient Greek times to contemporary times closely mirrors that of an LSD trip (which in turn mirrors that of the human process of birth) that has yet

Comments

[pancreas_guy]

You should come to New York.

[chris___scott]

or Atlanta.

[quietthomas]

All reads as very vague, idealized (overly abstracted?) and soft. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I can't understand what a substantial chunk of this post is on about.

Did depression exist in the 16th century? How did Grof see people's (presumably of both sexes) uteruses and birth canals contracting? Why is it assumed people on LSD are experiencing something "deeper" - and aren't just stoned? Didn't Jung just take the idea of the forms and put a new spin on it/them? Is Kant really well known for point 3)? Aren't ages labeled once they're over and easier to simplify? Doesn't all this smack of intellectual wank that could mean a different thing with each reading?

-just a passer by who believes in straight talk and concretes.

[pancreas_guy]

I should've clarified and said that Tarnas uses these figures as archetypes of major "paradigm shifts" in the way Western society understands itself in relation to the universe

[pancreas_guy]

Depression has existed since humankind first started, naturally...although of course it wasn't labeled as "clinical depression" but as "melancholia" or "spleen" for the majority of the Middle Ages/Renaissance/Enlightenment

[agriking]

An interesting read indeed. So according to theory, LSD or other mind altering drugs will return the human mind to a state before birth when the spirit was still connected with the divine? I shall be reading more on this subject. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[pancreas_guy]

It wasn't just this guy's experience, but a series of several dozens of experiences which were conducted in the 1960s by the psychoanalyst Stanislav Grof under very high levels of LSD. I'm skeptical as to whether the people actually believed they were reliving their birth, although I'm sure a large amount did, but the things they reported experiencing in the end such as oneness with the universe Grof in his psychoanalytic mindset interpreted as the reliving of one's birth. Tarnas abstracts this process as one that Western society has been undergoing since the dawn of time and is still trying to resolve and, with the rise of feminism and environmentalism, he believes that we are about to experience the feeling of "birth" that all of these LSD users experienced.

The Nullification of ego-centrism, the Tao of Less

[bugsydialectics]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tao_of_less