...it's really quite simple. Whenever you hear anyone sounding off on internal freedom and conscious-expanding foods and drugs, whether pro or con, check out these questions:
1. Is your expert talking from direct experience, or simply repeating cliches? Theologians and intellectuals often deprecate "experience" in favor of fact and concept. This classic debate is falsely labeled. Most often it becomes a case of "experience" vs. "inexperience".
2. Do his words spring from a spiritual or mundane point of view? Is he motivated by a dedicated quest for answers to basic questions, or is he protecting his own social-psychological position, his own game investment? Is he struggling towards sainthood, or is he maintaining his status as a hard-boiled scientist or hard-boiled cop?
3. How would his argument sound if it was heard in a different culture? (for example, in an African jungle hut, a ghat on the Ganges, or on another planet inhabited by a form of life superior to ours) or in a different time (for example, in Periclean Athens, or in a Tibetan monastery, or in a bull session led by any one of the great religious leaders - founders - messiahs)? Or how would it sound to other species of life on our planet today - to the dolphins, to the consciousness of the redwood tree? In other words, try to break out of your usual tribal game set and listen with the ears of another one of God's creatures.
4. How would the debate sound to you if you were fatally diseased with a week to live, and thus less committed to mundane issues?...
5. Is this point of view one which opens up or closes down? Are you being urged to explore, experience, or gamble out of spiritual faith, join someone who shares your cosmic ignorance on a collaborative voyage of discovery? Or are you being pressured to close off, protect your gains, play it safe, accept the authoritative voice of someone who knows best?
6. When we speak, we say little about the subject matter and disclose mainly the state of our own mind. Does your psychedelic expert use terms which are positive, pro-life, spiritual, inspiring, opening, based on faith in the future, faith in your potential or does he betray a mind obsessed by danger, material concern, by imaginary terrors, administrative caution or essential distrust in your potential? Dear friends, there is nothing in life to fear; no spiritual gain can be lost.
7. If he is against what he calls "artificial methods of illumination," ask him what constitutes the natural. Words? Rituals? Tribal customs? Alkaloids? Psychedelic vegetables?
8. If he is against biochemical assistance, where does he draw the line? Does he use nicotine? alcohol? penicillin? vitamins? conventional sacramental substances?
9. If your advisor is against LSD, what is he for? If he forbids you the psychedelic key to revelation, what does he offer you instead?
From The Politics of Ecstacy by Timothy Leary
