Organized Western society and its political culture fears the “psychedelic mind” because psychedelic consciousness can change life as we know it. Yet, nothing can be more revolutionary and necessary as it censures the status quo and is considered taboo by the mainstream corporate conglomerate, political parties and their news media puppets.
The “explorers” in the psychedelic realm, the “psychonauts”, grow their minds, expand their awareness as well as explore the imagination. However, psychedelic experimentation, practiced as scholarly research, is banned, taboo, even outlawed.
In Western culture we may never learn how to cope with or learn from our mind’s “inner space.” For example, Western culture cynics, or fault finders, tend to be portrayed as dismissing the explorers, or psychonauts, as the “lunatic fringe” just so the psychedelic mind will NEVER be taken seriously by the public.
As usual the bad publicity leaves out the other side of the story so the public can be led to believe something else entirely, which will typically follow the agenda of values and beliefs of the person(s) controlling the medium and the message. When dismissing the psychonauts, in all fairness to the cynics quoted in the “general” dismissal, upon further investigation, “specifically” they may be finding fault to try and make psychedelic exploration better which, of course, is conveniently left out of the message by those against exploration who control the medium, like corporate conglomerates, politicians or anyone else in control of the information.
Oftentimes the public is led to see only the “negatives” of cynicism and not the “positives”. The “lunatic fringe” described by a cynic in a positive way would be labeled instead as the “fringe culture” and described as follows. Since nothing ever really happens in the center, all innovative change and powerful ideas seem to happen out on the “edges” where sparks fly and opposing edges meet.
For example, if you travel into outer space faster than the speed of light when you return to Earth you would only be a few years older but hundreds of years will have already passed by on Earth, which is Einstein’s theory of time and space. If scientists did not already know this particular theory to be a fact, and if only the cynics’ negative perceptions of this theory of time and space were allowed to be adopted and reported on before it was ever adopted by the likes of Einstein and accepted by scientists everywhere, this theory would likely have been dismissed as just another invalid and unreliable idea from the lunatic fringe.
This brings us to intoxication which is most often portrayed as a negative state of mind. However, the positive side of the story rarely, if ever, gets told because it does not suit those in control of the information the public is allowed to ponder on a regular basis, day in and day out. For example, people like accessing altered states of consciousness for intellectual, scientific, psychic, psychological, exotic, euphoric as well as self-help reasons. We feel intoxication helps us to discover our true hidden self, to understand dreams and to heighten our artistic perceptions.
Of course, some of us just like to hallucinate and experience visions just for the fun of it. Unlike what you may be led to believe, intoxication may produce in some of us some kind of happiness IF the user is not an abuser and uses self-control and moderation in the process. Remember, we were born with the impulse to experiment and alter our mind.