Want to End War? Increase Consciousness

The root of reality is non-violent

Image: Bwiti Ceremony, znewsgh.com

The diminutive West African people known as the Pygmies have a French term for the local psychedelic they discovered—le bois sacre “the sacred wood.” Its real name is iboga, a foul-tasting rainforest shrub that produces a trance-like state that can last for up to 36 hours. They refer to the visions and internal discovery that it produces as “breaking open the head.” Their initiation ceremony known as Bwiti welcomes the devotee into the world of enlightenment and serves to separate the human race into two categories—the ones who have seen the other word, and those who have not.

I came to learn about this consciousness-raising rite from Daniel Pinchbeck’s personal journey to free himself from the unsatisfying (and somewhat nihilistic) perspective on existence that he had experienced up to that point in his life. His 2002 work, Breaking Open the Head, is a wild, first-hand account of that exploration. My take on the key point of the book is that life from the other side of the divide—those who believe (or rather know) that there is a higher dimension of reality—is immeasurably better than its forlorn alternative—a life of random and meaningless material interactions. 

He explains how the Pygmies made a concerted effort to initiate their more aggressive rivals, the Bantu. According to Pinchbeck, “The Pygmies showed their enemies how to use iboga so that they would discover their place in the spirit world. The Pygmies knew that once the Bantus made that discovery, they would lose interest in waging wars. If that was the plan, it worked: Gabon remains the only peaceful country in a region of inescapable hostility…”

And herein lies the point—regardless of the method to produce this fundamental realization (meditation, prayer, deep study and contemplation or entheogens)—the heart of the discovery is always the same—our fractured and fraught universe is overlaid on an indestructible base of oneness and love. 

Image: psilocybin, nytimes.com

These terms sound almost trite, but one of the interesting things about spiritual truths is that they are simultaneously trivial and utterly profound. In fact, the more true a spiritual notion is, the simpler it becomes until it terminates in absolute oneness—the simplest (and most mysterious) of all things. As detailed by Michael Pollan in his invaluable work How To Change Your Mind, psychotherapist John Hayes said his Psilocybin experience,

Felt like mysteries were being unveiled and yet it all felt familiar and more like I was being reminded of things I had already known. I had a sense of initiation into dimensions of existence most people never know exist, including the distinct sense that death was illusory, in the sense that it is a door we walk through into another plane of existence, that we’re sprung from an eternity to which we will return. 

The feelings that welled up for him had that banal profundity of the numinous.

I have at times been almost embarrassed by them, as if they give voice to a cosmic vision of the triumph of love that one associates derisively with the platitudes of Hallmark Cards. All the same, the basic insights afforded to me during the session still seem for the most part compelling…Love conquers all. 

And there’s the rub. The common denominator in almost all altered states of consciousness, whether achieved through substances, meditation, prayer, nature, or mystical experience, all seem to lead to the same visceral sense that it’s all about love and oneness. People who manage to dip their toes into those primal waters do not emerge and start killing people. They have no desire to hurt, steal, or disparage. Rather, they come to see themselves as fundamentally linked on a soul level. In the same way that it would strike us absurd for the left hand to take revenge against the right for an accidental cut, so would it seem equally as crazy to harm others, who are nothing less than another expression of you (at the core level).

Don’t argue with people. Don’t disparage their points of view or dismiss them as unsalvageable dross. Rather, help them to see from a higher vantage point. We will all be better off for it.