Interview with Neil Kramer on the idea of the psychedelic jetpack

July 2, 12:32 AMPortland Progressive ExaminerDouglas Lain

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Neil Kramer of thecleaver.blogspot.com

Neil Kramer is an English writer, speaker and researcher in the  fields of consciousness, metaphysics, shamanism and ancient  mystical traditions.
 
Neil has spent over 20 years on a path of inner transformation and shares his discoveries and gnosis in writings, interviews and lectures, as well as giving 1-to-1 spiritual teaching. He is a frequent guest on leading alternative radio and internet shows, enjoying international audiences and enthusiastic support. His work is regularly published on cutting-edge web sites, news portals and popular media networks.  
 
Neil’s acclaimed blog ‘The Cleaver’ is widely read across the world, attracting a large and discerning readership.

Q: What I wanted to ask you about was what you felt the role of entheogens would be in helping people to get to the level where they can experience an illuminated state or what you describe as galactic consciousness or awareness?  Or do you think that meditation or just being in nature is a better approach?  How do you approach it?

A:  Yeah.  To make it clear, what used to be commonly referred to as psychedelics are gradually being repackaged as "entheogens," and that's probably a better term.  Because it gives more respect to the usage and it's less loaded with all the Timothy Leary baggage, you know that "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out."   Although Leary was a super guy, but you wouldn't know that unless you listened to a lot of lectures to peel back the mainstream stuff.  

Yeah.  Entheogens are not a way to get there, they're a way to understand the mechanisms of getting there.  So in my personal experience what entheogens provide is an experience of the techniques and the technologies , organic human technologies, of perception and of changing consciousness.  And it seems that there is no real accident in the fact that whatever kind of continent and hemisphere and environmental location you might find yourself you'll also fine a mushroom, or a vine, or a this or a that, that can bring the specific demographic or geographic data to you that is required.  So I see this thing as a sort of organic internet, a kind of mycelial ultranet that provides access across the planet.  So the entheogens-- ayhuasca gains more and more popularity as time goes by, most people know what LSD is, Psilocybin mushrooms, Peyote, so on and so forth, mescaline...whatever.  These things have a heritage, and they have a spirit within them that must be respected.  And as one would display certain etiquette and a certain frame of mind going into a restaurant, or going onto the internet, or walking into a lecture hall, or into a library, you bring a different set of expectations with you.  And there is no difference in the entheogenic space.  So sure, if you're a teenager and you're just tripping for fun, well that's okay, except if you go with the wrong entheogen you run the risk of damaging your body, and you certainly run the risk of damaging your psyche.  It will basically give you a good spanking if you're there, and you shouldn't be there. 

One visual prop that is very useful for me that I've used before to explain the role of entheogens in an inner journey is if you imagine a normal life on the map, and you're in the map, you're in your existence walking along down the road, past the fields, into the city, driving your car on the map, well that is the three dimensional life.  The fourth dimensional experience is where you're lifted up from the map.  And you can achieve some bit of that perspective through meditation, to switch off the illusion of local consciousness and reconnect to the nonlocal experience of field consciousness.  Oneness.  All the various Indian, Japanese, and Chinese names for this stuff are around, but that's what it is.  It's a unitary experience.  And the higher up you go on this mountain of unity the further you can see as you look down on the three dimensional life.  You think, 'oh, okay.  I can see where that road heads now.  I'm not going to go that way again.  This is a much better route.  And I do like that region, and I don't like that direction over there.  And I'm going to go to the fields and the meadows.  Okay.  I understand now because I have this new perspective on things."

So what the entheogens do is, instead of requiring you to walk up that mountain through meditation to get that perspective, the entheogens provide a jetpack that you can strap on your back and press a button on the console and just fly up into the air in five seconds.  So they get you up 20,000 feet onto the top of the mountain in ten seconds. 

But if you're ill equipped to be at that altitude, if you don't know how to land, if you don't know what the landscape is when you get there, if when you go up the first thing you'll feel is fear, just as we feel the adrenaline of going on a roller coaster, or bungie jumping off a ravine.  There is fear that floods through the veins, and brings a visceral shock to the system.  So the approach to understanding what you're going to do with that rocket pack strapped to your back is important. 

So it's not a means in itself to get there, because your legs will become useless, and your muscles will atrophy, because you never use them.  You haven't developed the lung power to walk up the mountain.  So it's no use relying on them as this fake, artificial, permanent fixture for your Gnostic explorations.  They're not for that.  They show the way.  They're signposts.