The Question Posed About John M. Allegro: Was Jesus A Mushroom?

**Hi Gabriel, What's your take on John Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom And The Cross"? I've managed to get a copy, but it's proving to be a tough read. There does seem to be a little controversy surrounding it (vis. Jan Irvin), but one rarely finds any mention of it in one's quotidian quarters. -J. McDougall

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Mr. McDougall, thank you for your question! What is really at stake (at least for me) in the question of Jesus being a mushroom is this: Does the message and power that comes from the archetypal idea of Jesus change if he is in fact a mushroom? The short answer is a resounding 'no'.

We only need Jesus to be fully operating in the flesh if we believe the entire story of the canonized bible and its inerrance as a holy text. In my book, BORN AGAIN TO REBIRTH, I spend a chapter discussing many aspects of Jesus' life that have been rarely looked at, such as the identity of the Magi and what wisdom they may have supplied him with.

If you have seen the Zeitgeist film, you will undoubtedly see the many correlations between astrological events and the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus as a god-man in a long line of historical god-men.

I would like to direct your attention to a spoken word I did which may help with the next bit I am going to talk about:

If you can understand that all standpoints in a discussion about the nature of life and especially religion are fraught with garbage and diamonds, you can understand how you can take the good lessons from Jesus and leave the stuff that doesn't work behind. If you can do that, it doesn't matter if he was a wolverine, a turnip, or a pickled herring if the message is well received.

To many people, this is just too much and the baby must be thrown out with the bath water, but I don't think that is necessary.  

The benefit of Allegro's book is that it broadens one's mind to the possibilities that are out there; that the truth as we once knew it may have been anything but.  As far as Jan Irvin is concerned, I've never met him, but his online presence is pretty unkind, calling people who disagree morons and subjecting people to his Trivium method of argument and discussion.  Whatever great information he has found and researched has been ruined by his inability to play well with others.

The mushroom itself (According to Allegro and debated by Terence McKenna) is the Amanita Muscaria, which is not pleasant to consume.  I personally have made dear friends with psilocybin mushrooms and the little people who seem to come along with them.  They have provided me with a spiritual experience full of love and compassion that no Ante-Nicean creed could ever give me.  I hope I have answered your question sufficiently and wish you all the best in your spiritual endeavors!

Love and Peace,

G.

The Question of Pandeism.

Hi Gabriel, Just wondering what your take on Pandeism is? I was trawled through the Pentecostal thing (Australia) as a child/teenager, none of which made any sense to me, especially anything confirming the supernatural. I've had numerous psychedelic experiences later in life and since my late teens have found refuge in philosophy (rationalism) as it was the only thing that made sense to me. I've been debating and thinking about the ideas (Pentecostal Christianity/ Christianity,..) my parents imposed on me for over 20 years now and I seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion Pandeism makes- obviously not what a Christian would accept. A "message"- if you will- I got from those experiences is this (explicitly): "It is, I have provided in all my parts, for all my parts divided" http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Philosophy/godtheorem/godtheorem/node6.html -J. McDougall

Thank you for your question. To me, the idea is like many others, interchangeable and useful for metaphor. I've come to a personal philosophy of using concepts of one, many and all dieties as computer programs. You can fire up the ideas and feelings that each has use for just like you would use photoshop for photos and iTunes for listening to music. When the application has served its purpose, it can simply be closed until it is needed again. I have also integrated the idea of practicing conflicting beliefs simultaneously. Pandeism is a perfectly fine model and yet it is just an excuse to keep a deity in the conversation. The question that comes to us is, "Why do we need a deity in our lives to give us meaning?". Quantum Theory says light is both a wave and a particle, so why cannot we both be seperate from God, meaning God is an outside source we must look to and perhaps also consider that we are God as well. When we relenquish our power to a higher source and ascribe powerful characteristics to it, we are fashioning an anthropomorphized effigy of ourselves in most cases. In a universe that turns chaos into something palpable in consensus reality, we have to hold loosely that which we see as ultimate truth. I'm not saying that you do this, but it's our tendency as humans. In our laziness and desire to have something simple to cling to, we make up something that is "good enough" for our purposes. The best way to do this without being self-dilouted is to acknowledge that we are doing it to serve our own purposes. Do we want to be right, or do we want to be free of the confines of our own entrapment? The question of the value of Pandeism is the same as the question of the value of the word,"The". It might just be that the answer is there is no answer. Find a nice way of life that suits you and people to love with reckless abandon. If there is a God in the traditional sense, the best assumption we can make is that it wants real love as its holiest ritual and rite. May you be blessed in all of your pursuits! - G.

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What are your thoughts on Sandy Hook - S. Labs

Thank you for your question, S.

Since I do not know the intimate details of the scenario that brought forth the shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school I will not attempt to dissect the motives of the killer.

First off I would like to say that I agree with Morgan Freeman's assertion that we should not publicize the names of killers in scenarios like this.  We seem to glorify the killer just as much as we mourn the victims.  Stopping the killers names from being spoken in public puts the attention on the people, not the monsters.

It is my belief that we will have difficulty avoiding using the name of killers because we are addicted to War-porn.  When I first watched the Desert Storm attacks on Saddam Hussein, the news showed our cool looking tanks and advanced jets and missiles fired from our superior warships.  I knew the names of all the aircraft and it felt cool to be a part of it vicariously.  This war-porn addiction causes us to focus on the most grizzly behavior and quietly love it.  We focus on the guns and not the killers, on the means and not the ends.  This is apparently part of our nature, a leftover from a time when a more primal landscape was a necessary part of our lives.  It isn't necessary now.

My biggest concern, or woe is that we wait until horrific events to show our love and compassion to others.  for instance, just day's after Hurricane Sandy we saw droves of black friday shoppers trampling each other and getting into fist fights.  There was even a shooting at a Wal-mart.  So these tragic events seem to be distractions from our rat race toward more consumption, more excess and more disdain for others in our pursuit of whatever the fuck we think is so important.

So the point of this is that we are seeing signs about our need to change our world, but we don't believe them.  This brings me to the story of Cassandra, the ancient Greek woman who had the ability to predict the future, but the catch was that nobody would believe her.  I'm not the first to point out the possible omen that is before us:  Hurricane Sandy (short for Cassandra) disrupts the most powerful city in the world for a few days and life as usual resumes without much attention.

Now Sandy (Cassandra) Hook elementary school is viciously attacked and our most innocent citizens are murdered.  Will we take this message to heart?  Will we not see the warnings of a not so distant future and not believe the signs?  Perhaps we don't know what the lessons from each event hold?

Sandy (The Hurricane) had many lessons for us:

1. Our surface level way of life can be swept away at any moment, but our friends and family and the love we share will last even when everything else is in ruin.

2. Our world is changing and we must drastically change the way we deal with the earth itself by beginning to treat it like it is a living being.

3. Our consumptive, pay-no-attention mindset about others won't work in the new paradigm unless we like the misery in which most of us live.

Sandy Hook has lessons for us as well:

1. We are not paying proper attention to mental illness.  Our attention (especially our government's) is focused on a war based economy and stripping other countries of their resources rather than dealing with the massive amount of trouble in every form we face here at home., from healthcare, to rising poverty.

2. We have to decide if our love of owning anything other than a shotgun or rifle is worth the loss of innocent people every year.  This attitude depends on how we view the world and each other.  Do we view the world as a hostile place in which it is likely that we have to pull out a gun and kill someone to resolve a person to person conflict?  I love guns, I think they are really fun to use for sport, but I can have just as much fun at a firing range with a hunting rifle that with a  handgun. But it's not about banning weapons as much as it is about our attitude towards life.  Half of the country thinks that most people are going to burn in hell under God's wrath, so their life is worth less than theirs because they are the 'elect'.  All of this would change if somehow people intrinsically understood our deep connection with one another, both on the atomic level and the spiritual level. To kill another, is to kill a bit of ones-self.

3. There are dark forces at work all around us, but we must be the bearers of light wherever we go.  We cannot let these dark forces prevail by giving in to anger and malice and disunity.  It's such a huge pitfall.  Gun owners are not assholes.  For the most part they are good, peace loving individuals, so attacking them verbally isn't the solution.  In fact, the division we see now is exactly what these dark forces want.  They want more division and stress and anger.  We need to shut the fuck up for a minute and pray/meditate/send positive intentions as one people with a common purpose at heart: to let the light prevail in our hearts and lives.

So we see a dystopic vision of the future if we keep things the way they have always been, but we can take this tremendous opportunity in this space in time to say 'NO' to disconnection and disdain.  We have this opportunity to say, "you know what, I want to give my love and compassion out all the time to all people, regardless of what our differences are."  We must find the place where their love meets our love.

I'm a father of two elementary age children and I can never express or imagine the pain that these parents are going through right now.  We cannot undo the evil deeds of others, but we can decide not to take the low road with anyone.  We can send our love and prayers, whatever is needed.  We can decide that we want a different world.  We can decide to listen to The Sandy's of our recent history and see the omens.  Now, more than ever, we need to get our shit straight and not be so goddam selfish.  This time is a time of great soul searching and if that's not what we are doing, then we are a serious contributor to the problem.

Thank you for your question, I hope my answer has been helpful in some way.

Love and peace,

G.

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Sports Fan Worries

“As a Seattle SuperSonics fan is it OK to root for OKC, formerly the Sonics franchise? Or is that wrong. I think it wrong. But that may not be the healthiest way to live life. When Ken Griffy Jr. left the Marniers I was so mad that I refused to acknowledge him for the rest of his career. But when Lebron James went to the Heat and pissed of people I was all, get off Lebron’s back let him follow is bliss!”

— L. Gjurasic

More Superstorms To Come

I'm sorry...What was your question again?

G.

Ask Gabe a question here

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Misanthropic Anthropoid

““Dear Gabe, Bad Religion uses the term “misanthropic anthropoid” in one of their awesome songs. why is it that man hates himself and more importantly, how can any concept formed in the convoluted depths of mans limited, duplicitous mind of contradicting mayhem be reasonably assumed to define infinity? is infinity an illusion? do we exist? don’t go all Descartes on me. i want an original answer oh great and powerful Oz. ” — R. DeNada”

Mr. DeNada

First off, the band Bad Religion has some really great insights on a great many subjects while making uncompromising punk rock music. I commend you for your good taste in music.

To address your question, the term "misanthropic anthropoid" is semi-redundant, since the greek word "Anthropos" is the key to both words. Anthropos means human. A misanthrope is one who hates people. An anthropoid would be a being that is human-like. So the term used would literally be a human-like being that hates humans. It could be a nod to the rampant self-loathing that pervades the landscape of western society. We like our pleasures, but we kind of hate ourselves for being gluttonous, selfish individuals. To many this is subliminal and their self-loathing is not even intrinsically recognized by said misanthrope.

Addressing man's ability to overcome the proclivities of erring human nature, I have to say experientially that psychedelic experience can be one of the fastest methods of transcending this linear mindset that dominates our daily thought and limits our perspective. In many of my experiences with the entheogen known as Dimethyltryptamine the feeling is similar to near death experiences where one feels that they are free of the corporal constraints of the body; the spirit moves freely in non-linear hyperspace. With this experience comes the notion that time and space are illusory, but are somehow useful tools in our progression of sentience in the grander unknown schemes of a universal plan. Furthermore, the question of god becomes irrelevant because while you still feel like you, you know that you are one with everything. When I say the word 'know', I speak of the greek term 'Gnosis', which is a term that indicates direct experience of a truth. The sense upon return from the tryptamine vision is that of having too much info to bring back. It's like you experienced all that the universe can offer, but can't fit it all into your head. Imagine a dump truck full of sand trying to fit all the sand into a thimble. This is the feeling you get. Cloud computing is a great example of how this works. Some computers have very limited storage space, so the extra memory (arguably limitless) available in the cloud on the internet can contain more information than the computer itself can handle. Despite the memory limitations of the computer, it can still tap into all of the information in the cloud. Imagining ourselves as somatic and pneumatic (in the Hermetic sense) simultaneously allows us to see how we can tap into a much broader sense of a universal mind of which we are a part, while still operating in the limited sphere of our meat brain.

Wondering if infinity is also an illusion is another thing entirely and then the exact same. After experiencing the ecstatic realms, the question of time or no time becomes somewhat irrelevant as well. We are duplicitous because perhaps we are aping our way through the translation of duality, which seems to be a very real thing. For instance, if time and space don't exist in some other realm, then why should we give a shit about time or space? The answer is simple, that we occupy linear time and space, but can tap into a timeless and spaceless realm, or dimension (whichever term your nomenclatural predilections fancy the most).

Finally, since we occupy time and space, we must abide within it and make the best of the experience, but should also keep in mind that it's not the only game in town. I think self hatred is due to a lack of understanding about the true nature of self. Unfortunately, it is pandemic in our society because of our focus on materialism and don't balance it with an understanding of non-locality. Non-locality is a testable and proven hypothesis and therefore is one more example of how glorious, complex and fucking weirder than we could ever comprehend life is. We do exist and our ability is unlimited. For example, check this guy out:

I hope this has sufficiently answered your question!

G.

“Dear Gabe, What numbers should I pick to win the next Powerball drawing? ” — J. Collins

J. Collins, Thank you for your question.

I would say that for a literal ability to predict powerball numbers, you must become highly skilled in remote viewing. My piece on remote viewing and how to do it can be found HERE. The foremost non-military authorities in remote viewing can be found HERE.

However, I would say that it is much better to explore the treasures of your inner space. Many methods of performing this are available. It depends on whether you want to slowly stroll or take a rocket ship there. Basic ways to begin are through extensive study of meditation and personal reflection. A fast way is to find the right kind of mushroom and lay down in your bed in silent darkness with perhaps a dried gram to start. Lay there and look for the treasures inside, they are sure to come. With time and thoughtful observation of the respectful process of exploring your inner space, you will experience the tranquility that no amount of money can supply. It's not about getting what we want, because the things we want change when we change for the better.

I hope this has supplied you with adequate answers!

G.