“The only way to rewire neural patterns is to interfere with the neurotransmitter sequence at the synapse, thus retracting the old imprint and allowing for a new imprinting.” Leary, Infopsychology pp. 45
I thought that it was about time that I share a few thoughts on the use of drugs, specifically hash in the context of hedonic engineering. Firstly by way of disclaimer, drugs are dangerous, I am not endorsing their indiscriminate use, or promoting drug abuse. That said, they can also be useful, pleasurable, and of great assistance in the pursuit of higher consciousness. In consciousness expansion drugs are a tool, and like any other tool they must be used carefully in order to gain their benefit.
Hashish as a tool is uniquely suited for the hedonistic paths of enlightenment for two reasons; one, it greatly enhances sensual experience, and two, it loosens associations and pathways in the mind. The enhancement of sensual experience is desirable on its own, and this is the experience that most stoners are chasing. Brighter colors, stronger flavors, vibrant sounds, these are the initial pleasures for the user of any form of cannabis. The first time hearing great music while stoned on hash may seem like a religious experience in itself. Imagine the same enhancement of sensory input applied to great sex, which is easily transformed into a peak experience. These experiences can help to rewire the brain into a greater capacity for experiencing pleasure. This is where the second effect of hashish really comes into play, hinted at by the Leary quote above. Hash interferes with old patterns of conditioning while enhancing the ability to have rewiring peak experiences. This is a synergetic effect. Enhanced pleasure can rewire the brain by its own virtue but by ingesting hash we have also weakened our old bad conditioning. This is an extremely powerful combination, and once again needs to be used carefully. When used consciously and with precautions about what new imprints we are creating, hashish can be a tool for liberation. When abused, like anything else, its results become harmful. Smoking anything can cause cancer. Cannabis specifically can lower immune function, cause amotivation, and damage the brain. Hassan I Sabbah proved a thousand years ago that it could be used for sinister mind control, and in fact the word assassin comes from a corruption of hashishin. Sabbah used the re-imprinting capabilities of the drug to impose his own reality on his followers but, like the Tantrics, it is possible to use it to re-program our minds to perceive the higher reality.
In Tantric practice, hashish and other preparations of cannabis were not seen as central to the rituals of worship, but considered a useful if not strictly necessary preliminary. The most famous ritual of Tantra, The Ritual of the Five M’s, does not include ganga or hashish in the formal text, but it was almost invariably used before hand, both to loosen up the practitioners, and to enhance the experience. I believe Francis King and others have remarked that for the orthodox Hindu, the rite itself may have been impossible without the preliminary use of drugs to loosen their conditioning. They used it, as the modern hedonic engineer should use it, as a chemical tool to heighten consciousness.
Other drugs may produce effects of heightened sensory perception, and the loosening of association but are less useful for the hedonic engineer for a variety of reasons. LSD in particular is a powerful re-programming drug, but is less pleasurable, and its repeated use causes disorganization in the brain. William S. Burroughs for one thought acid made people “less competent.” Magic mushrooms as well, make colors brighter and loosen the pathways of the mind, but cause dissociation and hallucination. The experiences of these drugs are intense and detract from the meditative serenity that we are trying to attain with hedonic spirituality. They offer more of an illusion of transcendence than a spiritual experience. Their effects are produced largely by the introduction of chaos into the brain’s processes. These experiences may have their uses in the spiritual path, but the comparatively gentle effects of hashish are far more easily harnessed for positive development.
Aleister Crowley once attempted to categorize the hash experience according to his conception of the process of mystical development in an essay called The Psychology of Hashish, and ended up just comparing the effects of the drug to various states of meditation he had experienced. I think this is one of the few times in his literary career in which he sort of missed the point, and the fact that he published it under an alias may reveal that he was not to happy with that particular piece. The real power of hashish in mystical development is its ability to slingshot the user into a perception of a higher reality. When used in ritualized and extended sexual experience it loosens the bonds and makes it easier to have transcendent sex. I would imagine that it would similarly have the power to enhance any ritualized mystical experience, but for rituals that are fundamentally of a sensual nature hashish can be the last key for projecting the mind upwards into mystical states.
Photo from Morgan200’s Flickr stream
