War in Heaven - Chapter 19: A Revolution in Consciousness
Q. The term "revolution in consciousness" is usually associated with the Sixties psychedelics movement.
Can you answer some of the questions I've had about drugs that I've never been able to figure out on my own?
A. There's much more to the revolution in consciousness that's now going on than just the widespread use of consciousness-altering drugs, but it's a good starting point.
Especially, the drug issue illustrates that there's a War in Heaven going on:
we try to teach people how to use drugs for their own good, and the Theocrats work to create the "drug problem" in an effort to sabotage our attempts to take human consciousness on this planet another major step forward.
The modern struggle between the Theocrats and the Invisible College over the recreational and other uses of psychoactive drugs started long before the Sixties; and the drug then involved was alcohol.
The real reason that the Prohibition Amendment passed after World War I is that we suddenly stopped opposing the anti-alcohol movement that Theocratic Fundamentalists had been leading for decades.
In other words, we decided,
"Let the Christian Temperance Union and the other prohibitionist organizations have their way; maybe total prohibition of alcoholic beverages will fail so miserably that it will convince the majority of Americans that puritanical laws regulating intimate details of the personal lives of individuals are a bad idea."
And our plan worked.
Government policy and general opinion in this society are now treating alcoholism more as a medical and psychiatric problem than as a moral or criminal problem.
This is actually a significant step forward for the whole civilization:
learning how to deal with a social problem to minimize the total harm it does to the society.
Q. I've always found it inexplicable that Western society can deal with the alcohol problem in a reasonably sensible and sophisticated manner, but not with problems caused by drugs other than alcohol.
A. This is happening because the drug controversy is now one of the two or three most important battlegrounds between the Theocrats and the Invisible College.
The key to understanding why involves certain side effects of LSD and various psychedelic drugs closely related to it: mescaline, psilocybin, etc., in both their pure and their botanical forms.
Q. I was right at the heart of the Psychedelics Movement in the Sixties and Seventies, but I never really figured out what was going on.
Obviously, the Invisible College was urging large numbers of people to take these drugs, seemingly indiscriminately; but I never found out why.
In fact, I often got angry with you for trying to "turn on the world" to LSD, seemingly with little regard for the consequences.
Occultists have used powerful psychedelic drugs of this family for centuries as aids to psychic development, but always with a great deal of caution and respect.
Only occultists at a reasonable level of advancement were supposed to take them; their use was denied to the really immature and unstable.
Also, occultists have always taught that psychedelics use should be combined with other psychic training techniques, to maximize the benefits and minimize the dangers.
However, when I tried to teach these methods of psychedelics use in the context of the Sixties counterculture, I found that very few members of the movement had the patience for such a conservative approach.
Practically everybody just said,
"I'm going to keep on dropping acid until I get rid of my hangups and expand my mind, and then I'll worry about all this stuff about meditation and psychic exercises."
And I was aware why so many people felt this way: at this stage of my psychic development, I was beginning to become consciously aware of your telepathic messages advocating indiscriminate use of LSD and similar drugs.
Quite frankly, I disapproved of this policy, because I saw so many people hurt themselves with irresponsible drug-use.
A. You are aware by now, aren't you, that most of the people who experienced "acid freakouts" during the Sixties didn't suffer significant permanent damage?
Q. This seems to be true on the average, yes.
Also, I'm now mature enough to realize that a lot of the drug-users in the Sixties Movement who killed themselves, committed serious crimes, or became insane enough to be institutionalized, would probably have done something similar sooner or later anyway, even if they'd never used drugs.
A. True. This was a significant factor in our decision to take the risk of starting the Psychedelics Movement.
We still have to admit that there were casualties, though, and we're sorry about it.
However, we have to point out once again that a war is being fought and it's your freedom, that of the entire human race, that's at stake.
However, we have to point out once again that a war is being fought and it's your freedom, that of the entire human race, that's at stake.
Q. I understand all this by now, though I'm not sure how many of my readers will.
Well, there's nothing I can do about this except tell as much as I can of the facts and let people make up their own minds about who's right and wrong.
What I'd most like to know about the whole drug question is simply what the Sixties Psychedelic Movement was for.
What, exactly, were you trying to accomplish, and did it succeed?
A. The answer to your second question is,
"Yes, fairly well. Better than our expectations."
The answer to the first is technical and almost impossible to describe in English, but we'll try.
Since you, and probably a significant number of your readers, are familiar with electronic computers, we will use computer terminology for our explanation.
Since you, and probably a significant number of your readers, are familiar with electronic computers, we will use computer terminology for our explanation.
First, you have to realize that a normal state of consciousness is comparable to a computer program that's already running in an input or output mode instead of a command mode.
In an input mode, you can enter data into the files of the computer to be stored or processed.
In an output mode, you can retrieve information that's already been processed, and print it out or make some other use of it.
On most modern computers, you can switch between these two modes very easily, and this analogy seems to apply to the mind as well.
On most modern computers, you can switch between these two modes very easily, and this analogy seems to apply to the mind as well.
The input mode of normal consciousness consists of receiving information through the senses and entering it into the memory, where it is processed in various ways and is available for later retrieval.
The output mode consists of making use of data that the mind has already processed to feel emotions, think, speak, listen, move the body, and perform a wide variety of other activities.
The whole thing is much more complex and sophisticated than anything conceivable for electronic computers, even in theory, but the analogy should be clear.
However, you can't modify the program that's running on an electronic computer set to an input or output mode. In order to do that, you'd have to enter some kind of command mode.
Q. As an example, before I typed this paragraph, I entered the command mode of this word processing program and changed the margins for this one paragraph.
But now I'm back in the input mode to write this.
A. When this analogy is applied to states of consciousness in the human mind, you have to realize that the situation is very complex.
On one level, you feel that you have a great deal of free will, a large measure of control over what you think and do and even over how you react emotionally.
This is simply because you are aware of a large number of different alternative courses of action open to you at any given time.
This is simply because you are aware of a large number of different alternative courses of action open to you at any given time.
You are much less aware of those alternatives that are not open to you.
For example, large areas of your total memory are not available to conscious access at any particular time.
Like many electronic computers, the human mind arranges memories in banks, and you normally have access to only a few of these at any one time.
You can change banks by an act of conscious will, but this often loses you access to information you could recall easily before, from the other memory bank.
In addition, there's the subconscious, which contains memories that are very rarely available for conscious access.
In addition, there's the subconscious, which contains memories that are very rarely available for conscious access.
Q. It also appears to me that normal consciousness includes at least limited command functions:
for example, deliberately "putting yourself in a mood" to do a particular thing that you couldn't do without advance concentration and preparation.
This may be analogous to certain capabilities on this word processing program:
for example, I don't have to leave the input mode to PRINT IN ALL CAPS or to underline.
A. Yes, but you can't change the line-length except by going into a command mode, as you did above.
Now the point we're trying to make here is that LSD and related psychedelic drugs create a state of consciousness that is similar to putting a computer into a command mode and making changes in the program that is being run.
Q. This brings us back to my original objections to your advocacy of indiscriminate use of powerful psychedelics during the Sixties.
Going into a command mode on a computer is useless, and usually detrimental to finishing the job at hand, unless you know exactly what you're doing.
For example, the command mode I entered to change the margins could also have been used to delete the whole file I'm working on, and that could have been done by pushing only two keys.
A. Fortunately, the very complexity of the human mind makes it much less vulnerable than that.
What actually happened when the average person in the Sixties Psychedelics Movement took LSD wasn't the same as the limited work with entering a "command mode" and doing deliberate mental reprogramming that Western occultists have traditionally done when they used psychedelics.
It operated on a level unknown to the occultists.
In other words, you yourself, and all the people you considered serious occultists, underwent the same involuntary mental changes as the "street hippies" did because of taking LSD.
You accomplished your limited psychic training goals, while they did nothing but "sit and groove"; but the drug itself was doing something much more fundamental to every one of you, every time you took it.
Q. I'd already guessed most of this, but it's still a little disturbing to see it put into words.
Exactly what changes are you talking about, and how do they relate to the analogy about command modes?
A. Well, the computer you are using to write this book has several different levels of command modes, doesn't it?
Q. Yes. For example, the lowest level is the one I used to change the margins.
Beyond that is another level at which I could enter another application entirely, such as creating and sorting data in an address file.
Beyond that, I could write a program in Basic or Assembly Language and create a word-processing file similar to this one, but with whatever modifications we desired.
And beyond that, I could write or install a Machine Language program that would change the computer's capabilities for writing new programs, including teaching it an entirely different computer language.
A. OK.
By this analogy, the traditional use of psychedelics by occultists is on the level of writing a Basic program.
That's how people learn to use telepathy and other psychic powers:
they actually write a new program, but to do so, they use capabilities already present in their mind all along, as your computer has the Basic programming language among its files.
Q. This explains why psychedelics are not essential to psychic training.
They can speed up the process under the right circumstances, but they don't seem to be able to give a specific psychic talent to just anybody.
There are large numbers of otherwise intelligent and creative people who simply can't learn to become telepaths or mediums, for example, with or without taking drugs.
On the other hand, a lot of experienced occult teachers who dislike drugs assert that they can accomplish exactly the same degree of psychic training for a given person without using drugs as could be accomplished with them; it would just take longer.
I tend to agree with them in general, though I still fall into the "pro" rather than the "anti" camp of occultists when it comes to psychedelic drugs as a psychic training aid.
A. The real reason we advocated widespread use of LSD in the Sixties had nothing to do with the short-term effects of the drug, or with conscious use of those effects for psychic training.
To get back to the computer-language analogy we've been using, the "mind-expansion through LSD" that we were advocating involved a Machine Language program, not merely a Basic program.
Repeated use of LSD over several years makes fundamental changes in people's mental programming, and we used LSD plus direct telepathic conditioning techniques to significantly reprogram the minds of several million Americans.
We also used environmental conditioning through the general emotional climate of the Sixties counterculture itself, as expressed in its:
etc.
Q. To tell the truth, I found all that stuff about "Peace and Love and Flower Children and Dropping Out and Everything Should Be Free" to be naive and impractical at best, and at worst to be self-destructive.
A. You felt this way because you already had high ideals and were concerned mostly with trying to put them into practice.
We created the emotional atmosphere you find naive and self-destructive simply to teach a certain amount of idealism to young people who had been raised in average Fifties American homes that almost completely lacked it.
Throughout their childhoods, they had been taught to value various shallow forms of material success more than anything else.
We were trying to push them in the right direction, and advocating widespread use of the powerful psychedelics was our principal means of doing so.
We were trying to push them in the right direction, and advocating widespread use of the powerful psychedelics was our principal means of doing so.
Q. How did the reprogramming that you carried out through the Sixties counterculture and psychedelics movement compare in effectiveness with that accomplished through religious mind control by Theocratic religious groups?
A. There is a tremendous difference, roughly that between doing something using a high level of technology and doing it by human muscle power, with the psychedelic drug being analogous to the machinery.
We did more reprogramming in a few years on more people than the traditional religious Theocrats do in the same number of decades.
Unfortunately, the Fifth-stage Theocrats now have access to mental reprogramming techniques just as effective as those we used in the Sixties; but this is a subject we'll discuss later.
Q. Well then, why did you stop?
Why didn't you let the Sixties Movement continue indefinitely?
I realize that you would have had to make the material you were using to reprogram people much more complex, but wouldn't this have happened naturally as they matured and gained in knowledge and experience?
A. No, it doesn't work that way, unfortunately.
It was extremely difficult just to program large numbers of LSD users with a set of vague idealistic principles that would make their opinion-forming and decision-making processes more tolerant and flexible.
It was totally impossible to start teaching a detailed, sophisticated ideology.
The major reason for this is that we were working almost entirely through people's subconscious minds, so that they were absorbing short strings of data at random places in their mental files.
As long as these messages were simple, clear, and positive - and it's this that made you call them "naive" - then they did more good than harm.
If we'd tried using more complex material, it would have merely confused the recipients, probably to the point of interfering with ordinary mental functions.
If we'd tried using more complex material, it would have merely confused the recipients, probably to the point of interfering with ordinary mental functions.
In fact, most people in the Sixties counterculture suffered temporarily from a significant degree of this kind of confusion and impairment anyway.
Q. OK.
I'm pretty sure I understand now.
You were only trying to reprogram as many Americans as possible with some vague principles that would make them more socially and politically liberal, on a very fundamental level.
Even before I made the breakthrough, I was aware that something like this had happened.