Quote:
ultrafeel said:
In the meantime, Pastor David is free. Meaning he is out of prison, but his case will go on for a few more years. He and his lawyers are fighting for the right of the individual; basically for religious freedom.
I have interviewed him, unfortunately in German language,
maybe you could read it...
After visiting his latest website, I am rather upset with this 'Pastor Dave' fellow. In my view he and people like him are a large part of the problem.
His views (I decline to give the link but you can find it via the link on ultrafeel's post in this thread) seem nothing short of delusional. He's leading people astray.
Here is the problem: Dave has apparently, in taking mushrooms, encountered, perhaps like some people in this forum, an uncanny and remarkable experience of the sheer joy associated with physical existence -- with our status as living beings, as organisms. It is an experience beyond words.
What happens, though, is that a person has this experience -- a "high" -- but then, after, their mind descends or return back to their usual thought patterns -- the patterns produced by our upbringing, social conditioning, personal distortions, etc. In Dave's case, when this happens, he constructs around his core 'mystical' experience a bizarre set of extraneous beliefs that are completely false. That is the difference between a prophet and a madman or 'cultist'.
The true situation, in my opinion, can be outlined fairly clearly -- at least to those ready to hear it -- and for this we may refer to an esoteric alchemical symbol of the kind which the 'Pastor' so badly misinterprets on his website:
This old image comes from a sequence of 10 or 11 images that comprise what is called the Rosarium Philosophorum, or the Rosary of the Philosophers. The psychologist Carl Jung, who wrote extensively about alchemy, had a lot to say about these images.

To vastly oversimplify, what this image symbolizes is something like the following:
- Human consciousness has two 'elements' -- a solar/male/spiritual consciousness, and a lunar/female/material consciousness. Or we might even consider these two separate consciousnesses.
- The solar/male consciousness is more closely associated with, among other things, higher, abstract wisdom, reasoning, mathematics, etc.
- The lunar/female consciousness is more closely associated with the sheer experience of material being, of feeling, the "palpability" of material existence.
- What is sought is a union or "alchemical marriage" of these two consciousnesses. This union produces or promotes a superior level of awareness or functioning; spiritual salvation, etc.
The problem with modern (versus indigenous) culture is that only solar/male consciousness is valued. Lunar/female consciousness exists but is marginalized, even repressed.
One characteristic effect of mushrooms seems to be to reawaken or reassert the lunar/female consciousness. That's what happens when one is suddenly struck with the realization "I'm Alive!!" and all that implies. Dave seems to describe having had that experience.
For the unsophisticated, this experience may produce a rejection of all beliefs and acculturation associated solar/male consciousness. Rejected is anything associated with "patriarchal" society: traditions, traditional religions, institutions, logic, science. All these things are seen as as bad. You see that overreaction a lot these days.
However that attitude is completely inconsistent with the idea of the "alchemical marriage" described above. Yes, we definitely want to bring the lunar/female element back from the margins. But the point is to *integrate* it with the solar/male principle. We don't want to switch from one extreme to the other -- from an exclusively rational culture to an exclusively 'feeling' one; we want both elements united.
This is where 'Pastor Dave' fails. He has no respect for intellectual tradition. He tosses it all aside, and then, inevitably, constructs a new one; but, lacking a grounding in tradition, it becomes the product of his own ego and fantasies.
He cavalierly dismisses all Christian teachings as 'distorted' -- when, in fact, one doubts he has any more than a passing acquaintance with what those teachings actually are. We are to trust that he, 'Pastor Dave', and only he, knows the true meaning of Christianity -- and all of the renowned Christian mystics of ages past, Meister Eckhart, St. Teresa, Jacob Boehme, and many others -- who expressed profound mystical views *and* held onto traditional Christian doctrines, are to be ignored.
The truth is that Dave probably doesn't have a clue who these people are, and is too busy selling his "holy fleece" (a term which despite it's pretentious name has no historical or traditional precedent) to bother with them.
All this makes it difficult if not impossible for responsible people who are trying to gain social tolerance for religious and/or psychotherapeutic use of psychedelic substances. Never mind someone like Huston Smith, who has, quietly, over the course of a long and distinguished career, argued for the religious potential of psychedelic substances; someone like 'Pastor Dave' comes along with his stunts and grabs the headlines, virtually forcing law enforcement agencies to get involved.
You'd think, after spending several months in jail, he would have learned his lesson. Instead, he seems determined now to get amanita muscaria banned.
--wjames