Barbara Marciniak is an internationally acclaimed trance channel, inspirational speaker, and best-selling author of Bringers of the Dawn, Earth, Family of Light, and Path of Empowerment, which collectively have been translated into more than twenty languages and have sold over five hundred thousand U.S. copies. She has a BA in social science, and is the publisher and editor of the quarterly newsletter The Pleiadian Times. Her extensive worldwide travels, astrological studies, and a lifetime of alternative free thinking augment her personal understanding of the material she channels.
The Pleiadians are a collective of multidimensional spirit beings from the Pleiades star system, and have been speaking through Barbara Marciniak since May of 1988. The Pleiadians are here to assist humanity with the process of spiritual transformation in the years leading up to December 2012. Their distinctive style blends wit and wisdom, common sense, and cosmic knowledge in teachings that encourage expansive thinking and personal empowerment, and which have been compared to native shamanism.
Um… what?
I am not sure. Using this definition of heedlessness:
- a lack of attentiveness (as to children or helpless people)
- the trait of acting rashly and without prudence
- the trait of forgetting or ignoring your responsibilities
I think many things can be a cause - even fear and worry. - and lust for sure. And I would include psychedelics generally as well but much depends on how, where , and when they are used.
That is one way to look at it. Some monks allow themselves chocolate later in the day - I believe the justification being that when warm it is a liquid and Buddha allowed liquids after the main meal and never specifically said anything about chocolate (which wouldn’t be found there for another 2,000 years). For me it has to do more with the intent of the guideline - why it is there. It is a personal process and a personal choice as to what people do or don’t do or how much they take on at any point in time.
I agree with you. But, by definition, it cannot contradict it. As an example of what I mean: lots of things can be added to or modified on a bicycle and it is still a bicycle. But tell me it has three wheels and I say no - it isn’t a bicycle any more - it is something else. It might be a really great cool thing but it isn’t a bike any more.
Again we agree. The how, where, and when, are very important, and I would also add, “who.” I would say that when some people take psychedelics with the focused intention of contemplating the Dhamma and meditation, and resolve to stay heedful and mindful throughout, they can be more heedful and mindful than they usually ever are, just because they are actually dedicating that time to being so, which throughout an average day, most people aren’t. Also, when I say it doesn’t say you can’t, I’m not trying to add anything in, I’m just saying the Dhamma is really just a maze of experiences leading to the hole in the center where you can drop out (enlightenment), and the Buddha gave us a pretty decent map of the maze. But that doesn’t mean he put in every single possible wall and turn. An experience is an experience is an experience, if it somehow leads you closer to the center of the maze, then i would say that’s part of that Dhamma. Now if you add something that actually leads you further away, or just laterally, and you call it part of the Dhamma, then you’re calling a tricycle a bicycle.
Intelligence is a dangerous tool without a sense of conscience. The Buddha always included morality in his idea of what it means to be wise. The dhamma doesn’t impose itself on anyone but just reminds us to be mindful (life hacking) of the kind of life we live. What is helpful now might not help/appeal/be practical later, that’s all.
The Buddha teaches truths about the natural world and it is therefore not surprising that it is not a very exclusive truth. Other people with open and intelligent minds will observe those same truths, or find that they resonate with those truths wherever they stumble across it. Intoxicants are a way into heedlesness. It is maybe that the intoxicant itself is not harmful. We hear about gateway drugs and such like, which pave the way for other kinds of dependant behaviour. It is important to have metta for oneself.
With metta
We had an interesting discussion a while back: Would you take a Nibbana-pill?
Apart from that I had my own hallucinogenic experiences some 20 years ago and have very mixed feelings about them. Yes, I got some insights of emptiness and that generally the brain/mind is able to do much more than we usually assume. So in that very indirect way it was a good experience for meditation.
But every drug comes with its price, and the price can be quite high depending on drug, personality, and frequency. Even meditation comes with its ‘price’, just remember how difficult it is to relate to ‘normal’ people, materialistic life etc. - we become outsiders of society. Not in a bad way, after all we just get dispassionate about stupid things. But it can be a lonely life nonetheless.
Would I do drugs if they had no side effects? hm, maybe. But they do have side effects. And by now I can’t even stand the idea of alcohol, or even fire crackers, let alone mushrooms etc.
I really enjoyed reading this book.
Bringers of the Dawn:
Teachings from the Pleiadians
Compiled from more than four hundred hours of channeling by Barbara Marciniak, Bringers of the Dawn imparts to us the wisdom of the Pleiadians, a group of enlightened beings who have come to Earth to help us discover how to reach a new stage of evolution. Master storytellers and humorists, they advise us to become media-free, to work in teams, and to eliminate the words “should” and “try” from our vocabularies. We learn how to go beyond fear, how the original human was a magnificent being with twelve strands of DNA and twelve chakra centers, and who our “gods” are.
Startling, intense, intelligent, and controversial, these teachings offer essential reading for anyone questioning their existence on this planet and the direction of our collective conscious — and unconscious. By remembering that we are Family of Light, that we share an ancient ancestry with the universe around us, we become “bringers of the dawn,” consciously creating a new reality, a new Earth.
"An underground sensation." — Publisher’s Weekly
Bringers of the Dawn by Barbara Marciniak
Haha come on man, you are not helping my cause.
The Dalai Lama on Psychedelics (short video):
Of course, we are interested primarily here with EBTs - but I have to say, I Love the Dalai Lama. I think he is a beautiful person and he offers some beautiful and simple thoughts on this topic…
Regardless of whether psychedelics have any place in buddhism, I still think the reports from DMT research is extremely interesting. It’s a very unique molecule, and is actually endogenous in the human brain. People say it feels like they’re gone for months and it’s only about 3-5 minutes. They meet these beings of light, and different archetypes that many independently experience, and the very detailed and distinctive descriptions of them often match what many people independently report without ever talking to eachother or reading about it. There have even been reports of people saying the beings told them something personal that they didn’t know before about a friend who saw the same being and had talked about that personal thing. I don’t know, it’s interesting to me.
I read that article on levitation by Analayo, and he says that all the powers and celestial travels that the buddha and other monks had were using the mind-made body, so essentially it was all within the mind, as if they found a way, in deep concentrative states, to actually connect their mind with those other realms so they could travel within them. Analayo states that they were always while physically sitting cross legged in meditation. So, it seems to me that they could somehow tune their mind to the point where that is possible. A lot of people while have those DMT experiences are so overwhelmed that they can’t really remember everything that happens in those other realms, it’s more like a ultra vivid dream. But if you accessed these realms while in 4th jhana, you’d be so stable that you have no problem being present and totally mindful so you can remember the vivid dream-like realms.
Let me clear though, I’m not saying that DMT allows you do this, it’s just an interesting thought. The strange thing is that it isn’t like other psychedelics where your mind can be very, I don’t know, psychedelic-esque. With DMT your mind is totally the same, you’re totally with it, your just being “transported” to these dream-like realms where you talk to these beings. Hey, all I’m saying is that people are always looking for evidence of these other realms and rebirth, and it’s often similar in substantiality. It just shouldn’t be dismissed outright. Who knows, it could allow you to tune your mind with other realms in the same way meditation can, but it just doesn’t allow for real and worthwhile exploration because you don’t have the stability and peace as you do when you do it with meditation. It’s only a tentative theory, and barely that, that’s all. It’s just interesting.
Over the course of time, this forum has assumed a strict approach to controversial topics such as suicide. I believe it is worth considering defining some boundaries on the topic of illegal drugs and psychodelics such as DMT.
A key concern I have when I see posts like the above is that it opens space for people to wrongly associate the topic of EBTs with the experimentation of substances not only illegal but not yet fully understood in terms of long term effects to human mind and body.
Note as well that drug dealers, who may sometimes not be dealing exactly what they say the deal, could easily point to this post in this forum and say “Look even Buddhists like this thing! Pay me my price and you can have it!”. And we know that in the position they usually find themselves it is pretty easy to steal a lot from naive people and in return give them something half baked and super harmful to their brains and well-being.
@Aminah, @Cara could you please advise of the moderation team is working on it?
Well I can certainly add “I am not encouraging drug use,” but the only reason I talked about it here is because I thought The Watercooler was for random topics, not necessarily to do with the Dhamma or the EBTs. Also, this isn’t about drug use, this is about the effect a chemical compound has on the human brain. That’s why I kept the discussion as objective as I could. The fact is, a lot of scientific research has been done on these psychedelic substances, and it’s actually becoming more and more common in the scientific world. If these things can’t even be talked about in a place meant for any type of discussion, then where can it? This is akin to teaching abstinence instead of sex education, it’s just gonna cause more unwanted pregnancy in the long run. You’re far better off speaking the truth about these matters and allowing people to make their own decisions. It’s not like this was a one sided conversation, plenty of people made perfectly good arguments for not even touching these substances with a ten foot pole. Besides, I’m pretty sure we are all self-aware individuals here. Regardless though, I am sorry if I offended you or anyone else.
No worries. It is more an open question than anything. The concern I have about things like DMT is that it is not something someone can just plant in their garden like marijuana or mushrooms (albeit still at the risk of being committing a depending on where they live or dealing with poison depending on the type of mushroom by the way!) and experiment with.
If one really wants to try DMT he or she will have to source it from trustworthy and controlled sources and try it in very controlled circumstances.
I have over the years seen close, dear and brilliant minds lost to illegal substances. Almost always the harm comes not only from the substance per se but as well from the fact those individuals were in fact using very impure and sketchy versions of such things.
If instead we were discussing here the participation in controlled experiments in serious research conditions and within trustworthy institutions then maybe we would be having a conversation worth of this forum’s Watercooler.
Hi Guys,
Thanks for tagging me in.
Just FYI, we recently changed the idea of the Watercooler of rather being about “anything”, to being a place to talk about or post light-hearted topics.
Please keep this “light-hearted content” guideline in mind as you post topics and comments in the Watercooler.
The reason we ask this is because all the moderators here work entirely voluntarily, have a lot of other outside work, and therefore not much time. This helps us to moderate this forum more effectively.
I haven’t followed this topic closely, but it could be helpful for participants to check over the guidelines again -
If you feel there are specific posts that directly go against our guidelines, flagging is the best way to bring them to our attention.
I totally understand what you’re saying and let me as clear as I can be, I am not suggesting someone seek these substances out because of what they have read here. You’re right in that there is always some kind of risk, whether it’s something more unusual like a fatality from a sketchy dealer, or something which can be more common like a bad trip. This really wasn’t meant to convince anyone to try this, and even if someone directly asked me if they should, I would have to know them pretty well to even answer. As far as talking about studies, there are quite a few studies on all different types of these substances, and yeah maybe it would be better to speak of those instead of anecdotes and theories, but to be fair, even when it comes to these studies, it’s still relies on the reports of those who took it. I am only interested in the mind states produced by these substances and how interesting they can be, definitely not with promoting them in any way. The argument against them has been well presented here, and although I don’t necessarily agree with it, the information on both sides is out for consumption. I really think banning the topic is a step too far and counter productive to the whole buddhist ideal. The discussion was jagged at times, but still both sides spoke with the intention of seeking out the truth and, I think at the bottom of it all, with compassion for others in mind.
Sure.
Now let me offer a perspective.
To me, through exposing the four noble truths the Buddha offered a comprehensive guideline on how to deal with life having as aim the end of stress and suffering:
- There are things in this life that need to be understood
- There are things in this life that are to be abandoned
- There are things in this life that are to be verified
- There are things in this life that are to be developed
From the perspective of the first axiom one is to understand the suffering and stress that will always come with any experience in which delusion, anger and desire is present.
From the perspective of the second axiom, one is to understand that some choices are to be made towards abandoning whatever refuels this very threefold unwholesome root.
From the perspective of the third axiom one is invited to see for himself how by acting upon the two axioms above one will naturally experience for oneself a gradual but certain abandonment, ceasing or extinguishing of any stress and suffering.
From the perspective of the fourth axiom one gets a clear guideline of what is to be done, pursued, developed and cultivated for the gradual but steady and certain abandonment of stress and suffering.
All that said, given that I trust Buddha’s boundless compassion and wisdom, I take the fact that the earliest and probably most accurate rendition of his teachings (i.e. EBTs) are very precise in placing intoxicants in the basket of things to be abandoned as the basis for the understanding that there is no way I can justify myself experimenting with whatever substance recently found by mankind as a way to short-circuit or cut short the gradual path to awakening the Buddha so well pursued himself and encouraged us to pursue ourselves.
It’s still out for consumption because we’re all discussing the topic from inside our warm cozy room sipping hot chocolate. May I ask have you ever served in the military? If you have then you’d already know there’s only one simple answer when death comes staring straight at your face. Imagine you’re a soldier de-mining in the middle of a field full of mines and IEDs. Still unsure about whether to take psychedelic or not? If you are then odds are that you will come home in a coffin. Actually in this case there’d be no need for the whole coffin. It’d be lucky if they could collect enough of what’s left of you to put in a tiny box to send home to your family. A serious Buddhist practitioner is not that much different from a soldier out on the battle field. They have to maintain utmost attention and focus for they know death, destruction, and suffering can sneak up on them at any moment and any time.
How interesting that you say that, because they are actually having a lot of success treating PTSD in soldiers with Psilocybin and MDMA 
Yes. It’s hard to imagine the Buddha sitting under a tree, munching some mushrooms.
Are you a war veteran who is currently suffering due to PTSD?