Plato’s Method vs. the Neon Gods: The Holotropic Vision and the Psychedelic Renaissance
by R. Leonard Gibson, PhD, Dreamshadow® Group, Inc.
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato –A. N. Whitehead
ABSTRACT:
This essay presents a critique of contemporary thinking about the ‘Psychedelic Renaissance.’ It compares the contemporary phenomenon to the original European Renaissance and continues with a brief, very partial sketch of the history of philosophy through Descartes.
Beginning with Aristotle and strengthened by the program of the Christian Church, attention moved away from the original purpose of philosophy. Philosophy began as a search for the meaning of life. The Church shifted the cultural focus from the search for meaning to a quest for salvation. It subordinated philosophy to theology, and it established priests as gatekeepers of transcendence.
Philosophy sought direct, mystical experience of transcendence and had no need of priests or other intermediators. For Plato, direct, mystical experience was the goal of philosophy. His star pupil, Aristotle, lacked the courage of Socrates and ran away when faced with a charge of impiety. Socrates’s courage inspired Plato and opened him to transcendent experience.
Aristotle adopted Plato’s understanding that the well-being (eudaimonia) of a citizen and its community were intertwined, but he emphasized the importance of independent individuality in his concept of substance (ousia). The Church translated the importance of substance into its sacraments of wafers and wine. The treatment of psychedelic substances as ‘sacraments’ in the Psychedelic Renaissance derives from the Church’s usage. The focus on substances as the key to transcendence overlooks Plato’s insistence that “long study and close attendance” is vital to sustaining the insight provided by direct experience. Many of the ‘guides’ that the Psychedelic Renaissance purports to train are the Church’s priests in rainbow-colored clothing.
This essay extensively explores the ladder of mystical ascent Plato describes in his discussion of the fundamental nature of things, which Aristotle labeled as “metaphysics.” Aristotle, however, thought that fundamental nature consisted of individual substances rather than ideal relations, as Plato did. This essay devotes particular attention to Plato in relation to the Eleusinian Mysteries, with an example of how the Mysteries are misinterpreted in the context of the Psychedelic Renaissance. Also emphasized is how Plato promulgated a method of practice as essential for understanding his teaching, in contrast to the current quest for one transcendent experience after another.
As it draws to a close, this essay recites both positive and negative outcomes of the 1960s psychedelic era, and comments on contemporary issues with psychedelic guides and neoshamans. It concludes with brief references to the works of Stanislav Grof and Alfred North Whitehead, which are discussed in detail in this author’s other essays and writings.
