Dr.Albert Hofmann, the man who gave the world LSD (
Lysergic acid diethylamide),
popularly known as the addictive phsychedelic drug, "acid" is dead. He
discovered the drug and intended that it would be used properly and
carefully with respect.A similar person who proposed the use of drugs
to explore our mind with drugs died in 1996. He was a controversial
person who proposed drug use to transcend consciousness. His name was
Dr.Timothy Leary and he was perhaps the most respected and yet, one of
the most controversial figures of drug culture. I do not intend to
glorify these gentlemen. However, I do wish our society could have
learnt something more from them instead of prosecuting them to
seclusion and infamy. These were people who were unique because they
wanted us to transcend, to realize the possibilities.
There
will be several more chemicals which will allow the human species to
transcend and remove deficiencies. Men always thought that erectile
dysfunction was to be accepted once they became "old people" until
Sidenafil citrate (VIAGRA) came along. Men and women throughout the
world thought that they could never stop getting depressed until
Fluoxetine hydrochloride (PROZAC) came along. Hundreds and thousands of
such remarkable chemicals are being discovered and tested in the
R&D laboratories of the world. The only thing pending is our
acceptance.However, just acceptance does not suffice. There are many
slippery slopes in the path to human transcendence and the path is
particularly much more slippery when technology comes to lend a hand.
Dr.Albert Hofmann's LSD was accepted in the begining as a fantastic
medication for mentally ill patients. However, it soon became very much
similar to Dr.Alfred Nobel's Dynamite and still continues to haunt us.
One
of the most important things we must learn to accept in order to
transcend into transhumans, cyborgs, superhumans or whatever
transcendent being we want to call ourselves; is that we are nothing
more than an organism composed of flesh and bone. We carry out our
lives as bodies composed of biological cells aggregated together into
an organism. Once we begin to understand this; both humility and the
passion to transcend would be sown into our minds with double the
effect. A revolution could come about in our species if we could cast
away our cultural entanglements and understand that our human nature
and our human bodies still has a lot to improve.
Having written
all of this, I must now state that most of us are merely enthusiastic
voyeurs of consciousness. On the one hand, there are radical
libertarians or even extreme hedonists who wish to slip easily into the
deepest and most exciting realms of the consciousness using synthesized
chemicals. On the other extreme of the human spectrum are ascetics who
seek the same extremes using renunciation and extremely difficult
meditations.
I am very sad to say to both these extreme forms of
human nature have in fact wandered away from things that need more
immediate attention. More and more news stories are about drugs that
help men have better sex or other cosmetic purposes.
Very little
news about drugs that help combat AIDS or help reduce the pain of
Cancer patients comes up. Why ? because we don't want to listen in to
news that causes pain. Instead, we want to hear about exciting things !
Sadly, I have found recently in my own experience that there is less
and less news about AIDS research on television. The latest fashionable
crisis seems to be climate change. Wonder when this fad will pass on ?
If
humanity as a whole is seriously interested in transcending per se,
then it must do so in a balanced manner. It does not matter if a new
world order is going to be set up. Such global conspiracies bear no
meaning to a malnourished child without education in a warn torn
African country. Party and club drugs mean nothing to a teenager
seething in rage against nations that discriminate him/her on the basis
of religious values.
Buddha
tried renunciation to the extreme and found that he would die without
so much as a whimper or a glimpse into what he was seeking. He then
chose the "
middle path".
He has since found out one of the ways of transcendent existence.We
could have followed him. Instead, we have dissected his teachings and
built concrete palaces for him outside instead of within our hearts.
I
am quite sure that many other Bob Marley's, John Lennon's and Leary's
would come and go. But we would always be interested in their
"coolness" and "rebel" nature instead of their "message of love" or the
need to look beyond discrimination and monetary interests.
This
was somehow my tribute to a scientist who with good intention
discovered a potential chemical gateway to transcendence; which sadly
has again been sucked into the darkness of human nature instead of into
the light. I hope we come to look at the therapeutic uses of such drugs
instead of mindlessly indulging into the "easy road".