A Psychedelic Problem of Evil

Somewhere around 300 BCE Epicurus the philosopher asked how, if there is all-good, all-powerful God, how can there also be evil? Sorry Epicurus, we haven’t cracked that one yet, and in fact 28 centuries later, we who do psychedelics have found a brand new problem of evil all of our own: Given that the current advice in psychedelics is to “let go” and be open to whatever comes up, what if the thing that comes up appears to be evil? Do you stay open to that too?

 It is this problem of evil that we wrestled with in group last week, and like our other discussions, it was not borne out of abstract curiosity but from personal experience. In our secular culture evil spirits seem a strange, perhaps even quaint idea, but all the indigenous traditions I have ever come across carry beliefs about a spirit world, one where both good and bad spirits live. Those icaros, the songs that are sung during ayahuasca ceremonies, are often about protection, and you only need protection from something that means you harm. Here’s a translation of one that I dug up on the Internet:

 Now that I have extracted this black spirit from you,

I can call for the good spirits to come…

I call the spirits,

I call my spirit protector.

May nothing enter,

May no evil spirit enter this body

And may all be cleansed and pure.

 You don’t need to go to the Amazon to find beliefs in the need for protection. Here in New York City, just go to the candle section of your local botanica, and you will find many of the candles there are to give protection from malevolent forces, and they are only outnumbered by the selection of love potions. Add to that a European tradition where beliefs in evil entities were rife, and people like Saint Teresa of Avila and her friend Saint John of the Cross, were very careful about sneaky old Satan worming his way into their ecstatic states, and were on the lookout for demonic con-jobs all the time. All to say, that outside of the modern secular West, everybody else agrees that we should take evil spirits very seriously. Just say no, no, no, no! Very different to our let go, go, go! Is the first one ridiculous and superstitious? Or is the second one dumb and naïve? Want to know what it really feels like? Ask Gene Wilder.

 The secular viewpoint says let’s just notice that although we can detect quarks, protons, Higgs bosons, and even light going back almost to the beginning of the universe, no one has yet detected a spirit world or any evil entities. Could this be because they don’t exist? Just like the earth is not really the center of the universe and touching wood doesn’t actually make you safe. Isn’t it more likely that in a state of great fear we invent something like a wicked demon to embody as a fear object? I’m just saying, the psychedelic does alter the brain and its perceptions, so maybe what you are experiencing when you trip is entirely brain-based. And, nobody ever got over their fear of the bogyman in the closet by hiding under the covers.

 For myself, I think different things at different times; as I am writing this now in the middle of a bright and sunny afternoon, I believe in the psychological viewpoint, and I don’t believe that a protection candle is anything more than a fire hazard; if I am tripping though, or sometimes when I am dreaming, my belief system does a 180 and the spiritual point of view is obviously right.

 And that’s the dilemma we face. Unless scientists discover the spiritual dimensions hidden in one of the extra dimensions posited by string theory or something like that, the two ways of looking at the world will remain very alive and totally incompatible. And yet there will be moments while tripping, where we may be called upon to make a decision between remaining open and saying no. I’ll share with you a dream I had a few weeks ago that relates to this: I was in a house with some other people and there was an evil presence in there. I mustered all my will in a way I’ve never done before and told it to leave, and it did leave, smashing a hole in the window as it went. I woke up straight afterwards, knelt to the four directions, saying a Hail Mary to each one, and then an Our Father to top it off. I haven’t said those prayers since my young teens, and even then unwillingly. Nor did I become any more of a Christian while I was saying them, it was just clearly the sensible thing to do, just to make sure that whatever was gone was really gone. Next morning, when I woke back into the secular world, my belief system had returned to the rational camp. But I did not for a moment regret my invocations or even think them ridiculous or unnecessary.

 Since my left brain and my right brain have different belief systems and I don’t have a third brain to adjudicate between them, I go to safety first on this problem of evil. The whole subject of “letting go” is fraught with its own conflicts, but I tell you, if I felt something as malign in a trip as I did in that dream, I wouldn’t give it a moment’s thought, I would tell it to jump out the window. The worst that’s going to happen is you miss a chance for growth out of an abundance of spiritual caution.  It’s one thing to have the medicine kick your ass, and quite another to invite in bad-intentioned spirits, if they exist. If I am unsure which viewpoint is real, I for one, don’t want to find out the difference by a process of trial and error.