Julian Palmer : The Way Itself - Written in 2002

Prior to the renaissance, western civilisation was largely impelled by religious forces. For approximately 1500 years, the prevailing politics of consciousness in Europe determined the repression, abnegation and suppression of the human vitality into forms of control and doctrine - created from and around the teachings of Jesus Christ. Yet it cannot be truly said that what we know as Christianity are the primary roots of western civilisation. Prior to Christ the European world was largely lived on the basis of a more elemental and what we would see as superstitious cosmology - indicating an inherent human understanding of the multidimensional nature of the numinous.

For the western person today, who encounters perhaps the most direct route to accessing that living multidimensionality, dimethyltryptamine (DMT) - the inclination is often to attempt to find a way to reconcile and mediate these experiential realities with this world and its frames of reference. Very clearly, the immediate teachings of the older and most prevalent religions fall far short in actually communicating to us anything about the meaning and utilisation of vast technological complexes of intelligence, and the very specific forms of informational interbeing enabled in the DMT state. A basic understanding of the human physiology, shows us that these states are simply indicative of our own physiological potential for experiencing vaster realities - and not simply the consequence of some drug, or supposed induced distortion of consciousness.

In the face of these often immediately inexplicable realities, many are moved to turn to what we know as forms of shamanism to reach a deeper understanding of these states and how to utilise them via established, practical and workable contexts. And yet, what we know as shamanism in the west is largely a mythological framework of synthesised understandings of realities and terms of consciousness we ourselves are generally divorced from. Then we are left looking to the 'primitive' ways of 'the natives' - ways that our Christian missionaries are still attempting to convert, and that materialist western world culture is still assimilating into its borg collective. Yet the presumed 'natives' are usually framed by their own traditional means of determining reality and experience, which in many respects is not wholly translatable into an evolving western mindset.

Traditional cultures commonly delegate their resolutions of other worldly realities into forms of power and control to a very few elect, or even one person who can effectively mediate these realities for the rest of the community. We know this person as the shaman - and what we call shamanism traditionally utilises techniques and methodologies to allow the experience of the transcendent, constructing a communion with such states to be coordinated with the structures of the culture.

The dominant world culture is very clearly based on the formulation of thoughts into forms of power, and the construction of these thoughts into enactment of mechanical certainty and continuance. The usual shamanic contexts of experiencing reality ordinarily determine ways in which the bridge to the 'other' world can be mediated into this world. And yet such forms are in themselves ultimately remedial and repressive of forms of being, often conflictive and without a free purpose. Particular forms of these forms of magic are generally inherently possessed to continue other forms of magic, just as in our culture our mental forms usually only lead to more mental forms - without a true deliverance into the actual.

It cannot be truly said that the traditional shamen's role is to provide stepping stones for those in the community to access the other worlds. It is rather that he has been designated to do the work to access and bring back valuable forms of information for the community. However, within this present world context such an exclusive view of accessing these other realities is no longer appropriate. That is, if we are to enter into a state where all are in relationship to and in communion with the numinous at all times.

In the later part of the last century we have observed the search for the 'guru' from the east, initiated by a desire for a human being possessed of understanding and consciousness who can transmit and deliver this grace to other human beings - so as to co-ordinate them with the divine. However the usual eastern systems largely dismiss basic questions of how we are to live in the world, ordinarily recommending transcendence of the vital and creative life into forms of mindless fields of being which are proposed as the meaning and root of the human soul. Such approaches often admit an abnegation of personal power and volition to the 'guru', often a mother or father figure, who usually work to comfort and preach to their children within their field of consolation.

And it is true to say that most of us are small children in the face of divine. Western human beings are to a large degree, disconnected from their own inner peace and resonant being. Yet, in the reclaimation of the whole being and its realisations, we are still present with a world - an earth. And we live within an apparent conditional reality overwhelmingly governed by the complex translation of instinctual energies of survival - sexuality, power and money - lived by us through the complexities of interpersonal politics and the various methods of monetary commerce. These terms of being are clearly not an answer or deliverance of any sort of real life except into objectified forms of illusionary providence and power.

Our inheritance of the world is meager and for the most part, worthless in the face of the wholeness and freedom of inherent life. Rather, our forms of experiencing reality are relatively limited to rules and constructs which primarily only lead to more rules and constructs. It is clear then at this point in human history that it is vital we actually live as and from the wholeness and intelligence within us. It is then important for us to experience that within in our physiology are inherent rules and structures which ARE power. And yet, we cannot hold this power - only be it. This freedom of being is often feared, and is perhaps more feared than anything else that we know, because we don't know it - it is unknown, it is the continual flux of totality most of us are in denial of, living as seperative bubbles of self referential awareness - the illusion of separate souls apart from a presumed separate 'god'.

Initially, the free and creative reality of life appears as a 'madness' to the usual structures of perceiving the world - the contents of the mind which most live as their identity. When such structures of identity no longer determine experience, then the mind truly becomes a myth - and infinite meaning is generated within a whole field of experience. Dreams indicate the primary nature of experiential meaning and the realms of our more essential way of creatively navigating realities. Prior to our construction of the mind as an interpretive and manipulative organ of consciousness, are intelligent organs of non-differentiation and free perception. These organs of consciousness are often indicated within children below five or so years of age. And yet, these organs are not simply the shape of primal, ego gratifying narcissistic urges, but intelligent generators of primary forms of relationship and interconnectiveness - of truly focussed and individuated states.

Even our terms of illusory sacredness and power are so undeveloped, that we seek external forms to somehow mediate and control our own powerlessness and ignorance. Because in the human actualisation of the vastness of the human experience, what western culture proposes as consensus reality then becomes a flimsy artifice, a joke, a one dimensional caricature of the 'real thing'. That is indeed a shocking realisation, and in that realisation, one can only release all forms of the world and truly die to become alive, with prior and after forms of creation and life.

It is not that 'another' can inform or necessarily 'teach' anything of how to live. A very basic understanding of reality proposes that the only teaching required is that of freedom. The forms of spiritual and metaphysical teaching, generally propose a freedom that is defined by the present prisons! We do not know we are in hell, because we do not know anything else and our anasthaesia has become a comfortable basis for neither life, nor death - but the terror of neither.

The forms of shamanisn and eastern religion, and in fact, all religion in their assertions, generally work to deny the potential of the creative human formatting of relationship and sexuality. Rather, these areas are relegated to the more standardised structures of the culture's marketplace of ordinary life. The shaman is usually deemed to be separate from the affairs of the village, of the marketplace, indicating a sense of 'sacredness' and apartness to this role. This keeps the realities of the 'other worlds' distant from the determined ways and means of the culture. This perspective is largely indicative of individual forms of division and compartmentalisation of the realms of the supposedly internal and sacred, apart from the material, ordinary and everyday. This basic philosophy of 'sacredness' or 'apartnesss', has brought the greater majority of those within the western world to have very little or almost no understanding of the existence of anything but their own programs of day to day existence.

The inherent power of any individual is based on their capacity to navigate their own reality, and this capacity is founded upon the internal navigational means of present entelechy. External forms and systems of applying oneself to the deeper entelechy, can be perceived to exist as bridges, or as training wheels so that one can prepare different levels of being to become into a wider field of reality. Hatha Yoga was originally conceived and taught with this intention. And yet one is finally left with one's own capacity to create and be, no matter how far one developes any system or activity which is deemed to bring certain states of being or balance.

The obstructions within the rather complexified and conditioned western being can appear immense, and there can often appear to be very little direct help for individual somehow break through this opaqueness and constructed egotistical awareness. For many, the movement to old cultural formats can appear to allow a deliverance of western complexity and psychologique into a more simplified and present opening to 'spirit'. However, it is clear that the present obstructions are most effectively faced within their own sphere where they are presently enacted and lived: rather than taking these obstructions to be treated by the metaphorical witch doctor. And it is only in the real and present and created reality of consciousness that such consciousness can transform itself.

The true work of human beings is in co-ordinating and co-creating with the earth, each other and the many forms of intelligence which are present to us on many different levels. The ways we have to fulfil such work are present within us. Nothing is necessitated to allow such an undertaking apart from the release of apparent false work and false relationship. False work and false relationship consist of forms of life which are not inherently creative, generative and do not bring full satisfaction to the whole human organism.

And in that immediate dissatisfaction the western mind is left with a chap called D.H. Lawrence, and a profound perceptions of the deep innocense of humanity, its wondering and open capactiy to live, and be - our tenderness and capacity to love. The usual terms of living and being are however, so based upon social mechanical functionality and the grappling with the terms of survival that our wholeness is prevented in a field of discordant thought, leading nowhere but to more discordant thought. Concordant and peaceful thought is often initially perceived to be a sentimentality - framed through monocled glasses of mental forms. However the peace of life in its flow and movement is an art lost to us, so rigid is our conformism to the authority to the belief that thought can perceive - and all the consequent beliefs arising from that belief.

In the transformation of authority neither to god, to earth, or each other, but to the inherency of creation, can language become a more precise vehicle of expressive meaning. The usual fractured mentality is already disinherited from such spiraling meaning in this reality, least of all in other realities. The continuance of that perception, is in accepting primary disinheritance of enclosed and isolated forms of determining, and respecting the foundations of our intelligence, from which this is already in all ways arising. Then, it is not a matter or accepting or rejecting forms of shamanism, religion, technology or art - or coming into a field of tradition to continue that tradition or base oneself within the frames of their supposed power. It is a matter of accepting the primary flow of transmission through this reality, of which each of us is a part and a whole.

Life is then a co-ordination with a wholenss of energy itself, the presence and humour of life in its present lyricism and song. The primary acceptance of the often basic, staccato, stumbling and powerlessness power of our beings is a good place to begin our humility and wholeness with all of life. In this space of surrender, there can be an opening to the deeper currents of the elements and the intersubjective nature of what is usually unconscious trading of currency. Initially, this is a very feared space of psychic 'weirdness' - of which one is then obligated to bring to responsible creativity and full consciousness.

Then life can be a musical, and kinetic grace, whereby exploration is necessistated by the cessation of any journey and any particular home. The work, to bring back from the 'other' world is then invalidated, into a more complete circuit which recognises this movement already! The terms of healing then are denecessitated in the way of wholeness, health and being, rather than attempting to remedy or heal that which has arisen from that which is already whole.

Our terms of currency, sexuality and power are distorted, because their deliverance into love is not usually possible via their own terms of trading. Our structures, which ordinarily subvert, invert and divert our vitality are not usable to bring us true food. Food is primary, and we are food, we are currency, we are power, we are sex - and then there is a clear spectrum in which life is known in that expression - umediated, unrestrained in peace of its flow. The FEAR, of such uncontrollable and unmediated life movement, has become a large part of the force which impels the reasons of religion, politics and all media - all forms of which have often designed themselves to objectify and standardise our terms of perception and consequent understanding and thinking.

It has been subconsciously supposed that the unleashing of the supposedly unintelligent and instinctual subconscious basis, would take over and destroy us all in an anarchy of uncontrollable burst of love or hate, madness and violence - which is in actuality a repressed internal reality for most. And it is not that there suddenly IS an immediate way to control or live these aspects of the human experience. It is that the way of the whole human is ITSELF. And in that realisation there is a deeper entering into the present capacity of being, there is the release of ignorance and perversion, and what can be perceived as evil is invalidated. Then there is suddenly no need for a stamp of approval or a line of authority or reference to constructed manuals for operation. The manual of operation is present. The manual of operation is not IN anything, or to be read, or written. It is the reading and writing, that is unbound and unmediated by particular forms which determine how it should be.

Our communion does not begin with an abnegation or denial of the first three levels of the human experience, or in the attempt to somehow bring energy into the higher centers of the body. Such attempts only often bring a translation of the 'lower' centers from a higher perspective. It is that ALL levels of the being, and human organism are to reformatted in a clear recognition of when the bio-computer is bugged, corrupted and fragmented. That this is presently the case, is not a thing to be necessarily thought to be 'bad' or sinful or worthy of guilty indulgence. It is that as a species, humanity is uncordinated with its primal function and meaning, and is therefore imbalanced and in a very real sense dysfunctional.

The attempt of the past 500 years of the western world has been an affirmation of the body, of expressive and artistic light within the human sphere. And yet, such fixated positivity has become a continuing static charge without a point of contact or communion - then always seeking higher and more complex forms of expressing the human spirit. All such endeavors, without their return to native earth and body as it is, work to deny the primal ground and elemental technology of the earth, of the feminine - which in fact defines and truly is the meaning of s

It is not that some form of ritualised or already understood actions will bring us what we need. The determined ritual will bring a determined result. Rather, the ritual in its balance, exercises space and presence without necessary prior determination of outcome or result. And in this space the ritual is creative. For most, the capacity to create and presently be without forms of apriori learning is an art that has been lost. To seek exterior forms of understanding and ways of expressing, miss the point of the exploration of what we are. And that freshness, living and dying, coming and going, still and in movement, is space in which being is touched by itself. When all the life movements are contained in their own supposed knowledge, there is only the supposedly known - a continuing false certainty. Such familiarity soon breeds contempt or at least frustration and conflict, the creation of personal drama and games.

It is not that from any essential basis that there should an individual who wields the power to determine the flow and movement of others; it is that the others are allowed the space of their own inherency. And most have not allowed this to occur, it is as if they are growing themselves as bonzai trees. A third of the human life is spent in a state of sleep, our own inherent meditation. Rather than being a simple nothingness, the sleep state is one of profound activity - in which we rewind and replay and design our own realities and conspiracise together the movements of our lives - and dream our dreams.

And then we have DMT, a physical substance of spirit, which when orally ingested influxes a profound force of total beingness into the human organism - often completely shattering and destroying all illusory forms of reality, awakening a vast humour, love and intelligence within the human form. In this state, we can learn who we are in a true sense - we can begin to awaken the human organism to its individuated songs with the creativity of the ways we can experience each other, the earth and all of the cosmos. That we come together in humility, in spirit and take up the challenge of what it is to be a true human, to release the shackles of structural means and all forms of false power - into a vaster unlimited power...which has previously often been called god. All traditions, all thoughts fall away in the face of this...and the mission is clear, the mission is present and there is only one mission.

This time is one in which there is a clear movement back to our own intelligence, and co-ordination with what appear to be other realities. Our seeking for external forms of currency, sex and power - deny the inherency and freedom of both internal and external mutuality of energy - which is not based around a particular nodal point of human ego based awareness. And our work is not to deliver our currency, sexuality or power, or even our relationships into love, but to arise from a wholeness which is already generative of being which loves itself and all of life.