A Sense of Doubt blog post #3343 - Dune, Religion, and Psychedelic Spice
I have shared from this newsletter before, and I liked this one especially well and so sharing again.
Dune, Religion and Psychedelic Spice
A Paradox of Power and God
|
 |
‘Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.’ – Dune
Dune has taken the world by (sand)storm. While the recent film takes a mocking stance on religion, the narrative and the original books paint a much more nuanced picture of the place of religion, and psychedelics, in the world.
The novel represents religion as having a dual nature. The first and most familiar in our age is religion as a tool of power. We see this through the protagonist Paul Atreides’ use of the shadowy Bene Gesserit’s prophecy, which they proliferated amongst the Fremen, allowing him to transform into a religious figure of power they follow into Jihad.
While the recent film predictably mocks the Fremen’s religious fanaticism, we should note that Paul really is a character with mystical abilities of prescience and ancestral awareness. And with the help of a psychedelic spice and the Water of Life, he embodies the Kwisatz Haderach; the religious figure the Bene Gesserit sought to create and control. The Fremen’s religious fanaticism for what is a truly religious figure isn’t really all that silly. Not to recognise one, not to recognise real religion, is the true hubris of our age.
However, this is not without problems. Friedrich Nietzsche taught us that religious faith is just a means to control people. A command from an earthly authority, like a government, holds some power. We don’t ordinarily go around breaking all the laws. However, if a command comes from an all-powerful, omnipresent, omniscient God, then this command holds a lot more weight – especially if that God rewards or punishes you with eternal heaven or hell.
It follows then, that anyone who claims to be in league with this God, gains a new degree of power. This is Nietzsche’s story of religion and priestly authority. If on the Church’s side is an all-powerful God, and priests claim to have the exclusive ability to be in communion with Him (Her? It? Them?), then the Church gains a similar level of power. Yet this idea of God as some kind of all-powerful sky tyrant is at odds with the God of what I call ‘real religion’.
The second reading of religion, the second aspect of religion’s dual nature, is that the God of real religion is the God of mysticism, and this is a very different God than the one portrayed by the organised Church. In fact, not only are these two understandings of God very different, they are, as we shall see, mutually exclusive.
The God of mysticism is the God one finds during a mystical experience. As scientist Tom Roberts argues, following a psychedelic-induced mystical experience, ‘religion really is about something. It’s about an experience people can have.’¹[i] It is a well-defined phenomenon. We even have a questionnaire for it!
The God of mysticism is not a sky tyrant. Rather, the God of mysticism is found in the mystical experience of Unity, Noetic Truth, Transcendence of Space and Time, a Sense of Sacredness, Deeply Felt Positive Mood, Paradoxicality and Ineffability. Notice here some of the similarities with the psychedelic spice-induced insights of Paul Atreides.
Paul, for instance, can see through time, he transcends it. Paul then is a mystic, a figure of real religion, who knows the God of mysticism. He said, ‘The spice changes anyone who gets this much of it, but… I could bring the change to consciousness. I don’t get to leave it in the unconscious… I can see it.’ And here is the key understanding: no person or group can legitimately use the God of mysticism as a tool of power.
Like the priests of our own history, Paul and his religious claim to be Emperor is based on him being in league with God. But, if God is paradoxicality and ineffability, if God is an experience, and if God is not a sky tyrant who can punish, reward, and send us to heaven or hell, then what power does this God really provide? None at all.
How could a paradoxical or ineffable God form commandments? ‘Do not kill’, in a paradoxical form would be ‘Do kill and do not kill’, which doesn’t make for a very powerful commandment. And, even more damning, an ineffable God cannot even be put into words, let alone the words ‘do’ ‘not’ and ‘kill’, or any other imperative. Power gained through knowledge of God is not real power if that knowledge cannot be communicated.
For those who have undergone the mystical experience the claim to have knowledge of God is semi-legitimate. Those people really have had a union with God. However, this knowledge is paradoxical, ineffable, and once the mystical experience is over, this knowledge dissipates. Therefore, any claim to power based on the mystical experience is a false one. As Alfred North Whitehead ironically puts it, ‘the Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.’²[ii]
We see this powerlessness in the real religion of Paul Atreides. He increasingly becomes united with his visions of the future to the point he feels he cannot change it. Although Paul uses his mystical visions to claim power on earth even he recognises this claim to power is a sham: In Dune Messiah, he says, ‘What? Deny my own oracle? How can I when I've seen it fulfilled thousands of times? People call it a power, a gift. It's an affliction! It won't let me leave my life where I found it.’
So, religion has a mutually exclusive, dual nature. Organised religion is a tool of power, real religion is a mystical experience that cannot legitimately be used for power. Where do psychedelics come in? And what about Dune’s psychedelic spice? The means to Paul’s mystical awakening in Dune is the spice and later on The Water of Life, another drug created in the lifecycle of the sandworms. The psychedelic overtones cannot be missed:
‘Here is the Water of Life, the water that is greater than water—Kan, the water that frees the soul. If you be a Reverend Mother, it opens the universe to you. Let Shai-hulud judge now.’
Psychedelics, then, are a means to real religion. Several psychedelic studies have shown that the mystical experience is reliably reproducible under scientific conditions – God is reliably reproducible under scientific conditions! In this respect, the science vs religion debate is surely over. Once one has a mystical experience, and understands for oneself that it is not a source of power, then one can see that those who claim power through it, and claim power through knowledge of God, are partaking in a hoodwink and a sham.
Psychedelics, therefore, are power dissolving drugs. This is what we learn from Dune and also from Nietzsche. For although the reading of Nietzsche we began with has become commonplace, and has in a very real sense, become our culture, it tells only half the story. The other half is psychedelic.
Nietzsche had psychedelic-like experiences and is known to have used drugs with psychoactive effects.³[iii] When he refers to the mystical experience of Unity during the psychedelic Eleusinian Mysteries, he refers to it as the ‘Oneness amidst the paroxysms of intoxication’.⁴[iv] Similarly, in regard to the Transcendence, he writes, ‘In… intoxication there is… the retardation of the feelings of time and space.’⁵[v]
His philosophy, I argue in my book The Psychedelic Nietzsche, centres around the role of psychedelically-induced mystical experiences in our culture, and how they are antagonistic to the organised Church that Nietzsche so despised. Nietzsche saw that the psychedelically-induced mystical experience leads to the realisation that the Church’s claim to power is a sham.
Dune and Nietzsche’s thought both centre around the interplay between religion as power and the real religion inducible by psychedelic means. Religion as power has ruled for the last 2000 years and, as Nietzsche proclaimed, our modern culture still lives under the shadow of that God. It is high time for real religion. We must learn from both Nietzsche and Dune. Nietzsche tells us to live artistically, and to love our fate in spite of suffering – amor fati. Dune adds a warning: we must not mistake our visions for our fate.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2404.13 - 10:10
- Days ago = 3207 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment