05-08-2016, 11:53 PM
(05-08-2016, 06:52 PM)Bring4th_Jade Wrote: I see this as the same, in a way, for natural vs. synthetic. If we take a look at the earth and nature, absolutely everything we could possibly need is provided by her - for instance, we can get DMT from the ayahuasca. But that's not enough. We want a quicker fix. So we try to contort nature to do things for our benefit, instead of cultivating patience to wait for her to provide for us what we need. It's a subtle thing but I think it's important to take into consideration. There's a reason why the ritual to extract the DMT is so intense and profound, to synthesize that step in a lab cheapens it IMO. This is the case with most things.
Okay, but someone could have just as much reverence with a substance synthesized in a laboratory as a with a substance synthesized or extracted by a shaman in the forest. Reverence comes in many forms. I've met people that have done nearly exactly what IGW did and had great reverence for the chemicals even though they were pharmaceuticals and not derived manually from some plant out in the jungle. And they had fantastic and positive spiritual experiences. I don't think one can really judge what is a "plundering and prostituted" act from the outside. The charge of any action can't be known from that angle.
At the end of the day, what is nature? It is simply the natural behavior of the organisms that comprise it: mineral, fauna, and flora, and the weather. And nature naturally gave rise to animals, of which all do that which is natural to themselves. The human animal is simply doing what is natural to them, and thus everything that "seems" synthetic is actually part of nature to. The portion of your argument I agree with is the idea to have respect and reverence for the substances of nature, but everything in this world is produced by nature. Afterall, humans are a part of nature, so anything they produce is an extension of that nature.
The stuff that most of population confuses as "natural" is just as likely to harm your mind and body as things produced by humans (which as I said, is really also part of nature). There are tons of cases of people accidentally eating the wrong plant and either dying or ending up in a hospital. Point being: anything can be a detriment or a benefit, depending on its relativity to the experiencer.
The thing of importance is balance, and any substance can play a role in that balance whether it was combined in a laboratory, or combined in a plant out in the forest.