The Knights of Ripipip - A cry for assistance

I have written the essence of this text before in Swedish back on ASA, but I wish to take yet another take on the subject of psychedelics. In any case, those texts were written in a personal paradigm of mine where I thought I would be able to enjoy psychedelics in numerous ways plenty of times during my lifetime. It didn't really turn out that way. My conscious journey on that particular road has stopped - so my personal question is, what and who is Lucy to me when I'm forced to stay on the sideline of it all? 

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First things first: My personal criteria for what is to be considered a substance worthy of being called psychedelics is rather strict. A psychedelic substance can't be a challenge to the body in a physical sense, there can't be any risks of causing physical harm to oneself if one would overdose a few units over the recommended amount. Remember that everything can be dangerous or lethal if you take enough of it, I'm not saying that it should be safe to take unreasonable amounts of the stuff in question, merely that one should be able to make a rounding error when dosing the substance without having any reason to be worried, at least not concerning the body. 

Also, psychedelics as I see it can't have any addictive qualities, it shouldn't be a drug like tobacco or coffee is a drug to us - in the usage of psychedelics the users themselves need to be in control of the process and when they have used it they ought to be able to leave it be without having any "chemical" strings attached to the substance. Naturally, a mental addiction can be created, but again, that is true for all things, including non-substances. 

Looking at it this way, three substances make the cut, namely: LSD, DMT and Psilocybin. None of these has a known lethal dosage, and while it isn't healthy to take 1 gram of LSD the recommended dosage is around 100-200 micrograms - it's like claiming water is a dangerous substance to consume because it isn't healthy to drink a bathtub worth of water in a single setting. These three substances are physically safe, their challenge is contained in their mental qualities to the user - but more on that later. Neither runs the user any risks of being addicted to these substances, after a high dose a tolerance effect kicks in and the user needs to wait a few days until it can give it another go. In any case - since you can up the dosage if you really want an effect the next day - the experience of these substances is of the kind that if you got there on a high dose with them you don't want to go again for quite a while. You have stuff to do and work out in the sober state first.

Two substances I regard as being psychedelic-adjacent but since they fail to fit the criteria perfectly I'm choosing to not include them. Cannabis is completely harmless in a physical sense but has an addictive quality and can be used as a form of tobacco, instead of as a proper psychedelics and MMDA while having deep and rather unique psychedelic qualities is unfortunately dangerous to use regularly and can be overdosed if one isn't careful. They are interesting substances, but are not part of what I'm discussing below. 

The island of dreams

Late in the Voyage of the Dawntreader in Narnia the crew of Caspian reaches an island that confuses them. The island is surrounded by an unnatural darkness even in broad daylight and when they approach it a broken voice calls out to them, desperately asking for help. After saving the man, he explains to them that the darkened island is an island of dreams, a place where every dream turns true and get physical form, and that they need to turn around and flee immediately. First the crew gets rather excited, they want to see the land of their inner dreams get manifested but the man screams at them "you fools, not those kind of dreams. Nightly dreams! The things you will see will make you lose your mind!" and suddenly everyone works their hardest to turn the ship around and get out of harms way as quickly as they can. Everyone but Ripipip, the bravest mouse - and person in general - in Narnia. He gets angry and tries to remind Caspian that they are out on a quest for adventure and here seems to be a place that certainly promises to give an adventure to them all. How dare he allow the crew to turn around. Isn't it their duty to inspect this island and see what it has to offer? Caspian simply ignore the creature and pushes his men to work even harder to get out of there. The king didn't listen to one of his braver knights and soon thereafter the tale moves on.

The image has stuck with me though especially after I began my journeys into the land of psychedelics. What made me fall in love with these substances is that they hold real powers. All my spiritual life I have been nervous over the fact that most, if not every, technique that I have made usage of has been suspiciously subjective. When I got an effect with the help of a certain technique, my best friend beside me might have felt nothing, another is effective on tonnes of people but does absolutely nothing special with me and when translated to materialistic terms its clear for any non spiritual person that they must be complete nonsense and if anyone is getting an effect that one is tricking oneself more or less. It has been embarrassing, honestly. I want to have real stuff and God how I wished that the spiritual realms were real. 

Psychedelics showed me that they are. It's true that on an individual level the effects of different psychedelics may vary in strength and in kind- not everyone gets a full effect with every of the three substances every time they try a high dose with them, but I never heard of a case where the entheogen quality of psychedelics has missed an avid user completely when they are striving to get there. In short, psychedelics work, they are reliable and they can be studied intimately by a materialist without them finding any reason to "debunk" the experiences being had with the aid of psychedelics. Psychedelics saved my faith in the divine and I'm certainly not the only one having my faith rescued, or ignited for the first time even, by the psychedelic experience. 

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The issue is though while the technique of psychedelics can be said to be reliable, the divine and spiritual set of experiences to be had with them really isn't. Psychedelics is shun by all major religious traditions with the underlying reasoning that it takes the practitioner of them to a place in the spiritual world where one is destined to focus on the wrong things in their spiritual journey. It's a highway to the spirit world, yes, but when driving on a highway you cannot choose where to go and if you need to travel to a specific place not in the reign of the highway you are lost. It's not a given that the land of Lucy is where a practitioner or a seeker needs to go but when using the spiritual technique of these substances there is no other option. 

And this place can be dark and full of horrors, if the set or the setting is off or just by the sheer will of Lucy herself the experience can be a "bad trip" and not seldom traumatize the user deeply. These substances may be physically safe, but that doesn't mean they are mentally safe to use. No, I myself knows this better than most, the human mind can't really fathom what it deals with entering into the regions of the psychedelic. Anything can meet you, glorious things, divine and heavenly things as well as confusing, depressing or sheer hellish stuff can approach you at the door. It dawned on me in the after glow a rather hectic trip of mine, Psychedelics is the Island of dreams. Lewis' imagined place located in Narnia exists in our reality!

This explains why the kings of the religions (the ships on their way to the kingdom of Aslan) can't be bothered with psychedelics. They think that it is outside of the scope of their mission, they don't wish to undertake a dangerous path that runs a deep risk of giving no gains other than a silly adventure. While I can understand this approach to some degree my appeal at this part of my journey is not to them anymore - it is to the Ripipips of spirituality and the world. 

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It may be true that there is a higher mission regarding our life on this earth and space of existence where we as souls are expected to go in a certain direction with a certain objective in mind and if that is so, the major religions of this world must have been able to cultivate a proper way of going that path in a correct and orderly manner. I understand that point fully. Still. We are in a world defined by its freedoms and its countless amounts of wonders just hanging around, offering themselves to be explored and enjoyed if you so would wish. If it was expected for all of us to go as quickly as we can from our cradle to our grave focusing on the end game alone, then God simply sucks at pastoring his sheep in a fashion that both makes us safe and non- bored. I can't stick to the conclusion that existence is set up this way. Adventures exist, risks exist, excitement and wonders at the sideline is a very real thing in the Creation we have been given. Is it really expected by all of us to give it up without questions? 

So here is my cry: I want the Order of the Knights of Ripipip to be formed. When the idea got to me I desperately wanted to be one of the knights, but now I have to opt out, but I still want to - nay, need to - see this community come to fruition. The point of this knighthood is not to be another group of Psychedelic-loving hippies. No, what I see in my minds eye is a group of serious religious practitioners - monks essentially - that is accepting the task to explore and map out the island of dreams fully aware that his place - though beautiful and heavenly at times - is a scary and dangerous one to be fully submerged in. 

I don't want them to hate or actually fear psychedelics, I think that mentality may cause the experiences to have a certain dark flavor on its own, but I want these knights to respect what they are going into. I want them to go into this place with their faith in God on their side, knowing they are doing a quest to the benefit for every modern seeker. We need to know what is out there. I don't trust the scientists and the medical people to actually understand the depths of what they are dealing with. Psychedelics may have amazing medicinal properties and seen from a strictly scientific lens it may hold secrets to the "physical space" we are inhabiting that we can get some serious usage of. Sure to all this, but what I'm really interested in and frankly desperate for answers to is what the land of Lucy means when seen from a western spiritual view - well, distinctly from a christian perspective. 

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As of now Christianity is stuck in its way of calling everything it doesn't understand for demonic and/or evil and listen, dear brothers, psychedelics may be demonic but at the moment we simply don't know. Currently, psychedelics are djinnic in nature - in a spiritual sense its reign is both of the high and the divine as of the low and the chaotic, the only thing we know for certain is that psychedelics works as a proof for the dimension Christianity mainly cares about isn't pure fantasy and fiction. When materialists read the bible today some of them can salvage the content by assuming the experiencer of the more fantastical events were high as kites when it supposedly happened to them - for some this is identical to the stuff being hogwash but for some this is actually a great thing, because they have seen the same stuff themselves. The fantastical content of the Bible isn't irrelevant noise from a superstitious past, it's tellings and reports from a dimension we know is real. We can go there ourselves, today. 

This is why we as Christians, as hardened soldiers of Christ need to go out there and explore this specific dimension to its full. We have so many seekers in the modern world that will go there on their own and if the only response they get from the christian end is that they ought to contact narcotic anonymous when they are telling us what they are doing in search for the divine then the church is so offside that she deserves of being left in the dust when modernity moves on. Nay, we need our own answers, our own methodology, our own theories and doctrines on what the "land of Lucy" is all about. It's not enough to prudently, cowardly declare that "psychedelics is demonic stuff. Full stop.", to do so is an unloving act towards the humanity of the modern world and it is also stupid. God created this dimension, I'm sure he did, he may not dwell inside of it as much as one can feel that he does, but he is the author of everything going on there. Dear brothers of faith, we must dare to go there ourselves. 

If we don't even try, how can we ever dare to see Ripipip in the eyes when we finally reach the days when we are allowed to enter into the kingdom of Aslan?