Humanity Is Not Sleeping; It’s In An Induced Coma

In the late 1960s, the sudden widespread availability of psychedelics combined with the circulation of eastern philosophy to the west to begin a radical transformation of human consciousness. Our species, desperate to transcend the residual trauma from two world wars and the existential terror of the nuclear age, began moving into a wildly unprecedented relationship with its capacity for abstract thought.

For the first time ever, humans began disentangling themselves from egoic consciousness on a mass scale, suddenly using thought as the useful tool it’s meant to be rather than the life-dominating addiction that it had become up until that point. World leaders not only permitted this transformation but actively facilitated it, realizing from their own encounters with this new revolution that humanity relinquishing its egoic mental constrictions opened up the possibility for the creation of paradise on earth.

As we became less egocentric, our values and interests changed. This led to changes in the way we vote, in the kinds of media we chose to consume, and in the kinds of ideas which were popularized.

This set the stage for the next level of human evolution in the arrival of the internet. For the first time in history humans were able to network their minds all around the world in real time, by the thousands, then by the millions, then by the billions. Our harmonious relationship with our inner world suddenly segued smoothly into the ability to develop a harmonious relationship with our outer world, no longer confined by space and time in sharing ideas and information with each other.

With clear minds networked in a truly democratic way we were quickly able to identify and solve all the remaining problems in our world, and we saw ourselves transitioning into a collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem which gave us all a quality of life that had been unimaginable up until a few decades ago.

Now, here in 2019, all human creativity and ingenuity goes toward finding new ways to help us survive and thrive and understand. Technological innovation, once mostly stagnated in the cognitive cul-de-sacs of figuring out new ways to exploit and dominate each other and commit more efficient acts of mass military violence, is now flourishing and expanding at an exponential rate. We have indeed created Heaven on earth together.

Oh,

but,

that was just a dream I had.

It could have gone down like that. There’s no reason it couldn’t have. Maybe in a parallel universe it did. But, here in this timeline, it didn’t.

Here in this timeline, the people in power wanted to remain in power thank you very much, even if it meant making life worse for everyone in the long run, including themselves.

Here in this timeline, we had all the medicine we needed to cure our sickness, but we were forbidden from using it.

Here in this timeline, plutocrats bought up all the media so they can tell us every day how important it is to continue bolstering the status quo, and that the only thing up for debate is what strategies we should use to do so.

Here in this timeline they got us dependent on money, and then devalued it to ensure that we’re working harder and harder for less and less so we have no time to expand our consciousness of our inner or outer worlds.

Here in this timeline psychedelics were made as illegal as heroin or cocaine, and their use was stigmatized as a dangerous activity for criminals and degenerates.

Here in this timeline, control of the internet was quickly shored up by plutocratic interests and government agencies, and traffic is now directed toward authorized platforms sharing authorized narratives which bolster the status quo and manufacture consent for establishment agendas.

Here in this timeline, we had all the tools to escape this prison, but they were taken from us and replaced with more prison bars. Taken by people who were more clever than the rest of us, and who had enough money and influence to shut the whole thing down.

For some weird reason I found myself watching a spiritual guru-type guy discussing his political views on a video yesterday, and, like most spiritual guru-type people, his view of our political reality was highly malnourished. He kept talking about how all our problems are the result of humanity being deeply unconscious, and how that unconsciousness leads us to elect deeply unconscious leaders. Like “elected leaders” are the ones calling the shots. No mention of plutocrats, opaque government agencies or propaganda; the only problem, according to spiritual guru-type guy, is that we’re all equally asleep at the wheel and all equally responsible for what’s going on.

Spiritual guru-type guy is wrong. Humanity is not sleeping. Humanity is in an induced coma.

If our society had simply been permitted to progress along its natural trajectory at a natural pace and to use the innovations that we’d discovered in a natural way, we would all be wide awake by now. The psychedelic revolution would have continued and matured and grown into adulthood instead of being murdered in its infancy, and our exponentially increasing ability to network and share information would have coupled with our mature consciousness to build a deeply awakened society that benefits every living creature on this planet. That would have happened, and it is only because of the unnatural interference of a very few deeply unwise people that we stayed locked in the matrix, now faced with the looming threat of near term human extinction.

This is a crime against humanity which far surpasses all of the most egregious atrocities in any history book. What these people have done to us, what they have taken from us, what they have twisted us into, is an offense so profoundly evil that it cries out to the heavens for vengeance.

The good news, if there is any to be had, is that there are still more of us than there are of them, and that all the tools they took from us are still there to be used if we care enough to take them back.

A woman once had an LSD trip in which she realized the illusory nature of the separate self, seeing clearly that she’d been living in a dream world her entire life up until that point. The effects of the entheogen wore off, and she convinced herself that it was just a pleasant drug high. She made herself forget it, plunged herself into her career, got a promotion, got a husband, got a nice two-story house in the suburbs at 4.5 percent interest, got some kids, and got plenty of stress but whatever there’s always wine.

Decades later, after finding nothing but suffering along her chosen life trajectory, she began thinking about that LSD trip she took way back when. She began wondering if maybe that strange, sacred experience had been real after all. If, maybe, it was the only real thing that had ever happened to her.

That’s kind of where our whole species is at right now. A door opened up in the sixties which was very quickly and violently slammed shut, and now there are independent flickerings all around the world of that strange, sacred light that still shines under the crack of that door. We still have the ability to open it up again. We’ve only got to want it enough.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/humanity-is-not-sleeping-its-in-an-induced-coma-aa5c141f3b17