There is a certain amount of physical discomfort with psychedelics, like a twisting feeling inside; a spring is being wound up to the breaking point. It is almost like being pushed slowly up a bumpy hill, but once you get to the top the ride drops into free-fall and the exhilaration begins. There is a cellular component to this, corresponding to changes in metabolism and smooth muscle contraction in response to the psychedelic chemical. These transitions correspond with sensations in the body, like feeling itchy or twitchy or anxious, and then suddenly shifting gears and feeling intensely light, sensual, groovy, and unburdened by discomfort. Sometimes music or the temperature in the room can bring about transitions, sometimes changing body position or taking deeper breaths can bring about transitions. Sliding between rapidly shifting states of discomfort and exhilaration can be like a roller coaster ride on psychedelics. To me, navigating those twists and turns with rhythm, breathing exercises, and melodic cues appear to be the origins of all shamanic technique and ritual.
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I think that human systems are inherently chaotic, and we create things like rituals and traditions and calendars to provide some recurring periodic stability to our culture. Over time these recurring periodic rituals grow into religions where the central dogma revolves around imposing peace and order in an otherwise chaotic or misguided world. And then you get civilization, which is moral order imposed through laws and brute force. And then you get commercialization, which is order imposed through repetitive marketing of products and belief systems with the promise of beauty, love, acceptance, wealth, and salvation. And then you get where we are now, the age of irony, which is post-commercial and based on tragicomic critique of the banality of our repetitive ordered systems. However, nobody "planned" the age of irony, it grew out of being constantly bombarded with empty religious, political, and commercial propaganda, and our growing awareness that society is little more than an ongoing mind game of manipulation and deceit. This can be described as something like a chaotic transition to higher awareness, but it is not something I see as a spiritual awakening or an evolution of consciousness, it is a transition in critical thinking about the nature of media and control. The age of irony is like a control-interrupt that allows us to step out of preconceived notions and expose the top-down rules of society for what they are – a group hallucination that we all buy into – and use that perspective to laugh about how we’re all stuck in it, make critiques about it, and formulate new paradigms. The age of irony is a stable convergence zone between ideological order and intellectual anarchy that grew out the chaos of runaway commercialization and propaganda. What comes next is more intense drumbeating seeking to overthrow critical irony with more elaborate promises and deceptions until one sticks and takes hold of the popular consciousness until the next transition.
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Keep in mind that any powerful transition in science and technology can be weaponized, and if it can be used as a weapon people will want to use it as a weapon. Until that essential truth is changed for all people for all time, any kind of radical new technology or evolution in culture is potentially dangerous. The linear boundaries that are dissolved may be the walls of your home in a blast of fire, or the tables in your bank’s database as hackers drain your account. No matter how much you embrace archetypes of death, birth trauma, or the apocalypse, being on the receiving end of crisis and apocalypse is not cool, nor does it guarantee any kind of transcendent rebirth. Some people wish for an apocalypse so the remnants of the human race can come together for a do-over at attaining utopia or the Garden of Eden. That is insane. The world doesn’t need or want apocalypse or utopia or a singularity or radical new developments, it just wants to get through the day without messing things up too badly. And, every once in a while, on nice days, we like to kick back and have a good time. Humans want simple things. It’s easy to forget enlightenment or the apocalypse when the sun is shining and we’re in good company. Leave the doom and gloom and radical futures to the talking heads trying to exert ideological control over your mind. Have a good laugh, rattle your bones, enjoy the ride.