#thomknoles

August 8th, 2013 Los Angeles Knowledge Meeting in Santa Monica WHAT YOU REALLY DESERVE The True Story of Karma. It's better than you think. You do actually deserve the best. 

Another beautiful explanation from my teacher Thom Knoles. Grab a cuppa, sit back and relax while you listen.

September 14, 2014 Los Angeles Knowledge Meeting @ Skirball Center Life Without Fear: Cultivating Personal Invincibility To harness the constructive aspects of change requires higher consciousness. 

Alex Grey is an incredibly talented visionary artist from Ohio and this is his TEDx talk. He speaks of his own personal evolution as an artist and how it mimics the evolution of consciousness. The artist as a vehicle for Divine consciousness to be expressed in the physical world is a beautiful image in itself. His talk is a really interesting look into the world of Grey and his journey - what he has learnt as an artist over time and the conclusions he has come to. Namely that there is only one thing (consciousness - tick) and we are all interconnected in a network type of web (collective consciousness - tick) and that the ultimate goal is unity with that highest aspect of our self (self-realisation - tick).

What I'm not promoting here is the use of drugs to elicit this state of 'Divine Vision.' Experiencing higher states or visions is actually a by-product of de-exciting the mind and expanding your state of consciousness. Below is my teachers response when I asked him a while back what the effect of taking hallucinogenic drugs would have on my state of consciousness and more importantly their effect (positive or negative) on my evolution and expansion into higher states of consciousness. Watch the VIDEO then enjoy the KNOWLEDGE. 

Here's how drugs all work, and how they may cause temporary illumination, but at the cost of lockdown from illumination.

In the wall of certain cells is embedded a sophisticated bio-device known as 'a receptor'. Each receptor is specific to receive very specific molecules that are produced in the body. There are receptors that interpret drugs (hereafter known as "exogenous molecules") to be a command to create super normal sensory perception or expansive consciousness states. These same receptors took millions of years to evolve into the status that our bodies are today, as passed down by our parents from our ancient ancestors.

When drugs such as Dimethyltryptamine (DMT, as found in ayahuasca or a dealer's test tube), or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, from cannabis), or Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), or heroin, or morphine, etc. enter the body, their specific effect is caused by the fact that their molecular shape adequately mimics (or 'counterfeits') the molecular shape of certain proteins and peptides, known as "endogenous neurotransmitters" (brain chemicals) that are released as a by-product after transcendence or celestial awareness has already been attained by the mind.

Either a drug (exogenous molecule) or neurotransmitter molecule (endogenous) in proximity to a cell will trigger the cells' appropriate receptors to capture the molecule and dock it. Then the molecule is "read" by the cell and the body is commanded to respond with super heightened sensory perceptual capability.

The molecules that are produced endogenously (the neurotransmitters) are the product (after-effect, or epiphenomenon) of an already-attained heightened consciousness state that was caused by the mind learning how to go beyond; the neurotransmitter simply is triggering the body to participate with heightened sensory/perceptual capacity to correspond with an already-attained mental phenomenon; the body's reaction, though it can be ecstatic, does not inform the mind of anything new: the body is gifted with super subtle sensory data to verify and validate the pre-existing mental experience. In other words, the mind, having informed itself experientially, in order to complete its perspective, then triggers a physiological chemical reaction that allows the body's senses to experience subtlety. 

Counterfeit molecules, "drugs" (exogenous molecules), are mistaken by cells' receptors to be endogenous neurotransmitters so that cells respond with causing the senses to awaken into super-subtle sensory perception. But the mind has not learned first and created molecules second. Regardless of this, the body goes into super-subtle sensory data detection mode, but the mind is left without a mental framework to interpret completely or to put into perspective the super-subtle data now being brought in by the senses.  

Using exogenous molecules, the surprise subtle perceptions can be stressful. This is unlike the subtle perceptions resulting from endogenous neurotransmitters, which come along after the mind expansion has already occurred and are accompanied by the molecule-cocktail of a de-excited state (e.g., meditation).

The receptors that capture and read all candidate molecules -- be those exogenous molecules or endogenous molecules -- were not evolved over millions of years to capture and read the exogenous counterfeit molecules. The receptors are design-specific to capture and read the endogenous neurotransmitters.

Indeed, unless the animal (human) HAS the receptors designed to receive these certain endogenous molecules, then, interestingly, even if the exogenous molecule is injected in doses that would be lethal to a human, the exogenous molecule (LSD, THC, DMT, etc.) will have NO EFFECT on the organism.  For example, goannas have no receptors for LSD (or, properly speaking, for its endogenous model), so you can inject a goanna with as much LSD as you like and it will not respond with altered behaviour.

In a human, exogenous molecules' (DMT, LSD, THC) shape is imperfect for the receptor.  After all, they are counterfeit and not the real molecule for which the receptor was designed by millions of years of evolution.  Consequently, exogenous molecules get "stuck" in the receptor, then block the docking of a legitimate, endogenous neurotransmitter, should one of these appear.

When our endogenous molecules are blocked at the receptor level so that naturally-occurring molecules cannot dock into their receptors due to those receptors being filled by stuck counterfeits, we pee out the legitimate endogenous molecules. Our bladders and other urinary conduits are lined with other receptors that audit the loss of precious endogenous chemistry. Once loss is detected, the body's endogenous bliss-chemistry factory shuts down in order to save precious building-blocks.  

You see, under the effect of exogenous counterfeits, the body receives the impression that all available cells are filled with endogenous "bliss chemistry" so that no more need be produced.  With no endogenous bliss chemistry production (where we need a certain minimal amount), our body turns enthusiastically demandingly to its only known source: the exogenous counterfeit chemistry that triggers uninterpretable super-subtle sensory data but in return for which the mind learns nothing except its body's super subtle perceptions and has these experiences without a context in which to place them, and then craves more, in order, futilely, to understand what was experienced. This process becomes "addiction".

When we meditate regularly and let go of drug induced experiences, we achieve something that makes meditation alone far superior to meditation-slowed-by-drugs.

It is true that mind and body are related, but there IS a sequence: consciousness (mind) is primary and body follows, printing out whatever the mind becomes. During meditation, the mind gradually builds an experiential framework of access to baseline transcendence; the unknown becomes The Known. Next, one builds familiarity with perpetually-manifesting celestial phenomena at the layer from which the unmanifest consciousness/matter fountainhead incessantly is manifesting the world. The important thing here is that consciousness is coming before matter. The brain's own endogenous bliss chemistry TRANSMITS the mind's experiences to the body, allowing the body to catch up upon what the mind already knows how to repeat.

Conversely, exogenous molecule use (meaning ALL exogenous molecules, including Ayahausca and cannabis and their plant-sourced cousins, heroin and other opium-poppy derivatives, and, of course, laboratory-synthesized happy chemicals) can cause addiction.  In addition, exogenous molecule use gives no knowledge or guarantee of repeatability. This should be clear from the fact that it is difficult-to-impossible to name an iconic person who attained the highest states of enlightenment by blazing doobies, or even by guzzling Ayahausca; certainly we have no record of the Heroin Method of Gaining Enlightenment. Repeatability and familiarity of the experience of transcendence/celestial awareness brings about stable enlightenment with sustainable biochemistry.

Once your mind goes to its source spontaneously and effortlessly to inform itself of cosmic structure, your brain manufactures supreme molecules, molecules far superior to the exogenous molecules of any plant or laboratory on earth (or other planets).  

It never ceases to amaze me that people think that a body-led experience can drag the mind into enlightenment. Placing matter before consciousness is one of the classic errors described by every spiritual tradition on earth. Consciousness is primary; molecules are secondary.