David Luke "The Third Eye"

Tähenduse teejuhid (Maps of Meaning) is an Estonian language monthly newspaper that is distributed with the country's largest daily Postimees. The first issue came out in September 2020. The centre of gravity of each number is a ca 4000-word interview. We have been fortunate enough to converse with (in the order of appearance) David Fuller, Charles Eisenstein, Merlin Sheldrake, Jeremy Narby, Jules Evans, Richard Tarnas, Rupert Sheldrake, Mark Vernon, David Abram, Matthew Fox, Paul Kingsnorth, Regina Hess, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, Kyriacos Markides, David Lorimer, David Luke and Dean Radin. While a couple of these interviews have already been made public on this channel, the most of them have appeared only in the newspaper. In this English language playlist we shall make them public for the first time. We start with the spring season of 2023. The interview with David Luke, an associate professor of psychology form University of Greenwich, appeared in the 33rd issue of TT. Here are seven highlights from this interview. The first comes from my brief introduction, the other are direct quotes.
1. „The pivot of the modern predicament is epistemological, and it is here that we should look for an opening,“ writes USA cultural historian Richard Tarnas in „The Passion of the Western Mind“, the Estonian translation of which will be available in the bookshops already this summer. In the epilogue of his book Tarnas refers to Gregory Bateson’s „double bind“ - the impossibly problematic situation where mutually contradictory messages from the mother lead a child to become schizophrenic.
2. Perspectivistic epistemology departs from the assumption that if we want to know and understand something, we should become that thing. That is participatory epistemology. When Indians in the Amazon want to learn about the medical properties of a certain plant, they meditate with this plant for a period of time, taking ayahuasca with a piece of the bark or leaves of the plant mixed in it. In this way they try to understand its personality and healing possibilities. This type of extreme subjectivism is in many ways a complete opposite of Western epistemology.
3. The weeks passed by, there were no signs of children. On the 39th day a local shaman was called upon who drank ayahuasca and with the help of the brew found the lost minors. The military technology was not helpful in this situation, the problem demanded different epistemology. What is most astonishing about this story is not that it happened, for things like these happen all the time with indigenous people. The most astonishing thing is that this got published in the mainstream media. That’s the truly remarkable thing here.
4. When Kary Mullis was asked whether he would have discovered the PCR technique without the LSD, he answered: probably not. In broader perspective our ordinary waking state of consciousness is good for doing replications and lab work but it does not make us necessarily good innovators and discoverers. There is a difference between divergent and convergent thinking. Psychedelics enhance divergent thinking.
5. In a recent experiment done in Johns Hopkins University subjects were given DMT which is a very potent psychedelic that compresses the several-hour ayahuasca experience into ten minutes. A few people described it a bit like being punched in the back of the head by God. The other people encountered beings who, in their words, were more real than the objects of our everyday reality. The scientists were interested to what extent this experiment affected the metaphysical beliefs of the participants.
 
6. We may never understand the true nature of reality and that may not necessarily matter too much. There is no doubt, however, that our beliefs guide our behaviour, and our current blind, materialist paradigm is bankrupt. I think we should be open to the possibility that indigenous people have some wisdom in their relationship with nature. They have a reciprocal rapport with their natural environment and do not engage in rabid extractivism. We have been brought to the brink of ecological collapse by our epistemology and ontology, not theirs.
7. Huxley maintained that the brain is not a producer of consciousness, it is more of a filter of consciousness which narrows down the conscious experience for us. Otherwise we would be so overwhelmed by experiencing the ground being that we could not go to work or get on a bus or tie our shoelaces for that matter. The brain acts like a reducing valve, which allows just a small segment of reality to pass. Psychedelics - like mescaline, which he first tried - turn off this valve and give you closer access to the ultimate reality.