Alternative Metaphysics
by Peter J Carroll

Philosophy often seems like a dead issue to most people, and even Wittgenstein reportedly quipped that 'philosophy leaves everything as it is', after spending a lifetime on it. Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that studies 'being' and what we can know in principle, often attracts the greatest derision as mere empty speculation. In theory, metaphysics stands above mere physics (the study of the material world) and thus it structures what we can know through physics. In practice, physics has achieved astonishing things whilst metaphysics has gone nowhere. However I will argue that we have ignored metaphysics only because we have not needed to change it for several centuries but that now we approach a revolution in the subject.

Philo-sophy means word-wisdom in Greek, however very few philosophers have dared to question the assumptions built into the words they use. Words fail to express some types of thoughts, but worse, some words allow invalid concepts to exist. In using words as the units of thought philosophers have overlooked something quite astonishing. What they missed showed up in mathematics. Specifically it showed up in the maths which describe the quantum physics on which this universe runs. Basically this shows that nothing 'is' anything else, and nothing 'is' even itself. It means nothing for example, to say that an electron 'is' a particle or that an electron 'is' a wave The entire category of 'being' has no actual reality at all, it just arises out of poor observation and sloppy thinking. No-'thing' stands still in a state of 'being'. Reality consists of dynamic events only.

Whenever we say that something 'is' anything else, we really mean that an event exhibits a behavior in particular circumstances or frames of reference. In every case a statement of 'is-ness' represents a kind of useful shorthand, although it always conceals a loss of information. We can never actually observe anything in a state of 'being'. Even an apparently immobile object consists of a maelstrom of internal activity and energy exchanges with its environment. Stopping this activity would actually obliterate the event and the 'object' would cease to exist.

Now we pay an enormous price for the convenience of having the verb 'being' in our languages. It makes it too easy to believe things which have no basis in our actual experience. It more or less forces us to believe that we ourselves have a 'being' somehow separate in some way from the body and its doings, or, even more nonsensically, that we 'are a being'. This leads to the silly questions of what happens to 'beings' when they cease to do, (i.e., die), where does 'being' come from, and what about possible 'higher' or more powerful 'beings'? Most traditional occultism depends on the idea that you can interact with the 'being' or 'essence' in all sorts of animate and inanimate phenomena. From a simple fault in language, mighty stupidities have grown to confuse us.

Language though, only accounts for half of the main illusion under which we labour.

Neuroscience can now demonstrate quite simply and convincingly what the philosopher Hume first articulated in the west, what many Buddhists have known for millennia, and what some have seen on heroic doses of LSD. The 'self' of which we think we consist, and which we regard as the font of our 'being' and our thoughts and acts, does not really fulfill such a role at all. We think and act quite automatically on the basis of acquired or innate patterns of thought and behavior (or sometimes just randomly), and then within a measurable fraction of a second of having done so, a particular part of the brain usually identifies with the action and claims responsibility for it. In other words, the 'me' or the 'I' that we subjectively feel that we consist of, does not actually initiate thought or action at all! This sometimes becomes apparent as a result of meditation, but with a few carefully placed electrodes it becomes disturbingly obvious.

Perceptive Buddhists priests have, in the main, kept pretty quiet about the enlightenment of no-self. The doctrine has proved understandably unpopular and tends to lead to widespread unauthorized suicide. Despite that the realisation of the illusory nature of the 'self' forms a core part of the original Buddhist enlightenment, the majority of popular sects have marginalised or disguised this doctrine. Many Buddhist sects even have elaborate doctrines of reincarnation, although the specification of exactly what reincarnates remains suspiciously vague.

So why do virtually all humans have a false but overwhelmingly strong subjective sense of 'self'? Well it has a huge survival value for a start. Few people can hold any sort of a life together without the illusion that they consist of some sort of unity despite the multiplicity and unpredictability of much of their actual thought and behavior. Thus the hardwired neuroprogram of 'self' acts in a very similar way to the software linguistic program of the verb 'being'. Both act as convenient shorthand, but both impose false preconditions upon our understanding of reality. The subjective experience of the 'self' leads all too easily to the theory of the soul, especially when mixed with the concept of 'being'. This opens the floodgates to any desired amount of irreality and wishful thinking.

In discarding the concepts of 'being' and 'self' we also dispose of the theory of spirits and immaterial 'beings' and the Neoplatonic/Animist ideas of 'essence' which underlie so much of religious and occult thought and practice. We also have to abandon the idea of free will. To some people this does not look like a very promising start for a New Magical Paradigm. However, a closer look reveals that it can lead to a much leaner, fitter, meaner, more interesting, and more credible magical paradigm which has acquired the name of Chaos Magic.

If all the gods and spirits and daemons do not exist as the 'gaseous vertebrates' that previous generations seem to have imagined, then the phenomena which they cause must arise from something else instead. We know that the mind consists of many more or less autonomous systems including the 'self' and that in extreme cases it can create multiple personalities with selective amnesia about each other. We also know that parapsychology can occur occasionally. Thus it seems more logical and more fun to conclude the obvious, that humanity has always made its gods and daemons and spirits whilst pretending that it didn't. So from now on we can actually manufacture deities and daemons and spirit servitors to our own designs, tastes and needs, by the requisite investment of belief.

(For technical details see my books and CDs).

If free will does not exist, then our thoughts and actions must arise from all the capabilities that we have either inherited at birth or have acquired as skills during life. When we think or act in ways unpredicated by either, then we have acted randomly.

The illusion of free will works like this, when humans find themselves in a situation in which all the innate and acquired logical and emotional reasons for acting on one of two or more alternatives balance out, then pure chance decides the resulting action. However once the action has occurred, the 'self' identifies with it and claims it as its own. Well this usually happens, but if the outcome proves too disagreeable the 'self' may attempt to dissociate itself from itself. And yes that makes no sense, and it often causes strange malfunctions.

Personally I do not miss having a belief in free will. My 'self' has learned to enjoy the surprises that my capacity to act randomly throws up. When thinking, I often combine ideas randomly to see if anything interesting comes out of it, if it does, my 'self' tends to feel elated, but as a number of frequent thinkers have realised, ones 'self' does not actually do the thinking. The realisation that ideas and inspiration do not come from within the 'self' or the 'I' or the 'Me' or whatever you want to call it, has led virtually all mystics and many schizophrenics to assume the existence of spirits. It has also fooled most occultists.

Now in the absence of free will, the exercise of intent in life and in magic in particular becomes a much more sophisticated activity both in theory and on a practical level. We never actually act out of Will. The subjective experience of will or willpower arises merely out of conflicts between various fears and desires and real or imagined limitations. It has nothing to do with what we actually end up doing. Most of our apparently chosen actions result from trickery; they arise because one set of mental programs has tricked another set into submission. Hypnosis provides a rather extreme example of this process at work, but we all spend a lot of time having various parts of our minds hypnotising other parts. As social animals we also spend a lot of time trying to hypnotise other people into believing us, or agreeing with us, or complying with our wishes.

What we call 'will' actually means achieving a unity of desire, and we achieve that through the learned skills of Sleight of Mind. Those people who have a strong 'will' have simply acquired a lot of skill at deceiving conflicting fears and desires into submission. They often achieve much but the process can get out of hand and end up negating basic survival programs. 'Weak willed' people have simply not acquired this skill, so one whim or fear or desire just takes over from another in rapid succession and they fail to maintain any course of action for long, but this often keeps them out of serious trouble.

Magicians use enhanced Sleight of Mind techniques on themselves as a deliberate cheat. Successful magicians have always done this but in a rather haphazard fashion without really understanding why. Chaos Magic provides the theory and the technology to systematically exploit it. For extended practical suggestions see my books, but the trick works something like this: Take a whim, any whim, and I say 'whim' disparagingly because nobody ever has an entirely wholehearted desire completely unfettered by doubt or conflicting thoughts. Symbolise the whim somehow, and then use physiological techniques to either whip up the whole mind and body into an extraordinary frenzy or to plunge the mind and body into deep trance. Having achieved that, concentrate upon the pre-prepared symbol and you may achieve a parapsychological or a deep psychological effect out of all proportion to what ordinary wishing or 'willing' can achieve.

Enhanced Sleight of Mind has many advantages over more traditional methods involving the so-called 'Will'. With sleight of mind you can even conjure successfully for things that you have no particular personal commitment to, without first spending a lot of time trying to summon the commitment by a tedious process of repeated small sleights of mind.

Now nobody yet has a cast iron theory of exactly how unity of desire translates from a mental state into a parapsychological effect on the outside world. On the other hand nobody yet has a cast iron theory about how the so-called physical laws of the universe get enforced over time and distance either. However I strongly suspect that a breakthrough on a metaphysical level could supply an answer in both cases. In discarding the concept of 'being' we should also replace the idea of all tenses of it with something more dynamic.

The ideas that anything 'was' in the past, and that anything 'will be' in the future now begin to look very questionable. Most people now accept a probabilistic future but they still cling to the idea that there really 'was' a singular past. Quantum physics now confirms suspicions aroused by retroactive enchantment. The past has no more of a fixed nature than does the future. In fact with quantum optics you can actually do small scale retroactive enchantment reliably every time. You can change the pasts. Here we encounter profound metaphysical implications, for probabilistic pasts and futures strongly suggest that time has three dimensions rather than just one. Multiple pasts and futures lie sideways in time.

Three dimensional time explains a great deal about how magical/parapsychological events can occur and it also solves many of the conceptual problems in quantum physics. It also changes our ideas about 'being' completely and it sets new horizons to what we can in principle know about reality.

Metaphysical assumptions underlie all attempts to understand reality. Most physicists derisively ignore metaphysics precisely because they already have a fixed metaphysic and they do not want to alter it. Three-dimensional time would mean a new metaphysic that might just explain a whole raft of mysteries in science and in magic, and it might just unify both subjects.

n a 1966 Playboy interview, Timothy Leary said that LSD was the most powerful aphrodisiac ever discovered, and that---under the proper conditions---women could literally have thousands of orgasms in a single evening while on it. Tim later admitted that he was exaggerating a bit, but anyone who has ever had sex on acid knows that he wasn't really exaggerating all that much. Wide-eyed trippers rave about timeless sessions of exquisitely heightened sex. Making love under the influence of a psychedelic may be one of the most extraordinary experiences that human beings are capable of.

Psychedelic drugs and plants can dramatically amplify physical sensations and greatly dilate our sense of time. Because they increase our sensitivity to sensory stimuli, and elastically stretch each moment, these mind-expanding substances can heighten sexual sensations enormously.

Psychedelics can also amplify emotional connections, dissolve personal boundaries, and deepen interpersonal bonds, making sex a much more meaningful and multi-dimensional experience. In the proper environment, psychedelic lovers can be transported to heavenly realms beyond description. In the best of situations, this can actually become a truly sacred event, a genuine mystical or religious experience.

Why is Marijuana so Popular?

Many people say that they smoke marijuana before sex because it enhances their erotic experience, and this aspect of the controversial plant's use may play a significant role in its popularity. I've certainly found this to be the case. Having sex when I'm high is much more pleasurable than when I'm not. For me, marijuana acts as a mild psychedelic. It enhances my senses, heightens my imagination, and during its initial phase it often makes me horny.

Although my orgasms on marijuana are considerably more intense, the actual desire to orgasm is substantially decreased. I have much greater sensitivity when I'm high, and the feelings are significantly elongated, so I enjoy each moment of the experience more. There is no desire to rush into orgasm and end the rapture. When I close my eyes during cannabis-heightened love-making, my interior world is filled with brightly-lit visions. There is also a sacred aspect to these shamanic unions. I feel great feelings of reverence during my marijuana highs, and this tends to make my sexual experience much more holy.

What Does It Feel Like To Have Sex on LSD?

The sexual encounters that I've had on LSD have been among the most incredible experiences of my life. I've had ecstatic experiences with my lovers on acid, where our bodies completely melted, our minds totally merged, and our orgasms continued for (what seemed like) hours on end. LSD tends to make me extremely horny, and I will generally have between ten and fourteen orgasms on trips where my sexual desire is given free reign.

A common experience that I have had while making love under the influence of LSD is that my partners lose their individuality. I no longer feel as though I'm making love to a single woman, but, rather, to all women. Looking into my lover's face while I'm tripping I see a stream of archetypal faces, a morphing cascade of women of all ages, races and cultures. Her face shifts with each heartbeat, from African princess to Babylonian whore to cackling old woman. Then she's a wild teenage girl, my mother, or a stream of haggardly witches and beautiful goddesses.

Sometimes it seems as though I am ALL MEN making love to ALL WOMEN. On higher doses I feel as though I'm making love to the entire web of life, to the whole universe, or to God. Boundaries completely blur, and eventually dissolve entirely. One simply becomes (as a girlfriend once put it) "DNA with eyes". This genetically-centered awareness allows lovers to transcend their individual identities and merge with the larger life process.

Apparently this is a rather common experience, as I've spoken with many other people who have had similar identity dissolutions on LSD or psilocybin mushrooms with their lovers. (Mushrooms never made me feel particularly horny, and they make it difficult for me to orgasm, so my sexual experiences with them have been limited.)

The Post-Orgasm Bliss of MDMA

I've spent whole evenings cuddling with my previous girlfriend on MDMA, looking into her eyes and stroking her face in the candlelight. However, I've never actually felt like having sex while I'm peaking on MDMA, and the few times that I actually did try, I found it difficult to achieve an erection and nearly impossible to orgasm.

But, for me, the MDMA experience itself feels very similar to the way that I normally feel for those few precious moments of pure contentment right after the peak of an orgasm---only it lasts for hours. Pure bliss and pure love. No desire in the world, except to continue to savor the sensory fullness of each euphorically exquisite moment. The enhanced communication, increased empathy, and strong feelings of love that MDMA fosters can add incredible depth to the love-making that often comes at the end of an MDMA trip.

Ketamine and Alien Sex

I never really got very horny, or much spiritual enhancement from ketamine, although I have heard that other people have had those types of experiences with it. However, the times that I had sex on low doses of ketamine were often quite amazing because of their extraordinary strangeness, as well as the perceived telepathy that my lover and I experienced. Although the anesthetic properties of this unusual hallucinogen significantly reduced my sensitivity to physical sensations, I enjoyed these experiences immensely, and a number of them were fictionalized in my science fiction novels.

Once, when I was tripping on a fairly high dose of ketamine (90 mg) with a girlfriend, I found myself in an X-rated science fiction movie. I was making love to a creature that had thousands of tentacles and many bizarre alien appendages. We were underwater in a small arena, and I was also such a creature myself. After making love as this alien creature for what seemed a good while, I suddenly snapped back into my human form, and found myself in the process of making love to my girlfriend. I was completely shocked; I had totally forgotten that I was a human being.

Psychedelics and Masturbation

I've also found that marijuana and LSD can add new dimensions to the process of masturbation. Besides heightening physical sensations, psychedelics amplify the imagination to an uncanny degree. Because of this, these substances allow solitary sexual satisfaction to reach new heights of pleasure. I have experienced some amazing states of ecstasy all by myself, tripping on visions of making love to angels and porn stars, that all but turned to flesh before my eyes, they seemed so real.

One woman even told me that she actually preferred masturbation to sex when she was tripping. "I had many consecutive orgasms on LSD, but its more challenging. I find it easier to masturbate on LSD than to have sex with another person, because there are so many things to be distracted by," she said.

Making Love to God

Perhaps most significantly, I've had sexual experiences on psychedelics that have been profoundly meaningful, deeply spiritual, and suffused with feelings of divine love. There are extremely deep, multilayered levels of soul-to-soul connection that two people can experience while on psychedelics that seem to go beyond the boundaries of our current lifetimes. It has appeared as though I have known my lover over many lifetimes, or forever.

There have also been times where I truly could not distinguish where my body ended and my lover's body began. Other times it seemed as though my partner and I became a single being, and our erotic exchange became simply an elaborate form of masturbation. It was as though we were God making love to herself, and all of the cosmos was in a state of sexual ecstasy.

Many times on LSD I've seen a reflection of (what appears to be) the deepest aspect of myself in my partner's eyes, a smiling recognition of our mutual divinity. When we share these types of experiences with our lovers they become deeply imprinted onto our nervous systems, and usually create extremely strong and lasting bonds.

Forbidden Knowledge and Ancient Secrets

Naturally, my experiences with sex and psychedelics got me interested in Tantra, the ancient Indian system of sexual yoga. Over the years, I have become fairly well-acquainted with basic Tantric practices, and have gotten to know a number of people in the Tantric community. This sensual and spiritual community incorporates consciousness-raising sexuality into their daily religious practice. From spending time with these people I learned that it is not uncommon for practitioners of Tantra to incorporate psychedelic plants, such as cannabis or magic mushrooms, into their sacred rituals.

Although the ritualistic mixing of sex and psychedelics is ancient---and openly discussed in the writings of iconoclastic philosophers like Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson---the psychopharmacological techniques for activating higher states of sexual consciousness remain unknown by most people, and they are often kept secret from early initiates of Tantra. Techniques for enhancing sexual rituals with sacred plants are rarely mentioned in popular books on Tantra or in Tantra workshops.

This important omission is deliberate. It's due to the fact that it requires a good bit of training to handle the enormous amount of energy that a Tantric-psychedelic session can generate. Tantric sex can be quite intense on its own, and that may be more than enough for most people who are interested in exploring Tantra. Not everyone can handle shivering in ecstasy for hours while their partner's face is melting.

The omission of psychedelics is also largely due to the fact that most people in the Tantric community are aware that the idea of a sexually-based spirituality is controversial enough for most people. Mixing sex and religion elicits strong taboos in many people. Making it widely known that, many of those same people who are mixing sex and religion, are also using "Schedule 1 drugs", may not be the wisest way to gain societal acceptance during a time in history when sacred plants are regarded as forbidden fruit by the Puritanical overlords of society. So their secrecy is understandable.

However, since it can be quite emotionally risky to mix sex and psychedelics if one isn't properly prepared, perhaps a more open discussion of these experiences would be beneficial. Since nothing is going to stop people from mixing sex with just about every substance imaginable, and since the emotional consequences of these experiences can be so extreme, openly sharing our experiences with one another is probably a good idea.

This is one of the reasons that Annie Sprinkle and I are currently working on a book about sex and drugs, with an emphasis on psychedelics. We are collecting anecdotes for the book, and are eager to receive submissions. Please send us any interesting experiences that you have had combining sex with a psychoactive drug, regardless of whether it was positive or negative. Be sure to include written permission to quote from your experience in our book, and let us know if you wish to remain anonymous or not.