Brian C. Muraresku

-I am so glad i read this book now. I think i finally learned some things.
-love and knowledge mean less than what sex is in charge and whether you are on drugs
-The other assumption this makes is people believed in religions more in the past because they had drugs so they could see things. Go tell those people who speak in tongues they don't believe.
-We can spend our lives half thinking about things, really important things.
-What if all the catholics and those greeks all took some kind of drugs and got enlightened?
-Why do we want these things to be true? If it was true then what is he saying? That we could find that drug and then we could all take it and we would be happy? Were they happier back then? Why are there no new popular religions based on mushrooms or ayahuasca.
-So this guy wants to be the new Dan Brown only just like Dan Brown he isn't really a deep enough thinker to really even ask any good questions.
-If he really believed in the power of psychedelics why isn't he taking any? It isn't illegal in many situations. Does he really believe the old CIA trope that LSD will change you irreparably if you ever take it, unlike every other drug that ever existed.
-He is guilty of the most egregious of scientific errors right off the bat. He already knows what what the answer is and is trying to prove his point.
-He ends up with a cannibalistic drug cult run by women who eventually lose control all of it to men.
-He thinks drugs were always some forbidden thing. Like the romans must have been anti-drug.
-It is like the author is the one who has been most affected by the modern obsession with blaming and banning substances. Perhaps he should have tried some psychedelics at some point so he would know what he is talking about. Has there ever been a huge religion based on drugs?
-The only drug I have ever heard of that would remove your fear of death is ketamine. John C. Lilly used to say that ketamine removed your fear of death.
-This drug the early catholics took did the same thing as the mysteries but was easy to get and take. And also no one ever wrote down what it was and it was all totally forgotten and was never talked about. Somehow the way to make it or the substance itself was outlawed without that fact ever being recorded.
-This guy is conflating the weird right wing obsession with drugs as a way to change the world with the actual power of religions to change the world.
-The moonies are not doing drugs, the Scientologists and Mormons are not doing drugs. I can get some psychedelics in the mail without too much trouble. Tons more people are taking psychedelics these days but what is it changing.
-I think much more mysterious is how did the south americans discover ayahuasca which requires two ingredients for either to work. Like they raised corn from something you couldn't eat to something you could over many years. why would they do that?
-This guy is also one of those guys who essentially looks at everything through a single western lens which he thinks is shared by everyone.
-Does it look like the early christians discovered anything? Do they seem more enlightened? Did they write anything about it? Have they ever found any other substances at all in any of these early churches let alone the same psychoactive substance in a bunch of the churches.
-If there were numerous kinds of psychoactive wines or beers why can't we find any. Everyones looking.
-He is basically saying instead of community and love the basis of religion is drugs. So soon you you will be able to just take your spirituality in a pill.
-What drugs did the Buddhists use to become so wise?
-Look the US wins war WW2, Productivity soars, the population gets rich, everyone goes to college, people in power get worried about controlling the population now that people are getting educated. The government lets the right wing crack down on the liberals. The right wing puritanical weirdos in the CIA think drugs can be used to control people. Drugs were part of the then current liberal lifestyle. Drugs can be outlawed so they are. This current war on drugs continues to this day. The war on drugs is a powerful lobby entrenched within the people of power and they are able to control much of the media and demonize these substances. These substances gain an antigovernmental forbidden aura. People begin thinking drugs are the answer to everything but the government doesn't want them to know the truth.
-In secrets lies hope. There is some simple answer, there is something else. Even if all we do is sit home and watch tv we could suddenly come to know some secret truth that would change everything.
-In drugs lies hope. There is some substance out here that will solve all our problems even our own mortality. All we need to to do is consume it. In consumption lies transcendence.
-If you start with media themes you end with media themes. Is the media gonna save you. Are you just waiting for them to broadcast that one message that will save you? Is this book gonna save you? Is it gonna be an argument that saves you? Is there a place to go to, someone to meet, something to buy, something to learn, something to do one thing to take?
-People used to get off killing animals. Perhaps we should bring that back Animal sacrifice is a thing that happened all over the world for many many cultures. Animal sacrifice was part of many religions. Do we really think that killing animals did anything good for those people?
-The most important thing is why do you want this book to be true? What does it prove for you?
-They had poppies back then? they have always had poppies all over the place. No society was destroyed by this. Outlawing it only made it worth huge amounts of money.
-What about China? Are there no psychoactive substances in China?
-Ritual, secret ritual, these things are powerful. Think of the Masons and the oddfellows or any religion ever. People can be organized powerfully by ritual. Is there a special Mason drug?
-No one is taking any drugs today that would serve the purposes of the early christians. It would have to be something like LSD,DMT, Ayahuasca or mushrooms if it was going to be a drug that changes the way you see the world. There would have to be a secret plant or a secret chemical knowledge that no one has ever seen.
-Going through a severe flu can give you altered consciousness too.
-What about choking during sex I hear that is pretty fun. Does that altered state make you believe in god. Does it make you think the world is different than it was before.
-The part where they say people died taking the eucharist. If he wants to take it literally poisoned or bad food would be more likely to kill people than some drug everyone had been taking for years. The Alcohol would have sterilized the drinks so it would likely not be that.
-When the women were supposedly in charge is there any evidence that things were somehow better. Was everybody(who also apparently thought the end of the world was coming) just happy campers.
-You can go do the drugs now. Better drugs. Much better more extreme drugs. People are saying they are having spiritual experiences on them. Just what is the point this guy is making.
-Everybody in america grows up thinking this conspiracy theory. I did. Once you do mushrooms you wonder. But if you really think about it it doesn't really add possibilities to you personally. It only ends up being a story about those in power having secret knowledge that they have always been hiding from us.
-This idiot walks around thinking he knows something that none of these other people know. He teaches the people working at the museums all his new knowledge.
-This guy says he thinks the church covered up the actual church yet he still goes to church. This guy think hallucinations bring you closer to god but then he never takes any hallucinogens.
-When a weird idea like this comes up 70 or 80 years ago and nothing else has really ever come to light since then to really prove it you have to wonder.
-When you have to go back and retranslate things to make them mean something no one has ever thought they meant you have to wonder. Especially when you are a person who is looking for proof of what you already know.
-Somehow there is some information in the vatican that if known it would destroy it. Of course the current "secret archive" librarian is totally happy letting him look at whatever he wants.
-Apparently all the times people have looked for the drug stuff(and they have) throughout history and then published it Yet still no one has ever found a hallucinogen or any recipes for drugs that would cause them.
-No one is abusing any of the drugs he is talking about yet there a tons of others that they do. I think this is the best proof that he is full of it.
-He is trying to link the ill defined gnostics with the ill defined witches all of whom have completely lost all their most important knowledge apparently.
-the reality TV vibe becomes extremely cloying.
-Ok so all the cathers were witches.
-apparently there was a frog that gave hallucinations but it doesn't exist anymore.
-Given the logic of this book you will either end up less logical(if you accept it) or disappointed by the whole idea to begin with.
-Near the end of the book he sums up all of his "evidence" and begins to talk like he proved something. It is infuriating.… (altro)