This book is a deep dive into the definition of religion under the First Amendment in light of the sacramental consumption of entheogens, the nature of the primary religious/mystical experience effectuated through the sacramental consumption of entheogens, and the ever-developing historical record evidencing world-wide use of these sacraments in ancient times.
Ian Benouis, formerly a Blackhawk pilot in the War on Drugs, and currently a plant medicine activist, talks with an audience about his experiences of war and the pharmaceutical industry, and using natural psychedelics to heal trauma.
In this episode my guest is Ian Benouis who is a West Point graduate, former Blackhawk helicopter pilot, US Army officer and combat veteran who participated in Operation Just Cause in the Republic of Panama. He is an activist for the beneficial use of plant medicine, especially for veterans with PTSD. Ian is also a Muslim and a psychonaut.
Man’s been asking the question all along, does God create evil,
He didn’t have to create it-he just created people.
Everything that’s good in life comes from God’s merciful hand,
And everything that’s evil is done by the hand of man.
If Mecca is the supreme example of unity in diversity for Muslims, America is the Mecca for the world. That is why so many people make the pilgrimage to this country. America is the country where people of all religions, ethnic backgrounds, cultures and nationalities must demonstrate, by working in unison, that we are a community that improves the human condition and brings people closer together in harmony and unity, instead of contributing to more death, destruction and division. America is the country that can show the rest of the world that the most diverse nation on the planet with people who are different from one another in every conceivable way can live together in mutual respect and admiration and have a better society to show for its efforts. I believe that America is the last great social experiment of history and we the people are its subjects. I pray for the sake of all human kind that we are up to the challenge.
Horizons are apparent boundaries that constantly shift and eventually disappear entirely through an enlightening vantage point. What the sacred visionary plants do is they show the culturally conditioned boundaries that we have constructed to be pretty flimsy, arbitrary, manipulated and as always sold to the highest bidder. It is a mass consensual hallucination that if not maintained with sufficient attention and participation falls apart like a stock market crash or a bank run. This is the reason that corporations and governments are afraid of the teacher plant. It is the red pill. Once you take it you can still go back to the Matrix, but you can not ever unsee the Truth that you saw while under the effects of the medicine.
In his late 20s, Benouis said he went through a series of things that shook him up pretty seriously. First, he almost drowned while body surfing near Santa Cruz, which he said was a big deal for a kid who grew up in Hawaii. Then, he was deployed to Panama for Operation: Just Cause. Next, Benouis said his house was robbed and burned to the ground. And finally, his wife left him.
“I was like, ‘OK, God. You’re trying to get my attention,’” he said with a guffaw. “You’ve got it!”
Benouis picked up a Bible and other books about religion and spirituality. Eventually, he started reading the Quran and it made an impression on him quickly. “It wasn’t some particular passage,” Benouis said. But his sense was that the book was “clearly true.”
“I guess that kind of makes me a Muslim,” he remembered thinking.
Recently here in Texas Representative David Simpson a tea partier and conservative Christian published a blog post entitled: The Christian Case for Drug Law Reform in concert with his filing of a bill that would strike the word “Marihuana” from the Texas Criminal code. That inspired me to cover the same topic in Islam which I have been pondering for at least well basically for the entire time that I have been practicing Islam. Here goes:
Ian Benouis 