Pinchbeck and Dante

Daniel Pinchbeck wrote the phenomenal book Breaking Open the Head, which cataloged his experiences on utilizing hallucinogenics to expand his consciousness and find meaning in the world.

Reading about his experience with the iboga root, which I'll write more about in subsequent posts, it felt very akin to Dante drinking from the waters of Lethe (forgetfulness) and then Eunoe (memory):

"....laid out before me was the entire, intricate process of my
self-development. The process was complex yet ultimately organic. The
extension of the self was, i realized, a natural process akin to the
blossoming of a plant. while a plant extends toward the sun throughout
its life, human beings evolve internally. we rise up and flourish, or
become stunted, involuted, as we react to the forces that press
against us. our growth takes place in the invisible realm of our
mental space, and the unreachable sun we rise toward is knowledge --
of the self and the universe...

by letting me perceive the shape of my past self, iboga also seemed to
be freeing me from the burden of that past...through iboga, i
recognized my existing self as the product of all the physical and
psychological forces that had acted upon me. yet there seemed to be
something beyond all of it, something that was "mine", an energy
projected from outside my biographical destiny. that energy was the
self -- and the self's tremendous capacity for transformation....

perhaps iboga opened a symbiotic link between plant and human, a
doorway for interspecies communication. but if that were so, who or
what was communicating from the other side?"
  -daniel pinchbeck, breaking open the head

Pinchbeck and Dante have mirror experience - both can see, and understand themselves, as a stranger examining the narrative of their own life.

As I'll talk about later, this past-self visualization, according to Pinchbeck, is what makes iboga so powerful in treating drug addiction. People have taken it and suddenly find their need for alcohol,  cocaine, or heroin vanished.

Personally, I also think it would possibly help with eating disorders.

Of course this treatment is illegal in the US. :-/

So how does this relate to Dante? Dante drinks from the Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness, and then in Purgatorio's last Canto he drinks from the Eunoe, the River of Memory.

As this was explained to me, by forgetting his sins and then remembering them, Dante can see himself without judgement. It is this understanding of his past with the eyes of an innocent that allows him to forgive himself his sins and look at himself the way the ever-forgiving Divine looks at him.

That final scene closes the second book of the Comedy as now Dante is ready to climb the heights of Paradise (interesting that here again is botanical imagery):

"If, Reader, I possessed a longer space
For writing it, I yet would sing in part
Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me;

But inasmuch as full are all the leaves
Made ready for this second canticle,
The curb of art no farther lets me go.

From the most holy water I returned
Regenerate, in the manner of new trees
That are renewed with a new foliage,

Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars."
 -Purgatorio