More books (by now YOU PEOPLE have figured out this blog isn't for you; it's just my Net notebook):
as usual, this is mostly stream of consciousness. I WILL I"H organize things into potentially-fruitful
structures for Graduate work/publishing purposes, or performance art maybe (;-)

-Mammoth book of oddballs and eccentrics by karl shaw
-Disapearing Cryptography by Wayner
-Hidden Dimension by Edward Hall
-Social Life of Information by John Brown
-Emergence of Everything by Morowitz
-something by this guy Cliffor Pickover, don't know what yet. Seems interesting. You know, I don't know what "interesting" really means within the System of this Blog, as if (I think emergence works something like this), the definition in this sort of "intelligent" context is generated by the usage, "Interesting" would mean "something that I won't get around to").

So since noone seems to read this, I won't be writing much. I'd like to say that I won't write at all until there are some comments. But I need to think out loud outside the Yeshiva. Complexity and emergence are very much interesting me (and will continue to do so until I figure out what those words really mean), along with the usual issues of interdimensional/intradimensional taxonomy (a subject which I'm sure all of you are familiar with), stegonography, "nesting" (whatever that is), how we form the systems we systemize from (language, body language, Operating Systems, unconcious systems/maps, etc), self-organization (especially with Holmes Rolston, Michael Poole/Richard Dawkins debate and lhavdil Ramban,
and others in mind), ecology, ecosystems and information/knowledge/wisdom, literacy, illiterati, esoteric/exoteric models, "holoarchy" (something apparently that Ken Wilber said up and against more historically reputable/disreputable "hier-archical" cosmological models)..all of a sudden, I'm enveloped in the infamous "cloud of uncaring", and I want to ramble about popular science fans and the scientists who are loved by them; there is a real gulf between the former and the latter; aren't the fans interested in say, what the scientists themselves might be interested in? Who are their favorite authors, musicians, etc? What are THEY fans of in other words? I wonder from this, how knowledge from on High is disseminated into the universe (R. Tzadik haCohen of Lublin from "Orthodox Forum" essays, B. Naor's "lights of prophecy", rav Kook, etc), and the way it reproduces once it gets here. The fans generate their "own" ideas from the context of who they are, the science authors having formulated their insights (remember chiddushim from dreams in the history of science, as well as more recently, altered states among the Big-Guns, innovator programmers in the Psychotropic-influenced Silicone Valley/
Burning Man scene; Pinchbeck's book; for inducing experience, listen to Tool's "Schism" and/or
"46 and 2"), from their influences, etc. It just seems an astounding way to bring thoughts into the world, to really make order to hide *O*rder, redefining terms without letting anyone know, shifting their justifications for things they've done, thought, died and fought for for eons (flash to example of the IRRELEVANCE of some "paradigm shifting" revelations in history of science; copies of "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" in libraries for centuries all around Europe; printed on paper that absorbed the oil from countless fingers, the pages discussing his "cosmos-altering" theory are almost *white*, having been little read...it's quite possible that people didn't CARE that the solar system might be heliocentric, that such 'surface' disturbances didn't reach their deeper, pretheoretical foundations), ANYWAYS, order hiding order, Stegenography (hiding meanings in other meanings), but in a transdimensional sense. Back to Holmes Rolston quote about "watchmaker" model as not really as useful when we're talking about a universe; one that really seems capable of producing itself, generating it's generative systems. Creativity, like any other metaphor in the metaphorical universe, might not be made to reveal things beyond this universe, expect perhaps by alluding by absence (throwing paint on the Invisible Man?),
SOOO...Back to Pickover. It seems that his "Cryptorunes" and "wonders of numbers" look like possibilities, also "Strange Brains and Genius : The Secret Lives Of Eccentric Scientists And Madmen",


Sacred architecture, stegenography, ecosystems, (BTW, came across and incredibly strange webpage I DO NOT ENDORSE...just read through his list of links; http://d51326.u21.vilitas.com/gpage1.html), multimedia experience, kyrigma...been online for 1.5 hours now, must go

distracting thoughts of the day;

Find specific uses of "Biblical Law" (i.e., legal mechanisms/justifications "derived" from Hebrew Scripture that doesn't engage the Rabbinic eco-system/Gauntlet), in [for ex], English empire-building; concept of "indentured servitude" in settling new world, parameters of it deriving from Biblical sources, other pragmatics of Protestant Chosen-Peopleness ("New Israel" deriving "from Scripture", independence from the Mesorah of "Holy Tradition" in the Eastern/Catholic churches, with their tainted Greek connections), more facets to the generally-accepted role of Anglo-Israelism in "light to the nations", sense of benevolence to "entering Canaan" of the new world.

So this convert approaches Hillel and asks him about converting (Shabbat 31); that the famous one with the "standing on one foot", or the other guy with the whole "rest is commentary"; the other guy. So he is wants to convert, but doesn't accept Hillel's authority regarding there being an interpretive mechanism bound up with the Text (which is perceived as "THE Given facts"), i.e., Oral Torah (maybe this understanding I give is Jewishly reasonable, maybe not). So Hillel gives him his first lesson on the spot; learn Aleph Bet. He comes back the next day, R. Hillel has reversed the order; the guy calls R. Hillel on it, and Hillel responds that there is obviously an oral component without which EVEN THE MOST ESSENTIAL BUILDING BLOCKS OF JEWISH EXISTENCE (and from within to Torah outlooks, the building blocks of Creation, of the universe), CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD. Again, this understanding may be off the wall. All rubrics (Xtian, islamic, etc), entail some pretextual, pretheoretical Assumptions that EVERYTHING is understood/explained/misunderstood/"mystified", etc, through. In the modern world, the source for much of this is from Tanach as well as "Biblical" (Xtian), systems, even secularisms (which are Xtian heresies; Clouser/Dooyewerd/Voeglin, etc)...lost my train of thought...anyways, I'm very interested in the relationship of orality to literacy, and the transmission of "The Givens", pretheoretical assumptions that can't be doubted if you want your language-game-of-choice to function...it's likely in the West that almost all prime "language games" derive from essentially Torah/"Biblical" perspectives, either in reaction against it or from it, or from the presumptions shared by it/the ensuing Churches/social systems, etc,. probably also in more Esoteric ways with the Freemasonry and Freethought movements, Rambam's influence in Latin translation of Moreh Nevukhim, especially on skepticism and Liebniz, etc, with vernacular printing the accessabilty of "The Bible", it's perceived errors and inaccuracies, and it as an opponent, something to be revised, understood, amended, disputed, etc., also the death of "Scholarly Languages", of greek and latin or at least their STATUS as such...scientific/philosophic texts made accessable in local tongues; also "mystification" of languages that needed "translating", a new concept in some ways since printing flourished (yeah, Chinese printed, but didn't disseminate/foster the practice) and the Works themselves; also DEmystification of said texts, particularly religious texts of Others becoming "philosophical", when a pan-language-game-logic is assumed/accepted...the dissemination of "esoterism" in groups that required trappings of "mystery religion"; initiation, "code", etc...and what's "worse" (depending on your secondary commitments epistemologically/intellectually/morally-speaking), is...there are lots of good reasons to believe not only that Torah Givens aren't simply true pragmatically (Jamesian, some PoMo perspectives), but that they are TRUE in the most function-making ways possible in Olam HaZeh (this world). Where was I? Getting late for Minha.

Bittul-Zman reading/listening Wish List, no real order...Torah list I"H to come;

-Rationality and Science by Roger Trigg
-understanding Social Science by Roger Trigg
-Modeling of Nature by William Wallace
-The Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
-Heavenly Errors by Neil F. Comins
-Who Translates: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason by Douglas Robinson
-Orality and Literacy (New Accents) by Walter J. Ong
-The Book Before Printing : Ancient, Medieval and Oriental by David Diringer
-A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen
-The Spell of the Sensuous : Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram
-How Writing Came About by Denise Schmandt-Besserat
-Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets by George L. Campbell
-The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script by Maurice Pope
-Mysteries of the Alphabet: The Origins of Writing by Marc-Alain Ouaknin
-The Writing Systems of the World by Florian Coulmas
-Language Visible : Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z by David Sacks
-Writing Systems of the World: Alphabets, Syllabaries, Pictograms by Nakanishi Akira
-Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament by Philip S. Johnston
-Deaf People: Evolving Perspectives from Psychology, Education, and Sociology by Jean F. Andrews
-Remix Wars, Vol. 4 by Velvet Acid Christ Vs. Funker Vogt
-When the Brain Can't Hear : Unraveling the Mystery of Auditory Processing Disorder by Teri James Bellis
-"Words Fail Me": How Language Works and What Happens When It Doesn't by Priscilla L. Vail
-The Languages of the Brain : by Albert M. Galaburda
-The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch
-The Politics of Manhood: Profeminist Men Respond to the Mythopoetic Men's Movement (And the Mythopoetic Leaders Answer) by Michael S. Kimmel
-Unlocking the Iron Cage: The Men's Movement, Gender Politics, and American Culture by Michael L. Schwalbe
-Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra
-Life in Occupied America by Ward Churchill
-Doing Time: The Politics of Imprisonment by Ward Churchill
-Hammering Hot Iron: A Spiritual Critique of Bly's Iron John by Charles Upton
-Out of the Fog: Treatment Op- Tions and Strategies for Adult Attention Deficit Disor by Suzanne Kevin/Levert Murphy
-Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Turning Point Christian Worldview) by Gene Edward, Jr. Veith
-A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury by Aaron McGruder
-Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society by David Popenoe
- Ego Trip's Big Book of Racism! by Sacha Jenkins
-Iron John : A Book About Men by Robert Bly
-Muy Macho by Ray Gonzalez
-The Freemasons: A History of the World's Most Powerful Secret Society by Jasper Ridley
-revolutionary brotherhood by bullock
-art and architecture of freemasonry
-speculative freemasonry and the enlightenment by weinberger
-living the enlightenment by jacob
-freemasonry and american culture by demenil
-Meaning of Masonry by W. L. Wilmshurst
-The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised by Marc B. Shapiro
-Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood by George Grant
-A Field Manual for the Amateur Geologist : Tools and Activities for Exploring Our Planet by Alan M. Cvancara
-Descartes' Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio
-The Unconcious Civilization by John Ralston Saul
-The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism by Peter Gay
-Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 (Intellectual History of the West) by Marcia L. Colish
- Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 by Jonathan I. Israel
- Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Critical Perspectives on the Past) by Sam Wineburg
-Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays by Murray Newton Rothbard
-The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders
-The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America by George H. Nash
-Democracy: The God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
-The Order of Things : How Everything in the World Is Organized into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders by Barbara Ann Kipfer
- White Lies: Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse by Jessie Daniels
-From Swastika to Jim Crow: Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges by Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb
-Voltaire's Bastards : The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Ralston Saul
-The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists by Martin A. Lee
-Why Things Bite Back : Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner
-Our Own Devices : The Past and Future of Body Technology by Edward Tenner
-J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion by Richard L. Purtill
-The Practical Paleontologist by Steve Parker
-The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed by Russell S. Bowen
-Wall Street & the Rise of Hilter by Antony C. Sutton
-Law After Auschwitz by David Fraser
-War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black
-Small Worlds by Duncan J. Watts
-Linked: The New Science of Networks by Albert-László Barabási
-Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson
-Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science & Sacred Art by Titus Burckhardt
-What Is Civilization ?: And Other Essays by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
-I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project by Paul Auster
-Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage by Steven LeBlanc
-Time's Arrow/Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time (Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures) by Stephen Jay Gould
-The Dating Game : One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth by Cherry Lewis
-The Field Guide to Geology by David Lambert
- Underfoot : A Geologic Guide to the Appalachian Trail by V. Collins Chew
-The Practical Geologist : The Introductory Guide to the Basics of Geology and to Collecting and Identifying Rocks by Dougal Dixon
-Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology by F. Stuart, Iii Chapin
-Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don't Want You to See by David McGowan
-The Powers of the Word: Selected Essays and Notes 1927-1943 by Rene Daumal
-La Bas (Down There) by Joris K. Huysmans
-The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley by Loren Eiseley
-The Immense Journey : An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature by Loren Eiseley
- Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip P. Hallie
-Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook by James Talmage Stevens
-The NEW Passport To Survival. 12 Steps to Self-Sufficient Living by Rita Bingham
-Engineering the City by Matthys Levy
-Catapult: Harry and I Build a Siege Weapon by Jim Paul
-Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple
-The Story of Numbers : How Mathematics Has Shaped Civilization by John McLeish
-A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations) by Steven Shapin
-Edward the Great by Iron Maiden
-Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming by Anthony Stevens
-Powerslave by Iron Maiden
-Magical Alphabets by Nigel Pennick
-Ariadne's Clue : A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind by Anthony Stevens
-Flex Ability: A Story of Strength and Survival by Flex Wheeler
-The Myth of the Holy Cow by Dwijendra Narayan Jha
-Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities by Lewis Pyenson
-Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Contours of Christian Philosophy) by W. Jay Wood
-State of Mind [Bonus Track] by Front Line Assembly
-Archives, Vol. 2 by Delerium
-The Origins of Museums The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe by Oliver Impey
-Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Studies on the History of Society and Culture , No 20) by Paula Findlen
-The Western Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages & Magickal Systems of the World: The Key of It All, Book II by David Allen Hulse
-The Eastern Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages & Magickal Systems of the World: The Key of It All, Book 1 by David Allen Hulse
-Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany by Robert Gellately
-Hitler's Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil by Yaacov Lozowick
-Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson
-The Measure of Reality : Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600 by Alfred W. Crosby
-Unholy Alliance: History of the Nazi Involvement With the Occult by Peter Levenda
-Jung on Mythology by C. G. Jung
-J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth by Bradley J. Birzer
- The History & Practice of Ancient Astronomy by James Evans
-Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida & Marion on Modern Idolatry by Bruce Ellis Benson
-God Without Being: Hors-Texte (Religion and Postmodernism) by Jean-Luc Marion
-Ancient Structures: Remarkable Pyramids, Forts, Towers, Stone Chambers, Cities, Complexes (Catalog of Archeological Anomalies) by William R. Corliss
-Ancient Infrastructure: Remarkable Roads, Mines, Walls, Mounds, Stone Circles by William R. Corliss
-DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences by Rick Strassman MD
-Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness by Giorgio Samorini
-Gustave Dore's London: A Study of the City in the Age of Confidence, 1848-1873 (Monograph / Frederic Lindley Morgan Chair of Architectural Design) by John Coolidge
-Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
- Maldoror and the Complete Works by Lautreamont
-One Nation Under by Blackfire
-Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws by John C. Taylor
-Leaps of Faith: Science, Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Consolation by Nicholas Humphrey
-The Winter Wilderness Companion: Traditional and Native American Skills for the Undiscovered Season by Garrett Conover

(You'll be glad to know that westerners have recently acquired from an
Indonesian village a 50-ft python. 580 lbs or something. the only
worthwhile news to be read is generally to be seen at www.forteantimes.com).

There is a rabbi here who sailed around the world for 8 years or so-
solo. Before that he did crab fishing in the North Sea out of Alaska
or Scotland, don't remember. He describes very well the tenebrous
nature of the individual at midnight *riding* the frigid Fathomless
Depths churning beneath you (screw smarmy "existential" metaphors of
Abyss; MAELSTROM exists), as the rain pummells your sleep-starved body
- from all sides.
I personally imagine runes, Alchemical symbols made of animals or the
Aleph Bet flashing to mind as the lightning and thunder meet the Man,
on (the) Sea, on (his) Vessel; "The Artifact"...lightning and thunder,
of course, joining when the storm is over the observer, who for a
moment "stands" on the most unstable of "ground". The rabbi also
visited lots of strange places like Java, Polynesia, etc, and has lots
of bizarre connections to make to discussions in Gemara (the talmud,
sort of).

I want to go to yeshiva in Yesha (YEhuda and ShAmron; in english, Judea & Sumeria; in "CNN", the "West Bank"), where there is more desert to speak of, and Israeli Bedouin trackers who can teach you to track a grain of sand across the sky. I've been reading Loren Eiseley, can you tell? There's alot of fascinating triangulation in the process of tracking, of following the route of the land to sources of water, the route of pressed soil or overturned leaves, scents in the air to food sources. I feel like talking about hunting, or maybe letting someone else with the proper voice speak;

HUNTING PHENOMENOLOGY
"Hunting in my experience - and by hunting I simply mean being
out on the land - is a state of mind. All of one's faculties are
brought to bear in an effort to become fully incorporated into
the landscape. It is more than listening for animals or watching
for hoofprints or a shift in the weather. It is more than an
analysis of what one senses. To hunt means to have the land
around you like clothing. To engage in a wordless dialogue with
it, one so absorbing that you cease to talk with your human
companions. It means to release yourself from rational images of
what something "means" and to be concerned only that it "is". And
then to recognize that things exist only insofar as they can be
related to other things. These relationships - fresh drops of
moisture on top of rocks at a river crossing and a raven's
distant voice - become patterns. The patterns are always in
motion. Suddenly the pattern - which includes physical hunger, a
memory of your family, and memories of the valley you are walking
through, these particular plants and smells - takes in the
caribou. There is a caribou standing in front of you. The release
of the arrow or bullet is like a word spoken out loud. It occurs
at the periphery of your concentration." [pp.199-200]

Barry Lopez. "Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a
Northern Landscape".

Really great quote I found from Holmes Rolston, whose Gifford lectures can be found published as "Genes, Genesis and God", a critique of certain materialist perspectives on the natural world, human society and ethics (mostly critiques of sociobiology). Really takes to heart the metaphors of "information" in evolution. He's a tremendous thinker, the "dean of environmental ethics", or something like that; his "Religion and Science" is tremendous, dense vitamin-packed critique of the "traditional" dialogues between science and religion (he himself is an ordained Presbyterian minister), including the social sciences, erring on the side of theistic evolution. SO here's a great quote from him, carrying alot of the criticisms I have of Jewish apologetics in the sciences. He is utterly oblivious to alot of the insights fractaled by Gerald Schroeder, etc, from Chazzal and torah in general (Ramban on life-forming capabilities of the natural world, the Tiferes Yisroel on ages of Creation, R. Isaac of Acco on the Shemitot and the age of the universe, etc). emphasis is mine:

"The word 'design' nowhere occurs in Genesis, though the concept of creativity pervades the opening chapters. THERE IS DIVINE FIAT, DIVINE DOING, BUT THE MODE IS AN EMPOWERING PERIMISSION THAT PLACES PRODUCTIVE AUTONOMY IN THE CREATION. [this is where he gets good] IT'S NOT THAT THERE IS NO 'WATCHMAKER'; THERE IS NO 'WATCH'. LOOKING FOR ONE FRAMES THE PROBLEM THE WRONG WAY. There are species well-adapted for problem-solving, ever more informed in their self-actualising. THE WATCHMAKER METAPHOR SEEMS BLIND [(;-)] TO THE PROBLEM THAT HERE NEEDS TO BE SOLVED; THAT INFORMATIONLESS MATTTER-ENERGY IS A SPLENDIND INFORMATION MAKER. Biologists cannot deny this creativity; indeed, better than anyone else biologists know that Earth has brought forth the natural kinds, prolifically, exuberantly over the millennia, and that enormous amounts of information are required to do this.... [T]he grace of life [is] renewed in the midst of its perpetual perishing, generating diversity and complexity, repeatedly struggling through to something higher, a response to the brooding winds of the Spirit moving over the face of these Earthen waters."
-http://www.pc4rs.org/newsletters/2000_01/Rolston.html

Here are other places where he can be read:

-http://www.kun.nl/fil-beta/26-9%20Gene's%20Eye%20View%20of%20Evolution(def).ppt

-http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/archive/april2003/0408_genes.html ("what I say is all based on information", he says; what he SAYS, even is based on information, the matrix of perception and interpretation, etc., almost like maybe the "math in the brain" meeting with the facts on/in the ground).

-http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article.asp?6996

-http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199906/0027.html

-http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rolston/ferre.htm

Ideas and psychotropic/Entheogenic drugs:

It's relatively easy and safe to assent to a view, an idea or ideology half-grasped, to *agree* with something; it's quite another to reason and come to know something to be so by weighing, assessing by tooling through something; to believe is also different from "assention"; simple assenting does not lead to Ascension, to Redemption (there's some implication of the Baal T'shuva experience/Ger experience, but also all forms of "Conversion"). There is a level of "commitment to the consequences" when one begins with reasoning, with deliberation instead of belief or assent (to a degree, there is a base point where there is unmediate 'belief', where the "Givens", Dooyeweerd's Ground Motives, something like Plantinga's Properly Basic Beliefs). There are mind-expanding ideas (among many other kinds of ideas; many are derivative from more powerful, stupifying or expanding ideas, but these are just two kinds), and there is some corollary to "drugs" in this sense. There are also at times and places (in species as well as individual life), where certain seemingly destructive ideas (destructive in that they may challenge contingent ideas or beliefs, or states of mood or mind, whether comfy or in need of weeding), that, taken properly, can have mind-expanding consequences *when certain circumstances exist*; certain drugs thatm with proper "concentration" (Kavanna, jewishly speaking), can do amazing things FOR someone, not against them, in deconstructing what existed before in their mind or body; antibiotics, certain psychoactive drugs in the minds of Psychotics, anti-depressant drugs, etc. But also remember there was a time when sucessful and promising research was being done in the use of Entheogenic substances and chemically-derived ones (LSD is a now-infamous example), in treating some of the above-mentioned mental afflictions (Cleansing the doors of perception, Huston Smith).
Throughout history various animals, vegetables and minerals have been used to affect prime changes in mind and mood, and ideas theories and beliefs (in no particular order; also regardless of their coorespondence to objective reality), work on a very similar level. Jewishly speaking, there's sort of an Alchemy or magic of action and word in this world, that is acknowledged to have affects in the inner worlds in society and other people (and in changing the deepest innards, it reverberates to the furthest "outards", to the more substantive spiritual worlds where we are nested); improper/proper speech, thoughtless or thoughtful action, is considered to have Concrete affects in higher, more "existing" worlds. Maybe more later