~Raves a Spiritual experience~

What bizarre force draws the turgid masses to gyrate and sweat to orgiastic beats while peeling back their daily mind-set with love drugs?

"If you look at what it most resembles, it is a ritual," said Doblin, explaining the allure of raves. "They are listening to music, taking drugs, hearkening back to thousands and thousands of years of tradition. The only difference is that we have electronics and MDMA, where traditional peoples had peyote, drums, musical instruments, and singing. We have taken what culture and technology have given us, but we are still putting it to a spiritual purpose that creates balance and wholeness and healing."

Some raves are conducted with spiritual experience as their primary focus. Shortly after the rave scene first blossomed in Vancouver, BC in the early 90's, the group Mind/Body/Love held a rave in an Anglican church. Those who attended the event took psychedelics and walked a labyrinthian pattern on the church's floor, while meditating on spiritual growth.

In August of this year, Colleen Riley and her husband, Matt Porter, organized a weekend rave of dancing, yoga and drawing workshops in Indianapolis. When the police stormed in, making about 130 Ecstasy, marijuana, and amphetamine related arrests, their guns and badges created a stark, metallic contrast to the peaced-out love-vibe of grass, Ecstasy and consciousness.

If raves are spiritual experience, then prohibition and arrests are religious oppression. Put another way, they are attempts to limit our freedom to experience certain cognitive states, to roam the hills and mountains of our spirits and minds. If cognitive freedoms were a right, guaranteed by the constitution, there would never have been a prohibition against either marijuana or Ecstasy. Groups like Alchemind have formed to defend and promote these rights.