Why dismiss entheogenic experiences?

[fizix]

Speaking of ethneogenic experiences....

 

Renowned Shaman/Psychonaut Terrence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" Theory of Human Evolution

 

Give it a read!

[Brian]

My personal experiences observations suggest that people either have no obvious lasting effect, suffer lasting deleterious consequences (psychotic or schizoeffective affects, for instance) or get stupid but think they are deep. Fortunately, the former & latter are by far the more common reactions! I've never met anyone, however, who seemed to become more stable, more rational or more connected with reality as a result of consuming psychodelics.

 

Not saying it isn't possible, mind you...

[voidisyinyang]

Speaking of ethneogenic experiences....

 

Renowned Shaman/Psychonaut Terrence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" Theory of Human Evolution

 

Give it a read!

 

That just got me a general link -- here's the McKenna Stone Ape specifics

 

http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/theory.html

 

Their problem is essentially a phonetic alphabet. The phonetic alphabet empowers a distancing and an abstracting from natural phenomena that is probably equal in power to what happens in monotheism. It's just that in the case of the West, we got a full dose of both. There are non-phonetic ways to create sophisticated data bases -- the Chinese --

 

M2: Is the high Chinese culture a partnership society?

 

TM: More so than the West. If you look at the structure of Chinese marriage in the Tang dynasty, there's definitely male dominance, but on the other hand, shadow institutions were created to mitigate that dominance that we would never tolerate in the West. For instance, concubinage was tolerated in China, but the price paid for it was the right of inheritance of the primary wife and her control of the household. So there were trade-offs.

 

M2: Would it be fair to say that the biochemical matrix in which any human culture swims is shiftable by ideas, by ingestibles -- food or drugs -- and that there is a shifting center?

 

TM: Yeah, and it's not randomly driven. A lot of this stuff is dictated by the vicissitudes of botany. The fact that the European continent was so poor in boundary-dissolving hallucinogens allowed the phonetic alphabet and the city-building kingship style to never really be challenged [except in 1600, 1789, 1848, 1918, 1991?-Z].

 

Very cool stuff - -- this is the best I've read on McKenna -- usually his "talks" are not that impressive.

 

We lived in that paradisiacal grasslands situation, but the climate was slowly getting drier. Mushrooms began to be less available. There could've been many strategies for obtaining mushrooms, all detrimental. The first would be to do it only at great holidays, and only a certain class of people -- shamans, for example.

 

Eventually the mushroom only existed around water holes in the rain shadows of certain mountains; finally, the mushroom was gone. At that moment, under great pressure from the drying climate, agriculture was invented. Agriculture represents an intellectual understanding of how cause and effect can be separated in time. You return to last year's camp, look where you discarded the trash, and there all in one place are the food planets you so carefully gathered. Women, the gatherers, put this together: Wow! Bury food, come back a year later, and it's there. This was a watershed in the development of abstract thought.

 

This whole mushroom obsession contradicts the Bushmen healing trance dance culture which relied directly on sublimating sex energy, not on an external substance.

Edited August 24, 2010 by drewhempel

[Mark Foote]

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre67h0s6-us-depression-psychedelics/

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/24/psychedelic.drugs.depression/index.html?hpt=C2

 

Thanks very much for the links, Drew. I saw a show last night on PBS where pyschologists were treating fear of heights with virtual reality experiences and some drug, I didn't catch which, but the drug improved the patients' ability to get over their fear dramatically compared to virtual reality and no drug. They were talking about trying it for PTSD at the close of the show, saying it showed promise. I wonder if it a psychedelic they were using, or ecstasy; sounds like it from the article you posted. What a wonderful day.

[voidisyinyang]

Thanks very much for the links, Drew. I saw a show last night on PBS where pyschologists were treating fear of heights with virtual reality experiences and some drug, I didn't catch which, but the drug improved the patients' ability to get over their fear dramatically compared to virtual reality and no drug. They were talking about trying it for PTSD at the close of the show, saying it showed promise. I wonder if it a psychedelic they were using, or ecstasy; sounds like it from the article you posted. What a wonderful day.

 

Interesting -- my fear of heights is from this overwhelming feeling of wanting to jump off, to feel that sense of open space -- it pulls me in. I don't trust myself -- and then I start getting dizzy, etc. It's just too overwhelming to be on the edge of a huge cliff and know that with just one little step you could be flying through space. Too tempting. Must be the old primate tree dweller in me -- we're meant to fly through space only there should be a vine ready to grab.

 

Anyway I did DMT -- ayahuasca analog -- as a four hour full lotus third eye session. The whole thing was this amazing full kundalini energy -- as a rainbow vortex. The sacrum split up with amazing orgasmic energy -- beyond imagination -- and then I heard gun shots and the light was bright and turned into a rainbow vortex of the whole body. It was a post death experience -- Level 4 rainbow meditation http://springforestqigong.com

Edited August 25, 2010 by drewhempel

[Taomeow]

[Aetherous]

"so that's why not everybody's doing the buddha thing, because it's like you're opening yourself up to all of the suffering, because you're being the beings... ...it's like being a pain magnet...

 

...you meet that with the ocean of compassion that you are."

 

I like his take on it.

[Birch]

He said "possibility" not anything else. Didn't I already know it?? Didn't you?

Would his story have been more believable if he had said "probablity"?

 

Yep, figure the plants know much more than I'll ever know.

 

TaoMeow, did you have a similar experience? I know I'll find your story here if I search. Still, does Alex Grey's account have "matching" with yours? I guess I found it kind of -- bland.

 

Or take Narby's, his was for a book,did that make it part of it?

[Taomeow]

He said "possibility" not anything else. Didn't I already know it?? Didn't you?

Would his story have been more believable if he had said "probablity"?

 

Yep, figure the plants know much more than I'll ever know.

 

TaoMeow, did you have a similar experience? I know I'll find your story here if I search. Still, does Alex Grey's account have "matching" with yours? I guess I found it kind of -- bland.

 

Or take Narby's, his was for a book,did that make it part of it?

 

Yes, his experience does appear bland compared to what She put me through... but I posted it here because I thought the resident entheogenic virgins might enjoy his perspective. I think he's a really cool artist, some say "great visionary," and he attributes his artistic visions to entheogenic opening of his consciousness. He can show the money too. Not just "enlightenment of the mouth."

 

I never told my story except for bits and pieces here and there. SHE suggested to me that I should write "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ayahuasca." But I'm sure She was kidding. That mocking tone Alex Grey heard making fun of his buddha self-perceptions -- well, there was an episode where She used that tone of voice with me too, and that's when she mentioned writing the book. Doesn't mean I shouldn't write it, but definitely means I have to be very humble if I ever approach the task.