Entheogens

[Eviander]

 

I've watched a number of Terrence McKenna's videos, and I think he's a pretty interesting guy. I'm interested in entheogens as a step, definitely. I do not want to make them my main practice, but I think they have a chance at being a very useful intermediate stepping stone.

 

Basically, I'm interested in tripping, but would like to do it with an experienced shaman or guide...but I have no idea how I could go about finding someone like that to do it with. A skilled psychotherapist as mentioned above would be awesome to have with me, but I have a feeling that my chances of finding one of those to sit me is pretty slim here in the US of A. I'm also not sure what the best vehicle to start with would be (LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, etc).

 

Forget about the guides or the psychotherapist. This is a rogue field and their are not many reliable people to trust as a superior regarding psychedelics. I would say get a few buddies and create a nice sacred place to have the trip and eat some mushrooms for a start. A trip sitter who isn't tripping is sometimes advised but they would be bored and the trippers would not be able to communicate with them properly...which might make things awkward. Personally I enjoy it when everyone is tripping and there is no one analyzing outside of your trip and trying define your experience from his far off point of reference.

 

Overall though this is a good thread and provides plenty of links for further research, but my two cents is that set and setting make or break the trip

Edited February 18, 2011 by Eviander

[Easy]

Shulgin- PiHKAL

 

Hey.

 

You might want to take a look at this. I was a test pilot on Strassman's first run into this abyss. I made his A List because I had a reputation for being able to go to the furthest reach of potential human insanity and come back with a song in my heart and a coherent story to tell. I've been around this stuff...spent almost two weeks with Sasha Shulgin going down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. I don't like Sasha's stuff. He's a world class designer but he takes most of his medicine off the basic methamphetamine molecule and the best you're going to get out of that is MDMA and if your self-esteem ranks anything above a minus-85 it is going to be telling you megalomaniacal lies. MDMA is nothing but swishy-assed crank and it has nothing to do with entheogins.

 

My advice is wait to do DMT until the last. You have to know that right now you have probably enough DMT in your blood stream to be arrested for possession of a Schedule One controlled substance. As far as science knows it come out of your pineal glad. Once you have done big-time DMT you are no longer fit to do the lesser stuff like ayahuasca or peyote. My dad was an old cowboy and veteran and horse thief and even though he was a white man he ranched on the rez and when he was old and sick his Arapaho compadres helped him out with some peyote meetings and a couple of times I was allowed to tag along...this is 50-some years ago...neither one of us got off on the stuff...but the ritual was cool as hell. Now there are 'shrooms. There is stuff like peyote and San Pedro and ayahuasca and Syrian rue and these are the righteous kind of medicines if you want to get down and dirty and serious and religious as all hell about your issues. A good priest is handy to have with this stuff...but 'shrooms? 'Shrooms are disneyland spirituality. If you are going to work shaman stuff with 'shrooms your heart had better be three times the size of your brain and your will had better be five times that of both. Working with 'shrooms will take a focus that will deplete the best of your qi to nothing inside of four hours and back on the rez I have known healings to take up to 48. You have to work like hell until the work is done--none of this 20-minute, drumming-trance workshop piddlie-do if your are trying to save a life. If you don't have a slack hand who is into your brain and can take over from time to time, you'll get nothing done on 'shrooms. But if you are just into R & R there is nothing like making love on 'shrooms. Far better than grass...but grass does nothing but bore me back to drowning in a cold plunge if that is what it will take to clean that shit out of my system.

 

So it all comes down to some variation on DMT. Because getting 99.9% lab-made stuff is probably impossible except for the director of the lab, I would recommend Senoran Toad venom. Even if you have to sneak around in the Salt River Irrigation Project, night-time in the Spring (its southeast of Phoenix, Arizona) and milk those toad glands on your own and smoke the dried slime from them...it'll put your right with god if you have half your head about you and someone else to hang onto on the ride out.

Edited February 19, 2011 by Easy

[lazy cloud]

Easy, That is very interesting work. I look at you as a Chuck Yeager of test pilots and not on the tolerance level of the average "seeker".

All the compounds in PiHKAL are not methamphetamine derivitives. Peyote was mentioned in this thread. I am in the same opinion of you in regards to Peyote or

San Pedro. However I do find mescaline more interesting. It is a phenethylamine class.

I am surprised Raven's Bread was not brought up in this thread. I would not group it with the other "shrooms".

For me safety is a concern. That is one reason I favor mescaline. I have never heard of anyone ever dying from it. IMO the avererage "seeker" experiences a visionary state of awareness on typical "shrooms".

I have never personally tried the Vine of the Soul. I am curious about it. There are other plants not mentioned here that give powerful life changing experiences. I will not bring them up either due to what I view as a safety concern.

I won't knock the toad venom because I have never tried it. I am trying to stay in the plant kingdom. DMT biosynthesis is quite easy and instructions readily available.

It may require a visit to the local nursery.

Seems to be a consensus that this is a stepping stone tool and not a lifestyle.

[Jetsun]

I was looking into Ayahuasca for a while for healing as it is seen by some shaman as the healing vine, there are a lot of accounts from people on the web of how they have used it as a tool for self investigation http://forums.ayahuasca.com/ also there are a fair few videos on youtube about it, but I wouldn't underestimate its power as many people come out of it saying it was very humbling and finding it difficult the accept the truth they discover about themselves.

 

If I was to do it I would prefer to do it with a real shaman in Peru but the problem now is that the ceremonies have been turned into part of the tourist industry so you have to really search for the genuine thing

[zerostao]

[joeblast]

I've been very curious about entheogens for awhile. I'd like to know everyone's opinions on them as far as their value for spiritual development, and which ones are most useful for that kind of work.

 

I have my reservations about using them, but it is an avenue I'd like to explore in case it might offer some benefit to my journey.

did you ever peek through the keyhole when you were young and discovered your parents having sex? its a bit of the same thing, you arent very likely to understand or fully appreciate what you see, and it might just lead to attachments.

[Ulises]

Entering in relationships with the teacher plants: respect, appreciation. They are a sacrament, a medicine. A very good idea: practising your favourite qigong, praying, or meditating before ingesting the Gaian sacrament...

 

 

 

"The mushrooms have power because they are the flesh of God. And those that believe are healed. Those that do not believe are not healed.(...)

 

I take Little-One-Who-Spring-Forth (Teonanacatl:Flesh of the Gods) and I see God. I see him sprout from the earth. He grows and grows, big as a tree, as a mountain. His face is placid, beautiful, serene as in the temples. At other times, God is not like a man: he is the Book. A Book that is born from the earth, a sacred Book whose birth makes the world shake. It is the Book of God that speaks to me in order for me to speak. It counsels me, it teaches me, it tells me what I have to say to men, to the sick, to life. The Book appears and I learn new words...."

"My life", Maria Sabina (the mazatec shamaness of the "santos niños/holy children" - the mushrooms: Teonanacatl "flesh of the gods", called that way in a spirit of reverence and affection)

 

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520239531

 

 

&&&&&&&&

 

"It is paradoxical that the rediscovery of such chemicals should have related their effects to madness and pejoratively called them drugs, when the shamans who used them spoke of them as medicines and said from their experience that the metamorphosis they produced put one into communication with the spirit.(...)

The Indians do not call the mushrooms of light mushrooms, they call them the holy ones. For the shamaness, the experience they produce is synonymous with language, with communication, on behalf of her people, with the supernatural forces of the universe; with plenitude and joyfulness; with perception, insight, and knowledge. It is as if one were born again; therefore their patroness is the Goddess of Birth, the Goddess of Creation. (...)

 

'With prayers we will get rid of it all. With the prayers of the ancients. We will clean ourselves, we will purify ourselves with clear water, we will wash our intestines where they are infected. That sicknesses of the body be gotten rid of. Sicknesses of the atmosphere. Bad air. That they be gotten rid of, that they be removed. That the wind carry them away. For this is the doctor. For this is the plant. For this is the sorcerer of the light of day. For this is the remedy. For this is the medicine woman, the woman doctor who resolves all classes of problems in order to rid us of them with her prayers. We are going with well-being, without difficulty, to implore, to beg, to supplicate. Well being for all the babies and the creatures. We are going to beg, to implore for them, to beseech for their well-being and their studies, that they live, that they grow, that they sprout. That freshness come, tenderness, shoots, joy. That we be blessed, all of us.' "

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/munn.htm

Edited March 2, 2011 by Ulises

[Ulises]

The Wild Redeemer

"People who ingest the wild, whether plants or landscapes, do something civilized people never do, they take inside themselves the wildness of the world; they eat the Wild Redeemer. In that moment something unique happens, some invisible thing enters inside them. And when that happens everything changes. They become aware that there are intelligences in this world far older than the human and that the human and the older intelligences of the world are intended to make contact" Stephen Harrod Buhner

 

The cornerstone of indigenous mind/heart: Reverence.

Attuning to that feeling will deepen any experience with the plants...reverence and love, two names for a mysterious, complex, magnificent universe of the Heart...

Edited March 1, 2011 by Ulises

[Ulises]

I think Dennis McKenna makes a right frame : ecodelic medicines to correct our dissociation from Nature:

"It's a communication between the sentience that resides in Nature and us..."

 

[GreytoWhite]

I personally find cannabis to be quite helpful when working with my upper dantian and for spiritual work. I think it has more to do with pain relief than anything in my case. My body is still recovering from a stroke two years ago.

[Adishakti]

There's an interesting bit where Neem Karoli Baba consumed all the trippy pills (maybe LSD, not sure) and nothing happened to him. Ram Dass and Krishna Das then heard him say, 'It's all inside, you don't need stuff like this.'

 

Ram Dass is one of the most famous examples of what entheogens can do, he went from a Harvard Pyschology Professor to a Hindu holy man. I doubt anyone could have access to the wide array of chemicals a Harvard professor had when all of it was legal and distributed copiously in prestigious universities, but Terrence Mckenna is another famous example as well, who I would highly suggest if you are interested in the view of entheogens as being "the way"

 

 

This guy sounds pretty convincing selling his "best" Ayahuasca. Amazon, here I come!

 

 

 

 

I was looking into Ayahuasca for a while for healing as it is seen by some shaman as the healing vine, there are a lot of accounts from people on the web of how they have used it as a tool for self investigation http://forums.ayahuasca.com/ also there are a fair few videos on youtube about it, but I wouldn't underestimate its power as many people come out of it saying it was very humbling and finding it difficult the accept the truth they discover about themselves.

 

If I was to do it I would prefer to do it with a real shaman in Peru but the problem now is that the ceremonies have been turned into part of the tourist industry so you have to really search for the genuine thing

[doc benway]

Whether or not to use entheogens depends a lot on what you are looking for.

If you are looking for new experiences, shaking up your sense of reality, breaking down some conventional thought processes and that sort of thing, entheogens are very effective. For some people, these sorts of experiences are helpful, maybe even necessary, to get them pointed in a spiritual direction. I'm not convinced that they really produce meaningful spiritual growth for most who use them.

 

On the other hand, if you are looking for the truth - spirituality, the nature of our being and existence. I don't think entheogens are very helpful. They will shake your tree and loosen some nuts and bolts that society and culture has tightened in your head. But it is a very different thing to approach truth and reality.

 

A sober mind and body is as close as you can ever get to your true nature, the way you have grown out of this world. To pollute it with chemicals or entheogens, even natural ones, takes you farther away, rather than closer to, the truth. To approach truth you simply need to study yourself. No need for anything external. What are you thinking? What is the nature of thought? How do you behave? Where does that response come from? What do you feel? How do you relate to others and the environment? This is the mundane, boring, banal, but absolutely essential work that is needed to walk the spiritual path as far as I'm concerned.

 

For some folks, entheogens are helpful in the beginning. For others, entheogens are highly toxic and I've seen irreversible psychosis in two friends as a result. For many, they become more entertainment than anything else. And it is very important to recognize that a lot of the insights we have while intoxicated are very misleading.

 

Just my $.02

[sameesh]

I've been very curious about entheogens for awhile. I'd like to know everyone's opinions on them as far as their value for spiritual development, and which ones are most useful for that kind of work.

 

I have my reservations about using them, but it is an avenue I'd like to explore in case it might offer some benefit to my journey.

 

 

dude if your curious about tripping then do it. you may have a wild and rough time but at the end of it it all comes into crystal clarity and is quite touching. I have had many "spiritual" experiences because of the divine little ones and such

[Harmonious Emptiness]

The important thing is that people use entheogens (so nice to use better words than drug s) to feel liberated spiritually and sometimes physically. If we can do this without entheogens then we have achieved the desired effect.

 

If I don't have my own personal jet, it's great to be able to buy a ticket. At the same time, just because we can, doesn't mean it's a free for all, fly to France every weekend. There has to be a really good reason to do so. If you fly to much, you might not have the money to get back . And, you might not be able to fly at all. Not to mention, with the airline we have available, we don't have much control of where that ticket will take us.

 

I want my own "personal jet". Flying whenever I want on entheogen airlines will make this more difficult.

 

I'll leave the metaphor there..

 

 

One thing I did read from a full-blood Native American Shaman, which cleared up some misconceptions, is that marijuana was never in the peace pipe since it will "confuse your visions." I'm pretty sure it was used as a local anaesthetic and maybe for other "issues," but not as a means to knowledge.

 

Other traditions disagree, and *maybe* some other tribes too, but I've seen this same attitude towards the sweet leaf two or three times by Native American shamans. However, the natural methods by which Native Americans achieve visions are very serious and difficult, so a quick fixer upper like weed wouldn't have much place when you've been testing your limits to such an extreme extent.

Edited June 9, 2011 by Harmonious Emptiness

[Cat Pillar]

I personally find cannabis to be quite helpful when working with my upper dantian and for spiritual work. I think it has more to do with pain relief than anything in my case. My body is still recovering from a stroke two years ago.

 

I smoke a lot of cannabis, although I'm trying to cut down. I notice it tends to numb limiting belief structures, which occasionally allows me to view myself from different vantage points.

 

I guess I never really considered it much of an entheogen.

 

Harmonious Emptiness - I like your metaphor, and it points at one of my reservations towards using entheogens.

 

Steve f - sorry to hear about your friends. I am looking to both shake up my reality and discover truth...although lately, I'm not sure I believe truth exists.

 

sameesh - I'm not looking for a vacation or an entertainment experience, which is what I usually associate with the term "tripping." My intent is to gain practical benefit.

[doc benway]

 

Steve f - sorry to hear about your friends. I am looking to both shake up my reality and discover truth...although lately, I'm not sure I believe truth exists.

 

Thanks - I suspect that both were sensitive to the effects and they also were playing with things without any guidance.

I imagine that people with a predisposition toward mental illness/instability (ie a strong family history or personal history) are probably more susceptible to getting into trouble with entheogens.

Regarding 'truth' - I was sort of using it as a synonym for reality, the nature of existence, that sort of thing...

Good luck in you journey

[Cat Pillar]

Thanks - I suspect that both were sensitive to the effects and they also were playing with things without any guidance.

I imagine that people with a predisposition toward mental illness/instability (ie a strong family history or personal history) are probably more susceptible to getting into trouble with entheogens.

Regarding 'truth' - I was sort of using it as a synonym for reality, the nature of existence, that sort of thing...

Good luck in you journey

 

Thanks.

 

I've always wondered if my long battle with depression qualified me as part of the "mentally ill" category. So many spiritual practices come with warnings about how they shouldn't be done by the mentally ill...astral projection, chi kung, many other forms of energy work, the use of binaural beats...I've always wondered if that warning was pointing at me. If so...oops.

[doc benway]

Thanks.

 

I've always wondered if my long battle with depression qualified me as part of the "mentally ill" category. So many spiritual practices come with warnings about how they shouldn't be done by the mentally ill...astral projection, chi kung, many other forms of energy work, the use of binaural beats...I've always wondered if that warning was pointing at me. If so...oops.

If you battle with depression, please be cautious with entheogens.

They are extremely powerful and I find that folks that tend toward depression can be extremely sensitive (in general, not necessarily to anything in particular).

Lots of potential energy in that combination... just sayin'

Be healthy my friend

[Cat Pillar]

If you battle with depression, please be cautious with entheogens.

They are extremely powerful and I find that folks that tend toward depression can be extremely sensitive (in general, not necessarily to anything in particular).

Lots of potential energy in that combination... just sayin'

Be healthy my friend

 

I took LSA once long before I was interested in spirituality and consciousness, and had a really bad trip.

 

However, there were a lot of things I did wrong concerning atmosphere and company. I learned a lot from that experience, and had I done it in the correct context (which, if I were to take them I would look for some kind of shamanic/therapeutic context which includes a guide) I think it may have served as a useful tool of development.

 

Seems like it would be kind of like riding a firecracker though, and a lot of hassle to organize. It will probably remain a curiosity until my life calms down a little.