[threadbear]

Daniel Pinchbeck, student of the esoteric, psychonaut, author will be on Art Bell tonight.

From Breaking Open the Head:

"Think of the brain (as distinct from the mind) as a kind of radio. With "normative" levels of serotonin, the brain is tuned to "consensual reality" - something like the local Pop or Talk Radio station. By substituting psilocybin, Ibogaine, dimethyltryptamine, or some other psychedelic compound for serotonin and other neurotransmitters, you change the station and suddenly you begin to pick up the sensorial equivalent of avant-garde jazz, Tibetan chants, or another channel resonating with new and astonishing information. Yet your mind, the perceiving core of the self, remains more or less unaffected. In that sense, psychedelics - unlike alcohol or heroin - are not even intoxicating in an ordinary sense of the word.


Are psychedelics "good" or "evil"? In our culture these chemicals have been demonized, but like all profound and powerful tools, they are ambiguous. A computer can be an awesome educational instrument, or you can use it to play Doom fifteen hours a day. Psychedelics are different from other tools in one crucial respect: Because they work in the subjective domain of the individual's consciousness, the attitude one has before taking them shapes the effect they will have to an extraordinary degree. For this reason, laboratory conditions and the typical quantifying scientific method seem to be unsuitable for studying them."

http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/what ... delics.htm

[rowante]

Wish I could tune in... Just finished reading his book.

[threadbear]

Rowante, What did you think of it?

[trespam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'A')re psychedelics "good" or "evil"?

[PenultimateManStanding]

I liked reading about the Burning Man gathering each year out in the desert. Now if we can just keep the oil flowing enough for a couple of more years I've got to ride out there and see it. Speaking of Art Bell, last night he did open lines talk about Peak Oil and Kunstler's Rolling Stone essay. From what I heard before I went to sleep, people are going to blame the Oil Companies for it when TSHTF.

[threadbear]

Trespam, We could be translated into another medium by these drugs. On the other hand, what we regard as self could shrink to a tiny dot that can enter and exit other realms through the molecular portal doorways of the drugs.

When people dismiss the strangeness of these experiences with the explanation that it's "just a chemical reaction". I think--just? There is no such thing as "just" anything in nature and supernature. The chemicals themselves could be entire multiverses.

If you've read "Horton hears a Who",by Dr. Suess, you'll know what I mean. It's something like that, but much much weirder and more wonderful.

I didn't write that about whether drugs are good or evil. That's part of a quote from Pinchbeck's book.

PMS--Burning Man would be great. Me and my friends have been talking about going for 3 years.

Heard Art Bell's show last night. The question,"Would you kill for oil?" was answered, yes, by many. Notice that? Many Canadians phoned in to do their tsk tsk--naughty, self indulgent, gun toting Americans, commentary

This always cracks me up. Canadians have a moral superiority complex. It's funny hearing it come through on the radio.

[aldente]

Burning Man seems to be changing in its characteristics as to what I've heard (I have never been there) in the sense as the particular county in Nevada where it takes place started to collect heavy land using fees since they sensed the money in this rather large gathering.

A thread on psychedelics? Dive in the past. Aldous Huxley was working with them back in th 50's . Then the 60's (which I unfortuenately missed in terms of parties since I just was born then). Timothy Leary had it all down! All this information is and will be accessible by the ones who search for it.

I agree though that all "doors" to the future are (not exclusively) visible with psychedelic drugs. To enter any door takes a person, not the drug though, hence all the confusion.

Drugs are not to be discussed but to be taken!!!

[chargrove]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')rugs are not to be discussed but to be taken!!!

[Doly]

And what are these wondeful tools good for? Anything of relevance to peak oil?

[gg3]

Oddly enough, yes. Anything that can get someone thinking outside the box, has potential to lead to useful new ideas.

IMHO psychedelics are valuable tools, but still inherently risky and also not particularly necessary these days. One can obtain results of equivalent value via meditation, trance, paying attention to one's dreams, and introspecting a whole lot.

Huxley was also into these other methods, and was apparently quite skilled at using self-induced deep trance. See the paper on Huxley & Milton Erickson in Charles Tart's classic compilation _Altered States of Consciousness_.

Psychedelics work by essentially turning up the random noise level in the neurons, and then the brain does what it normally does so well, which is seek patterns in the midst of noise. What's also meaningful about the experience is the way in which one's mind seeks and utilizes the information.

One of the most significant benefits from the discovery of LSD (Hofmann is still alive, BTW) is that this, along with the discovery of REM sleep (brainwave condition that correlates with dreaming), marked the beginning of the biological approach to the understanding of human consciousness. And while I don't subscribe to materialist monism (which holds that consciousness is identical with classical-physics-level phenomena in the brain), it is quite clear that the new paradigm has opened up enormous avenues of understanding, and practical results such as new treatments for major psychiatric illnesses.

BTW, the Burning Man organization (Black Rock City LLP) is a client of mine. I'm responsible for their PBX. They have been growing like crazy over the past few years. They're still consistent with their values. Good bunch of people. (and please don't ask me for discounted tickets:-)

[trespam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'T')respam, We could be translated into another medium by these drugs. On the other hand, what we regard as self could shrink to a tiny dot that can enter and exit other realms through the molecular portal doorways of the drugs.

[Yavicleus]

I can personally testify that hallucinogens are an awsome tool.

DMT and concentrated Salvia Divinorum extract are the two best that I have found. One is still legal to use. Both are like being shot out of a cannon on 10 hits of acid. Both are too strong to be used 'recreationally'.

[EnviroEngr]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'S')ee the paper on Huxley & Milton Erickson in Charles Tart's classic compilation _Altered States of Consciousness_.

[threadbear]

Trespam, I think to get a taste of this feeling of actually "going somewhere else", one has to take substances like salvia and dmt, or ayahuasca. And that isn't advisable except under the most stringent controlled conditions-- And then only if you are the right type of person. I'd never take it, because I'm too borderline to begin with.

You may be right--the universe may be a thermo dynamic place filled with objects and living things that tend to grind down, like machinery, overtime.

I think of the universe as more like a great thought, personal mind is part of that great thought, and though the brain itself is, in some sense, subject to entropic laws, the mind lives on. So it's all a matter of perspective. To my way of thinking there's no compelling proof that my theory is wrong.

The Spirit Molecule by Strasbourg is a look at the DMT experience by a psychiatrist, who regarded the experiences as subjective expressions of the mind, at first. After studying several patients, in a university funded study, who went through the ten minute experience, his personal conclusions were different. You might like this book, regardless of your personal cosmology.

Enviro, I met Tart very briefly at a meeting of the "Journal of Scientific Exploration" about 10 years ago. Thanks for the link. Will look at the site later.

[oowolf]

I use salvia, mainly in a wilderness setting, as a vision quest adjunct. Helps to keep me "in the flow". Petroindustrial "civilization" is definitely NOT in the flow and is a manifestation of darkness that is leading us to an unprecedented holocaust. Black Elk knew this, the Kogi know this. I cannot begin to comprehend how and where we went so wrong or why the human spirit has been so degraded. Paul Shepard arrived at some insight in "Nature and Madness" and other works
http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/Shepard/

From here on the mountain it just seems to be a collective madness.

[rowante]

I really like Pinchbeck's idea of the brain as a radio. From my own experiences I intuit this to be true. Also consider the Dawkinsian concept of memes and the radio idea really starts to sing. To me, the mind and brain are one and the same, and the brain is just super organised matter. Literally the universe made self-aware. You can read whatever spiritual baggage into that you like.

I love reading about people on the path of poisons... but I'm still too busy doing my own ground state calibrations to join them. Trying to shake of an unwanted frequency (nicotine) is proving to be a SON A F'IN' BITCH.