First Evidence for Higher State of Consciousness Found

[Emil El Zapato]

Quote Originally posted by Wind View Post
The 15 min DMT trips are literally mindblowing as you are taken somewhere else, it also shows that time literally is relative. DMT is spirit molecule and perhaps the most potent psychedelic out there, that's why I find it both fascinating and scary. It's not to be taken lightly.
I don't do drugs or ayahuasca. If I want a psychedelic experience, I'll just listen to some good old Pink Floyd.

try them together ... now that's a trip ... that I've never taken ... Carlos Santana and psilocybin together will take one to dangerous places ...

[Aragorn]

try them together ... now that's a trip ... that I've never taken ... Carlos Santana and psilocybin together will take one to dangerous places ...

[Octopus Garden]

Accidentally took a double dose of white blotter acid when I was 15. It was amazing and it felt very natural. I think this acid was rumored to be the best that had ever been synthesized. Hard to describe the experience. Lots of hallucinations, like sitting back and watching a very odd movie--very lush, sensuous, outside of time and ego experience. I'd also had a fair bit to drink at the time, so I threw up in technicolor.

I think that to some degree it helped me as it made evident to me that my day to day perceptions were almost entirely influenced by my culture and my ego. If I couldn't trust my own mind with most matters unless they were directly related to social and physical survival, I also became very skeptical about my atheism. So, that was a huge relief. I lost my intense fear of dying. I think this is somewhat a universal side effect of being literally ripped out of your mind.

[Octopus Garden]

The psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca is DMT. You can take DMT without doing ayahuasca. It's a much shorter trip, 10 or 15 minutes. And you don't have the gastrointestinal experience.

It may be that other elements in the brew interact with the DMT to enhance the experience, I don't know.

I'm not interested in the vine brew, I could possibly see myself trying DMT.

Dreamtimer, You have to be a very commited psychonaut for DMT. Can it kill you. Yes, if you have very high blood pressure, there's a risk. You also risk being astonished to death...apparently. LOL

I have the sense from reading about it that ayahuasca, as dramatic as that can be, is a very toned down experience from DMT and conveys information in a way that people can (sort of) understand. DMT, though seems to put you in direct touch with the meta-programmer, as if you have tunneled down a wormhole into the vastness of space between quarks and sub atomic particles and been invited to watch the show.

[Emil El Zapato]

Accidentally took a double dose of white blotter acid when I was 15. It was amazing and it felt very natural. I think this acid was rumored to be the best that had ever been synthesized. Hard to describe the experience. Lots of hallucinations, like sitting back and watching a very odd movie--very lush, sensuous, outside of time and ego experience. I'd also had a fair bit to drink at the time, so I threw up in technicolor.

I think that to some degree it helped me as it made evident to me that my day to day perceptions were almost entirely influenced by my culture and my ego. If I couldn't trust my own mind with most matters unless they were directly related to social and physical survival, I also became very skeptical about my atheism. So, that was a huge relief. I lost my intense fear of dying. I think this is somewhat a universal side effect of being literally ripped out of your mind.

White microdot?

[Octopus Garden]

Could have been NAP. Not sure. It was eons ago.

[Emil El Zapato]

I think blotter was just prepared differently ... literally a bit of a 'blotter' versus a small concentrated pill. Acid-25 was the dosage that very few wanted to touch if one could even get it. I think it was more a laboratory dosage. Like the one that got the Ufologist to take a header out of his window.

[Wind]

Diamonds From Heaven

LSD and the Mind of the Universe

by Christopher M. Bache, Ph.D.

"The book is beautifully written labour of love. I think the author has done a great service to humanity on a par with other great explorers. He has navigated his way beyond the horizon, and drawn us a map.

Chris Bache (above) is professor emeritus in Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, Ohio, where he taught for 33 years.

Between the ages of 30 and 50 (1979 to 1999) he undertook a secret, twenty-year exploration of consciousness using very high doses of LSD. This became his life’s work. He had to keep quiet about, though, to protect his career, family and reputation. Even then, he remained silent while he overcame a dark night of the soul and integrated his experiences.

Now over 70, he is ‘going public’ with his great experiment.

Psychedelic explorations

Secret quest

Bache was first introduced to the idea of psychedelics in 1978, when he read Stanislav Grof’s great book, Realms of the Human Unconscious. Grof wrote about his early explorations with LSD, both on himself and with his psychiatric patients.

Grof found that by re-experiencing the personal root of an emotional complex, such as birth trauma, our experience will expand from personal to transpersonal levels, often with profound spiritual insights.

On reading all this, Bache felt compelled to explore the hidden depths of consciousness and reality for himself. Having graduated in philosophy with a special interest in religion and spirituality, he saw Grof’s use of LSD as a way to discover more about reality.

LSD had been illegal for ten years, however, so it had to be a secret undertaking.

Bache wanted to go as deep as possible and see how far he could break through into the spiritual reams. He committed to an extended series of sessions. These began in 1979, and reached a natural conclusion in 1999.

Ultimately, there were 73 sessions in total, with gaps of several months from one to the next, and all meticulously recorder for posterity.

Dosage

Bache knew from Grof and others that for psychotherapeutic work with LSD, dosages tend to be around 200 micrograms. This opens up the psyche sufficiently to allow therapeutic processing of personal material as it emerges.

At higher doses of, say, 300-500 micrograms, the experience is much more intense and takes on a more mystical flavour.

Bache worked with even higher dosages of 500-600 micrograms precisely to see what happens if you push the psychedelic experience as far as you can take it. With hindsight, he does not recommend anyone else to do the same over an extended period of time.

Protocol

Bache says that it was important to stick to a regular, well-defined protocol for his psychedelic sessions.

He always kept to the same environment (a room at home) and the same sitter (his wife). The sitter would be on hand to keep an eye on him and do things like pass the sick bucket whenever needed.

Taking his cue from Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork sessions, Bache included in his sessions a soundtrack of emotionally intense, varied music (classical music, world music, etc). The sitter could change the music on request.

The day right after any session, Bache would return to the room and play all the same music again in order to recall his entire experience and faithfully write it all down.

Intention

It is well known that both set and setting are crucial in priming the quality of a psychedelic experience. ‘Set’ refers one’s mindset or intent.

Bache’s initial goal was to see if he could achieve personal liberation or enlightenment. As a philosopher of religion, Bache understood the eastern concept of liberation from suffering and the cycle of rebirth. He wondered if working through the lessons of his karma on LSD would be a fast track to enlightenment.

By the end, however, his whole understanding was different.

While he came to believe in the evolution of the soul through reincarnation and karma, he did not see any urgent need for personal liberation from the process. Rather, the individual soul’s journey is all part of a much bigger dynamic of cosmic evolution, unfolding in its own good time.

The ‘liberation’ of the individual soul is no more significant than the continuing evolution of all life, which in turn is an integral part of an eternal process of exploration by the divine itself, within itself.

Over time, then, Bache’s intention in the sessions shifted from personal liberation to serving the divine.

Session phases

Typically, every session went through two phases:

1. Purification (painful)
2. Transcendence (ecstatic)

Purification

Purification involves discovering and working through difficult, often painful material that is not yet incorporated and accepted into one’s overall experience of ‘self’. For example, there might be unresolved shame or guilt around one’s behaviour in relation to others.

The purification phase would always keep Bache immersed in something until it came to a crisis or peak. Sometimes the focus of purification was purely personal; sometimes it was on a more collective level (e.g., ancestral karma). This would finally transform only whenever Bache dropped all resistance and fully opened up to experience the suffering that was being revealed, whether that suffering was his own, or another person’s, or the whole of humanity’s.

Sometimes the purification phase didn’t reach a conclusion in one session. In the next session, though, it would simply pick up exactly where it had left off.

Transcendence

Transcendence involves a breakthrough into higher levels of consciousness. This is usually blissful and profoundly illuminating. To get there, however, the purification process must be followed through to a peak, culminating in a death-and-rebirth experience.

Once the purification phase reached a peak and something was resolved, a window to the transcendent would then open up. The extent of ecstatic transcendence that followed would correlate with the depth of purification that had just taken place.

Over time, as the purification process continued into deeper and deeper levels of conflict, the transcendent phase likewise extended to higher and higher levels of consciousness and bliss.

Bache soon learned to start a session by tuning into any kind of pain or discomfort in his current experience, as this served to initiate and accelerate a purification process.

Real-life effects

Bache found the inability to share what he was doing extremely difficult. It became a kind of torment.

On the other hand, however, he noticed that his heightened energy and consciousness were having an unconscious effect on his university classes. Students would ask questions and he would intuitively know the answer they needed to hear. Or, he would come up with an example during a lecture, only to be told by a student that the example was exactly what they needed to hear at that moment.

This became such a common effect that he wrote a book, The Living Classroom, in which he suggested that when people intentionally collaborate, as in the classroom setting, a collective field of consciousness is created and developed. The longer this field is engaged, the more alive it becomes.

Realms of consciousness/reality

Bache consistently encountered certain realms or levels of consciousness again and again, so he is confident about the following ‘map’.

Personal reality

The first level is purely personal. This is where one’s everyday ego-consciousness meets one’s personal unconscious with its repressed feelings, memories and other material from one’s own life. This level of experience is also immersed in the normal, physical realm of space and time which each of us inhabits while in human form.

Subtle reality

Beyond the familiar level of one’s personal mind lie more subtle realms, which are normally invisible to human consciousness. One’s sense of self at this level is no longer as a human being in the physical realm of space and time, but is that of an evolving consciousness in ‘deep time’, where entire human lifetimes are like short intervals.

Bache identifies two distinct layers or sub-levels:

One subtle level that broadens out from one’s individual experience to incorporate the collective experience of mankind. This taps into a sort of ‘species-mind’ or ‘human soul’ that contains the feelings, images and memories of people generally, or the whole of humanity.

For example, Bache underwent a long-lasting process of experiencing femininity and womanhood. This, he later realised, was orchestrated so as to steer him past his identification with being a man. To move through the experience of female suffering, he had to give up his sense of identity as a ‘man’ and accept the female experience as equally his own.

‘Above’ or ‘behind’ the collective experiences of humanity, Bache encountered the deeper archetypal dynamics and intelligence orchestrating the whole of evolution. This includes, for example, karma as a mechanism to promote the evolution of consciousness. This evolutionary orchestration isn’t just specific to humans, but is universal. Every species has its own guiding intelligence.

Causal reality

Whereas subtle reality consists of oneself and many other consciousnesses evolving over time, the causal level consists of complete unity, oneness and wholeness. It is a single cosmic being of infinite love, which is perceived as brilliant light.

There is no point of reference outside this unity, nor is there any division within it. Every ‘thing’ (object, subject, dimension, event, experience) is simply The One unfolding itself in infinite ways.

The direct experience of this universal love-light is what Bache calls ‘Diamond Luminosity’. Once you have experienced this, you cannot help but wish to return to it. After just a few experiences of it, in fact, Bache actually struggled with living ordinary life; he found himself just waiting for his own death in order to return to the realm of light.

He gradually came to see the significance of ordinary life, however. The light of divine love is always present and is our natural home between lives. But while ‘down here’ in the realm of physical form, our evolutionary purpose is to find and share the light of love within our own lives.

Spiritual insights

There are many insightful lessons to be draw from Bache’s explorations:

Death and rebirth

The movement from one level or realm to another always involves a cycle of death and rebirth. In other words, de-identification from a shallow/narrow sense of self followed by self-realisation at a much deeper or broader level.

This is because the ordinary structure of the ‘self’ cannot interact in levels of reality for which it isn’t prepared.

To function at the level of humanity’s collective consciousness, one has to cease being a specific ‘person’ and surrender into the whole of humanity.

To function in the higher realms beyond human experience, one must dis-identify from human beingness and surrender into a non-physical self or soul.

To function in the causal realm, one has to cease being an individual consciousness altogether and surrender into becoming the cosmic source itself.

The surrender of any current sense of identity is always a form of death. Bache experienced this death process many, many times. By death, he means the willing loss or abandonment of one’s current sense of self.

For example, Bache had to let go of his image of himself as a professional, intellectual, adult male called ‘Chris’. This was forced upon him in early purification phases by first witnessing, and then experiencing for himself, the many painful experiences of other people, especially women, throughout history.

To stabilise our consciousness at any deeper level, Bache learned that we must learn to accept the uncertainty of the unfamiliar and adapt to its different energy flows. Just like when we are born as human individuals, we must become reborn into each new level of reality. Eventually we find our feet there and we are free to explore at will.

[Bache doesn’t mention it, but I also noticed another repeating pattern whereby his experience would shift from witnessing some aspect of reality to actually becoming that.

You can see something happening ‘over there’, but you don’t fully understand it until you directly experience it in, or as, yourself. This was the case with both experiences of suffering and experiences of ecstasy.

Ultimately, Bache shifted from merely witnessing the divine light to merging with it, knowing himself to be the source.]

Suffering

Suffering, Bache found, is integral to the experience of life. But rather than seeing it as an ‘error’ of the human condition, to be transcended once and for all, Bache came to see it as a natural mechanism for the evolution of consciousness.

We are absolutely free to create suffering for ourselves and for others, both deliberately and accidentally. By witnessing or experiencing suffering in whatever form, we may then choose to avoid it by becoming more conscious of how we have created it, or how we are maintaining it.

The more we open to suffering, the more we can evolve. That’s not to say there is any value or merit in just suffering for its own sake. The purpose of any experience of suffering is to learn from it, for the good of both oneself and others.

Transcendence

What our human mind regards as transcendence, our soul experiences as simply relaxing into itself. The option is always there for anyone who seeks it.

Likewise, what the soul yearns for in terms of union with God, the divine welcomes and embraces as part of itself returning to full consciousness.

Again, that door is always open. In fact, Bache learned that the divine is delighted for us to join with it in directly experiencing its absolute love. This ultimate experience is like no other.

But Bache also learned that we still have a life to live ‘down here’, otherwise there is no personal fulfilment, no evolution.

We can alternate between higher and lower states of consciousness as freely as we like. But just as there is no merit in endless suffering, so there is no evolutionary benefit to be gained from just disappearing forever into the divine.

‘Enlightenment’

The idea of ‘total enlightenment’ as some kind of final end state or destination point is without any basis.

Not only is existence infinite, but it is also infinitely creative, with a longing to explore every possibility. Consciousness relishes the limitless opportunities for creation and exploration that its existence affords. There is no point at which evolution stops. There is no end of joy to be found.

‘God’

There is a universal consciousness which is engaged in a never-ending exploration of experiences. Among those experiences it is exploring is the experience of evolving in individuality and self-awareness.

As individuals, we are all aspects of that same universal consciousness. Mostly we are tuned into our own individual experience of life. But (especially with psychedelics), we can also tune out of our individuality and tune into the universal field of experience of which we are a part.

The difference between individual and divine consciousness is like that between a leaf and the tree. Each leaf is but a small part of the whole tree, yet it plays an integral role in the overall life, growth and bounty of the tree. At the same time, the unique form and beauty of each leaf is perfectly valid and essential in its own right.

The future of humanity

Bache says that he was shown the whole of humanity as an evolving work in progress –past, present and future. As part of that, he was also shown humanity’s future ‘destiny’ as a highly evolved species.

But first, there is a global death-rebirth crisis to be got through. It seems likely that only a catastrophe can awaken humanity to a new, collective sense of itself as a single community…"

[Aianawa]

Far out, what a journey he took indeed, the death rebirth part was the time he awaited to share this journey ?.

[donk]

Quote Originally posted by Wind View Post
The 15 min DMT trips are literally mindblowing as you are taken somewhere else, it also shows that time literally is relative. DMT is spirit molecule and perhaps the most potent psychedelic out there, that's why I find it both fascinating and scary. It's not to be taken lightly.
I don't do drugs or ayahuasca. If I want a psychedelic experience, I'll just listen to some good old Pink Floyd.

try them together ... now that's a trip ... that I've never taken ... Carlos Santana and psilocybin together will take one to dangerous places ...

Your body breaks down DMT very quickly, it is found in the bushes that mixed with the ayahuaska vine to make the “brew”, the vine has inhibitors that prevents your body from breaking it down..so it is a prolonged, super intense experience. Make sure you have good guides.

The “gastrointestinal” issues is normally literally the purging of your “shit”, and usually is intensely cleansing and pleasurable (to me). Although in South America they often just use plastic soda bottles and no refrigeration which causes issues, she don’t like being fermented.

I heard that DMT is the only “drug” the human body produces, your brain releases it at death—causing the “white light” experience.

[Chris]

Your body breaks down DMT very quickly, it is found in the bushes that mixed with the ayahuaska vine to make the “brew”, the vine has inhibitors that prevents your body from breaking it down..so it is a prolonged, super intense experience. Make sure you have good guides.

The “gastrointestinal” issues is normally literally the purging of your “shit”, and usually is intensely cleansing and pleasurable (to me). Although in South America they often just use plastic soda bottles and no refrigeration which causes issues, she don’t like being fermented.

I heard that DMT is the only “drug” the human body produces, your brain releases it at death—causing the “white light” experience.

Good points about DMT.

It is also the chemical that gets released during a Kundalini awakening.

I have been listening to some accounts of NDEs recently and some accounts are remarkably similar to what I experienced during my Kundalini awakening, with the white light that fills everything, the visit by a divine being or guide, the expansion of consciousness, etc...

I don't know what that means, but I found the parallels interesting.

[Dreamtimer]

Author Michael Pollan discusses his new book, This is Your Mind on Plants, which focuses on society and opioids, caffein, and mescaline.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_qoHJieoM


Book blurb:

Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs-opium, caffeine, and mescaline-and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings?

[donk]

Dreamtimer, You have to be a very commited psychonaut for DMT. Can it kill you. Yes, if you have very high blood pressure, there's a risk. You also risk being astonished to death...apparently. LOL

I have the sense from reading about it that ayahuasca, as dramatic as that can be, is a very toned down experience from DMT and conveys information in a way that people can (sort of) understand. DMT, though seems to put you in direct touch with the meta-programmer, as if you have tunneled down a wormhole into the vastness of space between quarks and sub atomic particles and been invited to watch the show.

Smoking straight DMT is akin to recreational nitrous use, which feels like more intense acid peak for a short period. Thing is, with good acid, you can get to place real close to what the balloon will do, but you have a lot of context of hours of not as intense “wading” through the experience rather than being shot to another dimension all at once

But more than NO2 even, DMT truly is a portal to another dimension. And the prolonged brew journey can get you just about as deep as smoking the DMT. It’s where the consciousness of plants can interact, and for me…heal and open the minds of humans. The plants really do love us and want to help us.

One time at ceremony, my shaman was telling the first-timers, someone once described it thusly (my word, not his ������):

Being completely sober is to peaking on acid, as peaking on acid is to being on ayahuasca.

My friend who introduced me to the ceremonies has a much more personal relationship with “Grandmother” ayahuasca (as she is lovingly referred to), he originally was told by her in his first ceremony that “she said she was ready to meet me”, so he paid for ceremony if I’d fly out and do it. When i said yes, he said “you’re a brave motherfucker!”

Anyway, he has had some insight and experiences from the DMT. He has also told me that a terrible person that we both knew did it in his youth, and the fear it caused him made him an even worse person. My experience was so intense…like being in a cartoon, saw what I immediately associated with McKenna’s “machine trolls” or whatever, little sprite dudes that were totally stoked to see me. Everything was so vivid and precise. There was a stream of equations (maybe more than one) threading through the scene, but not like super-complex shit you see in sci-fi moves, but just perfectly texted number and symbols:

2 + 5 - 45 ➗ 8 x 17 …..just all the way through.

It was super fun, but I didn’t see gramma or was able to hold on to any profound insights I may have had—kinda like nitrous. I feel like I have the secret of the universe when I am 3-4 balloons deep, but damn if I ever can hang on to it ������

[Emil El Zapato]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRiA8A2hw0Y

[Fred Steeves]

Your body breaks down DMT very quickly, it is found in the bushes that mixed with the ayahuaska vine to make the “brew”, the vine has inhibitors that prevents your body from breaking it down..so it is a prolonged, super intense experience. Make sure you have good guides.

Hey Phil,

I remember talking to you about going to meet "your friend" on the way to doing that. Wasn't it in like Oregon or something? Sounds like the experience made quite the impression on you.

Smoking straight DMT is akin to recreational nitrous use, which feels like more intense acid peak for a short period. Thing is, with good acid, you can get to place real close to what the balloon will do, but you have a lot of context of hours of not as intense “wading” through the experience rather than being shot to another dimension all at once

Yes. Never done ayahuasca or DMT but would definitely like to do when the time is right. But I've certainly had my fair share of quite profound experiences with acid back in the day. Wading though it is a good way to put it. The anticipation after taking it, feeling it coming on, the trippy part, on the way back down, and finally over. Ultimately, my favorite part was after it was all over, because that's when the true introspection set in on what had just happened. Especially when I'd find myself alone with just my own thoughts by this point. I would feel like I had just been naked in the eye of the storm, temporarily stripped of virtually all ego, forced to take a magnifying glass to all of my own personal flaws and bullshit. It was really quite humbling.

LOL this may sound so trivial, in one of these "it's all over introspective sessions", and meticulously reviewing all my bullshit, I suddenly realized that I still owed this guy at work $5 he had loaned me, it had been almost a week now and I had forgotten! I was horrified at this seemingly horrible transgression. I was meeting up with him and a couple other guys to go to the beach that day, and it must have looked rather funny/strange to him me coming up, $5 bill in hand, all earnest and apologetic about being so late to repay him. And he was rather amused like "dude, no big deal". But it was a big deal for me.

My experience was so intense…like being in a cartoon, saw what I immediately associated with McKenna’s “machine trolls” or whatever, little sprite dudes that were totally stoked to see me.

That sounds very similar to Joe Rogan's description to little elves dancing around him, shooting him the bird while taunting him with "Fuck You! Fuck you! Fuck You!" And he quickly discovered they weren't really tauntin him so to speak, but his over inflated ego. Once he mentally got that and appreciated what they were pointing out, the taunting ceased and they were pleased. The taunting was their way of getting through to him.

There was a stream of equations (maybe more than one) threading through the scene, but not like super-complex shit you see in sci-fi moves, but just perfectly texted number and symbols:

2 + 5 - 45 ➗ 8 x 17 …..just all the way through.

It was super fun, but I didn’t see gramma or was able to hold on to any profound insights I may have had—kinda like nitrous. I feel like I have the secret of the universe when I am 3-4 balloons deep, but damn if I ever can hang on to it ������

Yes again. I remember one particular while peaking, I suddenly saw the inner workings of the universe, every little facet. At that young age of maybe 18 or so I wasn't even looking for answers yet, or more like it was in my blood but yet to manifest, universe recognized that, and chose to give me a sneak peek at something I'd never again come close to, no matter how much I was to strive to see again come later in life when the calling had manifested.

It was perfect, a perfectly functioning organism, with everything in it's perfect place. Cycle within cycle within cycle into infinity, and from single cell to the universe no difference, only a difference in scale. There were no problems, only perceived problems. And it coincided with a very simple mathematical equation. I was so blown away by the sheer magnitude of what I was beholding I started to cry, it was that overwhelming of a vision it was all I could do. While having my cry I started thinking to write it all down. But it was so simple and profound how could I ever forget? It was right there in my hand so don't bother. And LOL, 5 minutes later it was gone, only the remnants lingered on. I can only imagine what that scribbled down gibberish may have looked like, but it sure would be interesting to look at it now, and remember along with it from young Freddy's fragile eggshell mind.


I tend to think that there truly are no shortcuts to a profound spiritual journey, and that's why the memory of these experiences are so fleeting. It wouldn't be fair. But there are the lingering effects that can last a lifetime that can still prove quite valuable along that journey. For example, from that vision I'm totally convinced that everything is truly in perfect balance. If something is out of balance in one place, there will be a countering balance elsewhere. Likewise, although a single cell is vital to the function of a human body, it cannot possibly "see" what the overarching human body for which it serves, can see.

I think it makes sense to view us sort of as being that that single cell serving the good of the overall Body, doing our part. Perhaps the single cell can catch some rare glimpses of what the overall body sees at all time, but that's not our function , not now anyway. Our trouble comes in many ways, and one of those ways would be to become frustrated and disgruntled with our "lower" function of "the body". Leading to "this sucks!", "fuck this I'm miserable!", "I want off this carousel of reincarnation this is bullshit!".

But that comes with not seeing the proper order of things, and our proper place there within, and every one of us are subject to these distortions. Now enter the wise ones and philosophers who come back to us from the mists of time to advise us in the varying ways to try and clear those distortions, to see things how they really are.

Like William Blake told us a couple hundred years ago:

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.

It may seem as if I'm careening way off topic here, but what I'm really trying to do is take the use of psychedelics from the realm of abstract, and marry it into the realm of practical application.

Having done many of the recreational drugs over the years, psychedelics is the one I draw the line at, to where they're in their own special category. These are not just your typical street drug used to have a good time, these are special substance that have the capacity to cleanse those doors of perception, opening new doors of possibility, and offering radical new (but really ancient) ways to perceive the nature of our reality. (A shout out to Seth there at the end )

They're certainly not the answer, but used properly, they can help point the way.

Thanks to Aragorn for starting off this fascinating subject.