Psychedelic drugs

[pattycakes_]

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ligent-sentient-book-brilliant-green-internet

stick that in yer brain hatch

 

[shiels]

This is michael pollan on the same thing

The most bracing part of Mancuso’s talk on bioinspiration came when he discussed underground plant networks. Citing the research of Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia, and her colleagues, Mancuso showed a slide depicting how trees in a forest organize themselves into far-flung networks, using the underground web of mycorrhizal fungi which connects their roots to exchange information and even goods. This “wood-wide web,” as the title of one paper put it, allows scores of trees in a forest to convey warnings of insect attacks, and also to deliver carbon, nitrogen, and water to trees in need.
When I reached Simard by phone, she described how she and her colleagues track the flow of nutrients and chemical signals through this invisible underground network. They injected fir trees with radioactive carbon isotopes, then followed the spread of the isotopes through the forest community using a variety of sensing methods, including a Geiger counter. Within a few days, stores of radioactive carbon had been routed from tree to tree. Every tree in a plot thirty metres square was connected to the network; the oldest trees functioned as hubs, some with as many as forty-seven connections. The diagram of the forest network resembled an airline route map.
The pattern of nutrient traffic showed how “mother trees” were using the network to nourish shaded seedlings, including their offspring—which the trees can apparently recognize as kin—until they’re tall enough to reach the light. And, in a striking example of interspecies coöperation, Simard found that fir trees were using the fungal web to trade nutrients with paper-bark birch trees over the course of the season. The evergreen species will tide over the deciduous one when it has sugars to spare, and then call in the debt later in the season. For the forest community, the value of this coöperative underground economy appears to be better over-all health, more total photosynthesis, and greater resilience in the face of disturbance.

This isn’t to say plants are conscious, or have an idea of self, but they're trading information in networks that are a bit like neural networks, and there’s plenty of evidence to show inter-kingdom ‘communication’ too, which can affect gene-expression, and obviously behaviours (psychoactive plants and medicines)

Mammals tripping might just be a side-effect of the plant’s ‘intended’ cognitive effects ie making you feel nauseous or freaked out so we don’t eat them

I don’t think it’s too much of a jump from here to say that distinct plants and chemical combinations might have distinct conceptual representations in a trip (colours plus patterns plus feelings, discernible intentions even) especially in your hyper-suggestible tripping state, and within certain social contexts where more ambient info about the cacti and its effects and mythology are absorbed without someone having to say “you’ll meet the green entity”

 

[shiels]

eg

we humans must have innate evolutionary wetware that forces our senses to latch onto any piece of anthropomorphic data that pops into otherwise randomly uniform data -- like spotting the face of another human or a jaguar peering out from behind the bushes, or seeing another human moving through tall grass. The evolutionary advantage of such a trait is obvious, and in standard Rorschach tests even the most amorphous blobs are found to look like faces and/or people no matter what culture the observer is from. Now, given the amazing swirling kaleidoscopic imagery produced in the typical DMT trip, it is inevitable that anthropomorphic shapes will emerge and then express themselves in even greater detail as the mind latches onto them and "dreams" them into focus. With the imaginal workflow kicked into high gear, it is not surprising that these emergent anthropomorphic entities can then speak to us, revealing shocking details from our own subconscious in a conversational stream of visual theater. Given all of this, in a nutshell, the case for autonomous disincarnate DMT entities is closed. All that is needed to produce them is our own over-excited visual system and imagination, and thus Occam's razor wipes them right off the table and into the fairy-dust bin.

In conclusion I would just like to mention a couple more things. The visions produced by DMT are not solely elves and alien entities. A wide variety of archetypes and just plain-old whacked-out stoner shit creeps into the mix. It is highly individual and in many cases is heavily dependent on set and setting. This fact alone (more than anything else) leads me to believe that the DMT entities are mere figments. If, for example, everyone always saw talking penguins and only talking penguins while high on DMT, that would be much harder to explain and much more mysterious. The fact that DMT "consciousness" reveals itself in so many forms tells me that the "messenger" -- be it elf, alien, jaguar, or whatever -- is basically arbitrary within the context of the patterns and archetypes our minds tend to pick out of random noise. However (and this is the good part), the really interesting thing about DMT experiences is not the elves (messengers) themselves, but what it is they are saying (the message). And when you get to the heart of what the typical DMT message is, it is usually something about the environment or living systems or the vast plant consciousness that penetrates our world. The "Gaia consciousness" that infuses the experience is undeniable, and what to make of that I don't know, other than to entertain the possibility that this ancient plant consciousness actually exists and is attempting to make itself known through the DMT-enlightened mammal brain. If so, then this is the real discovery of the DMT experience, and this is the topic that should be looked at more closely. In the context of DMT being a two-way radio for plant-human communication, the "elves" themselves are nothing more than a cartoon interface for the exchange of information.

 

[version]

I hope you read all that lads did you read it

I did.

 

[version]

I've never had the Eastern stuff, kaleidoscopic visuals etc. My experiences have been like inhabiting a giant and perpetually melting painting.

 

[version]

Tripping his brains out -- Eric Bulson on Michel Foucault and LSD

In May 1975, Michel Foucault watched Venus rise over Zabriskie Point while Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths) blared from the speakers of a nearby tape recorder. Just a few hours earlier he had ingested LSD for the first time and was in the process of undergoing what he saw as “one of the most important experiences” of his life. And he wasn’t alone. Two newly acquired companions had brought Foucault to Death Valley for this carefully choreographed trip complete with a soundtrack, some marijuana to jumpstart the effects, and cold drinks to combat the dry mouth. It was all spurred on by the hope that Foucault’s visit to “the Valley of Death”, as he called it, would elicit “gnomic utterances of such power that he would unleash a veritable revolution in consciousness”.

 

[pattycakes_]

Now there's a picture

The act of witnessing, in fact, is what makes Wade’s account so masterly. Instead of trying to decode the riddle of the bald sphinx, he simply records what he heard as the two huddled together. With tears streaming down his face, Foucault declared: “Tonight I have achieved a fresh perspective on myself. I now understand my sexuality. It all seems to start with my sister. We must go home again … Yes, we must go home again”. Wade refuses to provide any gloss, preferring instead Foucault’s cryptic explanation that his experience in Death Valley “has not been a philosophical exercise for me, but something else entirely”.

That “something else” is, and will remain, a mystery. What we do know, however, is that Foucault returned to Paris after finishing his semester at Berkeley and radically reconceived his plan for Histoire de la sexualité, sharing the news with Wade and Stoneman by letter, that he “threw the completed second volume … into the fire and eradicated the entire prospectus he had meant to publish in the projected seven-volume series”. Wade interpreted this dramatic change in direction as Foucault’s final message, one that “teaches us to elude the ruinous codes of the Disciplined Society and to make our lives into works of art”.

The Death Valley scene will, no doubt, remain the centrepiece of Wade’s memoir, but there is also pleasure to be found in the more mundane activities, including car rides with Foucault in the back seat, a quick stop at a diner off Route 66, and a morning trip to Mount Baldy. Sitting in a cabin with Wade’s friends, Foucault plays the sage, chats, flirts, hikes and chops wood, the juxtaposition of his urbane style and the rustic setting earning him the nickname “Country Joe Foucault”.

 

[version]

"the riddle of the bald sphinx" and "Country Joe Foucault" cracked me up.

 

[version]

I liked this too,

“The stars are raining down upon me. I know this is not true but it is the truth.”

 

[version]

The Unpredictable Cactus

Jay begins his history in the Chavín de Huántar, a temple in the High Andes of Peru rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1930s. A carved figure in an inner sanctum, ‘snake-haired, sprouting fangs and claws’ and wielding a San Pedro cactus like an upraised baguette, has been dated to 1200 bce at the latest. Archaeologists believe the temple was a gathering place for the ritual ingestion of psychoactive plants at large ceremonies. The motifs and objects suggest that participants ingested not only San Pedro but snuffs containing N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), another naturally occurring psychedelic, and the alcoholic brew known as chicha, and that they may have countered the nausea that often accompanies San Pedro with movement and song. ‘The architecture of the complex seems to have been designed to frame and create a spectacle in which the senses were manipulated by sound, light and spatial disorientation as well as consciousness-altering plant preparations,’ Jay writes. ‘Rushing mountain streams were rerouted to create an artificial watercourse that echoed through the tunnels; conch trumpet shells have been found, and fragments of anthracite mirror that may have bounced light through the galleries along with sound.’

On the other side of the equator, in the high deserts of northern Mexico, the human relationship with peyote, the other cactus family high in mescaline, dates back to the time of Chavín and earlier. In botanical terms peyote is ‘about as different from the San Pedro as a cactus can be’, Jay writes. Its ‘creased, leathery, spineless heads’ grow close to the ground and have the appearance of ‘stones or deer droppings’. Dried peyote cactus buttons found in the Shumla caves of southern Texas have been carbon-dated to 4000 bce.

 

[version]

Interesting the conductor of a peyote ceremony's known as a "roadman".

 

[catalog]

Perhaps this is a potential squaring of the circle? How does ‘road’ differ to ‘street’? Im sure that ‘living on the streets’, ‘streetlife’, ‘raised by the streets’ is the more common, older way of describing a certain kind of life. ‘Roadman’, ‘on road’ etc is a newer formulation i think? What is responsible for this change? I suppose road is a broader term than street, for a start, but im sure thats not the only reason.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think of streets as inherently urban. Roads connect places - places that may or may not be urban themselves.

Roads can be lonely but streets always bustle.

"There where the long street roars hath been/The stillness of the central sea."

 

[catalog]

Yeah i get that, but why would people in london use road over street, if thats the case?

Both roads and streets can be lonely.

 

[sufi]

Now there's a picture

Glad to see this is still around http://www.electrokin.com/zabriskie_point/

Zabriskie Point is a place for images that have recently fallen out of my camera. Words and meanings are few, I like the images to speak for themselves. Zabriskie Point is named after both the visually stunning film by Antonioni - highly subjective and indulgent, albeit enjoyably so and the remote Borax mine in the centre of death valley.

 

[pattycakes_]

Yeah i get that, but why would people in london use road over street, if thats the case?

Both roads and streets can be lonely.

a street suggests buildings around it, a road sounds more open and long

in my head at least

 

[version]

A street tends to have a name too whereas a road can just be a road.

 

[droid]

Well. That was quite something.

 

[shiels]

Let’s hear it then. Did you think about this thread the whole time?

 

[DannyL]

The below nicked from a FB friend of mine:

Recently, the psychedelic appeal - and occasional psychedelic quality - of Tibetan Buddhist teachings and literature came up in conversation. Tibetan tantric Buddhism might have inspired a lot of psychonauts, and is more than occasionally mind-bendng.... Tibetan Buddhist texts drip with a deeply-felt sense of the inconceivable vastness of the universe, of the ever-present realities of other lives and ways of being, of other possibilities and perspectives co-existing and unfolding in a constantly shifting, impossibly vast web of interconnections latent and actualized, seen and unseen. This sense is not ultimately speculative, however, but based on the direct experience of meditators.

This sensibility is captured in an extraordinarily profound way in the following teaching song of the 19th century itinerant Tibetan yogi-poet Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol (1781 - 1851). This is the tenth song from Shabkarpa's famous text of popular instruction on Dzogchen Trekcho teachings, those meditation practices which encourage meditators to 'cut through the hardness' of dualistic concepts and conceptual mind. In the song below, Shabkar seeks to point out the relativity of perceived phenomena, to highlight the extent to which all concepts and perceptions arise of, through, and within mind. In doing so, the yogi provides a glimpse of a vast and luminous Buddhist cosmos and outlines a Tibetan Buddhist version of what anthropologists have called 'perspectivist' cosmology.

The following is my (very rough translation) of this incredible song and teaching. Ah-mazing!

"Emaho! How amazing!

Fortunate disciples, one and only children of my heart! All appearances are inconsistent. For some appearances arise, for some there is [merely] darkness. Further, there are some sentient beings on earth who perceive earth as earth, some who perceive earth as fire, some who perceive earth as their wealth or a resource to indulge in, some who perceive it as suffering. There are beings that perceive water as water, water as fire, water as nectar, water as their home, and water as earth.

There are beings who perceive fire as fire, fire as riches, fire as a place to live, and fire as their food. Beings that perceive the sky or space as space, space as their home, and space as earth. Thus, since appearances are inconsistent it follows that things appear however they do due to the influence of [beings’] karmic imprints. In this way, the way we perceive each of the four elements is really just our human perception.

Other beings perceive this earth as the fires of hell, the riches of the farmer, and as suffering caused by mental oppression. Likewise, fire-deities perceive fire as a resource, something they indulge in and enjoy, yidag or preta spirits with bodies made of fire perceive it as a home, and fire srinbu, invisible, microscopic creatures in fire, perceive it as food. In turn, beings in the hell-realms perceive water as fire, yidag beings perceive it as blood and pus, elephants perceive it as earth, deities as nectar. Deities [of the sixth heaven of the Desire Realm] with control over other’s magical emanations perceive it as jewels and rains of flowers and klu or naga spirits perceive it as their home. Space is also in the same way a home – all the deities perceive it as their earth. So it is that everything appears in accordance with however each individual being labels [or perceptually imputes] it. And Devaputra asked the Buddha, “who made Mount Meru, the cosmic mountain, the sun, and moon, and so on?’ And when he asked him the Buddha answered from his own lips:

“There is no other creator of these than the karmic imprints or conditioning of one’s own conceptual mind – by treating these as real, hard, and solid, one then labels and imputes [independently, concretely] existent things, and clings to them [as objects], and in this way they appear [as phenomena]. Everything is created by one’s mind.”

Devaputra then asked the Buddha again, “However much one might treat one’s mental concepts as concrete and solid, [the question remains:] where does the hardness and durability of things like Mount Meru, the sun and moon, and so on, come from?”

And having asked this, the Buddha answered from his own lips:

“An old woman in Varanasi meditated on her own body as a tiger and the townsfolk then saw her as a tiger and vacated the city [in fear]. As such, if one can appear [to beings] like this after only a short time [of conditioning one’s mind through meditation], then how much more might appear to a mind conditioned and habituated through the karmic imprints of [infinite] rebirths throughout beginning-less time?”

Thus, everything is created by the mind.

Further, some non-Buddhist Indian heretics, seeking to counter the hustle-and-bustle and distractions of the world, visualized isolated places of retreat or solitude and through this such places of solitude were actualized and even seen by other people. One [non-Buddhist meditator] is said to have meditated that the sky was rock and it transformed into rock and was impenetrable to any [human] body. Thus, everything is the mind’s own appearance, created by the mind’s concepts, and such self-appearances are in essence empty. Sentient beings in the short-duration hells perceive doors, pillars, stoves, ropes, and so on as their own forms and experience suffering. Thus, however objects are labelled and imputed by the conceptual mind, they will appear as phenomena accordingly.

All the pleasures and pains of transmigrating beings in the six realms are created solely by their own minds. Rest your mind utterly in equanimity, having completely made up your mind, resolved for yourself, that everything is non-existent yet appearing, is the natural form or embodiment of emptiness!

It is said that there are three thousand world-systems, universes upon universes, atop one single grain of pollen in the lotus [held in] Buddha Infinite Ocean’s hand. It is said that when one reaches the extent of rig pa or pure awareness [facilitated by the Great Perfection practices of] ‘Crossing the Skull’ or Tögal, one perceives limitless Buddhas and pure lands in every pore of one’s body, and limitless abodes of sentient beings of the six realms, and further, that one can send out as many magical emanations to tame or benefit beings as one can in a dream.

Thus, all phenomena of samsara-nirvana are one’s own, self-appearances. All these self-appearances are empty, without any basis. Develop confidence in the empty-and-luminous, ungraspable state [of all that is]. It is said, moreover, that in every tiny particle found within each atom there are immeasurable Buddhas and pure lands and innumerable abodes of the six classes of beings. The Victorious Buddhas have taught that all of these exist without getting mixed up together, without conflict, and without doing any harm to one another. Further, it is said that within the interior of every bacterium, every tiny, invisible organism, are innumerable cities of subsequent tiny organisms. It is said that there are multiple [celestial] cities in the sky, formed facing downwards, crosswise, and upwards throughout the field of space, infinite cities [every which way]. When one wonders, ‘who made all of these like this?’, the Buddhas state that all are made by the mind.

The mind’s nature is primordially sky-like, like space. Understand that all phenomena are likewise like this. Every single phenomenon, all sights, sounds and all other sensory appearances of conventional reality are nothing but the self-appearances of one’s own mind, one’s own reflections. When one dies and when one’s mind-stream changes and moves on, although the external world does not change one’s self-appearances or perceptions do. So it is that everything is the mind’s own appearance or perception.

All such individual appearances or visions are without any foundation, devoid of any basis they are empty. Non-existent, luminous appearances, they are like the reflection of the moon in water – nurture the experience of rig pa, pure basic awareness, inseparable clarity-and-emptiness! All perceived appearances are the mind’s own self-appearances.

The appearance of the inanimate universe, the ‘container’, is mind. The appearance of the six classes of sentient beings, that container’s ‘essence’ or ‘contents’, are mind too. The blissful appearances of the higher rebirths of gods and humans are also mind. The appearance of suffering in the three realms of lower, negative rebirth are mind. The appearance of non-awareness and the five poisons and afflictive emotions are mind. The appearance of the spontaneously, self-arisen primordial wisdom or gnosis of rig pa, too, is mind. The appearance of evil thoughts, samsara’s karmic imprints, are mind. The appearance of all good thoughts, of Buddhas and pure-lands, are also mind. The appearance of obstacles causes by dud and dre demons are mind. The auspicious appearance of gods and siddhis is mind. The appearance of the characteristics and colours of material phenomena is mind. Their lack of inherent characteristics and conceptual elaboration or embellishment is mind. The appearance of the non-duality of the one and the many is mind. The appearance of things not existing in any concrete way at all is mind.

There are no appearances beyond mind. One analogy for the mind is that it is like an artist, a designer. Your own body too has been made by the mind. Every possible dimension to be found in the three thousand fold universe has been painted by the mind. All sentient beings with their child-like minds have been deceived by the designs, the artwork of their own thoughts. So, it’s very important that you confirm for yourself, that you generate real decisive understanding, that all that exists is a magic show, the miraculous display of your mind.

This is the introduction to or pointing out of conceptual thoughts as mind.”