Psychedelics

[Soul_of_Shu]

To go beyond the anecdotal accounts of participants here, some of the best trip reports I've come across are recounted in the book The Toad and the Jaguar, with an excerpt detailing Stan Grof's experimentation with 5-Me0-dmt ~ he surely being one of the most extensive and incisive investigators of induced altered states.

[Jim Cross]

To go beyond the anecdotal accounts of participants here, some of the best trip reports I've come across are recounted in the book The Toad and the Jaguar, with an excerpt detailing Stan Grof's experimentation with 5-Me0-dmt ~ he surely being one of the most extensive and incisive investigators of induced altered states.

I think Tryptamine Palace mentioned in the link also is a good account.

I have considerable experience with LSD (many years ago), peyote, mushrooms, ayahuasca, and salvia over 50 years. Some of it was very intense stuff.

I still would stress there is considerable interpretation layered on top of the experience. As the intro to the link states:

Someone with little or no prior experience with meditative states or practices might simply go completely unconscious, i.e. dissociate, while those with more experience might find themselves in transcendent, out-of-body or absorptive trance states that can be only partially remembered and described afterwards. Body movements, sounds and verbal utterances that are observed by others but not remembered by the subject – also indicate dissociative disconnect, no matter how pleasurable the subjective experience. The ability to make sense of the experience would certainly be a function of having had some prior experiences of transcendent consciousness and acquaintance with the literature of meditative practices.

So the question becomes to what extent "prior experiences of transcendent consciousness and acquaintance with the literature" actually creating or defining the experience vs understanding what is inherent in the experience itself.

[SanteriSatama]

So the question becomes to what extent "prior experiences of transcendent consciousness and acquaintance with the literature" actually creating or defining the experience vs understanding what is inherent in the experience itself.

Yes. It's an interpretative loop, spiral etc., as much of the literature, myths etc. originate from direct experiences. And some times interpretative functions give way to medicinal etc. practical functions.

[Soul_of_Shu]

So the question becomes to what extent "prior experiences of transcendent consciousness and acquaintance with the literature" actually creating or defining the experience vs understanding what is inherent in the experience itself.

Jim ... Valid question, and to be clear, as BK also points out, these trips can tend to be very 'noisy' channels, and not so easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. And only having the 'profound' spontaneous experience I related above to go by, as opposed to the induced versions of 'psychonauts', since at the time it happened I was about as ignorant of all this transcendental messaging as one could possibly be, with no interest in spirituality whatsoever, and no prior reading or practice in that regard, I've no idea what prior experience might have conditioned that experience. I only really know that going by trip reports of the psychonauts, there are striking similarities.

[Astra052]

To go beyond the anecdotal accounts of participants here, some of the best trip reports I've come across are recounted in the book The Toad and the Jaguar, with an excerpt detailing Stan Grof's experimentation with 5-Me0-dmt ~ he surely being one of the most extensive and incisive investigators of induced altered states.

Grof is a real pioneer in the field. I disagree with a lot of his conclusions but he was one of the only ones digging into this stuff when no one else was.

[5MeO-DMT_Philosopher]

My favorite trip raports

[Jim Cross]

I've no idea what prior experience might have conditioned that experience. I only really know that going by trip reports of the psychonauts, there are striking similarities.

We can imagine, however, there could be a lot of influence of prior experience. If we compare the indigenous expectations and understanding of ayahuasca , for example, with those of Westerner we would probably find almost night and day differences. Ayahuasca for an indigenous person has little to do with mystical, non-dual experiences but has a lot to do with a unseen world of sorcery and magic. In that world, the shaman is there to cure the problem but the problem may not be related to either physical or mental health, but related to worldly concerns.

Getting information from other realms is indeed one of the main
functions of the caapi complex. It is used to locate animals in the forest, to
find out about relatives in distant places, to know the cause or etiology of
illness, to get to know the plans of the enemies, etc. When Karsten asked
the Shuar why they drink natéma, he got the following answer: “It is in
order that the people may not die away”. He then adds the following
commentary: “By this kind of divination they try to find out what dangers
are threatening the family, whether enemies are planning an attack against
them, whether evil sorcerers are operating against them, whether they will
be successful in their own undertakings, and so forth”

It seems that among some indigenous groups caapi was used with
warfare. Spruce described in 1852 how the person who has taken caapi
would “bursts into a perspiration, and seems possessed with reckless fury,
seizes whatever arms are at hand, his murucú, bow and arrows, or cutlass,
and rushes to the doorway, where he inflicts violent blows on the ground or
the doorposts, calling out all the while, ‘Thus would I do to mine enemy
12 Luis Eduardo Luna
naming him by his name) were were this he!5
’” Calavia[27] pointed out that
Yaminahua memories of life before the pax branca (the peace imposed by
whites), suggest a conception of ayahuasca that might seem strange or
perhaps even scandalous in another context: the plant-substance is a
bloodthirsty agent associated with war and vengeance that eventually is
tempered by the blood of a dead relative. It is also the instrument of an
aggressive shamanism in which therapy is defense and counter-attack.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... 8/download

[SanteriSatama]

It is also the instrument of an
aggressive shamanism in which therapy is defense and counter-attack.

There are also stories from the north, wild sorcerers hunting and trapping each other in various realms and dying for a sport.

[Lou Gold]

It is also the instrument of an
aggressive shamanism in which therapy is defense and counter-attack.

There are also stories from the north, wild sorcerers hunting and trapping each other in various realms and dying for a sport.

When Wade Davis asked the Vodun priest in Haiti if there was white and black magic the response was "Yes, both, but our people know the difference." I suspect that this is true for most paths from the shaman realm.

[JustinG]

FYI, there's lots of videos re psychedelics on this site for the online conference: Psychedelics, Madness, & Awakening: Harm Reduction and Future Visions http://www.psychedelicsmadnessawakening.com/
Haven't seen any specifically on idealism but some of the panels include topics such as " Christian traditions" and "envisioning collective healing", which might be of interest.