119 replies to this topic

[TVCasualty]

Like i said its all anecdotal evidence. Please show me a double blind scientific experiment where people high on acid, shrooms, cactus etc. have telepathy, telekinesis, contact with aliens, or whatever in an environment that is repeatable by the masses. One would think if this is possible that we here would be privy to and discuss these occurrences.

Thanks to the legal climate for studying these molecules, things have not progressed as well as they might have. But progress is being made and studies are being conducted. These don't show supernatural abilities, but they show enhanced natural abilities in some cases (often at the cost of a reduction in some other ability). More than anything else, they point to the fact that more studies need to be done.

Here's a quote from one, found here: http://www.maps.org/...1/07110bag.html

Semantic priming

The researchers found that psilocybin slowed the subjects' reaction times while at the same time producing a semantic priming effect for indirectly related words ("sweet" and "lemon"), similar to that seen in the schizophrenia research. The finding that psilocybin slowed reaction times was not unexpected; past research with psychedelics has found the same effect. However, the finding that psilocybin produced indirect semantic priming is more interesting. In their discussion, the researchers point out that their findings are relevant to claims that psychedelics "enhance creativity" or "broaden consciousness":

Although most objective measures have failed to support these claims, our data suggest that the [hallucinogenic] agent in fact leads to an increased availability of remote associations and thereby may bring cognitive contents to mind that under normal circumstances remain nonactivated; however, the generally decreased psychological performance under hallucinogenic agents suggest that the increased indirect priming effect is due to a decreased capacity to use contextual information for the focusing of semantic processing. Hence, subjectively experienced increases in creativity as well as the broadening of consciousness have been found to parallel decreases in objective performance measures (p. 1056-1057).

Thus, the researchers suggest that psychedelics may in fact "broaden consciousness" by making remote mental associations more available. However, this involves a trade-off. Although remote mental associations are more available, subjects are less able to focus, which slows their reaction time

And from another:

Abstract
Rationale Although psilocybin has been used for centuries for religious purposes, little is known scientifically about its acute and persisting effects.
Objectives This double-blind study evaluated the acute and longer-term psychological effects of a high dose of psilocybin relative to a comparison compound administered under comfortable, supportive conditions.
Materials and methods The participants were hallucinogen-naïve adults reporting regular participation in religious or spiritual activities. Two or three sessions were conducted at 2-month intervals. Thirty volunteers received orally administered psilocybin (30 mg/70 kg) and methylphenidate hydrochloride (40 mg/70 kg) in counterbalanced order. To obscure the study design, six additional volunteers received methylphenidate in the first two sessions and unblinded psilocybin in a third session. The 8-h sessions were conducted individually. Volunteers were encouraged to close their eyes and direct their attention inward. Study monitors rated volunteers’ behavior during sessions. Volunteers completed questionnaires assessing drug effects and mystical experience immediately after and 2 months after sessions. Community observers rated changes in the volunteer’s attitudes and behavior.
Results
Psilocybin produced a range of acute perceptual changes, subjective experiences, and labile moods including anxiety. Psilocybin also increased measures of mystical experience. At 2 months, the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior consistent with changes rated by community observers.
Conclusions
When administered under supportive conditions, psilocybin occasioned experiences similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences. The ability to occasion such experiences prospectively will allow rigorous scientific investigations of their causes and consequences.

(http://www.springerl...175688r1w4862x/)

[Hippie3]

subjectively experienced increases in creativity as well as the broadening of consciousness have been found to parallel decreases in objective performance measures

kinda like drunks who think they play pool or drive better after a few shots eh.

[TVCasualty]

kinda like drunks who think they play pool or drive better after a few shots eh.

It would be if the drunks actually could do something better, instead of just think they can. The studies seem to show that you lose some ability while gaining another, which is different from alcohol intoxication where people only think they gain something.

Based on physiological and pharmacological data, we speculate that this impaired attentional performance may reflect a reduced ability to suppress or ignore distracting stimuli rather than reduced attentional capacity. The clinical relevance of these results is also discussed.

(http://www.mitpressj...892905774597191)

According to that quote, it's not that our attention is lessened when we are under the influence of psilocin rather it's that we are less able to filter out what would normally be considered distractions. The result may appear to be functionally identical, but taking in too much info is not the same as failing to take in enough. Further studies are obviously needed to explore the implications of that.

[Hippie3]

we speculate

aye, there's the rub...

[chimp]

kinda like drunks who think they play pool or drive better after a few shots eh.

I don't know about playing better when I am drinking but I do know that I win alot more games than lose when I am intoxicated. I am pretty sure it is because those that I am playing can't handle their alcohol as well as I can. Either that or they like buying me beer so they lose on purpose..I doubt it though.

[mycot]

Thanks to the legal climate for studying these molecules, things have not progressed as well as they might have. But progress is being made and studies are being conducted. These don't show supernatural abilities, but they show enhanced natural abilities in some cases (often at the cost of a reduction in some other ability). More than anything else, they point to the fact that more studies need to be done.

The objective scientific perspective(dont take any of the stuff oneself) is completly out of its depth in trying to really understand these molecules. Even Strassman had to abandon reductionist scientific objectivity. That person with the feathers and rattles probably understands them far better.

Few priests would say yes to the question "So your a practitioner of shamanism are you"
To admit such would usually land him in very hot water quite quickly.

[Oblivion]

With my first example of alcohol and driving, the driver thinks(if nieve or belligerent enough) he can drive better. That is not to say other areas are not enhanced. Alcohol does, for me anyway enhances my creativity.
I am developing my own role playing system. When writing the background stories, the words pour onto the pages if I've hade a couple(only a couple) glasses of wine. As I continue to drink, there is a point where I lose the edge I had. Same is true with shrooms with the exception of actual writing. My ability for this diminishes but the ability to imagine new worlds and characters is greatly enhanced. I am inclined to agree with TV in that some abilities are enhanced while others are diminished. All things must be equalized.

[Sigaar]

Im curious as to how many of you that practice Shamanism, use your Guides and have them with you when you are tripping on shrooms.

[Hippie3]

...
I am developing my own role playing system...

bet you get laid alot eh
:lol:
just kidding, played many RPG when i had no life, no work, no worries...

[Ras Asad]

i jus spoke to wiki....

wiki has informed me that you are a Shaman. lol

:heart:

[Hippie3]

ha!
i have a note from my mom...

[Oblivion]

bet you get laid alot eh
:lol:
just kidding, played many RPG when i had no life, no work, no worries...

More times than I care to remember, still its never enough when it comes to that you know.

A few long time friends and I get together once a week for a few hours and shoot the shit more than anything else. Hanging with old friends is relaxing.

[TVCasualty]

Im curious as to how many of you that practice Shamanism, use your Guides and have them with you when you are tripping on shrooms.

During my very first trip, which was years before I ever explored the stuff associated with shamanism, I had what would be called a 'guide' show up unannounced and uninvited, but I was very very glad to see him and somehow had an instinctive understanding of his role in my trip. He rode into my bedroom on a Harley and took me on a fascinating tour of some places on the other side of the veil; he never spoke but he took us through some interesting places to say the least and I met him again unexpectedly years later in a totally different context (totally sober), and again he was quite helpful.

What made the biggest impression on me about this stuff was how it arrived in my life without my seeking it, or knowing anything about it at the time (I was too young and ignorant of what I was doing to be semantically primed for the experience I had). My mind was turned inside-out in a matter of hours and nothing was ever the same again, and it felt like it was for the better. All my reading and exploring of 'shamanism,' including weeding out the copious amounts of bullshit stuck to the word, came long after several vivid and profound experiences that manifested with no intent or effort on my part whatsoever. I've just been going along with wherever this crazy trip takes me, and calling it as I see it as it unfolds.

[Hippie3]

your totem rides a harley ?
come now,
you think maybe, just maybe, you dredged that imagery up
from your subconscious mind?
that your vision is symbolic, like a Jungian dream sequence ?
:lol:

[warriorsoul]

I had my first guide experience when i discovered my first wild actives.

My guide looked like Jesus Christ, he didn't use words, but rather conveyed his thoughts directly to my mind. I believe he came to me in this image because this was the image i was most comfortable with at the time.
At first i felt shameful of myself to be in his presence and cried out, but he quickly let me know that i had been chosen to receive this gift, it was a very intense experience to say the least. The message was clear... Stop messing around, there is work to be done!
I have tripped numerous times before this but never had this type of experience before.

I believe it is part of our "higher-self" that speaks to us, to guide us.
Through the my own research over the next year, i realized the mushrooms i found were Psilocybe aztecorum, also called Teonanácatl or "flesh of the gods" by the Aztecs.

This trip pushed me to become an expert on active Psilocybe mushrooms.
Shamans, like any good teacher, don't strive for status, they only need students who want to learn.
There is much too learn, but it will not be handed to you.
Truth is known in silence.
This is why prefer philosophy over religion.
The mushroom is the shaman.

Some people like to grease up their words like a used car salesman.
Hard to buy into that when you prefer to walk.

[Mr. Clean]

i used to romanticize w shamanism, and foreign culture in general..somehow i thought shamanism, buddhism to be "different" from western culture & religion i.e. christianity..to an american, these practices seem "mystical, "brand-new..

when in fact, all you're doing trading in a beast you know, for a beast that you don't..it's a fucking rediculous argument, if you ask me..certainly, every religion has it's specific beliefs..but, fundamentally..it's all the same!! :bs:

[Hippie3]

My guide looked like Jesus Christ

interesting.
of course what you really mean
is that it looked like the popular anglo-christian depiction of jesus-


however
one thing we know -
jesus did not look like that man.
jesus was of semitic racial background.
he looked a lot more like this-

hence the 'jesus' you saw
undoubtedly was drawn from within your own mind,
a symbol of a teacher i would suppose...

[Ras Asad]

Hip!

y'know
that depiction of him resonates more with me than any of these others. lol

i always figured that.. never saw an actual rendering tho. :heart:

[TVCasualty]

I bet both of those Jesii are on the No-Fly List. Especially that realistic one; he's way too Middle Eastern looking for modern American air travel.

your totem rides a harley ?
come now,
you think maybe, just maybe, you dredged that imagery up
from your subconscious mind?
that your vision is symbolic, like a Jungian dream sequence ?

He was one of several guides or totems or whatever I've encountered, and I don't think he rides a Harley but he manifested in my mind as appearing that way that night, or maybe I manifested him in my mind that way (the distinction makes no difference). It was not all angels and trumpets and magic flying carpets because (I'm guessing) my brain wasn't wired to respond to those things or they might have been too distracting (I'd have been spending too long looking at the vehicle and missed the scenery we were traveling through). During my second encounter he was not on a motorcycle (and we weren't going on a journey anywhere, either).

I do think the imagery was drawn from my subconscious mind (I think I like 'drawn' better than 'dredged') and I was familiar with motorcycles and roads and the other aspects of the imagery, but that's where the familiarity ended. The whole scene seemed to me to be a familiar point of departure into unfamiliar territory. The visions didn't get interesting until we had ridden that bike somewhere; just seeing him and the bike was not the vision in other words, it was just the vehicle and was conveniently symbolized by a vehicle.

I don't know if a consciousness exists separate from my own that can communicate directly with mine (i.e. a vision) and my brain perceives it as it is, or if there is some means of information flow that my mind can detect under certain conditions (not unlike a radio being tuned to a specific frequency) and that my mind projects its own 'skin' on it so the information is compatible with my own unique reality tunnel. Someone else may have received the exact same vision, but their mind applied a totally different skin over it so it would fit within their own unique reality tunnel.

Dream interpretation used to work well because of this phenomenon, but having someone else interpret our dreams is no longer likely to be accurate or useful. That's because in tribal cultures, the myths, metaphors, and symbols are largely homogenous and so mean roughly the same thing to everyone in the tribe. Coyotes are tricksters in the Native American reality tunnel, so a Native American elder could tell you that your dream of a coyote might be related to deception or cleverness or shenanigans. These days, there are very few to no such homogenous symbols; a rancher dreaming of wolves is going to be interpreting wolf imagery to symbolize something totally different than an eco-activist dreaming of wolves, etc.

This is one reason why I think it's good that everyone explore this path at least a little bit; our culture is becoming so fragmented in some ways due to its exponential expansion in population, information, and technology that our minds are becoming tribes unto themselves, so we need to learn to be our own hunters, gatherers, shamans, and warriors all in one. In other ways our culture is becoming so interconnected that ultimately privacy and individual identity may vanish altogether, and what I call shamanism is a tool for retaining my own individual identity via direct experience. I guess I want to maintain my own ego so that I can seek it's transcendence at its own pace.

I'm perfectly willing to entertain the idea that we're all (including myself) just chasing our tails and trying to pass the time with all these spiritual ponderings, but if so I want to go about it in the most enjoyable way possible, and so far tripping balls and grappling with the Puzzling Evidence I encounter along the way has fulfilled that for me.

[Oblivion]

My first guide was a woman's face reflected from a window in my sunroom. Her face was created from the light from my kitchen as it passed through the leaves of a palm tree. The emotions my wife felt were expressed on the womans face. I keyed my actions from her guidance and have never had a more emotional trip since. I named my daughter during that trip.