The use of psyadelics in insight

James, modified 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 2:21 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 2:21 AM

The use of psyadelics in insight

Posts: 4 Join Date: 7/12/15 Recent Posts
I wanted to stage a dialogue and share some of my own thoughts on using psychedelics.

I'm a long-time lurker on PsychonautWiki. For anyone who hasn't heard of us we are a community that catalogues and analyzes psychonautics from a scientific point of view, creating what is basically the DSM of psychonautics. We have some very interesting articles on ego death and autonomous entities and tulpas. We have a very active IRC community (come join us, I'm AleksTK) and I hope you will come and check us out.

Having done psyadelics, I can't imaging approaching the spiritual life without having used their aid. I was first turned on by a blog post I found on Less Wrong. I was impressed by the non-mythic and seemingly methodological process towards enlightenment. I began meditating on a regular basis and I can see direct parallels between cycles of vipassana and ego death on psychedelics.

I would love to hear about your experiences on psychedelics and what they have meant for your path. I am very interested in perusing altered states of self and other psychonautic pheomenon, approaching them from as much of a non-mystical point of view as possible. If you haven't yet dabbled with LSD or other psydadelics there are easy and affordable and safe means of getting them shipped to you (legally for many of them) and they are definitely worth experimenting with.
James, modified 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 9:13 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 8:45 AM

RE: The use of psyadelics in insight

Posts: 4 Join Date: 7/12/15 Recent Posts
I wanted to write a trip report, a introduction for what some of the experiences one can have on psychedelics are, and a first topic for PsychonautWiki's new mailing list. I took 400ug of LSD tonight, mixed with some smoked cannibals and hits of nitrous. I've felt like I've been shown fundamental patterns in the universe. I've been one with reality, God, oneness, being Some of the experiences I've had are almost ineffable, there aren't words to describe them. This experience has given me a lot to think about in terms of how consciousness emerges.

It seems that LSD links together your visual cortex with other areas of your brain, I felt like I was able to see 'see' my mind in completely new ways that provided genuine insight into the nature of existence. Taking hits of nitrious while on LSD instantly bought me to ego-death in exquisite detail. As if I was able to see my sense of self construct itself in real time from inanimate matter. I feel like I was able to see for minutes what people might spend years and years meditating towards to catch a glimpse of. My entire sense of self has changed. I could see myself see the space between my perceptions and watched in real time as my sense of 'self' dissolved as the framerate of consciousness broke down.

At times it almost felt like I was perceiving reality on some higher plane of consciousness, some different frequency than normal, it felt like I was just the cog of some global brain, some underlying global mind that exists on a different level of consciousness than our own. It seems that consciousness is not nearly as complicated as I thought it would be, but is a pattern that naturally flows from particle interactions like a fractal. There's something very fundamental and not-complicated at all about the way consciousness is implemented, a fundamental pattern that repeats itself.

As times it felt like I was almost merging in with other possible universes. Different possible way reality could be. I felt like I was seeing different lifetimes flash before my eyes, that I was seeing something incredibly fundamental and mathematical about trust and resource allocation in connection with reality, existence, and being. For those of you who are not aware I'm very interested in artificial intelligence and I've been researching different projects that attempt to replicate human intelligence. These drugs have a huge potential for AI and cognitive psychology. It could revolutionize the field.

At times it felt like I was moving quickly thought different strata of existence, as if I was quickly traversing through a God-like omnipotence to the very fundamental building blocks of particle interactions, seeing the whole emerge. It was a profoundly spiritual experience, some of the most profound beauty I've ever experienced.

It will take me some more time to collect my thoughts. But I hope that anyone who found this post interesting will either get in touch with me or join the very active IRC community on PsychonautWiki.

Email me at AleksTK@riseup.net if you want to get in touch, I'm looking to meet a few interesting people in this community.
James, modified 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 10:30 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 10:30 AM

RE: The use of psyadelics in insight

Posts: 4 Join Date: 7/12/15 Recent Posts
Here's an interesting response I recieved on our AI mailing list:

Hello fellow "Psychonaut",


Yes, ... the "mindplex" the academic world is trying to create
already exists ... implemented in consciousness and not some
transistor/barion matter based technology ... ;-) You navigate
within this larger reality by letting go of your ego and intellect
and by just using your focused intent. We don't need any
psychedelics to enter those states of consciousness after some
meditation practice.


Unfortunately most of contemporary science does not understand that
consciousness is the fundamental substrate of our physical reality
... that our physical reality represents just a tiny, tiny ergodic
learning environment implemented within consciousness. Consciousness
can be seen as an FPGA-chip like "substrate" ... capable of many
things ... many things of which a very limited virtual physical
playground for evolving "players" is just one. Any person playing
Super Mario Land can detach his/her consciousness from the game
world and operate within the larger reality ... most of us are just
not used to those kind of transitions.


Tom Campbell's book offers a "big theory of everything" which
unifies consciousness and contemporary physics into one framework.
He also explains how to operate within the larger reality
productively (without LSD/Psilocybin/DMT and other entheogens and
substances which disable the intellect/ego).

https://books.google.at/books?id=RYHtBPiZVgsC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA113#v=onepage&q&f=false


You might also enjoy Graham Hancock's removed/"banned" TED talk ...
or the other video on DMT and its effects ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtT6Xkk-kzk


p.s.: Hint: Try DMT-acetate soaked medical Cannabis in a vaporizor.
;-)


Kind regards,


jc
C P M, modified 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 12:45 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 12:39 PM

RE: The use of psyadelics in insight

Posts: 218 Join Date: 5/23/13 Recent Posts
I clicked on the Psychonautwiki, it looks like a very polished site, some skill has gone into putting it together.  I also see there is a responsible use page with some helpful tips.

In your post above, you mention taking taking three drugs, LSD (a heavy dose), smoked cannibals as well as hits of nitrous.  This strikes me as excessive.  Wouldn't any one item one give you plenty to explore?

Recently I read “Waking Up” by  Sam Harris.  Chapter 5 is titled “Gurus, Death, Drugs and Other Puzzles”.  I found that chapter interesting and entertaining.  Here are a couple of quotes, and I wonder what your thoughts are on his perspective:

“This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers.  Undoubtedly, some cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug.  It has been may years since I took psychedelics myself, and my abstinence is born of a healthy respect for the risks involved.  However there was a period in my early twenties when I found psilocybin and LSD to be indispensable tools, and some of the most important hours of my life were spent under their influence.  Without them, I might never have discovered that there was an inner landscape of mind worth exploring.
    There is no getting around the role of luck here.  If you are lucky, and you take the right drug, you will know what it is like to be enlightened (or to be close enough to persuade you that enlightenment is possible).  If you are unlucky, you will know what it is to be clinically insane.  While I do not recommend the latter experience, it does increase one's respect for the tenuous condition of sanity, as well as one's compassion for people who suffer from mental illness.”



    I cannot account for why my adventures with psychedelics were uniformly pleasant until they weren't, but once the doors of hell opened, they appeared to have been permanently ajar.”

http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion-ebook/dp/B00GEEB9YC/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 4:27 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 4:27 PM

RE: The use of psyadelics in insight

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
He likely crossed the A&P on them and so things turned dark. Plenty cross the A&P on hallucinogens, though no guarantees at all.

Psychedelics are complicated. I know plenty of good and bad stories from those who have taken them. I have close friends who have taken literally hundreds of hits of high-quality acid and have no obvious insight at all or obvious lingering effects, as well as people who took single doses of various things and had profoundly life-changing experiences both amazing (one instantly cured of cocaine addiction, one has had some persistent mild sense of transcendence of mortality that has lingered some 40 year later) and horrible (one friend who did LSD killed a guy he caught having sex with his girlfriend during a hippy party back in the day and did 25 year hard time in prison, one friend in junior high school dropped his first hit of LSD and came down 3 months later during which time he was in the state mental hospital and he was never the same after and not in a good way). The problem is that the current state of the art has no way to predict which will happen. (The same could be said of meditation, as endless stories here attest.) A non-trivial portion of my early teachers and current co-adventurers have taken them or still take them, and again, stories both good and bad abound. I remember a friend cowering under a table a week after doing some mushrooms that apparely deeply re-arranged his notion of the world, the major problem being that he was supposed to be hosting a large and important social cathering at that same time.

I am most skeptical of there being reproducible long-lasting changes the way there are with good old meditation with good teachers in moderately high to high dose, but that obviously takes a lot more time and money, but it is at least legal and has a generally better safety profile, I think.

Definitely stay away from 25i: saw a guy in the ED on that and it was truly horrible to watch: very lucky he didn't die by cop, and when they were holding him down he seemed not to notice that his violent thrashing on the concrete was doing terrible things to his hands, face, elbows, knees and feet.

Be safe and wise,

Daniel
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Dada Kind, modified 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 6:19 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 6:07 PM

RE: The use of psyadelics in insight

Posts: 633 Join Date: 11/15/13 Recent Posts
For current research see

http://www.maps.org/research/mdma
http://www.maps.org/research/psilo-lsd
http://www.maps.org/research/ibogaine-therapy
http://www.maps.org/research/ayahuasca
http://www.maps.org/research/mmj

http://www.maps.org/research/other-research

They also have a psychedelic research bibliograph search tool
http://www.maps.org/resources/psychedelic-bibliography

Attendees of this years BGeek's will have seen this, but anyway Katherine McLean on psychedelics

edit:
one more link
http://www.maps.org/resources/papers
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SeTyR ZeN, modified 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 10:56 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/5/15 10:56 PM

RE: The use of psyadelics in insight

Posts: 113 Join Date: 9/9/14 Recent Posts
A recurrent topic, many have been there and done that, since the 50's, specific molecules are still not a panacea emoticon

other than maps, which is an excellent initiative, i'll add :

https://www.erowid.org/

and
http://www.bluelight.org