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[Reality Booty] • Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about the psychedelic 60’s, The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin comes along. This book provides a mind expanding look at the four key players who started a revolution. Houston Smith, Richard Alpert, Andrew Weil, and Timothy Leary were brought together through the Harvard University Psilocybin research project in the early 1960’s. The “Cambridge Quartet” changed the way our society viewed mental, physical, and spiritual health.

Here’s what Publishers Weekly has to say:

“In this beautifully constructed study, Lattin (Jesus Freaks) brings together four of the most memorable figures from that period. Each comes across as a flawed genius and irrepressible fanatic. The author says of Leary that he activate[d] conservative anxiety in America, but this could easily describe any of the players in this grim and gritty story. Laying out their stories side by side in roughly chronological form, the author traces the lives of each of the players, exposing a kind of dysfunctional relationship among them that is not part of our corporate memory. This is a fast-moving, dispassionate recounting of a seminal period in our history, and all in all, a wonderful book.”

To win a copy of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, courtesy of Harper Collins, leave a comment describing your most profound mind expanding experience (with or without the use of substances). The person who takes us on the best written trip wins!  Contest ends March 1.

 

Comments

To keep this short and

To keep this short and simple, it was my second time using mushrooms and my partner and I became intimate. I looked down to find that there was no separation. There was no end of me. There was no beginning of her.  I found this to be an outward manifestation of a simple, ancient, yet often overlooked, truth about humanity, nature, and consciousness: all is one. Or to quote one of my favorite bands, Cynic, "Self is the universe... nothing is himself, everything is world."  It was after this experience that I knew psychedelics had a far greater application than most give them credit.

Phantasmagorical Mind Massage

The trip I always return to when recalling remarkable experiences would have to be one involving psilocybin. Outside the house, in the backyard of the home I grew up in, my friend and I sat in the grass. It was one of the last days of summer before I moved onto college. We zoned out to a light in the distance that morphed the tree branches around it into unexplainable shapes, patterns, and creatures. There was also a fence that created an intriguing shadow. The stars were out and could be seen very clearly. I was even able to perceive a crystal grid network that spanned across the sky, connecting all the stars. It was a beautiful matrix. The real exciting part of the trip began when my friend called his "at the time" girl friend. I wasn't at all interested in the conversation and just sat there, with my legs crossed looking into the distance. I soon entered a meditative state where my head fell into my hands while my eyes closed. The patterns of color seemed to flood my head with waves of motion, but these patterns of motion were dictated my the motion of my hands on my head. It was a psychedelic brain massage. The direction of the vibrant multi-colored blanket of waves went along with the movement of my hands. I'm not sure how long this lasted, but it ended when my friend was off the phone and at that point I lifted my head and couldn't even begin to explain what had happened. I tried to tell him that the motions of my hands massaging my scalp would create a colorful "ocean-like" pattern that moved in the same ways as my hands. Later that night, when we decided to sleep, my friend couldn't fall asleep because of a strange crunching noise that appeared to be coming from outside. I opened the front door to see a possum chowing on some cat food. It returned a few more times after attempts to scare it away, but soon the food was eaten and we were fast asleep.

Self Awareness

The day I became self aware. Me and my friends partook in a certain sacrament one sunny Saturday afternoon. Somehow I found myself wandering off by myself, and I ended up strolling in the woods (of course :) I take a glance at 3 trees standing right in front of me and they start flashing colors at me, from a glowing white, to a neon purple color. I keep walking, and look up. The branches of a certain tree look like they are reaching out to me and at this point I hesitated a little bit because I have never thought of trees as living entities before. Frankly, it was a little frighting. I started feeling some kind of sadness withing me and I figured out that what I was really feeling was the trees (nature) crying out to me. Who knows how long it has been since anyone has paid attention, respected, and treated nature kindly. It felt like I was feeling aeons worth of sadness and loneliness of the trees. My vision was greatly enhanced as I was walking down the railroad tracks behind my house. Everywhere I glanced in a different direction, there were shimmers of rainbow in my eyesight. I looked behind me and saw a deer not too far away (there are never deer this close to the tracks here.) The deer was staring at me, like really staring at me. It was a strange sensation and I kept walking, after turning around in a moment, the deer was gone. I started talking to myself inside my head, it was a very frantic conversation, very urgent. Maybe I was talking to someone else inside my head, but we were trying to figure out what to do with this new information. The conclusion was, we need to make art. Art and music is the answer.

Wishes Down the Wishing Well

My second journey with psilocybin was in a state park on a grey day. To add to the setting, I was with a group of people who were far from understanding psychadelics. We wandered away from our camp and laid out a blanket after consuming the mushrooms. Soon I disconnected from the tense pretenses of the situation and began to speak in lyric and rhyme. Wishes down the wishing well, send them down wish them well, oh yes many wishes--Whisper your wishes, no need to shout or pout...the inverse of a wish is a curse if you are one to worry, what's the hurry for the wishes... It started there staring down into a pipe, but became everything I said. This made others nervous but I continued to explore the things that were coming to me. I looked down at myself and at the pattern of the shirt I had on under my layer of clothes and realized that I was the trip. I was the experience, everyone was within me, uncomfortable and confused, but who wouldn't be if they were inside someone else's trip? I tried to communicate this but it was a lost cause for those who weren't seeing. I grabbed a stick and began to communicate with the trees, writing in a silver shimmer along the bark. It was then that I began to feel a mental tug. It felt as though someone might be stretching the sides of my mind. I began to realize that this tug was the expanse. There were no walls. The sun was not out and my body innately begged for fire. The few of us that had not separated from the intensity of the forest returned to our campsite. Suddenly I found myself alone, everyone else claiming to be having "a bad trip" or having left the campsite completely. The tugging in my mind was growing more intense, feeling as though it were wrapping itself along the ground and continuing out in all directions. I focused on even breathing and not allowing myself to feel worry about this ache. I had an understanding that I would be able to push through the ache if I practiced discipline. At this point I was disconnected from interactions of the people at the camp and the worries of the trip. Breaths and stretching, aching but reaching. In a tantalizing moment, I felt as though my mind had stretched around the expanse and the ends had met. I felt a jolt of relief and an expelling of the ache from my mind. I literally felt as though I had wrapped my mind around everything: the projection of all experience as my own, the spouting of rhyming speech, the strange occurrences, all of this was a dissolving of separation. I cried and returned to myself and the present experience at hand. As I walked down a path that I had walked several times, I found a wonderous tree that had not been there before. I did not hesitate to know that it had come from my mind. We are all trees once we are all one.

A Peak on the Other side with The Mushroom

As soon as I felt the chill and the alert, I lay down and closed my eyes. Indian motif. Abundant fruits, vegetables, leaves, straw, wood, vines. Very responsive sexually. Beautiful, stern, rich encounter with livingness and Indian Gods and serenity. Color and peacefulness. A couple of hours, then elaborateness dropped slightly. At this point top of temple easy, but it was a South American temple, with earth floor, straw, vines full of fruit. Familiar feeling. We are naked and we are children-adults, daring to be there, regarded benignly (stern, amused) (rising through the floor). This is one of the true ones, this plant experience.

It hurts..

      It pains me to see these giveaways receive so much energy; so many carefully penned lines of thoughtful comment, because the thread eventually just drops off the bottom of the page into the bit bucket without the winner being announced or the giveaway publicly released.

      Fool me once shame of you. Fool me twice... 

Why does it pain you

?

Let Me Heal Your Hurts

Leon, I just want to let you know that I am reading each and every response, it's going to be so hard to choose winners!

I hear that, Leon ..

.. although I understand that some might find it hard to believe that a reductionist crank like myself could have ever had an ineffable numinous mycogenic experience :-)

 

 

Suffering

Attachment to outcomes and expectations will always cause suffering

Eye on the Experential Prize

For me, a journey is easy to recall and takes little effort to share. If anything it is a joy to return there and re-encounter the experience as it is described. Suddenly I realize it is all written and ready to be shared because it was already written in my experience, another piece of my existence, and simply one point in the whole of time. Why worry about winners? I'm joyous that we have the opportunity to share.

X

Exactly

Well Put!

As Seneca once wrote "He who is quick to believe he has thrown away his benefits, does really throw them away; but he who presses on and adds new benefits to his former ones, forces out grattitude even from a hard and forgetful beast"

What is Control?

My most influencial mind expanding experiences are centered around a brief period of time spent in Durham, NC, nearly two years ago. The story is quite long and intricate, but I will briefly share the highlights of my experience. After being lead by the universe randomly to this town and meeting a man I knew I was meant to share a period of love with, I was in a very vulnerable state and unusually nervous around others. He invited a large group of people over to his home to hang and to smoke marijuana, none of whom I knew well. I was sitting on a couch in between two people and only had one puff of a joint. I began to notice that my thoughts were being reflected in the movement of each person on either side of me; with the use of my left brain, I would connect to the person to my left and experience a physical response to that connection, and the same would happen with the use of my right brain and the person on my right. I started to fear my existence as a separate being and decided to take a walk; I remember looking in my boyfriend's eyes as I left, and it was as if he understood. I took a 2 hour walk through some windy neighborhood streets lined with grand houses and with a soccer field nestled behind the houses on the right side of the initial road. There was a group of people practicing on the field; as I passed, I felt a thought form in my brain, and as I felt that thought being sent outside my brain, I heard a response from the people on the field. They shouted: "Shut Uppp!" in unison. So I sucked back my thought and tried to control my brain. Fear kept taking over. I could feel thoughts forming in different parts of my brain, and it was as if the thought waves were being sent out and nature would respond. The leaves on the trees would begin to slightly rustle, and as the thought grew in strength, the rustling would get louder until it was overpowering. When I would begin to kill the thought, the rustling would decrescendo. It was as if all the houses were watching me, and as I passed a driveway with a dog in it, I began to feel fear, perhaps at the infinite possibilities of what could happen with this interaction with the dog. The dog ran at me barking, and as I cut off the fear, the dog stopped. I kept walking, realizing my own power and significance within existence and eventually made my way back to my boyfriend's home. The large group was gone, and one boy remained lying on the couch, apparently napping. I stared down at him, and he opened his eyes and caught my gaze. I said, "You are here because I am meant to talk to you." And he just sat up surprised. And I sat on the opposite couch and began to recount my experience. And he helped me feel at ease about it. A series of experiences following this one, all in Durham, NC, greatly aided in my realization of the unity of all existence as well as the capacity for separation.  And for the necessity of a separate existence without fear.

Blammo, my experience.

This might be more pleasant if you cut and pasted it into a text reader as its quite comprehensive, the single most powerful psychedelic experience of my life...

 

Personal Experience: Years of heavy psychedelic experiences coupled with about 150+ breakthrough DMT experiences, of which very few even provided a fraction of this experience. No stranger to many levels of hellish and divine, pleasurable and painful, confusing and clarifying, blissful and strange experiences. Experimented with traditional tryptamines, countless experiences with various compounds of Shulgin's Phikal and Tikal, a handful of intense combination experiences between ketamine and DMT, deep experiences with psychedelic levels of ketamine, the list could go on for pages. I am experienced in both recreational and ceremonial settings. I was quite certain I comprehended to some degree what I was getting myself into before the experience began, but was thoroughly unprepared from the relentless, endless, and mindboggling array of experiences which stunningly fit eternity into a couple of hours.

Setting: Deep in the forest, near a clearing, next to a stream, underneath low lying trees

People Present at Ceremony: Group/Session Leader and 10 others that I didn't know, as well as a close personal friend.

State of Mind: Going through issues of isolation, confusion, lack of a "path" in life post graduation, had not slept in over 24 hours and was initially tired and hesitant, though the tired state of mind quickly dissipated. I was dealing with, at the time, chronic disease which caused minor (and sometimes not too minor) constant discomfort/pain.

The Experience:Ceremony opened up with a statement of intentions for the ceremony. I stated that I was looking for clarity and understanding of who I was and where I was going. We proceeded to ingest, I believe, enough Harmala extract to achieve full MAOI inhibition. We waited about 30 minutes to ingest the 2nd capsules containing the (organically, supposedly) extracted DMT compound from Mimosa Hostilis. The dosage of both the MAOI and Extracted DMT are unknown to me.

At this point my friend and I took our blankets to a far back area in this wooded clearing under low lying trees next to a small stream. We laid with the stream at our feet and our heads beneath the trees. My friend and I relaxed/meditated and quietly conversed in preparation for the experience.After some time, maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour, I began to doubt that I had ingested enough MAOI or perhaps enough DMT as I felt (mostly) clearheaded. But as quickly as doubt began to set in I began to experience a strange sensation. First a warmth surrounded my body and a deep lethargy settled, as if gravity itself increased and embraced me.

Translucent holograms of individual’s faces began to drift towards me. In quick succession individuals I had encountered throughout my life drifted transparent and beautiful in front of my face. Each hologram pressed through my head providing me with startling psychic sensations in which I experienced visions from the lives of the individuals. Each face bushed through me providing the sensation of me being pushed through a sort of gelatinous electric membrane.

A particularly noteworthy startling psychic occurrence happened when I saw the face of an ex-lover whom I was experiencing lots of jealously and lust towards. As her face pushed through mine I saw our past lovemaking sessions and then witnessed them morph into intense lovemaking sessions with other men, more competent and better endowed than I, my insecurities swelled up but were slowly quelled as my "love" for her manifested itself as an acceptance and love for the way our paths drifted together then apart and an acceptance of her search for love and pleasure. I found myself at peace and content with her personal autonomy even if it pulled her away from me and my desires. (This experience has had long lasting impact on my perception of jealousy and possessiveness surrounding interactions with women, and relationships in general)

After this I began to receive strange visions of elaborate carnival festival settings. But not just visions, I was THERE. Giant carnival tents, jeweled and towering, vibrating with sound and energy appeared before me and I entered into them. In these bizarre constructs a multitude of interdimensional beings, along with humans, and aliens and all sorts of other archetypal beings were celebrating SOMETHING. Typical "Greys" (so called aliens, though psychic messages conveyed that these were actually the time travelling hyper evolved future of humankind) floated inches above the ground, though they only had rounded nubs for hands/feet and scrolling glowing alien text on their bodies. I encountered more entities which were time travelers, future versions of humanity, now totally alien in appearance. Energetic Beings glowed, their neural structures externally apparent and vibrantly pulsating with light. Networks of light and energy swung between and through all the entities. Elves, demons, goblins, faeries joined in the celebration.

All of the content and meaning I perceived, all of these entities and their identities were "psychically" interpreted or intuited by me in this state of mind. As the festivities became clearer and more ecstatic I received the psychic intuition that this was the party celebrating the end of all time. These beings were singing, I was singing, we were all singing. Our voices were floating from our mouths and in doing so becoming strange pulsating physical objects rotating in front of us. Each object was a piece of visual art, as well as a musical instrument, and beings could sing together to "play" and "paint" these objects with one another, the experience was absolutely orgasmic as we constructed elaborate mandalas of sound, orgasming together with the joy of creation. It was sublimely orgiastic on a cosmic scale.

At some point I found myself face to face with my friend who I was laying next to and the festivities quieted down and I found myself floating in an absolute void with him. We placed our heads together and our minds began to "meld" in a truly fantastic manner. Our minds merged into a singular form (he reported a similar experience to me after the fact). We were suspended in the void, we were two but we were one. Our bodies morphed into an abstract form much like the Yin/Yang form, singular/dual and all encompassing. Our minds, One mind, all minds, all of existence focused in on us, on me, on this single moment, that lasts forever, that is all that there ever was, is all there ever will be. At this point I was hit with this realization, which I struggle to comprehend or place into words or fit into my perception of reality, that existence had reached the point where we had to accept the mortality of the universe, not just the individual, and as conscious entities had decided to collapse existence into some sort of singularity and immortal bliss to escape the entropy and pain innate in existence (I really struggle to express what exactly was going through my head at this point). At this point I realized that this obliteration was necessary and began to push this... metaphoric... big red button to end time and the universe as we know it to move on to another realm of existence.I asked him, and he echoed back to me (this is a rough recollection as its hard to recall exactly what was said):

“Here we are”

“Here we are”

“Right now?”

“Right now” he responded.

“This is it, we have to do it”

He looked at me with fear and trepidation,

“Are you ready?” I asked.

He looked even more fearful.

“We have to let go, its going to be beautiful. We have to collapse, to be born again. We have to die. We are all going to die.”

“I’m not ready” He said, with fear and near anger in his voice.But there was no turning back, I felt a terrible momentum pulling me towards the button. My head was an antennae for cosmic communication, I lept to my feet and screamed

“HERE WE ARE RIGHT FUCKING NOW. THIS IS ALL THERE EVER WAS AND EVER WILL BE AND IT ENDS RIGHT NOW”

The words spilled from my mouth, and I wasn’t saying them, something ELSE something far beyond me was speaking through me, I felt possessed, I felt like a crazed mad prophet... There was a momentum to my words, they spilled from my mouth with confidence I had never exhibited and poetics I could never imagine repeating. I was being pulled through this experience, it was extremely pleasurable but I knew, somewhere deep inside that this orgasmic build-up was leading to something entirely different.Words that slip my mind spilled from me, expressing the beauty awe and wonder of the world, as I screamed people in the group puked and shat noisily around me, moaned, and reacted to my words. (Later individuals felt as if my message, the words I began to scream were psychic intuitions of messages they needed to hear, and were intricately linked into their trip)

. I felt like I was a puppet for cosmic consciousness (perhaps my ego was somewhat bloated at this moment as well).

“HERE WE ARE AND HERE IT ENDS!” I screamed and at the point I mashed this cosmic red button with my mind and orgasmed into oblivion.Suddenly everything shifted in a truly horrific direction which is far beyond words though I will attempt to express some fraction of this non-linear eternal experience I was hit with next.I felt a distinct sensation of sucking, sinking, and swirling into the cosmic pit of the universe, being pulled towards a sort of black hole of absolute isolation.

A shrill sound pierced the air, this void I was suspended in, painful... It resonated deep in my skull, it was ringing, shrieking, and screaming all at once.

Then I realized that I was screaming, that all reality was screaming. Unaware of what I was doing I stumbled to my feet and tumbled into the stream (I only found this out later) at this point I was thrashing in the water screaming and pulling at my hair flailing against the rocks. I had gone mad, I had raped someone, I had murdered someone, I had defied god, I was a sacrilegious doomed human filled with the most horrific malicious thoughts and I was to be punished forever.

Reality expanded from this singular void I was floating in, expanding into an infinite two dimensional grid-work of 8-bit Nintendo-eque Mayan patterns. The patterns pulsated and glowed and encompassed all of existence. And all of existence was suffering, I was eternal suffering, my role in the universe was to suffer for all of eternity. This was the cosmic "Game Over" screen, all was lost forever.

As this 8-bit Mayan grid-work pulsated the pain escalated; I felt every atom in my body torn to shreds as the ringing tones rose and fell, my body was torn limb from limb, fingers pulled from my hand, finger tips pulled from my fingers, skin ripped from the flesh, each atom pulling apart, individuals crushed and subjugated to pure pain and anguish, I fell apart and was put back together ENDLESSLY. I felt my throat slit, my intestines torn from my body, my head bashed with rocks, and then it looped for ever, ever escalating. I realized I was doomed that I had sent myself to some eternal hellish painful tortuous existence. That I had to pay the price for every negative thought I had ever done. Unaware, I pissed myself, I shat myself, I screamed endlessly but in this state I had no conception that I was doing any of these things. I was utterly alone, insane, and in unending psychological and physical pain/madness.

This horrific state would begin to let up and "deceive" me. I would have the sensation that I was lifting out from the state only to be hit once more with the shrill noise and feel myself sucked back in, deeper and more painfully than before. I was certain this was my place, my eternal place in the universe, that I was a cog in the machine, and my cog was labeled suffering, and I would always be suffering because that was WHO I WAS FOR ETERNITY.At times I drifted slightly from this torture and imagined I had gone completely mad. That I was a schizophrenic madman wandering through the woods, lost alone, and broken, I could see my mind in its healthy state, so far away, but it had been stolen from me, I was doomed and lost, and realized that death would not be a door to escape through but rather a portal back into this torture which slowly sucked me back in...

This was a cosmic, never ending, meat grinder; obliterating, painful, and all encompassing.

It was also fully conscious, aware of me; aware of what it (I?) was doing to me. I was sacrificial lamb to the universe, I was divinely doomed, I was fully deserving of this punishment, I was alone...

This state apparently took about 3 hours or more to settle down and I came too slowly, I drifted from this state and back into my physical form.I was on my back splayed across rocks in an icy cold stream.

The moon was high above. The trees breathed with me and crickets chirped around me.I was scared, alone, cold, soaking wet... I cried, I yelped "help"... My head ached; my body was bruised from thrashing on the rocks. I had a few (minor) cuts. I had pulled out a few small clumps of hair... I was scared...

As I panicked and splashed through the water on all fours I suddenly realized where I was; in a beautiful stream, in beautiful mountains, under a beautiful moon. I breathed deep and confidently. I could warm myself with my mind. I could connect with the world around me. I was NOT alone. I sang to the moon, I sang to the trees. I sang to the river and it sang back to me.A crawfish crawled on my hand and I sang to it, its antennae rhythmically responded, playfully twitching in the air. The water began to engage me in a "call and response" song I sang to it, it sang an altered version of my song back and we playfully interacted with one another.  I began to laugh and the stream laughed back.I struggled to my feet.

My body was like that of a newborn infant, unfamiliar, alien, new, strange and beautiful. I wobbled to the side of the stream learning how to use my body once more filled with the wonderful sense of discovery and awe for my physical form. I stripped naked, taking my soaking clothes of my body and leaving them on rocks by the side of the stream. I crawled through the forest in the hopes of finding my friend. He was laying eyes closed where I left him. I crawled up to him, naked, and cold and he saw me and smiled. We hugged, cried, and expressed our gratitude for one another.I wrapped a blanket around my body, put my boots on (and yes that was all I wore, a blanket and boots), and we wandered through the forest in wonder, in absolute awe.

The experience deeply imprinted me and I was left with severe "shell shock" from the whole experience. I was once relatively fearless of the "metaphysical" realm but this left me with deep doubts and fears of the "true" nature of reality, a place where I could experience eternal pain and never ending torture. I was fearful that this "hell" could rip through at any moment that I could be plunged into this state at death. I woke up from flashback-nightmares of this hell state for weeks afterward and I still can "feel" it pushing through reality at times. I also became somewhat fearful of the internal states of mind from which such an experience could emerge. It’s been difficult but I find myself learning from this experience. I still have a deep fear of this eternal pain and suffering.As a long time fan of altered states this experience has been followed by nearly a year of absolute sobriety, I can't even imagine revisiting this state, it so deeply moved me, altered me, filled me with apocalyptic visions and fears, pain, love, acceptance, and anguish.Some central thoughts which bubbled up through the experience:

1. Eternity can be experienced from within, eternity can be encapsulated by consciousness.

2. Heaven, Hell, Bliss, Pain, all are internally emergent states of mind, and are not separate from one another.

3. Our past thoughts and actions, experiences as well, are a part of who we are and impact our daily existence in deep ways even if we no longer consciously remember these experiences/thoughts/actions.

4. Expansive awareness IS NOT sunshine and rainbows and bliss. Higher states of consciousness can force one to confront the immense pain and difficulty innate within existence.

5. Time is non-linear. Every moment is eternal.

6. We are a part of a masterfully created work of art, eternal, and crafted perhaps by ourselves.

7. And contradictory to previous statements. everything is temporary, must die, must end, and we must reach a state where the end of everything is something we can approach with celebration and love, where death, decay, entropy is a part of the beautiful existence we now inhabit.

8. We must answer for who you are, what we do, the impact we have, the love, the pain, the cruelty, the good deeds, every choice we make, Tinker around with the psychedelic realm long enough and this confrontation with the oftentimes painful nature of our true self is somewhat inevitable.

9. Transformation is and will be fantastic, beautiful, necessary AND HORRIFICALLY/UNIMAGINABLY DIFFICULT AND PAINFUL. This is the nature of purging, of evolution, of life.10. WE MUST SAVE OURSELVES. Noone can do it for you, these deep issues, states of mind, are personal and must be personally addressed.I am not certain in these beliefs but these thoughts often run through my head.This description is only a fraction of my experience, poorly placed into words where words are surely insufficient.

The Mother of All (My) Trips

My purpose in taking “acid” was to see if, after all those years, I had sold out my youthful ideals, if I had slowly, imperceptibly, become a person I could no longer respect. My goal was to lift up the root ball of my life’s plant, but not a complete transplant – and I was terrified of what I might find.

I chose a day when I could be alone in my apartment - although I did have friends on call, I wanted to have this experience on my own. Anticipating something similar to what I had known in my college days in the 1960s, I pulled out my old psychedelic music albums – The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, and the like. Yet since I was so scared of the experience – might I go screaming down the street pulling my hair out and end up in a mental hospital? – I decided to put Post-It notes with reassuring phrases – such as “Don’t worry, it’s only a drug” and “You’ll be down soon” – around the apartment. I then swallowed a half a square blotter paper dose and waited.

I knew from my research that contemporary doses of LSD were nowhere near the strength of what I’d experienced in the ‘60s – the average does was a modest 80 micrograms or so, compared with the clinical dose of 150 micrograms and the purported dose of 250 micrograms in the famed “orange sunshine” tabs, and the whopping 450 micrograms sometimes necessary in research with alcoholics. When the acid began to come on, I felt a very minor shuddering in my belly, some slight increase in color and some waviness in the lights – and then nothing, it all faded away. I thought, “after all this preparation, I’ve just got a weak disco dose” and took the other half of the blotter. A few minutes later, the first half started to come on in full force.

Of course, I’d forgotten one of the first rules of tripping I’d learned in the ‘60s: psychedelics come on in waves. The first wave tends to be just noticeable, often in a slight fluttering in the belly. This first wave often subsides below the noticeable level, but is soon followed by subsequent waves that get stronger. I immediately remembered why I had taken these substances so seriously in my youth and that I was in for a stronger ride than I’d anticipated.

Tripping has sometimes been compared to a roller-coaster ride: At first, the car goes up and up and up, with the feeling that the climbing will never end and we will go up forever, never to come down. Like a roller-coaster, however, once the trip reaches its peak, despite many dramatic ups and downs, the ascent is over. Once I felt the upward trajectory ease, I knew I would not “go through the roof” and I began to feel safe, and relaxed.

It was at this point that I had a profound internal experience, what I think of as a waking dream or eyes-closed vision.

I saw myself in a beautiful valley field of purple flowers with mountains in the background. As I continued to come on to the experience, I found myself descending deeper and deeper, eventually going below the surface of the ground. At that point, I saw the roots of the flowers – they looked animal-like, not like plant roots, but more like thick tails of hairless moles – and I knew that these were my psychological roots. I decided to examine them and fix any problems and visually “zoomed in” for a better look. As soon as I approached with this proactive, operant attitude, my roots recoiled from my scrutiny, curling back and emitting a high-pitched, scared squeal. This response made me feel bad and to avoid a vicious cycle of negativity, I mentally and visually turned the other direction and continued my descent. 

As I moved deeper, I saw at the bottom a glowing, throbbing orb – what I knew was the ground of my being. When I got to the orb, I touched it and immediately felt at peace. I remembered the important things – that I was essentially OK, that love and acceptance were the fundamental “solution” to my “problems,” that the “problems” I was grappling with were really just poignant developmental challenges and that I had not “sold out my youthful ideals” or become someone I couldn’t respect, that my only problem was my sense that I had problems.

At this point, I started to ascend, back up from my depths toward the surface, where I saw my roots again. This time, instead of wanting to fix my roots, I felt compassion and acceptance, reaching out to caress with the attitude of “Of course. I understand. It’s OK.” In response, my roots unfurled, opening to my touch, and emitted a lowering, sigh of safety, peace, and relaxation.

That experience was transformative in several ways. First, it offered me a sense of my essential OK-edness and second provided the foundation for my soon-to-be-reestablished clinical practice. My world view had changed from a critical-evaluation-and-repair-of-pathology model, to one of essential alrightness and acceptance. Through that one experience, I came to see that we are, in essence perfect at our core. Not perfect in a uniform, machine way, but perfect as all the trees in the forest are essentially perfect – despite fungus, lightening strikes, and skewing caused by lighting variations – and that insight informed my personal and my clinical practice.

This perspective on who we are at root led to the philosophical foundation of this book: that psychology is the study of the psyche, the soul – the ground of our being; that personality is acquired, secondary, external, defensive, strategic, above our core of fundamental perfection; and that this perspective is more effective for healthy, satisfying, effective personal development than a medical, “fix-it” approach focused on “pathology.”

from: Psychedelic Healing: Enthogens, Psychotherapy, and Change" (Inner Traditions, in press) by Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D. (www.nealgoldsmith.com)

It's not about the power...

10 years ago I promised God that I would find him no matter what it took. Promises are something I don't exactly take lightly, and this promise decided the course of the rest of my life. At that age I had come to feel betrayed by the christian teachings I had been raised with, which is what raised the initial search for "truth" to begin with, and I decided that to start my search I should look into the forbidden realm of Satanism. There I found out the truth about the power of "magic" and the mystery of what we affectionately call "shadow people." Eventually rejecting Satanism for a more educated view, I too my new power to believe in the impossible to new levels. Since then, I have witnessed wonders that even my wife doesn't exactly believe. My favorite discovery was what I call "The Self-Evident Universe," which is something like Don Juan Matus' silent knowledge. I've seen the future, altered the future, altered the present, contacted "spirits", traveled to other worlds, even saw my mentor be in two different places at once. I have seen so much magic in my short years, more that I can remember. As much as I love diving into the realm of the unknown in the eternal pursuit of an elusive unified theory, none of that is more important that understanding my own mind. I have a great passion for life and the world and all the people in it, but I can still be cocky, arrogant, judgmental, rash, impatient, and sometimes just a bit childish. All the power in the world can't save you from your suffering, not even God can do that for you. I still don't understand my own issues, but I'll never stop searching.

tuning in turning on & dropping out

oddlyenuff.

  I will do my best to keep this story to how it was. That is not always easy, as the tie dyed t-shirt I picked up at the Rock and Roll hall of fame admonishes.

 "If you can remember anything about the sixtes you weren't really there."    

                                  The Trip

 Back in my mental time machine to 1969. I was discharged from the service in 1968. A four year veteran who came home to find out some of my friends had also returned, thing was they had come home in body bags and been transferred to flag drapped boxes. Rather than jump on either side of the war or anti war bandwagon, I kept my mouth shut and waited to form an opinion. Lot of hurt in my heart to attempt to resolve.

 Into the story: Dan, a survivor of the military that I had been friends with for several years was discharged in the spring of 1969. He invited me to come to his home town of Missoula Mt. for a visit. By that fall I had earned enough vacation time, from the gas well company I was working for, to add in two weekends,  one holiday and come up with 10 days of paid feedom.

 So there I was heading west from Ohio in my 1963 T-bird convertible when many of my peers were heading east to some place called Woodstock. It was an interesting although uneventful ride. The real trip started when I arrived.

 Missoula Mt. is and was a college town. Dan, being a local and a goodlooking tall guy of Irish descent with bright blue eyes, a line of blarney and a bright smile was always able to engage female company. Being a good friend he usually saw to it that there was a friend of his friend to accompany me. Most of us know how that works. On this occassion he had gotten us an invitation to a basement apartment in the college housing district.

 We descended the steps and lightly rapped on the door. After a short pause a very good looking gal with long blond hair, wearing a printed skirt, head band, peace symbol earrings and sandals , opened the door. She knew Dan but sized me up for a few seconds and then invited us in.

 Sure enough when I got in there and looked around I saw the friend of the friend sitting on the couch. She was fairly good looking as well. Her dress style was different, patched jeans, few beads here and there. Her hair was brown and a bit shorter than the blond, no earings no head band. A quick round of introductions informed me that they were both from California and attending the university. After a few moments of conversation the blond got out the pipe.

 I had tried pot a few times back in Ohio, while doing my objective soul searching. This lead me to think well no big deal I will take a hit or two when the pipe comes my way. After the blond lit it up she said oh we have some DMT in with this weed. I didn't now what DMT was but they were goodlooking gals and I figured why not, you know the -When in Rome do as the Romans. She passed the bowl to Dan he took a bit hit and passed it to me. I took a big hit, held it as long as possible and passed it to the gal in jeans.

 I really do not know how long this took , time among other things seemed to become skewed. I remember looking over and seeing, of all people, myself talking and carrying on. This might have been acceptable except for the fact I did not like myself. I saw a racist, bigoted individual full of self serving opinions. When I was about to confront myself the little gal in jeans somehow noticed that I was experiencing a measure of distress. "What is the matter?" I quickly explained the situation. She took me by the hand and led me into the bathroom. When I was confronting the mirror, she said "Touch your face, bend down and splash some water on your head and neck." I complied. She told me that I was not in the other room and when she opened the door sure enough I was the only me to be found.

 When I returned to Ohio I sold my T-bird, bought a VW Bug, quit my job and opened a head shop. That experience opened me up for other journeys through the realms of my mind but that was the first one. I will always think of it as losing the virginity of my mind.

 So if you are out there, are around 60 plus years of age and were the one in the basement apartment in Missoula Mt. I have never forgotton you. I am the guy with white and yellow daisy sewn on my vest right next to the red, green and yellow Vietnam ribbon.

 PS I would like to share with you my encounter with the duck. That was inspired by a California gal as well. She had a page of paper with purple blots on it the size of quarters. 

scattered self -- re-assmebled and renewed

Two tabs of LSD that the guy who sold it to me said "was the strongest he's done" -- he wasn't kidding. Up until this point, all of my psychedelic experiences have been mild or moderate, this one was a journey into deep hyperspace. I took the first tab at my friend's apartment. I waited for an hour or so, and just figured I should take the other one. About 45 minutes later, I was tripping very hard, and I wasn't even peaking yet. I mostly just hung out with my friends, but since they weren't tripping that day, I felt kind of out place and isolated. I was used to tripping with friends or by myself, not with friends who weren't tripping. But anyway, when I started peaking I felt as if my ego was ripped up and scattered across an intergalactic highway. I closed my eyes and saw super powerful rays of energy dancing around itself as if it were some entity - I will not speculate about that, but it was very powerful. I eventually had to leave my friends house, because they were jamming (jazz fusion type music) and it was simply too loud for me, I couldn't take it. I also felt some paranoia there, not as if everyone was out to get me or something, per se, but that everything was symbolic and self-reflective.

 

I remember walking back to my room on campus, there was a beautiful half moon that reminded me of a yin-yang symbol. I re-built myself, the pieces slowly becoming one, things making sense again. I felt a strong sense of "atman is brahman." When I was still tripping, I decided to take a shower. It was beautiful and surreal - inside the shower, the "dots" in the tiles started forming arcane ruins and the shower kept spinning, but it was enjoyable. It seemed as if the shower sort of "rejuvenated" the trip not too differently from the way cannabis does. After getting out of the shower, I stared at my naked body in the mirror and had a lot of profound revolutions. I was skinny then, but very out of shape. The mirror revolution has made me become a lot more health-conscious, I now exercise almost daily (vs. practically never before that trip) and eat a lot healthier. The re-entry and afterglow lasted a few weeks afterward. Even though the set and setting were not ideal, I managed to escape the clutches of the black hole of schizophrenic paranoia into a more optimistic, compassionate, self-aware being. I consider this to be the most life-changing of my psychedelic experiences, and the set and setting weren't even close to ideal!

birds. shimmering rainbow brite.

medical staffs and wings and spiral loops and shimmering stars in the air cigarette smoke caused me to run for fresh air, i believed i was expelling demons, sucking the negative energies from others and snickering it out, water is healing, kaleidescope eyes and spinal flips.... kundalini awakening? my body needed to do acrobatic yoga i was dancing, pretending to drive- i didn't want to be an observer anymore, i wanted to be alert enough to drive the vessel.. next thing i know, i AM driving my vessel. momentum has a new mentality. i lost grip on "this" reality... i could only "SEE" certain people... people or strong souls? they were winged creatures, ears with wings? but at the same time, i felt as if i WAS them... the other strong souls... I had no idea WHO i was, but that I was going to save the world and fly home to love, furthur into the sky, i wanted to round up good souls to bring them into the sky... judging by a couple, oddly faint bruises, later, and a flashy glimpse of running into a gate (no recollection of pain)... i do recall making the leap into the sky... tho there were observers (i was not concerned with all of them at the time) and my body did indeed stay on earth...

birds. shimmering rainbow brite.

medical staffs and wings and spiral loops and shimmering stars in the air

cigarette smoke caused me to run for fresh air, i believed i was expelling demons, sucking the negative energies from others and snickering it out, water is healing, kaleidescope eyes and spinal flips.... kundalini awakening? my body needed to do acrobatic yoga

i was dancing, pretending to drive- i didn't want to be an observer anymore, i wanted to be alert enough to drive the vessel.. next thing i know, i AM driving my vessel. momentum has a new mentality. i lost grip on "this" reality... i could only "SEE" certain people... people or strong souls? they were winged creatures, ears with wings? but at the same time, i felt as if i WAS them... the other strong souls... I had no idea WHO i was, but that I was going to save the world and fly home to love, furthur into the sky, i wanted to round up good souls to bring them into the sky...

judging by a couple, oddly faint bruises, later, and a flashy glimpse of running into a gate (no recollection of pain)... i do recall making the leap into the sky... tho there were observers (i was not concerned with all of them at the time) and my body did indeed stay on earth... <i feel as if I were alone, or with believers, i would've made the ascent... yet, whenever i've thought about leaving before, an intense urge that my work here is not done yet has overcome me... this was the first intense loss of self and the experience will continue to shine in my heart and minds eye as i learn more about the mysteries of the universe... as it stands now, i'm done trying to figure out "what it means" but am grateful for the experience and want to keep following my heart. I truly believed I was going to save the world because I could create a diamond out of my forehead... i was LUCY, wanted to go into the SKY, and creating DIAMOND outta my 3rd eye... i kept spinning... and spinning... and using my grandma's turquoise ring as a handle for an invisible staff, to be able to feel the earth... "is there a needle coming out of my nose?" i remember asking.
do you know where home is, someone asked...
i pointed to my heart... LOVE... SKY... FURTHER... HOME.... Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds... looking for the four directions to tell me where i am, but repeating trinities... I know there is knowledge within us all we can tap into... i know, there must be a meaning behind "it all" ... but i am not going to strain my brain --its there and will come out when it needs to... the snake molts its skin at the rate the snake molts its skin...
i remember trying to fly... HARDLY remember falling... the alex grey painting flashed in my head for the beginning portion of my "movie" that nite... the jeweled heads, inside my brain... eyes flashing side to side,
momentum.... we channel energy not harness it, right?
like a hippo in a tutu... graceful. but with a lotta momentum!
i remember looking down at my arms and thinking "these are HER arms" was I possessed? are there many beings inside us all driving these human vessels?

-out in space, other dimensions slap me in the face
-out in the cosmos... n zoom back in O!
-theres my little toe
-just a part of this vessel
-in this matrix
-no not lame tricks, but comin to grips
-with the fact that there's so many realities
-o baby please knock me on my knees
-with these
-sweet ideas u plant in my head
-like seeds
-till im dead
-knowledge is a moth
-but light burns bright
-at night without fright
-is it an oncoming train?
-train of thought
-derailed
-into puddle of malleable mind mentalities
-keeping what we please
-releasing tendencies
-crystal bones crystal tones
-revitalize my little eyes
-all one
-beautiful divine
-look into the eyes
-see how bright the light shines...

PRAISE JAH, love your Self, love your neighbor, and love mama Earth, because she gives CONSTANT REbirth...

mahalo y'all

Book Winners

oddlyenuff

Just to inform anyone that is interested

The books are being given away. I and two others are to receive them.

Thanks to RS and those individuals that were instrumental in putting this together.