Kafei wrote:A lot of people who've never experienced hallucinations often imagine it's something more of a Freudian projection of the personal subconscious, and that's not the case at all.

And that's seriously how many people you know would describe their guesses as to what hallucinations are like?

You must know some strange people.

Kafei wrote:I was surprised not to find the word "fractal" after reading Dr. Strassman's "DMT: The Spirit Molecule." There is, however, the mention of words that I believe are other ways of describing this fractal luminous phenomena such as "mandalic," "geometric patterns," and "kaleidoscopic."

We all know you have heard the word 'fractal'.

Congratulations - give yourself a gold star.

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:A lot of people who've never experienced hallucinations often imagine it's something more of a Freudian projection of the personal subconscious, and that's not the case at all.

And that's seriously how many people you know would describe their guesses as to what hallucinations are like?

You must know some strange people.

Well, I bring up this topic a lot in message boards, chatrooms, conversations, etc., and this seems to be the consensus amongst most people I've spoken to about these experiences. Their conception of hallucination is drawn from media, such as TV shows, movies, and vague textbook descriptions, and this is basically what you end up with most of the time.

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:I was surprised not to find the word "fractal" after reading Dr. Strassman's "DMT: The Spirit Molecule." There is, however, the mention of words that I believe are other ways of describing this fractal luminous phenomena such as "mandalic," "geometric patterns," and "kaleidoscopic."

We all know you have heard the word 'fractal'.

Congratulations - give yourself a gold star.

Why, thank you. I will give myself a gold star.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Kafei wrote:
Well, the common denominator is the human brain, we all possess this substrate, and that's important to point out, because it's a more apt explanation as to why this experience is universal. A lot of people who've never experienced hallucinations often imagine it's something more of a Freudian projection of the personal subconscious, and that's not the case at all. While the experience itself is being filtered through the personality of the individual, the experience itself contains universal archetypes, and it may be because we're all dealing with the same substrate.

Universal to humans. Which does NOT necessarily equate to universal in an absolute cosmic sense.

Sure, the fact that I said "human brain" was meant to imply that I was referring to humans when I said universal. However, there are views in eastern philosophy in which they apply these "awakenings" to any sentient beings. So, wherever and whenever a bodily entity that possesses consciousness arises, there is the possibility for this phenomenon in consciousness to occur.

As for a "alternate reality." Terence once called it "the invisible landscape."

Once again: who gives a FUCK what Terence fucking McKenna said!

The man had a lot of experience with these altered states. He was extremely articulate in distilling these theories and concepts. The Psychedelic Salon cares about what he said, a lot of people in the psychedelic community felt he was important voice for the psychedelic point-of-view, and if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have had this experience for myself.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

When you say "alternate reality," I know you mean that it doesn't literally allow to witness some kind of parallel universe, but when people say "alternate reality" or "invisible landscape," it's because this is the overwhelming impression in the experience. That this state of mind might as well be a glimpse into a "alternate reality," because that's how the experience presents itself.

Only if you stretch the term "reality" to the point of meaninglessness.

There's no such thing as absolute reality. What we call "reality" is only as real as your brain tells you it is. Terence McKenna once said, "If culture is the serotonin trip, then what kind of culture would we live in if the serotonin were backed out in favor of a DMT maintained neural substrate."

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

It is, in a sense, an alternate reality in that it is no longer the "reality" of ordinary consciousness, but the "reality" of a vastly altered state of consciousness.

Do you really think we can't see through such word games?

Well, it depends on how you're defining reality, I suppose. If you define it on the basis of "consensus reality," then we stray away from that reality in these experiences.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

We mentioned earlier Sam Harris' idea that it may be that all your neurons are being set off to give this impression of having all experience at once. Maybe, but why then this mandalic imagery? The fractal kaleidoscope?

It probably has something to do with hyperstimulation of the parts of the brain responsible for processing edges, contours and shapes.

That's very interesting. I just finished reading the entire article. Although it's all based on assumption, it's interesting, nonetheless. So, there's a possible explanation for the visual aspect of the hallucinatory phenomena. What would you attribute the feelings of "oneness" to?

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

I used the analogy of a TV in an earlier post, that the TV is capable of producing many different patterns as consciousness is able to project or receive many different patterns in space-time. Well, it's also possible to light every RGB signal on the TV, and what you end up with is a "white screen." I'm not saying that this is an explanation of the "white light" reported in near-death experiences, but people nevertheless commonly report a "white light."

There is no reason to believe that the "white light" of NDEs and other types of hallucinations is causally analogous to the white screen on a TV. Aside from the fact that TVs and brains are profoundly different in their structure and functioning, there is strong evidence to suggest that the white light of NDEs are due to pupil dilation, oxygen depletion to the brain, and malfunctioning of the visual cortex.

Well, I don't think they're causally analagous, I think you may have misinterpreted the metaphor. The concept behind the metaphor is that if you were to display every possible pattern, i.e. ignite all RGB inputs, you'd end up with a white screen. The impression in the mystical experience is one of having all possibilities played out at once or having all experience simultaneously. Likewise, the art in "Sacred Geometry" is indicative of this underlying pattern that any object or image can be drawn out from.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

In witnessing this morphing iridescent fractal, if I were religious, I would have called it "God." It's not a blurry image, it's all HD, and I've read people that have been blind since birth are able to witness this thing. It moves with fluidity, and everything is morphing in a logical fashion.

Because such hallucinations utilise (read: hijack) the same neural pathways that are involved in processing images from real life.

That was a possible explanation, it wasn't the explanation. However, I still believe you're missing the point. These fractal geometries, if they are a phenomenon generated by the visual cortex, then it is the impression in the experience that you're seeing every single output the brain can generate. Every possible image or interpretation of the reflection of light is lit up and what then falls behind closed eyelids are these geometric patterns. That's why people will reach for religious vocabulary in articulating this experience or why someone might believe they're witnessing the language of extraterrestrials.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Terence fucking McKenna wrote:Ultimately, I think, what the psychedelic experience may be is a higher-topological manifold of temporality. That the reason it is so puzzling and so familiar, so alien and so exalting is that it is mundane, it is, in fact, just us. But us sectioned through some higher-spatial dimension.

"Would you like some extra wibble dressing with your word salad?"

I got what he was talking about.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

So, there's this concept that all space and time, the entire multiverse itself contorts itself into this experience so that the morphing fractal is some kind of shifting homeomorphism of "temporality" or the "multiverse." So, that this "transcendental object at the end of time" is a state of ultimate complexity when every point in space and time is connected to every other point. It represents all possibilities retained in pure potentiality, an entelechy, and hence you have "the ground of all being" experienced through the phenomenon of consciousness.

Where's the evidence for this? And no, hallucinations from drug trips do not count as evidence in this case.

Well, in this case, these experiences are the evidence. That's the entire point of the clinical trials that were done at the John Hopkins University and the work Dr. Rick Strassman did at the University of New Mexico.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

In any case, the experience is titanically profound, transcendental, and allows you to intuitively feel a deep-rooted sense of a fundamental interconnectedness.

Just because it feels profoudly real doesn't mean it *is*. Is it really so hard for you to understand that just as people can see and hear things which aren't really there, they can also experience feelings with no reality beyond their own misfiring neurons?

This statement shows you've either misunderstood or misinterpreted what I've said thus far. I wouldn't equate this to those people who "hear things" or "see things." If a person claims they're seeing leprechauns or unicorns, that's just one subset of possible imageries that would go on in the psychedelic experience. Like I said, there's an impression of every possible imagery that could possibly be displayed. So, that's how I distinguish this experience from someone with a neurological condition that is causing them to perceive entities that aren't there.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Maybe you find Sam Harris' explanation sufficient, but there really is no neuroscientific explanation. Sam Harris explanation is at best a guess.

Ground of the Gaps, eh?

Not really. Because it's not like I'm saying, "We don't know what consciousness is, therefore there must be a God." Perhaps Sam is right, however there's no confirmation. I'm not discounting what Harris has said, but the fact of the matter is that there is no neuroscientific confirmation of this explanation.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Steve Jobs wrote:Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could. -Steve Jobs

That's a curious utterance to come from someone who 1) made a colossal fortune by taking the exploitation of herd mentality and planned obsolescence to new heights, and 2) died from cancer largely because he preferred alternative woo-based medicine over the scientifically established kind.

Well, he's one of many famous people who've done this and had their lives completely transformed by this experience. Amber Lyon, Francis Crick, Aldous Huxley, Richard Alpert, James Scott, etc.

Kafei wrote:Well, he's one of many famous people who've done this and had their lives completely transformed by this experience. Amber Lyon, Francis Crick, Aldous Huxley, Richard Alpert, James Scott, etc.

WooooOOOOOOooooo!

Any other cretinous fallacies you want to commit besides verecundiam?

the fact of the matter is that there is no neuroscientific confirmation of this explanation.

Nor any explanation of any other kind. This is pure gap thinking, and it's fucking stupid.

Kafei wrote:
Well, I bring up this topic a lot in message boards, chatrooms, conversations, etc.,

No one would ever have guessed!

Kafei wrote:

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:A lot of people who've never experienced hallucinations often imagine it's something more of a Freudian projection of the personal subconscious, and that's not the case at all.

And that's seriously how many people you know would describe their guesses as to what hallucinations are like?

You must know some strange people.

Well, I bring up this topic a lot in message boards, chatrooms, conversations, etc., and this seems to be the consensus amongst most people I've spoken to about these experiences. Their conception of hallucination is drawn from media, such as TV shows, movies, and vague textbook descriptions, and this is basically what you end up with most of the time.

Where does Freud come into it?

Kafei wrote:There's no such thing as absolute reality. What we call "reality" is only as real as your brain tells you it is. Terence McKenna once said, "If culture is the serotonin trip, then what kind of culture would we live in if the serotonin were backed out in favor of a DMT maintained neural substrate."

I thought you just said he was articulate?

Kafei wrote:Well, it depends on how you're defining reality, I suppose. If you define it on the basis of "consensus reality," then we stray away from that reality in these experiences.

How about defining it as the thing which bites people on the arse if they act as if it doesn't exist?

Or the thing which overphilosophising types talk about the actual or possible nonexistence of, while acting very much as if it did exist.

Kafei wrote:That was a possible explanation, it wasn't the explanation. However, I still believe you're missing the point. These fractal geometries, if they are a phenomenon generated by the visual cortex, then it is the impression in the experience that you're seeing every single output the brain can generate. Every possible image or interpretation of the reflection of light is lit up and what then falls behind closed eyelids are these geometric patterns. That's why people will reach for religious vocabulary in articulating this experience or why someone might believe they're witnessing the language of extraterrestrials.

How can one see 'everything' at once, given that seeing things is a function of particular activation patterns existing in neural networks?
To see 'everything' at once, one would have to see every possible shape and colour in each place simultaneously, and that would effectively be to see nothing but a hopeless mess or a white screen.
As is clear from experiments with optical illusions, even seeing two incompatible things at the exact same time is difficult-to-impossible.

Dude, I think I've crossed over!

Those feet reminded me of this:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/how_draw_hands

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Once again: who gives a FUCK what Terence fucking McKenna said!

Kafei wrote:

The man had a lot of experience with these altered states. He was extremely articulate in distilling these theories and concepts. The Psychedelic Salon cares about what he said, a lot of people in the psychedelic community felt he was important voice for the psychedelic point-of-view, and if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have had this experience for myself.

Machine Elves 101, or Why Terence McKenna Matters

Is it really a psychedelic point of view? All of Mckenna's "theories" and concepts? Universally accepted by this Psychedelic Salon? Or is Mckenna just so prolific with whacky ideas that anyone with a new age bent can find something to quote?

I mean there's a lot there to choose from:

The dawning of new age.
Time waves and corresponding creative cluster events.
Enlightened aliens.
Benevolent spirit guides.
Elf ambassadors of the Logos.
Mayan prophesy.
The I Ching.
Gaia mind.
The collective unconsciousness.
The noble savage in tune with the environment.
Mystical extra dimensions.
Oneness with the universe.
Love is an objective property of the universe.

McKenna is quoted ad nauseam by people like you and Daniel Moler. The problem is that he is your messiah or prophet, not mine or apparently not anyone else on this thread. He is not any kind of authority, and nothing he said is evidence that he is right. That Mckenna was right is what you are arguing for here, so quoting him means nothing, and no one seems to care what he said other than acolytes like you and Moler.

McKenna belongs in the category of crackpots populated by the likes of Rupert Sheldrake, Depak Chopra, David Icke, and the time cube guy, and no amount of quoting McKenna is going to change that.

hackenslash wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, he's one of many famous people who've done this and had their lives completely transformed by this experience. Amber Lyon, Francis Crick, Aldous Huxley, Richard Alpert, James Scott, etc.

WooooOOOOOOooooo!

Any other cretinous fallacies you want to commit besides verecundiam?

I'm not appealing to authority, I'm only pointing out that these things are capable of profoundly transforming people in the way they think, their attitude towards life, etc. I only was giving famous examples that you could look for yourself. Take James Scott, he was an actor on the show "Days of Our Lives," after the ayahuasca experience, he quit the show claiming that he felt guilt that he was contributing to the "dumbing down of the nation." He believes ayahuasca helped him open up to that revelation.

hackenslash wrote:

the fact of the matter is that there is no neuroscientific confirmation of this explanation.

Nor any explanation of any other kind. This is pure gap thinking, and it's fucking stupid.

Again, this isn't "Gap thinking." I'm not positing any scenario or explanation as truth. Perhaps it's Sam Harris' take that is sufficient in explaining this phenomenon. I'm only pointing out, once again, that there is no confirmation that Harris' take is what's going on nor is there any other explanation neuroscientific or otherwise.

Spearthrower wrote:

Kafei wrote:
Well, I bring up this topic a lot in message boards, chatrooms, conversations, etc.,

No one would ever have guessed!

Did I mention I was obsessed?

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:A lot of people who've never experienced hallucinations often imagine it's something more of a Freudian projection of the personal subconscious, and that's not the case at all.

And that's seriously how many people you know would describe their guesses as to what hallucinations are like?

You must know some strange people.

Well, I bring up this topic a lot in message boards, chatrooms, conversations, etc., and this seems to be the consensus amongst most people I've spoken to about these experiences. Their conception of hallucination is drawn from media, such as TV shows, movies, and vague textbook descriptions, and this is basically what you end up with most of the time.

Where does Freud come into it?

That was my point, that Freud doesn't come into it. Freud is useless in attempting to explain this through Freudian psychoanalytical terms. I mean, the notion that the contents of the psychedelic experience could be reduced to what Freud called "day residues" and "repressed sexual desires," and stuff like that doesn't wash. Within ten minutes you could tell that was not a serviceable metaphor. Jung, on the other hand, offered a vast pantheon of Gods, archetypes, and psychic complexes forgotten or abandoned. The notion of the "collective unconscious" is probably closer to offering as dependable a map of the psychic geography we're going to get of the psychedelically-induced state of consciousness in psychoanalytical terms, but even that concept is insufficient when it comes to this experience it seems.

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:There's no such thing as absolute reality. What we call "reality" is only as real as your brain tells you it is. Terence McKenna once said, "If culture is the serotonin trip, then what kind of culture would we live in if the serotonin were backed out in favor of a DMT maintained neural substrate."

I thought you just said he was articulate?

He was, he was a raconteur, an Irish bard, are you saying that you didn't get that line?

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, it depends on how you're defining reality, I suppose. If you define it on the basis of "consensus reality," then we stray away from that reality in these experiences.

How about defining it as the thing which bites people on the arse if they act as if it doesn't exist?

Well, that's consensus reality. Consider someone who's paralyzed from the waist down.

tolman wrote:Or the thing which overphilosophising types talk about the actual or possible nonexistence of, while acting very much as if it did exist.

I'm not talking about some kind of extreme nihilism. If it's non-existent, then it doesn't exist. Nothing is nothing. Terence McKenna once said, "Even to try to imagine ourselves without imagination is itself a paradox."

tolman wrote:

Kafei wrote:That was a possible explanation, it wasn't the explanation. However, I still believe you're missing the point. These fractal geometries, if they are a phenomenon generated by the visual cortex, then it is the impression in the experience that you're seeing every single output the brain can generate. Every possible image or interpretation of the reflection of light is lit up and what then falls behind closed eyelids are these geometric patterns. That's why people will reach for religious vocabulary in articulating this experience or why someone might believe they're witnessing the language of extraterrestrials.

How can one see 'everything' at once, given that seeing things is a function of particular activation patterns existing in neural networks?

To see 'everything' at once, one would have to see every possible shape and colour in each place simultaneously, and that would effectively be to see nothing but a hopeless mess or a white screen.

As is clear from experiments with optical illusions, even seeing two incompatible things at the exact same time is difficult-to-impossible.

Well, this is the impression in the experience. Perhaps the "white light" phenomenon is neuronal activity heightened to such a degree that it offers this sensory overload, this "white screen." I feel that the iridescent fractal, kaleidoscopic phenomenon, the geometric hallucinations that can occur even behind closed eyelids is similar. It's as though there's some kind of oscillation in the synapses. Constant surges of neuronal activity passing throughout all parts of the brain where they bind to serotonergic receptors, and are just igniting these synapses in such a way that you don't see leprechauns or pink elephants, but it seems to slam through the capacity of the brain's ability to produce images, all colours and patterns running across a screen like some kind of 4D screensaver. It's as though the molecules are just at the switchboard of the brain's panel equalizer, and are now raising hue, saturation, brightness, gamma and contrast tones to their max. On light doses, too, you get this enhancement of colour like someone raised the colour on the TV. Terence once said of the psychedelic experience, "You'll see more art in one night with a heroic dose of psilocybin than the entire human species has produced in the last 10,000 years!" Not a modest claim, and you don't have to take my word for it. It's available to anyone willing to be called to the task.

Oldskeptic wrote:McKenna is quoted ad nauseam by people like you and Daniel Moler. The problem is that he is your messiah or prophet, not mine or apparently not anyone else on this thread. He is not any kind of authority, and nothing he said is evidence that he is right. That Mckenna was right is what you are arguing for here, so quoting him means nothing, and no one seems to care what he said other than acolytes like you and Moler.

I'm not saying that Terence was right. He was a philosophical poet, really. He'd refer to himself as a "Philosophical Gadfly," but the most important message I feel he had was of perturbing the mind to awaken it from its autopilot mode, from a zombie-like momentum that is subliminally instilled through culture, and he felt that psychedelics were a useful tool for doing that (if you took 'em at sufficient doses, of course). I'll give you a couple of his quotes that really give you a glimpse of what he was truly about, and if you don't agree with what's said there, then... I don't know what to tell you.

Kafei wrote:I'm not appealing to authority,

Fucking bollocks. That's exactly what you're doing. It's the only reason for mentioning them, not to mention pointing out that they're famous. Lie all you like, I've got your fucking number.

I'm only pointing out that these things are capable of profoundly transforming people in the way they think, their attitude towards life, etc. I only was giving famous examples that you could look for yourself. Take James Scott, he was an actor on the show "Days of Our Lives," after the ayahuasca experience, he quit the show claiming that he felt guilt that he was contributing to the "dumbing down of the nation." He believes ayahuasca helped him open up to that revelation.

Well, just like you, what he believes and two shit will purchase for him precisely two shits. Irrelevant, uninteresting and without any utility whatsoever, other than as an attempt to bolster your position, which is a textbook appeal to authority, regardless of your lies.

Again, this isn't "Gap thinking." I'm not positing any scenario or explanation as truth.

Utter fucking cock. That's exactly what you're doing, along with lying about it.

Perhaps it's Sam Harris' take that is sufficient in explaining this phenomenon. I'm only pointing out, once again, that there is no confirmation that Harris' take is what's going on nor is there any other explanation neuroscientific or otherwise.

You're doing no such thing.

Here's the thing: I can pretty much fucking guarantee I've done more hallucinogens than you or anybody you've met, and you're talking through your fucking arse.

Oldskeptic wrote:McKenna is quoted ad nauseam by people like you and Daniel Moler. The problem is that he is your messiah or prophet, not mine or apparently not anyone else on this thread. He is not any kind of authority, and nothing he said is evidence that he is right. That Mckenna was right is what you are arguing for here, so quoting him means nothing, and no one seems to care what he said other than acolytes like you and Moler.

Kafei wrote:

I'm not saying that Terence was right. He was a philosophical poet, really. He'd refer to himself as a "Philosophical Gadfly," but the most important message I feel he had was of perturbing the mind to awaken it from its autopilot mode, from a zombie-like momentum that is subliminally instilled through culture, and he felt that psychedelics were a useful tool for doing that (if you took 'em at sufficient doses, of course). I'll give you a couple of his quotes that really give you a glimpse of what he was truly about, and if you don't agree with what's said there, then... I don't know what to tell you.

Reclaim Your Mind

Culture is Not Your Friend

It appears that you haven't taken notice in my signature. For if so, you would realize that I don't put much stock in what any one philosopher has to say. And why you would think that I would put any weight to what a "philosophical gadfly" has to say is beyond me. Perhaps neither you or Mckenna is familiar with what a human gadfly is? The term is taken from a type of insect that is a minor annoyance and prompts cattle to futile movement in order to escape the annoyance.

And no I don't agree with Mckenna that there are cultural engineers that want to turn everyone into morons. Nor do I agree that we are picking the bones of a dying world.

Mckenna damns culture in one broad stroke as if it were a thing in its own right and not just the accumulation of vast and varied forms of knowledge, art, ideas, and social behavior. McKenna talks as if culture is something that conscious social animals could do without or escape. He damns culture while proposing his own form of culture as a solution.

Everyone being an artist is his proposal. Well that's all well and good, but where does he think art is to come from without culture? Art in whatever form does not come from a vacuum. Art arises out of culture, and I defy anyone to separate art from culture or explain how they can be separated.

Proclaiming culture as the problem is simply building your own demon so as to have an easy target to fling your own delusional complaints at while achieving nothing. There is nothing new or original about it.

hackenslash wrote:Here's the thing: I can pretty much fucking guarantee I've done more hallucinogens than you or anybody you've met, and you're talking through your fucking arse.

This thread's always been about cock-waving, so let's engage in a little penis-fencing of our own, Hack!

I bet my penis is longer than yours I've taken more hallucinogens than you, of a wider variety, and of more HEROIC doses!

The only time I've ever had a problem is when I thought I had a moth in my pocket. I don't like moths. It took me some time to realize I could just take off my jacket!

What I love about Kafei's fapping is that he thinks that turning yourself into a gibbering fuck-monkey gives you access to special, super-powered higher dimensions of understanding, whereas all one is really doing is plummeting ever deeper into one's navel. A wonderful experience I think would be useful if everyone experienced once, but to mythologize it like Kafei does is juvenile and really dopey.

Kafei wrote:

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Kafei wrote:

Well, the common denominator is the human brain, we all possess this substrate, and that's important to point out, because it's a more apt explanation as to why this experience is universal. A lot of people who've never experienced hallucinations often imagine it's something more of a Freudian projection of the personal subconscious, and that's not the case at all. While the experience itself is being filtered through the personality of the individual, the experience itself contains universal archetypes, and it may be because we're all dealing with the same substrate.

Universal to humans. Which does NOT necessarily equate to universal in an absolute cosmic sense.

Sure, the fact that I said "human brain" was meant to imply that I was referring to humans when I said universal. However, there are views in eastern philosophy in which they apply these "awakenings" to any sentient beings. So, wherever and whenever a bodily entity that possesses consciousness arises, there is the possibility for this phenomenon in consciousness to occur.

What “eastern philosophy” asserts is beside the point. The fact that the human brain can generate such a “universal” experience does not provide evidence that any other conscious organism can do likewise. This assertion isn’t merely baseless; it’s an outright non-sequitur.

As for a "alternate reality." Terence once called it "the invisible landscape."

Once again: who gives a FUCK what Terence fucking McKenna said!

The man had a lot of experience with these altered states. He was extremely articulate in distilling these theories and concepts. The Psychedelic Salon cares about what he said, a lot of people in the psychedelic community felt he was important voice for the psychedelic point-of-view, and if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have had this experience for myself.

He had a lot of experience disrupting the functioning of his brain with foreign substances, and he was good at spouting deepities about the resulting subjective experiences. That’s it. Why should I give a rat’s arse what the Psychedelic Salon (whoever they are!) said about him? McKenna contributed *nothing* of actual value to the world as a result of his tripping; if he is the psychedelic community’s idea of an important voice speaking on their behalf, then that really doesn’t reflect well on the psychedelic community.

When you say "alternate reality," I know you mean that it doesn't literally allow to witness some kind of parallel universe, but when people say "alternate reality" or "invisible landscape," it's because this is the overwhelming impression in the experience. That this state of mind might as well be a glimpse into a "alternate reality," because that's how the experience presents itself.

Only if you stretch the term "reality" to the point of meaninglessness.

There's no such thing as absolute reality. What we call "reality" is only as real as your brain tells you it is. Terence McKenna once said, "If culture is the serotonin trip, then what kind of culture would we live in if the serotonin were backed out in favor of a DMT maintained neural substrate."

I never said anything about an “absolute reality”. That said, what your brain tells you is demonstrably NOT the sole or even main criteria for assessing the reality of something. Ask anyone who’s ever seen an mirage or experienced an hallucination due to a brain injury. We probably wouldn’t live in any kind of culture if the serotonin in our brain were switched with DMT, because even if the neurochemical disruption didn’t immediately kill us then the distorted perception of our environment would make us far more susceptible to external dangers (i.e. the ones that exist in reality).

It is, in a sense, an alternate reality in that it is no longer the "reality" of ordinary consciousness, but the "reality" of a vastly altered state of consciousness.

Do you really think we can't see through such word games?

Well, it depends on how you're defining reality, I suppose. If you define it on the basis of "consensus reality," then we stray away from that reality in these experiences.

No I don’t define it in terms of “consensus reality”, because such a term suggests that world we live in is defined by some sort of democratic process of mutual consent. This is manifestly not the case: reality clearly does not conform to our will, nor does it ask for our “consent”. These experiences are nothing more than a form of escapism, brought about through distorted neuronal functioning.

We mentioned earlier Sam Harris' idea that it may be that all your neurons are being set off to give this impression of having all experience at once. Maybe, but why then this mandalic imagery? The fractal kaleidoscope?

It probably has something to do with hyperstimulation of the parts of the brain responsible for processing edges, contours and shapes.

That's very interesting. I just finished reading the entire article. Although it's all based on assumption,

That’s a bit rich coming from you.

it's interesting, nonetheless. So, there's a possible explanation for the visual aspect of the hallucinatory phenomena. What would you attribute the feelings of "oneness" to?

The feeling of oneness is most likely due to subdued functioning of the parts of the brain involved in self-cognition, and altered functioning of the parts of the brain involved in the perceptions of the body’s spatial location within and division from one’s environment (e.g. the posterior parietal cortex).

I used the analogy of a TV in an earlier post, that the TV is capable of producing many different patterns as consciousness is able to project or receive many different patterns in space-time. Well, it's also possible to light every RGB signal on the TV, and what you end up with is a "white screen." I'm not saying that this is an explanation of the "white light" reported in near-death experiences, but people nevertheless commonly report a "white light."

There is no reason to believe that the "white light" of NDEs and other types of hallucinations is causally analogous to the white screen on a TV. Aside from the fact that TVs and brains are profoundly different in their structure and functioning, there is strong evidence to suggest that the white light of NDEs are due to pupil dilation, oxygen depletion to the brain, and malfunctioning of the visual cortex.

Well, I don't think they're causally analagous, I think you may have misinterpreted the metaphor. The concept behind the metaphor is that if you were to display every possible pattern, i.e. ignite all RGB inputs, you'd end up with a white screen. The impression in the mystical experience is one of having all possibilities played out at once or having all experience simultaneously. Likewise, the art in "Sacred Geometry" is indicative of this underlying pattern that any object or image can be drawn out from.

So in other words, you do in fact think they’re causally analogous. Just because you have an “impression” of something happening in an altered state of neurological functioning doesn’t mean that it’s actually so, and that’s even before we consider the extent to which such experiences are conditioned by preconceived notions beforehand (e.g. from listening to the articulate ramblings of Terence McKenna) and selective memory afterwards.

In witnessing this morphing iridescent fractal, if I were religious, I would have called it "God." It's not a blurry image, it's all HD, and I've read people that have been blind since birth are able to witness this thing. It moves with fluidity, and everything is morphing in a logical fashion.

Because such hallucinations utilise (read: hijack) the same neural pathways that are involved in processing images from real life.

That was a possible explanation, it wasn't the explanation.

What do you mean it wasn’t “the explanation”? Have you got a better one?

However, I still believe you're missing the point. These fractal geometries, if they are a phenomenon generated by the visual cortex, then it is the impression in the experience that you're seeing every single output the brain can generate.

Yes, it’s an impression. So what? HOW does that impression follow from the experience, and what is the evidence to back the impression up?

Every possible image or interpretation of the reflection of light is lit up and what then falls behind closed eyelids are these geometric patterns. That's why people will reach for religious vocabulary in articulating this experience or why someone might believe they're witnessing the language of extraterrestrials.

Where is your evidence for this claim?

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Terence fucking McKenna wrote:Ultimately, I think, what the psychedelic experience may be is a higher-topological manifold of temporality. That the reason it is so puzzling and so familiar, so alien and so exalting is that it is mundane, it is, in fact, just us. But us sectioned through some higher-spatial dimension.

"Would you like some extra wibble dressing with your word salad?"

I got what he was talking about.

So did I, and it was total fucking word salad. Nonetheless, you are welcome to explain what you think he meant in your own words.

So, there's this concept that all space and time, the entire multiverse itself contorts itself into this experience so that the morphing fractal is some kind of shifting homeomorphism of "temporality" or the "multiverse." So, that this "transcendental object at the end of time" is a state of ultimate complexity when every point in space and time is connected to every other point. It represents all possibilities retained in pure potentiality, an entelechy, and hence you have "the ground of all being" experienced through the phenomenon of consciousness.

Where's the evidence for this? And no, hallucinations from drug trips do not count as evidence in this case.

Well, in this case, these experiences are the evidence. That's the entire point of the clinical trials that were done at the John Hopkins University and the work Dr. Rick Strassman did at the University of New Mexico.

No they’re not. The key contention here is that these hallucination experiences are glimpses into some higher transcendental reality. You cannot demonstrate the validity of these experiences by pointing to the experiences themselves. That is circular reasoning.

In any case, the experience is titanically profound, transcendental, and allows you to intuitively feel a deep-rooted sense of a fundamental interconnectedness.

Just because it feels profoudly real doesn't mean it *is*. Is it really so hard for you to understand that just as people can see and hear things which aren't really there, they can also experience feelings with no reality beyond their own misfiring neurons?

This statement shows you've either misunderstood or misinterpreted what I've said thus far. I wouldn't equate this to those people who "hear things" or "see things." If a person claims they're seeing leprechauns or unicorns, that's just one subset of possible imageries that would go on in the psychedelic experience. Like I said, there's an impression of every possible imagery that could possibly be displayed. So, that's how I distinguish this experience from someone with a neurological condition that is causing them to perceive entities that aren't there.

Like hell I’ve misunderstood. The answer to my question then is “yes”, you really can’t your head around the idea that an experience which SEEMS supercalifragilistically awesome isn’t necessarily an accurate representation of reality.

Maybe you find Sam Harris' explanation sufficient, but there really is no neuroscientific explanation. Sam Harris explanation is at best a guess.

Ground of the Gaps, eh?

Not really. Because it's not like I'm saying, "We don't know what consciousness is, therefore there must be a God." Perhaps Sam is right, however there's no confirmation. I'm not discounting what Harris has said, but the fact of the matter is that there is no neuroscientific confirmation of this explanation.

What you *are* saying is that exposing the brain to foreign substances provides a window into some Higher Reality / Ground of Being. You are making this assertion based on incomplete knowledge of 1) how the brain works and 2) how certain substances disturb the functioning of the brain. Therefore you are speculating about a Ground of the Gaps. Harris’ explanation has a damn sight more neuroscientific credibility than what you’re proposing.

Ven. Kwan Tam Woo wrote:

Steve Jobs wrote:Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could. -Steve Jobs

That's a curious utterance to come from someone who 1) made a colossal fortune by taking the exploitation of herd mentality and planned obsolescence to new heights, and 2) died from cancer largely because he preferred alternative woo-based medicine over the scientifically established kind.

Well, he's one of many famous people who've done this and had their lives completely transformed by this experience. Amber Lyon, Francis Crick, Aldous Huxley, Richard Alpert, James Scott, etc.

So what? It simply does not follow that someone has glimpsed into a deeper/higher reality just because they have undergone a personal transformation as a result of such an experience. Come back and talk to us when one of these people – just one of them – brings back something substantive and independently verifiable from these experiences.

Spearthrower wrote:

hackenslash wrote:Here's the thing: I can pretty much fucking guarantee I've done more hallucinogens than you or anybody you've met, and you're talking through your fucking arse.

This thread's always been about cock-waving, so let's engage in a little penis-fencing of our own, Hack!

I bet my penis is longer than yours I've taken more hallucinogens than you, of a wider variety, and of more HEROIC doses!

The only time I've ever had a problem is when I thought I had a moth in my pocket. I don't like moths. It took me some time to realize I could just take off my jacket!

What I love about Kafei's fapping is that he thinks that turning yourself into a gibbering fuck-monkey gives you access to special, super-powered higher dimensions of understanding, whereas all one is really doing is plummeting ever deeper into one's navel. A wonderful experience I think would be useful if everyone experienced once, but to mythologize it like Kafei does is juvenile and really dopey.

Indeed.

Kafei wrote:I'm not appealing to authority, I'm only pointing out that these things are capable of profoundly transforming people in the way they think, their attitude towards life, etc. I only was giving famous examples that you could look for yourself. Take James Scott, he was an actor on the show "Days of Our Lives," after the ayahuasca experience, he quit the show claiming that he felt guilt that he was contributing to the "dumbing down of the nation." He believes ayahuasca helped him open up to that revelation.

That sounds like the kind of 'profound insight' someone could get any number of other, entirely mundane ways.

Though also like the kind of thing which, obtained by certain people as a psychedelic-drug-fuelled revelation, might prompt them to assume that that was either the only or a necessarily superior way of achieving it.

Date line Bahia de Concepcion



Baja del Sur Mexico. November,1999:

Camped on the beach at Santispac. Took a Heroic dose of local mescaline tea. Watched from my low beach chair the waves lapping at the beach. Figured out that current events were a wave breaking on the uneven shore of an ultimate reality.

The Nobel committee was unimpressed.

Date line Mountains in Utah, 1976:

Massive dose of mescaline. Left camp for a walk and ran into Bigfoot. Very large hairy male smelling like a cesspool. No one believed me.

Date line the Salt Palace arena, Santana concert, September, 18, 1970 - 14 years old:

Massive amounts of blonde Lebanese hash, some Panama Red, a bit of opium, and one hit of purple microdot. Hendrix discovered dead that day. Carlos played Red House Carlos style as tribute. Changed my fucking life forever.

I don't know how old the rest of ya'll are but I don't think our young Kafei even understands what "Heroic dose" means. I didn't know the term in my dosing days, but pushing the limit was what we did. Hell, by the time I was 18 acid was passe, it was for wimps. Mescaline and psilocybin were it. One whole lost summer after graduation dedicated to hallucinating my ass off. Lots of weird beings and thoughts, but I guess I didn't realize I was supposed to take any of it seriously.

And then it was off to university and having to think straight. Got into an experiment program, as a paid volunteer, using a sensory deprivation tank and wow! The same altered brain states as all the drugs. What the fuck is going on?

Turns out nothing special. Just the way the the brain works when under stimulated or over stimulated. Two sides of the same coin. Under stimulated by sensory deprivation and you get profound hallucinations , over stimulated by chemicals promoting neural transmissions and you get profound hallucinations.

Oldskeptic wrote:Massive dose of mescaline. Left camp for a walk and ran into Bigfoot. Very large hairy male smelling like a cesspool. No one believed me.

Sounds like Chairman Bill...

Massive amounts of blonde Lebanese hash, some Panama Red, a bit of opium, and one hit of purple microdot. Hendrix discovered dead that day. Carlos played Red House Carlos style as tribute. Changed my fucking life forever.

frankly. listening to Santana playing such a fuck-off classic constitutes a heroic dose, in my book, regardless of whether you taken an space-cadet shit. That's a gig I'd like to have been at. Never saw Santana live with any line-up, though I did see Journey, which was mostly Santana, although I always thought Neal Schon was the better guitarist (as did Carlos).

I don't know how old the rest of ya'll are but I don't think our young Kafei even understands what "Heroic dose" means. I didn't know the term in my dosing days, but pushing the limit was what we did. Hell, by the time I was 18 acid was passe, it was for wimps. Mescaline and psilocybin were it. One whole lost summer after graduation dedicated to hallucinating my ass off. Lots of weird beings and thoughts, but I guess I didn't realize I was supposed to take any of it seriously.

Yep, that's about the size of it. Really class gear is pretty difficult to get hold of these days (or I'd still be enjoying lysergic sojourns.

And then it was off to university and having to think straight. Got into an experiment program, as a paid volunteer, using a sensory deprivation tank and wow! The same altered brain states as all the drugs. What the fuck is going on?

Turns out nothing special. Just the way the the brain works when under stimulated or over stimulated. Two sides of the same coin. Under stimulated by sensory deprivation and you get profound hallucinations , over stimulated by chemicals promoting neural transmissions and you get profound hallucinations.

Again, yep!

Oldskeptic wrote:

Massive amounts of blonde Lebanese hash, some Panama Red, a bit of opium, and one hit of purple microdot. Hendrix discovered dead that day. Carlos played Red House Carlos style as tribute. Changed my fucking life forever.

Hack wrote:

frankly. listening to Santana playing such a fuck-off classic constitutes a heroic dose, in my book, regardless of whether you taken an space-cadet shit. That's a gig I'd like to have been at.

It was the Abraxas tour right after Woodstock. Country Joe and the Fish opened and got arrested on stage for doing the Fish Cheer. Then Gentle Giant came on to really fuck with our heads. My girlfriend wore white pants and some guy threw up red wine all over her butt. She stripped her pants off and some paisley shrouded girl gave her a big scarf to wrap around her waist. Danced the night away. Gotta love the 60's.

Country Joe and the Fish. Ahhhhh.

I think I might be having an heroic flashback.

Oh wow! The memories. Jethro Tull, the Stand Up/Benefit tour that same year at Kingsbury Hall. Tai bud, eaten not smoked, topped off with some synthetic chocolate mescaline. I felt oh so heroic!