Compliant Meat-Robots Don't Get To Question The Status Quo

realitysandwich  |  DMT (N, N-dimethyltryptamine) is an incredibly powerful, short-lasting tryptamine psychedelic found naturally in animals, fungi, and a wide variety of plants. DMT experiences are characterized by fantastic visions and breakthrough events, including most interestingly, contact with a range of entities. Among these DMT entities, “machine elves”, or “clockwork elves”, are some of the most well-recognized in the DMT realm, even cross-culturally. In this article, we will take a deep dive into machine elves, and also explore some of the other DMT entities that are commonly reported in DMT trips.

Overview of DMT Entities

Contact with entities is reported in the majority of DMT trip reports in the West, but also in a multitude of non-Western cultures. This ranges from the ancient shamanic traditions of Native Americans to indigenous Australian and African tribes.

In the West, the psychiatrist Rick Strassman was the first to conduct human research with DMT at the University of New Mexico throughout the early 1990s. In the five year study, nearly 400 doses of DMT were given to 60 volunteers. In his book DMT The Spirit Molecule, where he documents these experiences, Strassman writes, 

“I was neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared for the frequency with which contact with beings occurred in our studies, nor the often utterly bizarre nature of these experiences.”  

Indeed, of the thousand pages of notes taken throughout the course of Strassman’s research, 50% of them involve interactions with DMT entities. Similarly, Philip Mayer collected and analyzed 340 DMT trip reports in 2005. Mayer found that 66% of them (226) referenced independently-existing entities that interact in an intelligent and intentional manner.

According to Strassman, the research subjects described contact with “entities”, “beings”, “aliens”, “guides”, and “helpers”. Contact with “life-forms” such as clowns, reptiles, mantises, bees, spiders, cacti, and stick figures was commonplace among the volunteers as well. Interestingly, the DMT entities appear sentient and autonomous in their behavior, as if denizens of a free-standing, independent reality.

What are Machine Elves and Clockwork Elves?

Machine elves is a term coined by the ethnobotanist, philosopher, and writer Terence Mckenna to describe some of the entities that are encountered in a DMT trip. They’ve come to be known by many names, including “clockwork elves”, “DMT elves”, “fractal elves”, and “tykes” (a word for small child). 

In his book Archaic Revival, Mckenna refers to them as “self-transforming machine elves.” In any case, they are inhabitants of the DMT dimension that often try to teach something to whoever is visiting. McKenna frequently resorts to a series of metaphors to describe his experiences with machine elves (and the DMT experience in general), underscoring the difficulty of reducing such ineffable experiences to the lower dimensionality of language. 

As detailed in his book True Hallucinations, Mckenna traveled with his brother and some friends to La Chorrera in the Columbian Amazon in search of Oo-koo-he, a DMT-containing plant preparation used by the indigenous people to access the spirit realms. Mckenna found their descriptions of entity contact resembled his own experiences with the machine elves,

“What was eye-catching about the description of this visionary plant preparation was that the Witoto tribe of the Upper Amazon, who alone knew the secret of making it, used it to talk to “little men” and to gain knowledge from them.“

Machine elves are frequently portrayed in trip reports as benevolent, playful, prankish, and sometimes ornery. Generally, they’re reported to greet the visitors with a child-like curiosity and innocence, often continuously changing form and singing immensely complicated objects into existence. They commonly urge the DMT realm visitors to try to focus on what they are showing them, or even want the subject to imitate what they are doing.

Global Beta Test: Abolish the DEA and End the War on Drugs - or Go Full Duterte?

charleshughsmith |  Addiction and drug use are medical/mental health issues, not criminalization/ imprisonment issues.

It's difficult to pick the most destructive of America's many senseless, futile and tragically needless wars, but the "War on Drugs" is near the top of the list.Prohibition of mind-altering substances has not just failed--it has failed spectacularly, and generated extremely destructive and counterproductive consequences.

What was the result of the Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s? Prohibition instantly criminalized 40+% of the adult populace and created hugely profitable criminal organizations.

What was the result of the "War on Drugs"? This modern-day Prohibition instantly criminalized large swaths of the adult populace and created hugely profitable criminal organizations.

If you want to increase drug use, criminalize innocent citizens and spawn gargantuan criminal organizations, then by all means declare "war" via Prohibition. The results of Prohibition/War on Drugs are so visibly perverse and so destructive that the entire enterprise is sickeningly Orwellian.

The well-paid apologists for Prohibition/War on Drugs claim that imprisoning millions of people "helps" them avoid drugs. If you think being tossed in prison for a few years "helps" people, then step right up and accept a fiver (5-year sentence) in an American prison, which is essentially a factory that produces one product: people damaged by imprisonment, deprived of their full citizenship, hobbled by a felony conviction--ex-con beneficiaries of years of tutorials by hardened criminals.

This is as Orwellian as the Vietnam War's famous "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

If you think throwing millions of people in prison "helps" them or society, you are either insane or you're making a living in the gulag or our sick system of "justice".

the greenbaum speech...,

reddit |  Here’s where it appears to have come from. At the end of World War II, before it even ended, Allen Dulles and people from our Intelligence Community were already in Switzerland making contact to get out Nazi scientists. As World War II ends, they not only get out rocket scientists, but they also get out some Nazi doctors who have been doing mind-control research in the camps.

They brought them to the United States. Along with them was a young boy, a teenager, who had been raised in a Hasidic Jewish tradition and a background of Cabalistic mysticism that probably appealed to people in the Cult because at least by the turn of the century Aleister Crowley had been introducing Cabalism into Satanic stuff, if not earlier. I suspect it may have formed some bond between them. But he saved his skin by collaborating and being an assistant to them in the death-camp experiments. They brought him with them. 

They started doing mind-control research for Military Intelligence in military hospitals in the United States. The people that came, the Nazi doctors, were Satanists. Subsequently, the boy changed his name, Americanized it some, obtained an M.D. degree, became a physician and continued this work that appears to be at the center of Cult Programming today. His name is known to patients throughout the country. 

[Pause] 

What they basically do is they will get a child and they will start this, in basic forms, it appears, by about two and a half after the child’s already been made dissociative. They’ll make him dissociative not only through abuse, like sexual abuse, but also things like putting a mousetrap on their fingers and teaching the parents, "You do not go in until the child stops crying. Only then do you go in and remove it." 

They start in rudimentary forms at about two and a half and kick into high gear, it appears, around six or six and a half, continue through adolescence with periodic reinforcements in adulthood. 

Basically in the programming the child will be put typically on a gurney. They will have an IV in one hand or arm. They’ll be strapped down, typically naked. There’ll be wires attached to their head to monitor electroencephalograph patterns. They will see a pulsing light, most often described as red, occasionally white or blue. They’ll be given, most commonly I believe, Demerol. Sometimes it’ll be other drugs as well depending on the kind of programming. They have it, I think, down to a science where they’ve learned you give so much every twenty- five minutes until the programming is done. 

They then will describe a pain on one ear, their right ear generally, where it appears a needle has been placed, and they will hear weird, disorienting sounds in that ear while they see photic stimulation to drive the brain into a brainwave pattern with a pulsing light at a certain frequency not unlike the goggles that are now available through Sharper Image and some of those kinds of stores. Then, after a suitable period when they’re in a certain brainwave state, they will begin programming, programming oriented to self-destruction and debasement of the person.

In a patient at this point in time about eight years old who has gone through a great deal early programming took place on a military installation. That’s not uncommon. I’ve treated and been involved with cases who are part of this original mind-control project as well as having their programming on military reservations in many cases. We find a lot of connections with the CIA. This patient now was in a Cult school, a private Cult school where several of these sessions occurred a week. 

She would go into a room, get all hooked up. They would do all of these sorts of things. When she was in the proper altered state, now they were no longer having to monitor it with electroencephalographs, she also had already had placed on her electrodes, one in the vagina, for example, four on the head. Sometimes they’ll be on other parts of the body. They will then begin and they would say to her, "You are angry with someone in the group." She’d say, "No, I’m not" and they’d violently shock her. They would say the same thing until she complied and didn’t make any negative response. 

Then they would continue. "And because you are angry with someone in the group," or "When you are angry with someone in the group, you will hurt yourself. Do you understand?" She said, "No" and they shocked her. They repeated again, "Do you understand?" "Well, yes, but I don’t want to." Shock her again until they get compliance. Then they keep adding to it. "And you will hurt yourself by cutting yourself. Do you understand?" Maybe she’d say yes, but they might say, "We don’t believe you" and shock her anyway. "Go back and go over it again." They would continue in this sort of fashion. She said typically it seemed as though they’d go about thirty minutes, take a break for a smoke or something, come back. They may review what they’d done and stopped or they might review what they’d done and go on to new material. She said the sessions might go half an hour, they might go three hours. She estimated three times a week. 

Programming under the influence of drugs in a certain brainwave state and with these noises in one ear and them speaking in the other ear, usually the left ear, associated with right hemisphere non-dominant brain functioning, and with them talking, therefore, and requiring intense concentration, intense focusing. Because often they’ll have to memorize and say certain things back, word-perfect, to avoid punishment, shock, and other kinds of things that are occurring. This is basically how a lot of programming goes on. 

Some of it’ll also use other typical brainwashing kinds of techniques. There will be very standardized types of hypnotic things done at times. There’ll be sensory deprivation which we know increases suggestibility in anyone. Total sensory deprivation, suggestibility has significantly increased, from the research. It’s not uncommon for them to use a great deal of that, including formal sensory- deprivation chambers before they do certain of these things.

freight train of happiness...

Bloomberg | On the seventh floor of a building overlooking the Federal Reserve Bank in lower Manhattan, two medical clinics share an office. One is run by a podiatrist who’s outfitted the waiting room with educational materials on foot problems such as hammer toes and bunions. The other clinic doesn’t have pamphlets on display and offers a much less conventional service: For the advertised price of $525, severely depressed and suicidal patients can get a 45-minute intravenous infusion of ketamine—better known as the illicit party drug Special K.

Glen Brooks, a 67-year-old anesthesiologist, opened NY Ketamine Infusions in 2012. “At least eight or nine of my patients have ended up making appointments with the podiatrist,” he says. “But I haven’t gotten any patients through him—I don’t know why.” Not that Brooks is lacking for business. He typically treats 65 patients a week. Most come in for an initial six infusions within a span of two weeks, then return every six to eight weeks for maintenance sessions. To keep up with demand, he often borrows rooms from the podiatrist on weekends so he can treat eight patients at once. His only help is a secretary at the front desk.

Patients don’t need a prescription, but not just anyone can get an appointment. “You have to have the right story,” Brooks says. “For ketamine to work, there needs to be some preexisting brain damage caused by post-traumatic stress. I’m looking for some indication of childhood trauma. If not overt pain, then fear, anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem—or bullying, real or perceived.” Patients receive a low dose of the drug: about one-tenth of what recreational abusers of ketamine take or about one-fifth of what might be used as a general anesthetic.

During the infusions, which are gradual rather than all at once, patients often experience strange sensations, such as seeing colors and patterns when they close their eyes. “The first time, I had a sense that the chair was rocketing upwards, just on and on and on … a kind of weightlessness,” a patient from a different clinic explains. The 51-year-old environmental engineer and university lecturer, who asked to remain anonymous for professional reasons, credits ketamine with reviving him from a near-catatonic depression. “During the treatment, I got this profound feeling of optimism,” he says. “I told my family it’s like getting hit by the freight train of happiness—they tease me about that now.”

egodeath has value, but mapping the contours of the subconscious would be priceless...,

vox |  I have a profound fear of death. It's not bad enough to cause serious depression or anxiety. But it is bad enough to make me avoid thinking about the possibility of dying — to avoid a mini existential crisis in my mind.

But it turns out there may be a better cure for this fear than simply not thinking about it. It's not yoga, a new therapy program, or a medicine currently on the (legal) market. It's psychedelic drugs — LSD, ibogaine, and psilocybin, which is found in magic mushrooms.

Related Imagine if the media covered alcohol like other drugs

This is the case for legalizing hallucinogens. Although the drugs have gotten some media attention in recent years for helping cancer patients deal with their fear of death and helping people quit smoking, there's also a similar potential boon for the nonmedical, even recreational psychedelic user. As hallucinogens get a renewed look by researchers, they're finding that the substances may improve almost anyone's mood and quality of life — as long as they're taken in the right setting, typically a controlled environment.

This isn't something that even drug policy reformers are comfortable calling for yet. "There's not any political momentum for that right now," Jag Davies, who focuses on hallucinogen research at the Drug Policy Alliance, said, citing the general public's views of psychedelics as extremely dangerous — close to drugs like crack cocaine, heroin, and meth.

But it's an idea that experts and researchers are taking more seriously. And while the studies are new and ongoing, and a national regulatory model for legal hallucinogens is practically nonexistent, the available research is very promising — enough to reconsider the demonization and prohibition of these potentially amazing drugs.

is there any basis for intelligent people to hope and be hopeful?

Quotes

14:49: Since the rise of western monotheism the human experience has been marginalized. We have been told that we were unimportant in the cosmic drama. But we now know from the feedback that we're getting from the impact of human culture on the earth that we are a major factor shaping the temperatures of the oceans, the composition of the atmosphere, the general speed and complexity of speciation on the planet... A single species, ourselves, has broken from the ordinary constants of animal nature and created a new world, an epigenetic world,...a world based on ideas...downloaded out of the human imagination and concretized in three dimensional space... 29:29: Consciousness is the generalized word that we use for this coordination of complex perception to create a world that draws from the past and builds a model of the future and then suspends the perceiving organism in this magical moment called the now where the past is coordinated for the purpose of navigating the future. McLuhan called it "driving with the rear-view mirror" and the only thing good about it is it's better than driving with no mirror at all. 36:10: Reality is accelerating towards an unimaginable Omega Point. We are the inheritors of immense momentum in our social systems, our philosophical and scientific and technological approaches to the world. Because we're driving the historical vehicle with a rear-view mirror it appears to us that we're headed straight into a brick wall at a thousand miles an hour. It appears that we are destroying the earth, polluting the atmosphere, wrecking the oceans, dehumanizing ourselves, robbing our children of a future, so forth and so on.

I believe what is in fact going on is that we are burning our bridges. One by one we're burning our bridges to the past. We cannot go back to the mushroom-dotted plains of Africa or the canopied rainforests of 5 million years ago. We can't even go back to the era of...200 years ago. We have burned our bridges. We are preparing for a kind of cultural forward escape. 39:35: Nobody's in charge. 41:16: We are central to the human drama and to the drama of nature and process on this planet. 41:34: Every model of the universe has a hard swallow...a place where the argument cannot hide the fact that there's something slightly fishy about it. The hard swallow built into science is this business about the big bang. Now let's give this a little attention here. This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant. Before we dissect this, notice that this is the limit test for credulity. Whether you believe this or not, notice that it is not possible to conceive of something more unlikely, or less likely to be believed. I defy anyone. It's just the limit case for unlikelihood: that the universe would spring from nothing in a single instant for no reason....It makes no sense. It is in fact no different than saying, "and then God said, 'Let there be light!'".

What the philosophers of science are saying is "give us one free miracle and we will roll from that point forward, from the birth of time to the crack of doom. Just one free miracle and then it will all unravel according to natural law and these bizarre equations which nobody can understand but which are so holy in this enterprise." Well I say then if science gets one free miracle then everybody gets one free miracle.

A trip on tripping

RawStory | Magic mushrooms (psilocbye cubensis) can provoke hallucinations, spiritual insights, and serious hilarity, but just what do they do to your brain?

They’re illegal under federal law–a Schedule I controlled substance, like heroin, LSD, and marijuana–but scientists say they can have thereapeutic uses for people suffering from disorders such as PTSD and depression. And a widely-cited 2010 British study  found magic mushrooms to be the least dangerous of any of the 20 drugs evaluated, both for users and for society at large.

Those science sleuths at ASAPScience have a nifty little three-minute animated video that explains just what psilocybin, the active ingredient in ‘shrooms, does in and to your brain as your mind melts. The science is firm and the viewpoint is balanced–they don’t shy away from the possibility of unhappy experiences–but in the end they come out for loosening up the laws in light of what we know now.

the chemical muse at the root of western civilization

theatlantic |  In a massive study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, scientists at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology at Trondheim concluded that there is no link between use of LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and mental health problems. The study selected 135,000 participants at random—including 19,000 who had used psychedelic drugs—and found no evidence linking such drugs to the onset of mental disorders.

"Over 30 million U.S. adults have tried psychedelics and there just is not much evidence of health problems," author and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen said.

Johanesen was careful to acknowledge that users of psychedelic drugs are not immune to bad trips, and are as susceptible as anyone else to mental health issues. But his findings negate a common perception that drugs like LSD put users directly in danger—a justification used in criminalization.

Most psychedelic drugs—including LSD and psilocybin—have been illegal in the United States since 1970, the year President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act. The legislation classified LSD and mushrooms under Schedule 1, prohibiting not only their consumption and sale but also their use in medicine. Research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs largely froze after decades of frenetic scientific investigation.

This is in us. It is in our brains. It is part of who we are

Boing Boing | The United Nations says the drug war’s rationale is to build “a drug-free world — we can do it!” U.S. government officials agree, stressing that “there is no such thing as recreational drug use.” So this isn’t a war to stop addiction, like that in my family, or teenage drug use. It is a war to stop drug use among all humans, everywhere. All these prohibited chemicals need to be rounded up and removed from the earth. That is what we are fighting for.

I began to see this goal differently after I learned the story of the drunk elephants, the stoned water buffalo, and the grieving mongoose. They were all taught to me by a remarkable scientist in Los Angeles named Professor Ronald K. Siegel.

The tropical storm in Hawaii had reduced the mongoose’s home to a mess of mud, and lying there, amid the dirt and the water, was the mongoose’s mate — dead. Professor Siegel, a silver-haired official adviser to two U.S. presidents and to the World Health Organization, was watching this scene. The mongoose found the corpse, and it made a decision: it wanted to get out of its mind.

Two months before, the professor had planted a powerful hallucinogen called silver morning glory in the pen. The mongooses had all tried it, but they didn’t seem to like it: they stumbled around disoriented for a few hours and had stayed away from it ever since. But not now. Stricken with grief, the mongoose began to chew. Before long, it had tuned in and dropped out.

It turns out this wasn’t a freak occurrence in the animal kingdom. It is routine. As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure. But Siegel had seen cats lunging at catnip — which, he knew, contains chemicals that mimic the pheromones in a male tomcat’s pee —so, he wondered, could his supervisor really be right? Given the number of species in the world, aren’t there others who want to get high, or stoned, or drunk?

This question set him on a path that would take twenty-five years of his life, studying the drug-taking habits of animals from the mongooses of Hawaii to the elephants of South Africa to the grasshoppers of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia. It was such an implausible mission that in one marijuana field in Hawaii, he was taken hostage by the local drug dealers, because when he told them he was there to see what happened when mongooses ate marijuana, they thought it was the worst police cover story they had ever heard.

What Ronald K. Siegel discovered seems strange at first. He explains in his book Intoxication:

After sampling the numbing nectar of certain orchids, bees drop to the ground in a temporary stupor, then weave back for more. Birds gorge themselves on inebriating berries, then fly with reckless abandon. Cats eagerly sniff aromatic “pleasure” plants, then play with imaginary objects. Cows that browse special range weeds will twitch, shake, and stumble back to the plants for more. Elephants purposely get drunk off fermented fruits. Snacks of “magic mushrooms” cause monkeys to sit with their heads in their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker. The pursuit of intoxication by animals seems as purposeless as it is passionate. Many animals engage these plants, or their manufactured allies, despite the danger of toxic or poisonous effects.

Noah’s Ark, he found, would have looked a lot like London on a Saturday night. “In every country, in almost every class of animal,” Siegel explains, “I found examples of not only the accidental but the intentional use of drugs.” In West Bengal, a group of 150 elephants smashed their way into a warehouse and drank a massive amount of moonshine. They got so drunk they went on a rampage and killed five people, as well as demolishing seven concrete buildings. If you give hash to male mice, they become horny and seek out females — but then they find “they can barely crawl over the females, let alone mount them,” so after a little while they yawn and start licking their own penises.

In Vietnam, the water buffalo have always shunned the local opium plants. They don’t like them. But when the American bombs started to fall all around them during the war, the buffalo left their normal grazing grounds, broke into the opium fields, and began to chew. They would then look a little dizzy and dulled. When they were traumatized, it seems, they wanted — like the mongoose, like us — to escape from their thoughts.

to fathom hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic

whale | Psychedelics are the Fourth way spiritual path and people with this knowledge we call Shamans, although they may not.  The main LSD and Ketamine explorer and writer was John Lilly while Timothy Leary was the main man who spread the word about LSD with brilliant communication skills such as this interview: 1966 Timothy Leary interview.  The classic books are 'The Centre of the Cyclone (see original cover below)' by John Lilly, 'The Politics of Ecstasy' and 'Neuropolitics' by Timothy Leary.  Psychedelics have been suppressed by killing off the people with that knowledge, called Shamans and some Witches, and outlawing their use.  

These are called Power Plants or an Ally of Man by the Deer Tribe Metis-Medicine Society and Don Juan, the best ally after men, and can bestow immense personal Power if used wisely, partly by giving Visions and Knowledge, but also by being the greatest Aphrodisiacs, whose main gift is to open the Heart chakra and bestow great love/tenderness and intimacy, along with increased energy and pleasure, leading to great contentment and peace.  They also throw a big spanner into the works of the Mind Control agenda, put lucidly by Terence McKenna (although many users are Pyjama persons, they have a spirituality about them which is the greatest gift of psychedelics--spirituality).  This is is why Alcohol is that agenda's drug of choice, for us, along with Cocaine and Methamphetaminee (crystal meth) which opens you up to Possession, not forgetting all the Psychiatry nightmares, the biggest drug Addiction problem of all time. Cannabis prohibition feeds 50% of the Prison Industrial complex and costs $10 billion to enforce every year (USA) with an estimated $8 Billion in lost sales.  Psilocybin, LSD, or Ketamine would cut prison returns dramatically (Tim Leary cut the prison recidivism rate from 70% to 10% using Psilocybin) along with curing Alcoholism (Peyote on the Brain: Nature's Cure for Alcoholism, Ketamine Psychedelic Therapy), most other diseases with Cannabis Oil ("Our research indicates that hemp oil is an effective cure or control for practically any disease known to man"--- Rick Simpson), and other spiritual diseases such as despair from lack of Spirituality/Knowledge that feeds criminality, and cut the supply to Prison Inc from Alcohol abuse, and robbery from Methamphetamine Cocaine & Heroin abuse.

The Huichol Indians high up in the Sierra Madre Mountains of central-west MexicoHigh Sierra Indians, walk 400 miles every year to collect Peyote and then spend a few weeks, no doubt, crossing what Don Juan called the 'barriers of affection', or 'talking to Jesus' (your higher self or Spirit) to use Quanah Parker's term (Native American Church).  This would also destroy organised Religion and severely undermine the Church of Allopathy (Alcohol abuse fills most hospital beds), the two pillars propping up The Cult of Authority.  No wonder they are all illegal!!]

the god father of ecstasy...,

DIRTY PICTURES is a documentary about Dr. Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, the rogue chemist who discovered the effects of MDMA (aka Ecstasy) and over 200 other mind-altering drugs. Shulgin's alchemy has earned him the title "The Godfather of Psychedelics," and a reputation as one of the great chemists of the 20th century.

Working from a lab in his home, and using himself and his wife Ann as test subjects, Shulgin's discoveries have brought him into conflict with the law but made him a worldwide underground hero. The two books they co-authored, "Pihkal" and "Tihkal", have built a foundation for cutting-edge neuroscience and medical research. DIRTY PICTURES examines the impact of Dr. Shulgin's lifelong quest to unlock the complexities of the human mind.

{Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin is the scientist behind more than 200 psychedelic compounds including MDMA, more commonly known as Esctasy. Considered to be one of the the greatest chemists of the twentieth century, Sasha's vast array of discoveries have had a profound impact in the field of psychedelic research. By employing unorthodox methods; testing his creations on himself, working from a makeshift lab in his home, Shulgin has gained the reputation of a modern day alchemist within the scientific community}

entheogens and the development of culture

psypressuk | Originally published in 2013 ‘Entheogens and the Development of Culture: The Anthropology and Neurobiology of Ecstatic Experience’ is a collection of essays edited by John A. Rush. Rush has previously authored the books ‘The Mushroom in Christian Art: The Identity of Jesus in the Development of Christianity’, ‘Failed God: Fractured Myth in a Fragile World’ and ‘The Twelve Gates: A Spiritual Passage through the Egyptian Books of the Dead’. This work has been published by North Atlantic Books.

 

As a collection, Entheogens and the Development of Culture: The Anthropology and Neurobiology of Ecstatic Experience proposes that psychoactive substances have been key components in the development of both human culture and the human brain. The fourteen essays that are included in the collection are written by a number of researchers from across various disciplines, including anthropology, mycology, classics, cultural historians, psychology and biology. While, academically and perspectively, the writers often appear to be coming from altogether totally different theoretical places, with a myriad of intentions laced within them, they do share the common goal of examining the role of psychoactive substances in the history of human culture. And, as such, provides an interesting argument when taken in its totality.

The question regarding the entheogenic effect on the development of the human brain, while bolstered to some degree by the cultural chapters, is largely formulated in Michael Winkelman’s essay Altered Consciousness and Drugs in Human Evolution. Holding the position that our brains have evolved alongside, and as a result of certain plants and altered states, by way of the serotonergic and dopaminergic systems that can be stimulated by exogenous neurotransmitters—such as those found in Psilocybe mushrooms. Winkleman writes:

“The role of drugs in the evolution of human consciousness must be understood in relationship to effects on the serotonergic system and its roles in overall brain functioning. The alterations of consciousness enhance paleomammilian brain functions and their coordination and integration with the entire brain. Enhanced serotonergic mechanisms contributed to experiences of altered consciousness in humans, embodied in visionary experiences” (Rush 45)

So, the theory goes, the evolution of human consciousness has been, in part, mediated by the exogenous neurotransmitters that humans have sought out and consumed, thereby taking a hand in their own evolution. Taking the theory at face value, for the moment, this leads Winkleman to postulate that, “this expanded associational area improved the brain’s capacity to interface with a variety of other neural mechanisms, including those involved in learning, problem-solving, and memory function” (ibid.). Here, therefore, is the window into culture. From these improved brain functions, art, society and, indeed, organization generally, could develop. However, as we shall see, the remainder of the essays are less about the role of entheogens generating the capability for culture-creation in humans, but more about the role of entheogens within culture itself. Indeed, if entheogens created the capacity for culture, culture itself embarked on a process of reintegrating entheogens from the newly evolved perspective.

Entheogen discourse is primarily driven by historical analysis, and particularly the religious use of mushrooms within human culture, and while this is also very true of this collection, a number of other substances are discussed, which are worth mentioning first. Chris Bennett and Neil McQueen, both having written extensively on drugs and the bible, offer a chapter entitled Cannabis and the Hebrew Bible, which makes use of Sula Benet’s identification of kaneh bosm—an anointing oil used as an initiatory rite—with cannabis.

the entheogen theory of religion and ego death

egodeath | Vertical, Timeless Determinism -  In late antiquity, consciousness was centered around the doctrine and mystic-state experience of the pre-setness of future thoughts and occurrences. The central thematic concern of religions in the Hellenistic era was Heimarmene (Martin 1987), which means fatedness, Necessity, or timeless cosmic determinism. Modern thought considers some related issues, though only in a single cognitive state. For example, Philosophical Metaphysics investigates the related issues of tenseless time, fatedness, agent movement through space and time, and controller agents (Oaklander & Smith 1995). 

The future is unchangeable and pre-set because of the static relation of control to the time dimension, and because it is largely an illusion that a person is a continuant agent who exercises power while moving through time. 

Modern science introduces clockwork determinism and thereby reduces the person to an automaton; in reaction, Copenhagenist quantum mechanics aims to provide an emancipating alternative to the hidden-variables determinism of Einstein and Bohm. However, modern conceptions of determinism and causality are limited to intellectual speculation based in the ordinary cognitive state, so they habitually tend to envision time as a sequential flow.

Transcending Determinism Requires Two Jumps - Determinism is both a praised goal and a disparaged trap to escape, due to determinism-awareness being the intermediate but not final goal of religious mental transformation. Valentinian Gnosticism affirmed cosmic determinism but also transcended it, and formulated two contrasting schemes of thinking about moral culpability (Pagels 1992). 

Simplified 2-stage initiation themes actually reflect a 3-stage progression that is centered around determinism. Mystic metaphor both endorses and disparages the realization of determinism, because determinism is only an intermediate destination on the path to salvific regeneration. The first demon or stage of egoic delusion to be cast out is the assumption of simple independent self-command and freewill. The second demon to be overcome is the mental model of cosmic determinism or fatedness, a model which is rationally coherent but raises the practical problem of control instability.

how did the irs, the dea, and the judiciary become our primary religious judges?

NYTimes | Sixty-four-year old Roger Christie, a resident of Hawaii’s Big Island, although most recently of Cell 104 at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center, is a Religious Science practitioner, a minister of the Universal Life Church, ordained in the Church of the Universe (in Canada), an official of the Oklevueha Native American Church of Hilo, Hawaii, and the founder of the Hawai’i Cannabis THC Ministry.

As you might guess, it was the last of those spiritual vocations that landed him in prison. 

In 2010, Mr. Christie, along with several co-defendants, was indicted on charges including conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana. He does not dispute the facts of the case. He just believes that his operation — “a real ‘street ministry’ serving the needs of our neighbors from all walks of life,” he told me in an e-mail from prison, “busy six days a week,” employing “three secretaries and a doorman” — was protected by the First Amendment. 

On July 29, Mr. Christie’s lawyer will argue in Hawaii federal court that his client should be allowed to present a religious-freedom defense at the eventual criminal trial. He will base his argument on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by Congress in 1993, which requires the government to show a “compelling interest” whenever it “substantially burdens” a religious practice. In 2006, the Supreme Court relied on the act to permit a New Mexico church to use the hallucinogen hoasca, or ayahuasca, for sacramental purposes. 

But so far such exceptions have been granted to small religious communities and relatively obscure drugs: for American Indians’ use of peyote, for example, or the New Mexico church with its ayahuasca. But marijuana? That would be problematic. 

“The difference is that peyote and hoasca have little or no recreational market, and that is not likely to change because they make you sick before they make you high,” Douglas Laycock, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Virginia, wrote in an e-mail in explaining why a court would be unlikely to approve of the church’s practice. “Marijuana has a huge recreational market. Diversion from religious to recreational uses, and false claims of religious use, would be major problems.” 

Mr. Christie is hoping that now, as many state marijuana laws are liberalized, federal courts may allow him to argue for the sacramental needs of his ministry, where he worked full time until his arrest. First, he must convince a federal judge that his religion — or one of his religions — is not just a form of personal spirituality concocted to get stoned legally.

A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

exploratorium | We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.

A structure for nucleic acid has already been proposed by Pauling (4) and Corey¹. They kindly made their manuscript available to us in advance of publication. Their model consists of three intertwined chains, with the phosphates near the fibre axis, and the bases on the outside. In our opinion, this structure is unsatisfactory for two reasons:

(1) We believe that the material which gives the X-ray diagrams is the salt, not the free acid. Without the acidic hydrogen atoms it is not clear what forces would hold the structure together, especially as the negatively charged phosphates near the axis will repel each other.

(2) Some of the van der Waals distances appear to be too small.

Another three-chain structure has also been suggested by Fraser (in the press). In his model the phosphates are on the outside and the bases on the inside, linked together by hydrogen bonds. This structure as described is rather ill-defined, and for this reason we shall not comment on it.

We wish to put forward a radically different structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (5). This structure has two helical chains each coiled round the same axis (see diagram). We have made the usual chemical assumptions, namely, that each chain consists of phosphate diester groups joining beta-D-deoxyribofuranose residues with 3',5' linkages. The two chains (but not their bases) are related by a dyad perpendicular to the fibre axis. Both chains follow right-handed helices, but owing to the dyad the sequences of the atoms in the two chains run in opposite directions (6) . Each chain loosely resembles Furberg's² model No. 1 (7); that is, the bases are on the inside of the helix and the phosphates on the outside. The configuration of the sugar and the atoms near it is close to Furberg's "standard configuration," the sugar being roughly perpendicular to the attached base. There is a residue on each every 3.4 A. in the z-direction. We have assumed an angle of 36° between adjacent residues in the same chain, so that the structure repeats after 10 residues on each chain, that is, after 34 A. The distance of a phosphorus atom from the fibre axis is 10 A. As the phosphates are on the outside, cations have easy access to them.

shamanism is entheogenesis - alkhemia concerns the alkahest...,

realitysandwich |  In Plato, Shamanism, and Ancient Egypt, the writer Jeremy Naydler argues that there is good reason to believe that Plato and other Greek philosophers journeyed to Egypt in order to receive some form of initiation. In Plato's case, according to Naydler, this led to his philosophy -- to which, as Alfred North Whitehead remarked, all subsequent western thought is merely a footnote, which suggests that a book on The Egyptian Roots of Western Philosophy remains to be written. Exactly what Plato and the others received may not be absolutely clear, but Naydler believes that by trying to understand Plato's relationship to Egypt, we can gain a firmer grasp, not only on Plato's ideas, but also on "that deep current of thought and spiritual practice known as the Hermetic tradition."

Naydler argues that some form of shamanism was involved in ancient Egyptian spiritual practice. Naydler points out that the central narrative in Egyptian mythology is the story of Osiris' dismemberment at the hands of his evil brother Set and his resurrection by his consort Isis, and argues that this is paralleled in the dismemberment motifs in shamanic initiation rituals. He also argues that the journey of the soul through the underworld -- what the Egyptians called the Duat -- as described in the Book of the Going Forth By Day, otherwise known as Egyptian Book of the Dead, can be found in shamanic ritual, as can be the idea of a spiritual ascent, which is another Egyptian theme. In both shamanic and Egyptian religious accounts, this ascent to the sky takes place via wings or a kind of ladder, and it should come as no surprise that a parallel idea appears in the Hermetic notion of a journey through the planets to the "Eighth sphere." That Plato described a version of this stellar ascent too, suggests for Naydler that his version and the Hermetic one stem from the same source.

Predictably, for 'official' Egyptology, Naydler's ideas put him the lunatic camp, as most mainstream Egyptologists reject the notion of Egyptian shamanism. They reject it because, Naydler argues, they are fixated on the funerary interpretation of Egyptian religious texts, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Egyptian Book of the Dead is a collection of hymns, spells, incantations, magical 'power words,' and instructions used to guide the soul of the deceased in the after-world; unlike the Tibetan Book of the Dead, however, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which is much older, is an often wildly heterogeneous assembly of writings, gathered over millennia, and is not really a book at all, at least not in the modern sense. Its earliest 'chapters,' known as the Pyramid Texts, were written on the walls of the tombs of the pharaohs circa 2350-2175 BC, but originated in sources much earlier; the practice of mummification and concern for the afterlife can be dated to at least 3100 BC, and according to the occult scholar Lewis Spence, an inscription on the sarcophagus of Queen Khnem-Nefert, of the 11th Dynasty (circa 2500 BC) states that a chapter of the Book of the Dead was discovered in the reign of Hosep-ti, the fifth king of the 1st Dynasty, "who flourished about 4266 BC."

We may take Spence's remark with a grain of salt, but the fact remains that the material making up the Book of the Dead is at least five thousand years old. Later parts of it, circa 1700 BC, came from what are known as the Coffin Texts, writings found on the sides of wooden coffins, or contained in scrolls placed with the dead. Although originally reserved for the pharaohs, this sort of Rough Guide to the afterlife gradually became available to anyone who could afford a scribe to copy it out. Perhaps the most well known version is the Papyrus of Ani, a copy of the Book of the Dead made for the scribe Ani circa 1240 BC, which contains the famous illustration of the god Anubis weighing Ani's heart on the scale of Ma'at, the goddess of justice. Late versions appeared with blank spaces for the names of individuals not yet dead. Initially the privilege of an elite, the spiritual rebirth associated with the journey through the underworld became over time something more democratic.

Yet while the funerary aspect of the Book of the Dead was certainly made use of, Naydler argues that the text had another, more central use. It was, he believes, a manual on how to "practise dying," a method of learning how to experience the separation of the soul from the body, which normally happens only in physical death, while still alive. Naydler argues that as this was also the aim of Plato's philosophy -- the Phaedo famously argues that philosophy is a "preparation for death" -- there is good reason to believe that rather than merely picking up an idea that was 'in the air,' Plato learned it at first hand from the priests at Heliopolis. The belief that one's nous, or mind, was immortal while one's body was subject to death and decay was, as a central theme of the Hermetic teachings, and this suggests that, rather than repackaging Platonic ideas - as some have argued the Corpus Hermeticum does -- both it and Plato's philosophy originated from the same source.

the vast active living intelligence system revisited

realitysandwich |  For most people, Philip K. Dick (hereafter known as PKD) is best known through films like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, which were all based on his writings. Classic movies like The Matrix and Vanilla Sky also owe a great debt to PKD's work. What is not so well known is that PKD was a bit of a latter-day mystic, a man who spent the last decade or so of his life struggling to come to terms with a series of visionary experiences (not related to psychedelics) that befell him in the early 1970s. In these experiences, PKD felt as if some vast cosmic intelligence was communicating with him, as if a deity was slipping him secret information. Such was the impact of these theophanies that he chose to incorporate their thematic content into a number of novels as well as an eight-thousand-page exegesis. To the consternation of his peers, PKD began to be not a little obsessed with ideas of "divine invasion" and the like, his last books testifying to his escalating interest in theology and theistic philosophy (interestingly, his last novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, partly concerns the search for a sacred mushroom).

Since his death it has been speculated that PKD suffered from what is known as temporal lobe epilepsy -- a brain disorder that can lead to hallucinatory experiences -- and that this explains his mystical encounters. However, leaving aside the contentiousness of this claim, it does not deal with the burning issue of immediate mystical experience. To label an experience in order to explain it away is to avoid the very real nature of the mystical experience, however it should arise. In fact, as Huxley noted in The Doors of Perception, we should not be surprised if there is always unusual neuronal activity concurrent with a mystical experience, for, as we have seen, modified neuronal firing patterns are related to expanded forms of consciousness. Altered forms of awareness demand altered brain processes, and such a change in brain state can be achieved in many different ways, whether through psilocybin mushrooms, endogenous DMT, yoga, meditation, fasting, or spontaneous epileptic disturbances. Mystical experience is therefore not to be conveniently disposed of with a diagnostic label.

Even before his visionary experiences, PKD had long fought to discover the true nature of reality. It was his pet fascination. In a talk he delivered in the late 1970s, he admitted that for all the years he had thought about the question "what is reality?" he had gotten no further than concluding that reality was that which remained even if you stopped believing in it. Admittedly a thin definition, it is nonetheless indicative that the true nature of reality is not so easily pinned down.

PKD juggled with countless explanations for his mystical experiences. Some involved a Judeo-Christian God, others involved the Logos outlined in some of the Gnostic gospels (these are the "alternative" gospels dug up at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945), while others even opted for an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence. Whatever the case, PKD was certain that he had been "contacted" by some form of advanced transcendental intelligence-cum-Other.

One of his more enduring theories concerned VALIS, which is an acronym for "vast active living intelligence system," a notion that accords well with our intelligent Other. In the semiautobiographical novel of the same name, VALIS is a hidden entity of immense power and sentience that is in the process of infiltrating our reality by establishing communication with certain individuals. These disclosures are experienced as theophany. For our purposes, the key point is that VALIS is essentially outside of our dimension, but able to penetrate our world. The question arises as to the feasibility that a superior intelligence exists in another dimension with the capacity to move across into ours. This is one of our fanciful options concerning the Other.

how can this man give us his flesh to eat?

John Chapter 6: 

1 After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. 

2 And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased. 

3 And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. 

4 And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. 

5 When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?

6 And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do. 

7 Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. 

8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him, 

9 There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? 

10 And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. 

11 And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. 

12 When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. 

13 Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. 

14 Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world. 

15 When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone. 

16 And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, 

17 And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. 

18 And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. 

19 So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. 

20 But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. 

21 Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went. 

22 The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone; 

23 (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:) 

24 When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. 

25 And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither? 

26 Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. 

27 Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed. 

28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? 

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. 

30 They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work? 

31 Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. 

32 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. 

33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.

34 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. 

35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. 

36 But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not. 

37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. 

38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. 

39 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. 

40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day. 

41 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. 

42 And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven? 

43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves. 

44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. 

45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. 

46 Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father. 

47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. 

48 I am that bread of life. 

49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 

50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. 

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. 

52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? 

53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. 

54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. 

55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. 

56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. 

57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. 

58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. 

59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. 

60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 

61 When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? 

62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? 

63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. 

64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. 

65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. 

66 From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. 

67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? 

68 Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. 

69 And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God. 

70 Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? 

71 He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.