They are not recreational, except in the true meaning of that word. They re-create.
There are many much safer methods for realigning oneself with reality. You can't be me, I'm taken
Well said.
I see colour relationships now that are a result of my first mushroom experience--the colour test is how I know if I'm getting an effect from psilocybin.
There are many much safer methods for realigning oneself with reality.
You mean safer to the psyche? I would say (off the top o' me 'ed) that anything that suddenly re-aligns your reality is (potentially) dangerous because, as Owsley put it, "No one really knows why certain things are done, but everybody feels uncomfortable unless they do them."
Take/ receive anything (weekend seminar; a film; a conversation in the pub; a sexual encounter; notice of redundancy) and...there's that uncomfortable feeling.
Physically (effect on body), my experience is that psychedelics are health-promoting. They did tests in the sixties, giving LSD to alcoholics, individuals with mental health issues. With correct setting and ritual and relationships (and as you say so well, "a certain innocence and balance in the taker"--where balance can be acceptance of the situation--)
So, I think that anyone who has doubts about taking psychedelic substances shouldn't. Resolve the doubts first, take them with friends, get out into nature, create a safe environment...
My personal experience is that the thing that disturbs people the most when on psychedelics is that the world reveals itself counter to the claims of the ego. I read an article once by a guy who said something like, "The ego creates a world which protects it from hurt. When you take psilocybin "you" see the world as it is. This is dangerous because you "see" what the ego has been protecting itself from and how it has been protecting itself. Who is "you" in that mix I dunno, but it's the difference (of degree? of intention?) between consciousness and sentience, or intelligence and understanding...I dunno...
Reminds me of the buddhists who say mushrooms (psychedelics) give you a glimpse of higher reality, but they shouldn't be used because they are like (this is my analogy) being flown to the top of a mountain in a helicopter rather than taking the path. For people who don't believe in mountains and think there is nothing to see, though, I think psychedelics open up as receptors--our senses--to the "noise", or the shapes, or the structures...
A last point (I is a rambling man): I saw shapes in trees (when I had taken some mushrooms), excellent sculptures, beautiful and alive and I thought, "I could sculpt that." Then another voice (a friend of mine claims psychedelics create temporary schizophrenia--don't take if you are not balanced, in the company of people you trust, etc.!) said, "But they are there now. Scultping them...what would be the point?"
The point would be to show forms and combinations to people who hadn't seen them before.
Still, psychedelics are usually taken rarely or not at all by most people. I think they are a self-limiting drug both in dosage and in individuals taking them, and for good reasons to do both with the substance(s) and the people involved.
Ramble ramble. (What other methods were you thinking of?) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
if true, it is tempting to think of a world in which such hate and venom had not built up agin the idea of entheogen consumption.
i think most people aren't into taking psychedelics because their lives are going tolerably enough (soft bigotry etc.) that they remain occupied on a relatively shallow level of perception, running their godgiven mental ferraris around in 1st gear thinking that the noise they're making means that they're actually covering serious ground.. .
it usually takes a radical crisis, or sometimes the long accumulation of repressed needs leading to a psychic flash point of temperature to trigger a fascination for the 90% of our consciousness that remains veiled, except for the dreambody.
literally the flex goes from the intellect's blade, and, brittle stump in hand, the survivor is forced to dig deeper into his or her spiritual curiosity and resources to find a new solution.
were they to stumble upon psychedelics at that stage. it could be valuable, if set'n'setting were right.
entheogens are signal augmenters, capable of picking up signals so faint that they are way below the level of the everyday mind.
if one gets a taste for the challenge of seeing and feeling parts of oneself that don't jive with one's sense of identity, this can help us understand why the sign above the oracle at delphi said 'know thyself'.
there is a natural repulsion within ourselves for the worst in our own character, that is highlit under the microscope of self-examination.
it is humbling to unpack the psychic baggage we are carrying as a consequence of cultural conditioning, however i think it is always better to know what's 'around' you, and unless your life is already beyond improvement(!), there are valuable clues for bettering one's attitude -and consequently one's relationships - woven into the experience.
it is shattering to be asked to jettison accrued defence mechanisms, painfully constructed over years or lifetimes, as it can be liberating to accept the challenge of asking to see what's behind the doors of perception, and survive the experience.
i like to think of it as 'bringing the butterfly back alive'
i remember the sense of risk back in the 60's and the sense that one was jumping off some metaphorical cliff to see if one could fly.
everyone knew of some good reason not to do it, like for instance the poor sod loon-babbling in front of the tube station, whispered to be an 'acid casualty'.
so if you did, there was an implicit 'nothing to lose', 'all or nothing', or even a 'wtf, it can't be worse than what i'm already going through' element to the whole affair.
i totally agree with eisner about the 'body-heavy' thing.
nice work, rg, the top image is breathtakingly beautiful. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
In the gallery there was an Ivon Hitchens on the wall, colours still bright, a beautiful composition (there was a Henry Moore painting--I think it was Henry Moore--on the wall opposite.)
"How much is that one?" I said, pointing to the one by Ivon Hitchens.
"£36,000."
"And the Henry Moore?"
"£30,000."
Any art collectors out there with £30,000 to spare, I'd recommend an Ivon Hitchens. They're beautiful, will only go up in value, and are probably £50,000+ these days.
He lived in the woods, built his house, took his easel and paints out into the woods every day, developed a technique of simple brush strokes depicting all manner of depths and resonances...
Here's another one for you, melo.
His line drawings are good, too.
btw, I think afew had some useful comments re: storing pics online. (If anyone has any useful advice...I wanna read melo's diary and see his pics!) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
I haven't seen anything quite this good since a Jack Yeats exhibition in Bristol more than ten years ago.
(sorry, this going to be a slightly complex explanation)
A neuron fires if it receives a certain pattern of signals from the possibly hundreds of dendritic upstream connections to other neurons. It fires if a signal of its own down the axon to reach out and become the dendritic input of a downstream cell. I have no ideas if this process can be recursive with downstream dendrites reaching back to attach themselves to upstream neurons - but it's an interesting thought ;-)
Anyway, if the incoming pattern/s (the algorithm) keep the cell firing, the inhibitory neuron shuts it down (don't ask me how, but it does). This can be seen in the phenomena of 'When the novelty wears off" type. You can cause things to disappear from your sight by staring at them long enough. This would appear to be an inhibitory neuron effect. You can think of many others.
The inhibitory neuron needs to charge itself with a substance called GABA which it can otherwise run out of, and no longer be able to inhibit. This happens when you are asleep - which according to the theory may have a connection with dreaming ie your neural networks have lost their inhibitors.
Back to acid: I explain the above to show how changes in the inhibitory system can affect the way the brain works. Acid may have an effect on this system in that it would, in a way, remove the 'repression', to take away the limiter/compressor in the system and 'hear' the real loudness and dynamic of everything.
Our sense of time may come from that repression, in the same way that sand falls thru the narrow waist of an hourglass, regulating an even sense of time. Remove the regulator and time goes crazy. You can't be me, I'm taken
Other people seem unaware of it, just as, if you focus, you can have phone conversations with people and they are are unaware of any difference (my mother, for instance!). It really is a matter of trusting your good old autopilot system that also keeps you safe while driving on the motorway even if you can't remember the last 10 kms while thinking about something else. (I am talking about complete sobriety here - the normal daydreaming that we all do on a fairly empty road). You can't be me, I'm taken
