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.