Salvia Divinorum (C or D)?

HOOS, i would smoke all this salvia with you

Sébastien is webmans. we all webbers

i never even heard of jimsom weed abuse. this stuff disintegrates your kidneys on contact.

Heh.. Datura is to be avoided. I'm sure there are shamans around that dig the stuff, but I'm not one of them.

HOOS thanks & wow. it sounds like what i thought drugs were like before i actually did any drugs.

I've had some similar experiences when I would do multiple doses of "double dipped" or liquid LSD, but I remember when I would tell other people who'd used acid, nobody really seemed to believe me. So, it just became a relatively secret type of experience shared by one or two other "trip buddies." I remember once every single bit of everything I could see was just wiggling and I suddenly was transported into this cosmic sandstorm where I actually felt like it was so windy I could barely breathe and I was trying to shield my face from all the shit that was flying at me. It was notably different also in that everything was rust or greyish colored rather than obvious psychedelic bright colors. I was basically incapacitated and having a kind of panic attack for a while on the couch, just collapsing under the weight of these incredible visions. Once the peak experience passed, the rest of the trip was straight out of a science fiction movie, where everything in my apartment looked like portals or hallways of a spaceship or robotic and metallic in some way. There was almost no talking the entire time except when we were both frightened by the cat, which looked like an evil robot monster coming right for us. The entire thing was cold and alien rather than warm and organic.

Sébastien is webmans. we all webbers
^^^^^ that's right

Webmans + webbers! Thanks for the specifics! ;-)

Watching Syd Barret's documented acid trip sort of enlightened me how silly the use of psychedelics really are:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4fyxNPz9-ks

Not to bum anyone's trip or nuthin'...

Yeah I want to emphasize that I had a positive experience, but that I would *not* recommend the use of the thing given the preponderance of people that have had horrible experiences with it.

HOOS, that's amazing. It reminds me somewhat of the account I read of the person who took Salvinorin A, and then found himself in his grandmother's house, just as he remembered it from childhood. But, to emphasize, he reported being actually, physically there, like in the sense of a place that felt more concretely real than the room in which he had been before he had taken the drug...He could walk around the place, open up drawers, or whatever. That particular story is probably online somewheres; I will try to dig it up.

Also, have any of you read Dale Pendell's books? I highly, highly recommend them, if you have even the slightest interest in any psychoactive substance, from the most commonplace to most exotic. He's an amazing guy.

Found it. It's from Daniel Siebert, the guy who first isolated Salvinorin A.

...But then I saw that something was very wrong! This was not my living room. It was the living room of my deceased maternal grandparents. And it was furnished as it was when I was a child, not as it was later in their life. The most extraordinary thing about this was that this was the real world, not a memory or vision. I was really there, and it was all just as solid as the room I'm sitting in now. I had the sudden realization that although I had managed to pull myself back into my body I had somehow ended up back in the wrong spot in the timeline of my physical existence. I was convinced that I might be stuck in this situation and would have to continue my life from this point in my past. As I panicked and desperately tried to remember where it was that I was supposed to be, I lost awareness of the physical world again and found myself without a body—lost. Then it happened again. I found myself regaining consciousness in the real world. And again, as soon as I saw everything clearly, I realized that this was not my home, it was a friend of mine’s. Then again I panicked and lost consciousness. This cycle repeated at least seven or eight times. Always I would find myself in a familiar room. Some of these places were from my childhood and some were from my more recent past. In this state, all the points of time in my personal history coexisted. One did not precede the next. Apparently, had I so willed it, I could return to any point in my life and really be there, because it was actually happening right now.

link

Also, Dale Pendell on Salvia...

i had some wolf shaman friends who were really into this. they were all "safety first" so i said fuck y'all lightweights and dusted mine with a healthy serving of pcp. i passed out immediately and felt nothing, but now everytime i see a bowl of beernuts this happens:

http://filer.case.edu/~gjc2/donwave.gif

For real?

no, sorry

It seemed kinda plausible, you had me going there.

your trip sounds really amazing

Just for the sake of clarification, I didn't try it again and I haven't touched any psychoactive drugs in almost two years. "Put down the bong and get on with life" and all that.

Also the Buddha prob wouldn't be real happy with me trippin.

HOOS, have you ever read "Zig Zag Zen"? It's a really thoughtful and well-worth read about the intersection of Buddhism & psychedelics.

um, zigzagzen.com

Also the Buddha prob wouldn't be real happy with me trippin.

Yeah, the hippie mentality of psychedelics as "instant enlightenment" is silly. It's the opposite, pretty much. Certain Vajrayana sects use/d them once or twice to reintroduce a person to the nature of mind, but more than this is basically going the opposite way of what Buddhists are trying to achieve. Psychedelics blatantly show the endless arising of thoughts and allow one to experience the enormity and interconnectivity of existence with the fresh eyes of a baby and functioning brain of an adult. Other than that, from a Buddhist perspective, they're a rather dangerous waste of time and opportunity.

But, there's got to be a reason such a large percentage of American Buddhists used to be hippies or psychedelics users. It seems like enlightenment and it gets one off chasing even better "highs" and opens eyes to possibilities, right?

Certain Vajrayana sects use/d them once or twice to reintroduce a person to the nature of mind...

whaaaa? examples please! seriously.

I'd suggest that given psychedelics' tendency to disconnect us from present reality, they can be nothing but a road block to experience of "thus."

But, there's got to be a reason such a large percentage of American Buddhists used to be hippies or psychedelics users. It seems like enlightenment and it gets one off chasing even better "highs" and opens eyes to possibilities, right?

I think this is pretty much correct. Psychedelics, if they don't damage you permanently, certainly leave you open to alternative ways of looking at the world. Given Buddhism's surge in popularity in the early 70s, it's a pretty safe bet that lots of that surge was coming from ex-hippies who were looking for psychedelic-free ways to experience "reality." The same happened with Christianity: look at the language used to witness in the late 60s/early 70s! "Jesus is far out and really NOW, maaan," etc

xpost to el deano

There's a bunch of info online including an mp3 lecture, if you're really lazy (as I was at the time ;-)) But where I originally read about it was Blofeld's "Tibetan Buddhism." The author himself was a product of the 60s and this catapulted into the serious study of Tibetan Buddhism. All you have to do is look at the iconography and it seems pretty obvious there's some psychedelic origin. In Tibet, the form of Buddhism is an amalgamation of everything from the area thanks to that great king whatsisname who made enlightenment the #1 goal of Tibet, so it blends all the forms of Buddhism with the shamanic-like practices that were indigenous to the region, like Bonpo, etc. There's some great passages I could pull from books that show the certain similarities that might be addressed in Zig Zag Zen (I don't know, I haven't read it).

I'd like to comment on something I didn't even realize I hinted at in my post above about the cold and alien metallic science fiction trip. I don't know what caused this particular sort of "space" trip, but my tripping partner had the same experience. As I said, the entire trip was silent except for the time when we freaked because the cat was coming at us and we couldn't tell if it was a real robot alien monster or just a hallucination. I think the extent of our conversation at that point was, "Ah! What is it? Is it real?" or maybe even startled mumblings. I remember it was my roommate who said finally, "It's the cat!" (because I think he had balls enough to touch it and felt the fur?)

But, the question I'm getting at here is: what's with the psychic factor in psychedelics? The 2 guys sharing a phantom cigarette in the above video sort of hints at this, too. In my experience, my friends and I saw the same shit. Now, how is that possible without communication?

I'm gonna try to avoid the cognition trap from the meditation thread when I say this, BUUUUUT:

Did you and your friend actually see the same thing, or did you just think you did? Unless you were inside your trip partner's head (whoa), there's no way to be sure you guys actually had the same experience at the time, and memory tends to be easily bent (especially when drugs are involved).

Reading much more subtle body language maybe? xpost

Well, we were pretty serious "white boy drug professors" at the time and we'd compare notes and draw pictures to compare the next day, etc. Obviously, I don't know what he saw because I wasn't in his head. But, when the entire vision is skewed into a cosmic storm and the entire trip takes on a metallic spaceship appearance for no particular reason, that's weird. And this is only one particular trip. We were basically always seeing the same thing. As far as "body language" goes, in this particular case, we couldn't see SHIT and we were both lying on our backs staring at the ceiling and the opposite walls for about 4 hours. Typically, I remember we didn't look at each other too much at all because we always looked strange and it was just not very appealling.

There was some big psychedelic psychic experiment in Port Chester in the 60s which, of course, was a big "success" according to those involved and a big failure to the scientific community that later evaluated the whole thing. I think it's on wikipedia.

http://dozin.com/esp/thedream.html

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/169/the_grateful_deads_acid_test_for_esp.html

I accidentally smoked some dusted weed in college. Highlights included the lights going down and a spotlight coming up on anyone who was talking to me, stepping into a "closet" and walking in Narnia and being amazed by the showerheads singing to me. Friends told me I kinda blacked out; never had any intoxicant experience that intense since.

This does seem pretty interesting; the brevity of the experience makes it pretty appropriate for a short attention span culture.

Hmmm. Well, there's a book called "Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas" which has a great deal of information about various psychoactive plants used by shamans in Nepal who follow variations of the Bonpo and Vajrayana paths...I guess what I balked at was your assertion that "certain Vajrayana sects use/d them once or twice to reintroduce a person to the nature of mind". I have a hard time believing that this is true. There are shamans in the Himalayas who use plants having psychedelic properties, but they are used more for healing, divination, and other traditional shamanic purposes-- not for reintroducing folks to the nature of mind. The online sources that you linked to seem pretty speculative at best.

As for the origin of the iconography, it is possible to have all sorts of visionary experiences without ingesting psychedelics. We're talking about people who meditated in caves and/or in total darkness for long periods of time.

Regarding telepathy, I have no problem accepting that such experiences are common occurences while one is intoxicated. Ayahuasca, for one, has a strong reputation for fostering telepathic experiences.

Oh, I didn't even realize you were balking! I thought you were just interested. Why do you have a hard time believing this is true?

brains being similarly evolved tend to work similarly (we all know the color blue , the sweet taste etc) , it will tend to produce similar results @ stimulus : same things will tend to be produced under the influence of a substance of a given potency or a given sensorial deprivation etc

dell what do you think of that guy Randi who offers $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate psychic powers? don't you think you should have a go at it and bag that prize ?

Interest + skepticism. It's just, think of all that you've read, teachings that you've received, etc. When have you ever heard an account of a lama giving a student a plant in order to reacquaint the student with the nature of mind? Vajrayana is very practical, so I imagine that if such a thing were thought to be beneficial, then it would be employed. From what I understand, the teachers in these traditions would have sufficient realization to be able to do this for the student without recourse to plants.

Sebastien, I am merely saying that there are frequent anecdotal reports of telepathic experiences when people have ingested Ayahuasca and other substances.

Oh hey guys I forgot to mention:

I did try it without significant result on one occasion previous to the story mentioned above. I had On the Corner playing really loud, I hit, and proceeded to freak out. Apocalyptic doom-funk is a bad idea when you're trying new psychedelics, but I was young and stupid.

No hallucinations (I figure I did it all wrong). I fought the impulse to hyperventilate and was gripped by a sudden panic that everyone on earth was going to know I'd been smoking this stuff. I started to frantically clean my device to rid it of the smell and, in my panic, dropped and broke it.

but I was young and stupid younger and stupider.

Hm, I thought my comments were pretty clear about how common psychedelics in Buddhism are:

Yeah, the hippie mentality of psychedelics as "instant enlightenment" is silly. It's the opposite, pretty much. Certain Vajrayana sects use/d them once or twice to reintroduce a person to the nature of mind, but more than this is basically going the opposite way of what Buddhists are trying to achieve.

But, I guess it is a little vague. To be extremely clear, then, it's not common and I don't even know if it is still practiced anywhere (though possibly?) and the mp3 I had of it was actually called something like "use of psychedelics in secret vajrayana cults" but I am having a damn hard time trying to locate it again. You used to be able to just Google "psychedelic vajrayana" and it popped right up on the first page. Anyway, if you Google the same terms now, as I said, you will find plenty of information about it. Vajrayana practitioners also get drunk. That's pretty common knowledge. They're not simply trying to "get wasted," but some people end up doing that and fooling themselves about progressing. As an additional thought, meaning nothing whatsoever, have you ever noticed how psychedelic Tibetan art is?

dell what do you think of that guy Randi who offers $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate psychic powers? don't you think you should have a go at it and bag that prize ?

I think dell was just providing links to the psyche experiment I had mentioned for anyone who was interested. As far as Randi goes, there are some funny YouTube videos that demonstrate his useful role in society. He saves us from people in kung fu suits who try to move pages of a phonebook with their "minds," but he also is a roadblock to serious scientific inquiry. James Randi is a "pseudo-skeptic" and, basically, full of shit in his own way. He's as much a carny as the people he tends to expose. But, if someone really had a paranormal power, he certainly would not ever admit it, as his pattern of behavior indicates. Anyone who raises the JREF publicity stunt $million prize as a serious response to discussion of the "paranormal" can't be very serious, either.

nothing less than a roadblock to serious scientific inquiry... can you be more dramatic?

can you be more rhetorical?

But, if someone really had a paranormal power, he certainly would not ever admit it, as his pattern of behavior indicates.

why is that?

Because he's an angry little man whose livelihood depends on it now that he's a failed magician?

go revive a paranormal thread or whatever I'm done with you

like I give a fuck?

Pseudo-skepticism at work: "I overstated my case... based on the small amount of data I obtained. It was rash and improper of me to do so." ... Randi stated: "Viewing the entire tape, we see..." This is simply not true, and Randi now admits that he has never seen the tape.

I'm done with you

hahahaha this fuckin guy

Yeah, :), I was trying to bait him back with that last post just so's I could say, "I thought you were done with me!"

dean ge = nude spock?