psilocybin's mystical properties scientifically confirmed

err_fatale · Post by **err_fatale** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 1:17 pm

look, not everyone is going to have a "mind-expanding" journey from the ingestion of psilocybin, many people go bonkers and get anxiety attacks, physical discomfort like intense nausea, paranoid delusions, and exhibit signs of psychosis or schizophrenia....

I don't know what to say about these types of situations happening to folks.....

i have noticed in my experiences messing around with people and substances back in the days that there are certain people that can and certain people that simply CANNOT handle psychedelics.....

but i know for sure that i and many others have had very "profound" deep mystical life-changing experiences from them. I will admit to having a few bad trips, and a few just bummy not-too-special trips, too.....as I said I doubt I would ever try them again though, my last few trips back around 2000 were too much for me.....it can definitely take a toll mentally and physically.....it's like Russian Roulette playing with these things....

but as far as dissing psilocybin altogether....

If you ain't down, then I guess you just ain't down.

maybe the spirits just don't like you...

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 2:18 pm

noisetonepause wrote:
A mind that is self-aware? Sounds a bit like trying to chew your own teeth to me

A love that

Reminds me of Hofstadter's book "Gödel Escher Bach".

// C

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 2:22 pm

err_fatale wrote: but i know for sure that i and many others have had very "profound" deep mystical life-changing experiences from them.

Alright.
But to be narrowminded: What was the outcome and content of these experiences?

// C

David · Post by **David** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 2:22 pm

hi,

what is considered a 'normal dose' for mushrooms? say for example the 'liberty cap' variety, what is a normal dose for that type?

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:16 pm

conny wrote:
noisetonepause wrote:
A mind that is self-aware? Sounds a bit like trying to chew your own teeth to me
A love that

Reminds me of Hofstadter's book "Gödel Escher Bach".

// C

It's from one of Allan W. Watts's books on Zen. I don't have it handy or I'd quote the context, it's well funny.

robin · Post by **robin** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:33 pm

noisetonepause wrote:
conny wrote:
noisetonepause wrote:
A mind that is self-aware? Sounds a bit like trying to chew your own teeth to me
A love that

Reminds me of Hofstadter's book "Gödel Escher Bach".

// C
It's from one of Allan W. Watts's books on Zen. I don't have it handy or I'd quote the context, it's well funny.

Like trying to eat the menu instead of the meal?

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:51 pm

To the person with the dosage question:

I am not familiar with "liberty caps" so i can't help you. Have a look at http://www.erowid.org/. There is probably information for you in there.

.lm.

Bong Sau · Post by **Bong Sau** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:53 pm

Also try...

http://www.shroomery.org/

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:04 pm

I can't imagine not having had the psychedelic experience.

delusion or true, it is profound.

and if it is delusion, how is it less desirable delusion than that of your day to day existance?

everything you experience, high or sober, is only experienced through the mind. This is one of the best lessons psychedelics can teach you. Can you learn that lesson without psychedelics? Yes, of course you can.

And what is a spiritual experience? Those are not involved in spiritual practice often discount the experience of those who are, saying things like, "these guys are kooks, yoga (for instance) is bullshit" How do they know?

I just think that it is a similar unfortunate knee jerk reaction from folks who haven't taken psychedelics to invalidate people's spiritual experiences with them. How can you know if the water is hot or cold if you don't taste it yourself?

.lm.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:31 pm

conny wrote: But I do take drugs nevertheless every morning, two pills that are prescribed to keep my head over the agony and depression so that the black hole want drown me.
Maybe a mushroom would work even better?!

I'm not claiming I know anything about your depression here, but I was seriously depressed for a few years back in the late 90's, and resolved all of that depression on a single intense acid trip. I went from near-suicidal to normal overnight because of an experience I had on acid. Basically I saw/felt/experienced the absolute and overwhelming love of the Creator of the universe, which pretty much obliterated any possible feelings of depression, self-loathing, etc.

To me, that is the value of psychedelics - you can have your perception shifted just enough to catch a glimpse of how things really are, and that can change you for the rest of your life. That seems much better to me than putting a pharmaceutical bandaid over the problem every day (my depression was probably not neurological, btw)

The downside of psychedelics, to me, comes when a person becomes reliant on them, or doesn't apply what they've experienced to their sober world. Psychedelics are just about like anything else - if you do it all the time, it will quickly lose it's positivity and become a negative.

I will also say that, no matter what you think, you cannot possibly understand what an intense psychedelic experience is like unless you've had one. Comparing an intense psychedelic experience to sleep dep, yoga, psychotic state, or anything is just plain ignorant. It's like reading a book on Buddhist culture and saying, well, Buddhist culture is really about the same as Indian culture.

As for the study...it's ridiculous to me that a study like this somehow validates what people have been saying for a really, really long time - psychedelics can lead to mystical experiences. This study, and the reaction to it, is a sickening example of our world's increasing worship of scientist-priests...."well, there was a scientific study that says psylocybin mushrooms can lead to mystical experiences, so I guess that settles it" No shit! It's good that the study was done, and hopefully it well help to eliminate the paranoia/myths that surround psychedelics, but it disgusts me that a scientific "study" like this would somehow validate psychedelics to some people.

In Rick Strassman's book on DMT, he talks about how they were administering DMT via IV injection in a laboratory settting, and the test subjects kept reporting horrifying experiences of being abducted by alien forces, strapped down, and probed with horrible instruments - and then they realized people were having these experiences because that is what was happening to them....they were strapped into a a chair, injected with chemicals, and having every body system monitored by machines! So these types of studies need to take a serious lesson from quantum mechanics and realize that, especially when dealing with the human mind, the very act of studying it changes it...

Also, this type of study has been done before, many times. The military/CIA was doing tests with LSD on soldiers, volunteers, and unsuspecting New Yorkers back in the 50's, and a study was done on some priests that were unknowingly given some psychedelic and the ones that were given the psychedelic typically had mystical experiences. To me, the danger in all of this is relegating mystical experiences, and even consciousness, to a physical brain state - which to me is confusion of cause and effect.

$.02

Zirus Blackheart · Post by **Zirus Blackheart** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:51 pm

Well said man

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:46 pm

You can get some great insights from doing psychedelics, people who haven't done them will often say "how do you know it isn't just some made up shit that you think is an insight". Well you do get that made up nonsense as well, that's the downside of having no learned contextual map whith which to assimilate the information (such as that from a mystical religious school).

Organised religions of some types do have a function other than to keep the morons in check, they also tend to have mystical orders who pick out the likely candidates for becoming a spaceman and give them enough mental tools to make sense of what happens. Training up those mental muscles helps you pull yourself out of sticky situations.
Sadly the mystical organisations the west has on offer range from the dubious to the rediculous with the little sense that does exist being drowned in a cacophony of hippy/new-age hokum.

The insights you bring back which are recognizably usefull and probably Ok are actually pretty recognizable. Everything from - "I was a real twat to my last girlfriend - I called her an ugly ape" to "we are like a big set of single cell organisms that work together as a larger whole" and beyond. Both these you can analyse in the cold light of day and see that they still stand up as valid assesments. you could even google them up and see how unoriginal you were.

The troublesome 'insights' such as "I am a budha", "my thoughts can kill people", tend to stem from having no mystical conceptual framework to help you deal with the issues that are introduced by "looking from another place". A lot of these 'flawed' insights are also true by some interpretations, but not in the concensus reality - and if you don't agree with concensus reality you are fucked in this society.

pax · Post by **pax** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 6:19 pm

Angstrom wrote:The troublesome 'insights' such as "I am a budha", "my thoughts can kill people", tend to stem from having no mystical conceptual framework to help you deal with the issues that are introduced by "looking from another place". A lot of these 'flawed' insights are also true by some interpretations, but not in the concensus reality - and if you don't agree with concensus reality you are fucked in this society.

So true. I think a lot can be learned from the lessons of Timothy Leary and Ram Dass. They both were fired from Harvard University for their experiments with psychedelics. I can't remember which one of them said it, but getting academia to study psychedelics is like asking the catholic church to study aphrodesiacs.

I think for Western Society an occaisional glimpse in to the other realms can be a sort of mental laxative... We tend to see reality as all too solid.

Nevertheless, as an outsider you have to develop a spiritual and mental discipline. You have to look beyond society, but embrace it in some way... If you don't you run the risk of being completely outside of any social bond with no hope of return: (Syd Barret, Van Gogh, etc.).

Patch · Post by **Patch** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 6:35 pm

I think for Western Society an occaisional glimpse in to the other realms can be a sort of mental laxative...

That, my friend, is very profound - if a little crude!

I can't imagine living my whole life in the same state of mind. As a youngster (before I'd taken anything) it was never a question of if I was gonna do drugs - it was more "which drugs am I gonna do and when".

As an adult, though, I find it much easier to say no having tried so much in the past.

warpus · Post by **warpus** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 6:43 pm

Zirus Blackheart wrote:
nn-Di-Mythal-Tryptamine, DMT, remember is the strongest psychedelic known to man....

It's probably worth noting that psilocybin (the active ingredent in mushrooms) is a chemical relative to DMT. It goes by the name N,N-DIMETHYL-4-HYDROXYTRYPTAMINE or 4-HO-DMT. It is true that 4-HO-DMT is not as strong as DMT though.