Contemporary Psychonauts: Opening the Doors of Perception
To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large ...Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954) What is a Psychonaut? Documents for serious Psychonauts Ego Death Early Christianity and hallucinogens Lars FARBER Stanislav GROF 2012 and Human Destiny: End of the World or Consciousness Revolution? "The purpose of this conference is to explore a radically different, more optimistic interpretation of the Mayan prophecy – as referring to the end of the world as we have known it: a world dominated by unbridled violence and insatiable greed, egotistic hierarchy of values, corrupted institutions and corporations, and irreconcilable conflicts between organized religions. Instead of predicting a physical destruction of the material world, the Mayan prophecy might refer to death and rebirth and a mass inner transformation of humanity. In order to explore this idea, we have to answer two important questions, First, how could ancient Mayans two thousand years ago predict what situation humanity would be facing in the twenty-first century? And second, are there any indications that modern society, more specifically the industrial civilization, is currently on the verge of a major psychospiritual transformation? I will try to address these questions in the course of my presentation." The Consciousness Revolution: New Perspectives in Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy "This astonishing idea is not new. In the ancient Indian Upanishads, the answer to the question: “Who am I?” is “Tat tvam asi.” This succinct Sanskrit sentence means literally: “Thou art That,” or “You are Godhead.” It suggests that we are not “namarupa” – name and form (body/ego), but that our deepest identity is with a divine spark in our innermost being (Atman) which is ultimately identical with the supreme universal principle that created the universe (Brahman). And Hinduism is not the only religion that has made this discovery. The revelation concerning the identity of the individual with the divine is the ultimate secret that lies at the mystical core of all great spiritual traditions. The name for this principle could thus be the Tao, Buddha, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Great Spirit, Sila, and many others. Holotropic experiences have the potential to help us discover our true identity and our cosmic status (Grof 1998). Sometimes this happens in small increments, other times in the form of major breakthroughs. " Erowid Character Vaults Stanislav Grof HIGGLEDY-PIGGLEDY: The Zen of Verbal Play The History of Psychedelic Therapy with the Dying Nature, Mind, and Consciousness: Gregory Bateson and the New Paradigm History of LSD Therapy Terence MCKENNA
Terence McKenna (Wikipedia) New Maps of Hyperspace "If one leaves aside the last three hundred years of historical experience as it unfolded in Europe and America, and examines the phenomenon of death and the doctrine of the soul of all its ramifications--Neoplatonic, Christian, dynastic-Egyptian, and so on, one finds repeatedly the idea that there is a light body, an entelechy raison d'etre and falls into dissolution; metabolism stops. The other part goes we know not where. Perhaps nowhere if one believes its does not exist; but then one has the problem of trying to explain life. And, though science makes great claims and has done well at explaining simple atomic systems, the diea that science can make any statement about what life is or where it comes is currently preposterous. " Terence McKenna Land "Terence McKenna (1946—2000) has been studying the ontological foundations of Shamanism and the Ethnopharmacology of spiritual transformation for the past quarter century. An innovative theoretician and spellbinding orator, Terence has emerged as a powerful voice for the psychedelic movement and the emergent societal tendency he calls The Archaic Revival. Poetically dispensing enlightened social criticism and new theories of the fractal dynamics of time, Terence deobfuscates many aspects of the visionary lexicon, and then some. As Artist Alex Grey suggests, "In the twilight of human history, McKenna's prescription for salvation is just so crazy it might work." the gaian mind: cut-up from the works of Terence McKenna "The planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian supermind." Geometric Model of the Psychedelic Experience "Because of the possibility of being stepped on by woolly mammoths and eaten by sabre-tooth tigers, the primitive evolving mind of human beings concentrated on nearby space and time because that's where threat comes from, the kind of threat that has to be immediately responded to by running away or fighting or something like that. But...if the psychedelics prove anything they prove that consciousness is an incredibly plastic and malleable medium. So what happens when you take a compound like psilocybin in silent darkness in a situation of no threat and low anxiety and low input from the exterior world is that this function, which is essentially in most situations a closed fist ready to strike out at something coming from nearby, unfolds into something much more beautiful, much more interesting, and much more true to itself. In other words, not defined by an exterior context or situation, but defined by its own mechanics. " On the Disillusioning Revelations about Terence Mckenna A Conversation with Terence McKenna and Ram Dass (1992) (YouTube) Terence McKenna - Opening the Doors of Creativity (YouTube) Terence Mckenna the entity and the elves of psilocybin (YouTube) "Terence Mckenna articulates the powerful entity and the elves of psilocybin. There is an all knowing entity that lives within psilocybin intoxication. This entity can communicate profound thoughts and life changing ideas." The Tree Of Knowledge (Terence McKenna) [FULL] (YouTube) Food Of The Gods (Terence McKenna) (YouTube) Jeremy NARBY The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge "So here are people without electron microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzyme of the digestive tract, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic effect. And they do this to modify their consciousness. It is as if they knew about the molecular properties of plants and the art of combining them, and when one asks them how they know these things, they say their knowledge comes directly from hallucinogenic plants." Shamans and scientists ....By Jeremy Narby"In 1999, three molecular biologists travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to see whether they could obtain bio-molecular information in the visions they had in sessions orchestrated by an indigenous shaman. They had no previous experience of ayahuasca shamanism or of the Amazon, though they did have an interest in alternative healing traditions and shamanism. Their age ranged from the late-30s to mid-60s. One worked as a scientist in an American genomics company. Another was a professor at a French University and a member of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). The third taught in a Swiss University and was a director of a research laboratory." Timothy LEARY Benny SHANON Ayahuasca and Creativity "Phenomenologically, the effects of ayahuasca are multifarious -- they include hallucinatory effects in all perceptual modalities, psychological insights, intellectual ideations, spiritual uplifting and mystical experiences. As discussed at length in the book mentioned above, many facets of these may be attributed to enhanced creativity." Benny Shanon Says Moses Was Tripping "When Moses saw the burning bush and listened to God giving the Ten Commandments he was stoned according to Benny Shanon. The Israeli professor has been exploring this angle for decades...." Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis "This paper is concerned with Judaism. Merkur (1985, 2001, a psychoanalyst and student of religion, proposed that the Manna the people of Israel received from heaven during their wondering through the Sinai desert was actually an entheogen. Here I would like to put forth a hypothesis, admittedly speculative, regarding other enteogenic uses in early Hebrew religion...." Entheogens Reflections on ‘Psychoactive Sacramentals' "Last but not least is the story of the Tree of Knowledge. There is much to be said about this story but this is not the place for it. Here, let me confine myself to one simple, yet instructive, observation. Whatever the interpretation one gives to this story, one thing is clear--it was told in a context in which people (adult individuals, not children reading fairy tales) believed that knowledge could be obtained by the ingestion of plant material, and that this knowledge had a relationship to the Divine. As the Serpent told Adam and Eve: 'In the day ye eat [of the fruit of the tree] then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' Indeed, the biblical text goes on noting that having eaten of the fruit 'the eyes of them both were opened' (Genesis, 3.7), and that God's appraisal was that 'the man is become as one of us, to learn good and evil' (Genesis, 3.22)." Back to Previous Level