Listening to some old Tim Leary LPs recently (the Mercury one still kills after all these years) I was reminded to look into the mystery of the old movie for which the "Turn On Tune In Drop Out" LP is the supposed original soundtrack. While the album is easy to find, evidence of a finished movie actually existing is scant. However, I came across some old newspaper ads that seemed to indicate that the film did exist in a finished state that was shown in Los Angeles theatres for a little while, at least. In view of its completely forgotten state today, this seemed unlikely, so I ran the whole thing by one of Leary's associates, who provided the following excellent input: 

"The movie was made and released.  It played about a week in LA (only?) in 1967, and was pulled (suppressed, likely, or maybe just bad reviews and poor box office, or a combination of things) and never released again. Ralph Metzner, who had the major role in the movie, owned a 3rd generation copy on videotape which he screened in Petaluma in the late '90s (Rosemary and I were there and spoke), so I saw the whole thing.  It's a film version of "Death of the Mind," the Hesse/ Magic Theatre dramatization staged at the Psychdedelic Celebrations in NY in the mid-60s. Tim narrated, Rosemary played the Guide, Ralph the first-time tripper. I enjoyed watching it--the audience (100 or so) loved it; some of the special effects were said to be co-opted by the makers of 2001, which I don't doubt as underground light show artists were hired to work on it. It didn't exactly work as a movie but is totally amazing as a psychedelic document from the heart of the era. People have been contacting me for years if I knew the whereabouts of the movie; some of them went to MGM in hopes of finding it but no one did.  Joanna Leary said she had a copy and screened it at a benefit for Tim but I could never confirm this or where she got it.  I don't know whether the studio lost it.  It's hard to believed they destroyed it. But it's very much a mystery why no copies of the 35mm film have been located. Somebody should look into this!"

Indeed! in view of the substantial interest in the Kesey/Prankster movie project recently, a similar enterprise involving the 1967 trip movie would be a big deal, not least since Leary's "brand name recognition" is much higher. Hopefully someone with the right resources will wake up with this idea one morning.

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:27 MEST

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After wrapping up my walk-through of last year's Breaking Convention, the last couple of months have been spent primarily on the anthropological/psychedelic fringe, which continues to offer stimulating food for thought; some of it 3000 years old, but still digestable. As readers of Psychedelia may have noted, I make use of Carlo Ginzburg's research into the history of witch-craft and related phenomena in the spiritual underground, not least so because Ginzburg opens a door for questions regarding long-running pagan traditions that otherwise have been avoided by branch anthropologists.

A thorough reading of Ginzburg's "Ecstasies" yielded some 25 pages of handwritten notes, which have contributed to an essay which I soon will finalize. While Ginzburg is primarily interested in tracing the history and rites of the witches, I found his use book eminently useful when looking into a different question, namely the existence or non-existence of a (West) European tradition of shamanism. I address this in Psychedelia, but the topic lends itself well for expansion. No matter which side one chooses, it is a vital matter--if there has never been a Euro-shamanism, why not? Why would Europe differ from the rest of the world? On the other hand, if there was a Euro-shamanism in pre-history, where did it go? How come we see no traces of it? Or do we?

Attractive, beautifully marbled meat for the intellectual carnivore. The witches tie into this question most decidedly, as do another group which prompts me to post this. I realized recently that I had failed to address the issue of Druids altogether in the Psychedelia book, and I would have to call this an oversight. Reading up on current research in the Druid case offered a certain comfort, since it's obvious that almost nothing is truly known about this class of priests or sorcerers, and that a substantial part of what people 'know' about Druids is in fact just popular folklore and myths invented in more recent times. The best source, still today, is Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico (also a main source for the great Asterix comic books), where Druids of Northwestern France are described and discussed. Some doubt has been cast on Caesar's stories, but as an archeologist smartly pointed out recently, Caesar was unable to fictionalize much, since several Roman senators accompanied him in the field, writing their own accounts.

What little is actually known about Druids will be discussed in my upcoming essay. I do believe they have a place in the puzzle of pre-Greek European shamanism that I'm piecing together, but it is unlikely to be something that turns the table on the whole map. Until that time, my apologies to the Druids and their heirs for not giving them a paragraph or two in the 2012 work. 

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 19:54 MEST

Updated: April 20, 2014 19:59 MEST

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Renowned underground scenemaker and scholar of Occulture Carl Abrahamsson recently published a favorable review of Psychedelia at his blog. No stranger to these domains, Carl smartly identifies the optimistic streak that runs through the book, a tone which is deliberate and hardly given when looking at Western society and its handling of psychedelic compounds and private spirituality. He describes the book

...like being drawn into a colorful vortex of human experimentation, audacity and optimism. And of course it is just that. Lundborg's project more than anything shows how deeply integrated the psychedelic experience has been (and still is) in the development of human culture...this is not just a good book among others. It feels very much like a definite and invaluable piece of work that will help future psychonauts as well as scholars to grasp a phenomenon/experience that is, paradoxically, almost intangible yet crucially essential to the health and wellbeing of mankind.

As he says, so it is. 

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 20:45 CET

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There's a 10-part interview with Dennis McKenna on Youtube where he describes a new theory of neuro-evolution (or similar heading). Obviously something that would interest me, and it was an hour well-spent. Dennis was in good form, more verbal and extrovert than I've heard him elsewhere, and the interviewer did a good job of throwing really big issues in the air for Dennis to catch best he could. Much is said, and I'm only going to concentrate on one aspect here.

The new theory turns out not to be Dennis' as much as belonging to Tony Wright and Graham Gynn, authors of Left In The Dark (2008). They cover a lot of ground including sharp criticism of the modern way of life, which is described as a degeneration. This has come about from a change in diet from the fruit and vegetables of the rain forest to the meat and grains of the pastoral grassland lifestyle, which we today are an extension of. This diet has favored the growth of the left brain hemisphere, whereas the right hemisphere had a much stronger position, or was in fact in control, in an earlier stage of evolution. The importance of the diet is related to the various neurally active compounds that enter the human organism when we eat, where the authors state that psycho-active neurotransmitters were a much larger part of the original diet.

The most interesting part of this theory is the suggestion that this diet had an evolutionary impact--not via DNA or Darwinistic adaptation, but through an epigenetic process where the neurochemically rich diet of the pregnant woman was carried over to the womb and affecting the foetus towards a more right-brained configuration. A few generations of this diet-based evolution in a stabile local biosphere would lead to the creation of a whole clan of human or hominids displaying the attributes of a right-sided thinker. And by right-brained we mean psychedelic, among other things.

With the migration out of the jungle onto the savannah and grasslands, the diet was profoundly changed, and the presence of the important neurotransmitters reduced to little or nothing. Man evolved technologically, perhaps due to his left brain getting room to express itself, and this seeming progress also contributed to the evolutionary downgrading of the artistic, visionary and free-spirited being which had preceded him. And at our current point, we are probably further away from the psychedelicized hominid we once were than ever before. Except, of course, for a few million people who use psychedelics.

This summary was based on McKennas rap and isn't intended to cover the book mentioned above, but it's sufficient for my purposes. The theoretical model matches the one I present in Psychedelia in several places, not least so in the suggestion that man once had superior mental abilities which were lost over time, but can be re-accessed through the use of psychedelic drugs (neural agents). Dennis McKenna mentions telepathy as one such ability that may have existed among a tribe of cerebrally enhanced herbivores; I suspect he uses this example as telepathy is so blatantly common among people who take solid doses of psychedelics.

In Psychedelia I speculated that this and other mental gifts which no longer exist among humans (synaesthesia is another case, as is profound visionary abilities) had been brought here through so-called panspermia, meaning alien organic matter carried by meteorites. Panspermia is a big deal among psychedelicists, partly because the visionary content of the trip often hints in that direction; Michael Harner's early ayahuasca vision offers a classic example. The panspermic event, or events, can help explain certain mysteries jumps in the early evolution of life which the scientists wrestle with. My suggestion is that an evolutionary path was ignited where new species carried in their DNA the potential for an advanced being, not least in terms of its cerebral faculties. However, the environment on the planet did not favor this evolutionary path at all, and so these higher abilities--like, again, telepathy--never got the chance to be expressed, or were expressed but then lost through a Darwinistic process. The natural environment may have required maximal attention on survival and safety issues, which would downgrade everything else, and instead foster a being strongly dominated by physical traits.

Closing this cycle of theorizing I suggest that the current impact of tryptamine plant drugs and the extraordinary yet curiously similar experiences they trigger is due to the DMT or psilocybin unlocking ancient regions of the brain and for a short time allowing their potential to be played out. I connect this with the triune brain hypothesis, so that the reptile brain is temporarily unlocked by the flood of neurotransmitters, its unusual abilities rapidly integrated into the total mindstream. There is more on the detailed operations of this state in my Psychedelia book, partly inspired by anthropologist Michael Winkelman's useful theory on psycho-integration. 

The point of my model is that these abilities, which we might consider super-human, do in fact exist within us, but have never been genetically expressed due to evolutionary priorities. The theory that Dennis McKenna references says instead that these abilities were in fact brought into the human organism from our environment, and furthermore they were at some point fully expressed--telepathy and synaesthesia and other, more baroque mental gifts did exist among the early humans as an aquired trait. This model suggests that we can now recreate the right-braining process by adding the same or very similar type of neural agents from the entheogenic plant drugs like ayahuasca or magic mushrooms. If so, it should mean that the potential for telepathy etc became integrated into the human DNA following the initial epigenetic influx, and that this potential survived in our DNA material over thousands of centuries during which it lay dormant and unrequested.

This all sounds reasonable enough, although one might raise a couple of specific questions. I will return to this topic once I've read the book by Wright & Gynn. 

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:48 CET

Updated: February 13, 2014 22:44 CET

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You have probably heard of the 49 days enigma, as discussed in Rick Strassman's famous DMT book and other places. Basically what it says, if one believes in these things, is that there exists a mystic link between the post-death limbo state (or "bardo") s

poken of in Tibetan Buddhism, which lasts 49 days before the reincarnation into a new physical body, and the growth of the human fetus, where the pineal gland first appears after 49 days. This also, if I recall correctly, is the time when the gender first can be discerned.

The mysteries around the pineal gland go back to ancient days and still today the function of this unique, non-paired brain part is unclear--intriguingly, however, it seems to be connected to perception of light and regulation of neurotransmitters, including DMT. There is much more to be said, for which I recommend googling.

Here comes what I wanted to share: not too long ago my beloved old father passed away. He left us calmly, expressing complete readiness for the end. There was of course grief and mourning over the simple fact that we would never meet him again, but otherwise his passing was as pure and dignified as one can hope for. In the days that followed my thoughts often went to the Buddhist tradition, which on one level deals very much with dying and death, seeing life as essentially a preparation for the final journey. With this in mind I went into a contemplative state and sought to counsel and advise my father's recently departed soul/energy towards a favorable rebirth according to the ancient technique  of the Bardo Thödol, or what the West has named the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. Concentrating upon the image of my father I tried to steer the guiding words of the Tibetan ritual towards his stateless existence--these are essentially admonitions to go towards the 'bright lights' and avoid the 'smokey lights'. Doing this without even having had a formal conversion to Buddhism might have become awkward, but I sensed a "response" from the abstract overseer of my innerspace indicating that I did a good thing and that the formal method was acceptable. This encouraged me towards a more energetic commitment, and I spent several minutes in this curious head-space, which differed from the meditative moods I was familiar with. Afterwards I felt like maybe something had been achieved, realizing at the same time that I would never find out.

Time passed and the practical arrangements were handled, including a traditional christian funeral. The last few years before his passing I had felt close to my father, and whatever disagreements and misperceptions we'd had in the past were now gone. We were in frequent contact, and I think for this reason, along with his gentle, welcoming attitude towards the end, made the loss less difficult to handle. It seemed to me simply a transition to a different stage whose time had now come, and left behind were a life full of shared memories. Yet at the same time there was something gnawing in the back of my head, a restlessness that kept me from getting back fully to my regular life. It wasn't a depression as much as a sense of irritation, and naturally I connected it with my father's passing, though I couldn't find the precise causal analysis. This went on week after week; a manageable yet limiting irritation.

Then, very recently, the stone in my shoe was suddenly gone. It just disappeared, from one day to the other. I no longer felt constrained, but experienced the familiar energy of being fully committed to the projects I was working on. The persistent grey cloud had gone and the air was again clear. It wasn't the idea of being much 'happier' but rather the return of normalcy. I didn't understand why the cloud had vanished, just as I didn't understand why it had been there. The changes were undeniable, but confounding.

For some reason, perhaps due to reading an article on DMT, my mind wandered off to Buddhist realms and the Bardo Thödol again. The figure '49' popped up in my head, as in the 49 days preceding reincarnation. I felt a chill run along my spine as I counted the weeks and days since my father's death. It seemed to add up, but I wasn't entirely certain that my calculations were right. I sat down by the computer, pulled up a digital calendar, and slowly counted the days and weeks. And, as you've probably guessed, it matched up perfectly. The period from my father's passing in late December and my sudden return to 'normalcy' in February was 49 days. Not 48 with a thumb on the scale, or 50 minus 1 due to a technicality. The time-span was exactly 49 days.

I haven't fully digested this somewhat spooky piece of information, but I can see the outline of certain interpretations. However, I'll leave it at that for now.

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 01:51 CET

Updated: February 13, 2014 21:29 CET

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One of the most interesting presentations at the Breaking Convention 2013 came from Matthew Clark, a British researcher who has taken the old Soma horse out for another stroll around the pastures of psychedelia. As he remarks, not much has happened in the field the past 20 years, with those concerned lining up with Wasson or McKenna (soma was a mushroom) or Flattery & Schwartz (soma/haoma was Syrian Rue+Ephedra). After looking into the case for my Psychedelia book I still found Wasson's 1968 fly agaric theory the most credible, even if the psychotropic effects of the mushroom when taken "neat" are poor. My guess, which I put into the book, was that something in the preparation brought forth a new entheogenic profile from the Amanita, providing the clearly psychedelic effects bespoken in the hallowed 9th Chapter.

Matthew Clark does not buy the Wasson theory, or any mushroom theory at all. His main argument against is that the description of the soma plant as being crushed with heavy stones to produce juice does not match the preparation needed for a fly agaric shroom at all. This is a rather reasonable objection, although the forceful crushing, like everything else in the Vedic interpretation labyrinth, could be explained away as a figure of speech, or an exaggerated gesture put on for show, or elements borrowed from another ritual, etc. However, if we go along with it as an accurate description of the preparation of soma, the mushroom case is considerably weakened.

Clark (and probably others too) has developed another theory, which is inspired by his ayahuasca studies. Rather than just one plant, he suggests that soma was an early "anahuasca" potion; meaning a combination of two plants where one is a DMT source and the other a MAO inhibitor to allow the DMT to reach the brain. The theory elegantly combines two fairly recent paths in entheogenic research; the Syrian Rue hypothesis from Flattery & Schwarz (whose proposed Efedra is not psychedelic) and the "DMT everywhere" revelation of DMT's presence in common field grass made by Jim DeKorne in the Entheogenic Review 1993.

Since the Syrian Rue already has a fairly strong case in the Soma literature (although neither Wasson nor McKenna bought it) it needn't be argued for, but reinterpreted as an harmala alkaloid MAOI rather than a "vision" plant. DMT or maybe 5-MeO-DMT extracted from various grasses would provide the psychedelic effects, just like chacruna/Psychotria viridis does in the Amazon. The result: a Central Asian ayahuasca, carried both Eastward to India and Westward to Persia, where the potion lived on as soma and haoma, respectively, until at some point the knowledge is lost or the plants become inaccessible.

This offers some food for thought, and I'll leave it like that for the moment, although there is clearly more to say both in advance and against the hypothesis. See Matthew Clark's presentation here:
http://vimeo.com/77042748

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 19:21 CET

Updated: February 3, 2014 20:07 CET

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There is no real need to go into detail on these topics, but I feel it worthwhile to highlight the increasing interest that psychedelic reserchers currently take in ancient Egypt and its mythologies and possible use of hallucinogens. There seems to be a near-consensus that the Egyptians knew how to use a plant in the Acacia family which conveniently provided both DMT and alkaloids with an MAOI effect. This all-inclusive entheogen package is not offered by any of the South American plants, to my knowledge. Images of the Acacia and its distinctive morphology can (supposedly) be found in many of the ancient frescoes, and it is also being suggested that the rites that egyptologists have interpreted as dealing with the death and post-death voyage of the rulers, are in fact descriptions of higher consciousness states for the living, much like a shamanic heritage. It seems clear that the psychedelic map needs to make permanent room for Egypt. Here is a lecture that deals partly with this, presented by I Lucy Wyatt: Psychedelics, Alchemy and the Hidden History of Civilisation . As usual I feel the best approach is to pick up two or three books on the subject and formulate one's own view.

Completely void of ancient speculation yet worthwhile to watch is Jolane Abrams' unglamorous description of the current ayashuasca tourism situation around the nexus of Iquitos in Peru. Abrams has spent enough time in the region to gain the fundamental insights that newbie Westerners usually lack, which is to recognize the cultural and social difference, understand that one is a stranger in a very different country, take heed and follow local customs, and generally keep a low profile and adapt to the reality of the place. Fortunate enough to find a real ayahuasquero maestro among the many phonies, Abrams' experience as a session assistant obviously includes many unfortunate and embarrassing moments with disrespectful 'gringos'. She also points out that some masters who were alright at the core become corrupted by the veneration and attention given to them in recent years. Check it out here, Think Before You Drink.  

Personally I don't understand the fixation upon the actual location of the ayahuasca session, since all the visions and healing occurs in Otherworld/Innerspace and is accessible through your mind no matter where you are, as long as the brew is the right one. Why not buy the raw matter on-line and cook up the 'tea' for yourself? All the circumstantial risks disappear when your safe at home, and you can concentrate on the challenging experience itself. Ayahuasca can be heavy stuff, but of course you start off with a moderate dose to gauge how to proceed. Incidentally I must object to Ms Abrams' offhand remark that Ayahuasca makes psilocybin mushrooms seem like chewing gum (or whatever it was)--a high-dose mushroom trip is every bit as challenging as a yagé ride.

Home-brewing the entheogens should also contribute to a growing problem of Banisteriopsis scarcity, which is being reported currently. The vine is apparently getting harder to find in its natural environment, due both to its popularity and to clumsy reaping. The mailorder business is likely to source its matter not from the rainforest, but from designated back yards and green-houses which are there for the very purpose of entheogenic harvesting.

That's all for today! 

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:19 CET

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In an earlier post I philosophized at length about the implications of Terence McKenna's reported bad trip on psilocybin and how it caused him to stop taking mushrooms entirely, even as he was travelling the globe preaching their wondrous effect. There was quite a bit of activity on the psychedelic circuit after this revelation from brother Dennis, and you can read more about it here:

http://www.lysergia.com/psychedelia/index.blog/2310143/brotherhood-of-the-screaming-abyss/

What needs to be added now is the fact that Dennis withdraws his claim that Terence gave up psychedelics. The presumed bad trip, as a distinct event, is looking increasingly dubious too--instead Dennis offers vague general talk of 'midlife crisis' and 'doubts'. So basically the whole drama has fizzled out, and if Dennis had been a little more cautious in how he phrased this aspect of his brother's biography, it needn't ever have happned. Unfortunately I think we're going to see half-informed bozos and anti-Terence people restating the "bad shroom trip" saga for many years to come.

So just for the record: Terence McKenna did not stop using psychedelic drugs, including mushrooms, in the 1990s, and if and when he had a bad experience in the late 1980s is unknown beyond hearsay.

Let's stick to what Terence did do and did say instead. This guy, Martin W Ball, had quite a lot to say about that. It's kind of harsh and biased and egocentric, but still worth reading. Ball brings up the idea that the singing machine elfs that Terence saw in DMT space were in fact hallucinatory mirror images of himself, the great eloquent orator and trickster, singing objects in existence; a possibility that I too pointed towards in the McKenna chapter in my Psychedelia book. Ball has more to offer on St Terence, most of it negative or even contemptuous on a strangely personal, ad hominem level.

His theory or Entheogenic Paradigm is pretty interesting however, with a marked buddhist flavor rather than the shamanic perspective that tends to dominate today. Along the lines of higher mahayana teachings, Ball suggests that content-bearing visions, such as persons or places, are hallucinatory mirror images of lingering parts of the ego, meaning that visions of formless, ego-transcending, non-dual energy fields will come once the psychodynamic matter has been fully cleansed. His ideas have grown out of experiences with 5-MeO-DMT and Salvia, which contributes to his different point of view. Except for the unpleasant tone, an interesting essay: Terence on DMT: An Entheological Analysis of McKenna’s Experiences in the Tryptamine Mirror of the Self

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:25 CET

Updated: January 5, 2014 01:04 CET

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The Breaking Convention conference featured a number of psychedelic illuminaries who were present via Skype, a modern solution which I support. Dennis McKenna spoke about the history of ayahuasca research, it was fairly introductory stuff that anyone familiar with McKenna and ayahuasca already knows. I found his observation that there are more than 100 academic papers dealing with ayahuasca in Medline for the 2000-2013 period interesting and encouraging.

Tim Scully (of Owsley and Orange Sunshine legend) also skyped in with an excerpt from his ongoing research into the early days of black market LSD, and this reading contained highly useful material which included several details that I was unaware of, and which may in fact never have been documented before. I'll let Mr Scully present the full monty in his upcoming book and restrict myself to things that complement or correct my own pre-Owsleyan LSD research in the Psychedelia book. Thus...

Government made Eli-Lillys research industrial as a response to fears of LSD manufacture behind the Iron curtain. The government code name for LSD-25: EK 7029 (poss. misheard)

Regarding "the two Bernards" who have been credited with the first ever underground LSD synthesis in 1963, Scully offered several pieces of vital data.
- Bernard Copley met the legendary LSD advocate/psychologist Oscar Janiger in the late '50s
- Bernard Roseman in turn met Copley in Joshua Tree circa 1957
- In 1958 Bernard Roseman brought with him a Dr James Grossman(?), an agriculture specialist from Philadelphia, to meet Copley--the three of them shared a peyote ceremony
- Copley & Roseman claimed to have made LSD as early as 1960 in a lab in LA where they lived at the time
- Scully refers to the "two Bernard" LSD as "impure" and "very impure" throughout
- When Copley and Roseman were arrested for selling bulk quantities of LSD, it was Myron Stolaroff who had tipped the FDA off, possibly on advise from Al Hubbard. I bring up the fact that Stolaroff's name occurs in the investigation in Psychedelia, but I did not have enough data to take it further. Scully does, however, and this casts a problematic light on Stolaroff's position and presumed service to the psychedelic field. I wonder if this old informer role is the reason why several people in recent decades have been eager to defend and exalt Stolaroff, even when he hasn't being accused of anything. I've always found this lauding of Stolaroff a mystery, not least since his book on psychedelic therapy struck me as unimpressive and almost counter-productive. It's not Stan Grof for sure.

Continuing the LSD history, Scully brings up a name that is unfamiliar to me: one Douglas George (?) in Los Angeles, who heard an early '60s lecture about LSD and how it was easy to make. He tried to synthesize LSD but failed repeatedly, until he was informed that the patent document he followed deliberately omitted a step.

After receiving the missing process instructions George manage to produce LSD . It wasn't very pure but he reasoned that since such small amounts were needed, there wouldn't be any toxic risks with the impurities. He had to triple the amount of his impure LSD to get the desired trip effect.

This occured in the Fall 1963 at Hermosa Beach, and so represents the second successful (more or less) underground LSD synthesis anywhere, preceded only by the two Bernards. Again, to my knowledge this is previously undocumented.

In late '63-64 word got around on Berkeley University, inspiring students to travel south and buy LSD from Douglas George. Among them was Owsley, who noticed the difference between George's LSD and industrial LSD, and figured he could make black market LSD that was as good as the industrial. Owsley was partly inspired by newspaper writings about the Copeman/Rosley trial.

Here my commentary ends. There are many among us who look forward to Tim Scully's book!
  

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:53 CET

Updated: December 26, 2013 22:26 CET

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Next on the agenda is a talk on “the Role of Emotion, Attention & Neurotransmitters in Human Timing” featuring research psychologist Cathy Montgomery.

http://vimeo.com/74727800

The research team works towards an understanding of how we perceive time and how this is altered in different states of consciousness, such as under drugs. Their fundamental model of time processing is that an internal metronome in the brain sends a steady stream ‘clicks’ to an accumulator, which in turn judges the time passed from the number of clicks accumulated. In animal tests, under increased dopamine levels, the frequency of clicks increase, which leads to a judgment of time that is too short vs reality. However, the team were unable to clinically reproduce this dopamine-specific effect in humans, as demonstrated by how Parkinson’s patients have no timing deficits. Montgomery concludes that dopamine plays a significant part in animal studies, but not in humans. I would add that this may seem hard to reconcile, unless one bears in mind the realization of Albert Hofmann and others, that animal studies do not work for psychedelics. At the same time, with dopamine levels clearly affected by psychedelics, it does seem odd that it has no measurable correspondence upon temporal judgment. The findings may be less confusing if one studies serotonin instead, which after all is the neurotransmitter with the strongest connection to the psychedelic compounds (tryptamines in particular).

Montgomery’s team worked primarily with other drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, where all stimulant type compounds had a ‘time-contracting’ effect, meaning that time seemed to fly by like it does when one is busy being euphoric. The cannabis drugs were the only ones to display a time-expanding quality, which seems anecdotally accurate.

The research project joined another group for a series of psilocybin experiments. Montgomery mentions the fact that psilocybin’s effect on the serotonin distribution will affect the working memory, among many other things. Regarding the perception of time they found no changes for very short durations (<2.5 seconds) but notable deviations for longer spans of time, when the assessment of how much time had passed was clearly off. It was suggested by the psilocybin researchers that this was not due to changes in ‘metronome’ frequency, but rather the effects the psilocybin had on short-term memory. Comparisons vs short memory were not reliable in the drug state, which led to the judgment of time being in error. I find this to be possibly accurate, but it does not account for that much of the temporal distortion is not retrospective, but rather occurs in real time, with a minimal or no feedback loop at all. On psychedelics you perceive time stretching out while it happens, sometimes bringing you with it, and this is a forward-oriented process that does not seem to rely on working memory for measurement.

Another hypothesis suggests that the judgment of time on psychedelics is elastic/inaccurate because time has lost its meaning to the subject, which has the effect that the metronome clicks are not checked or maybe not even generated since the mind has removed its attention. To me, this again makes sense in some ways, but the blanket statement that time in the trip space has become ‘meaningless’ is neither universal nor predictable, and so the theory rests on dubious ground. Meaningless is in fact not a proper term to describe the psychedelicist’s attitude towards time. The responses range from preoccupied disinterest to analytical fascination, and the change does not reside in a non-psychedelic ‘care/don’t care’ modality, but rather in the way that the passage of time has become externalized from the psychedelic mindstream.  One is no longer able to perceive the clicks of the metronome, which takes place somewhere down in reality, yet there is still an ability to examine and brood over the passage of time if it raises one’s interest. Time will still pass in the tryptamine state, but its rigid tick-tock sequence belongs to the baseline state, while in Innerspace it has become flexible in both nature and relevance.

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 17:58 CET

Updated: December 21, 2013 18:00 CET

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(read Part I below first) 

Another possibility raised by the findings of this research team is to link the event of ego-loss to the collapse of the integrated baseline brain state. If the so-called hubs that connect and thereby integrate different brain regions show a significant reduction of access on psychedelic drugs, one can speculate that the notion of ego or 'I' is dependent on the operation of the interconnecting nodes in the cerebral structure. As the brain parts lose their baseline integration yet stay operational, one of the main things that are lost is the very epitome of integration, the idea of 'me'. 

Unlike Carhart-Harris I don't believe that the brain remains in some disorganized, chaotic state after losing the hub connectivity, but rather re-organizes itself into something else, probably with larger portions of the mammalian and reptile brains in play. However, with sufficiently large doses the re-organization may not result in a different type of consciousness, but rather the loss of ego is followed by a truly transcendental state marked by profound, cosmic ideation, non-dualism, unearthly bliss and so on. Where this transcendental state (level 4 on the General Trip Model) originates in consciousness, if it indeed comes from consciousness at all, is a matter where so little is known that we don't even know what questions to ask. As for the ego-less state however, it is significant that the ego always returns as the effect of the psychedelic compound wears off; in the perspective of Nutt's and Carhart-Harris' research group, this would mark a reactivation of the connecting hubs in the cerebral network, and a re-emergence of the familiar, baseline configuration of the mind.

Finally, a few words on memory in and out of the psychedelic state. The British research team made another unexpected find here, which is that on psilocybin, the brain activity during memory access and memory processing did not primarily show in the memory parts of the brain, but rather in parts that deal with perception and emotion. Carhart-Harris explains this as the experiece of the memory being much more vivid and living whe under psychedelics than in the normal, baseline states. This seems accurate enough, both logically and experientially, but it does not explain why the revisited memory is more vivid and living in this state. One might say that it's a function of the general magnification of all perceptual and emotional processes, but the memory retrieval is an entirely internal affair to the brain which does not necessarily pass through the same perceptual-cognitive machinery as external data does. So it's not a given, even if it appears likely that internal visualizations are magnified and deepened in much the same manner as external impressions are.  

Carhart-Harris mentions one subject's dramatic recollection of a (presumably suppressed) memory of importance, and how the subject stated that "...there was nothing that prompted it, it happened spontaneously." This is brought up in a manner more anecdotal than significant, but once more it appears to me a failure to understand the holistic, self-healing tendency of the higher psychedelic state. Important memories whose recognition can help untangle psycho-dynamic traumas do not appear randomly during psychedelics, just as they do not appear randomly (much less frequently) in night dreams. The drive towards psychological healing in the early stages, and spiritual healing and a teacher/guide vocation in the more advanced stages, is a governed process which I refer to as the Overseer. Anyone who has taken a few steps under the aegis of the Overseer will testify that there is nothing random or disorganized about it.

Despite my objections, I found both David Nutt's presentation and Robin Carhart-Harris' video quite valuable, which should be obvious from the amount of text they triggered. Thanks for your patience. 

Nutt's presentation at Breaking Convention 
Carhart-Harris video

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:53 CET

Updated: December 18, 2013 22:09 CET

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British neuro-scientist David Nutt gave a presentation of his team's research into the psychophysiological effects of hallucinogens on the human brain. Working with psilocybin, this is one of the more notable research projects in progress and clear evidence that psychedelic science is finally making its way onto the mainstream arena again, after decades of moratorium and irrational fear. As I've pointed out before, brain research, neurotransmitter research, and psychedelic compound research are closely linked, and it's simply necessary for the 'illegal' substances to be present in the studies if true progress is to be made. Although I won't dwell on it here, Nutt discusses the problems and absurdities of restricted psychedelic research in his talk:

Psychedelics and the Neuroscientific Enlightenment  

Nutt's team made some interesting, counter-intuitive discoveries which should be taken note of. Primarily they found that activity in the brain, measured as blood flow, actually showed an overall decrease when under the influence of psilocybin. Not only that, but "...the more the brain is switched off, the more the psychedelic effects increase". However, the down-shifting of cerebral activity was not uniformly distributed, but rather there was a reduction in the overall integration of brain processing, while the individual parts still showed activity. In other words, the harmonizing-integrating exchange of neuro-messaging across connecting hubs was notably reduced, which in practical terms should create a more scattered and distributed brain activity, as the various centers went on "doing their own thing" independently. This hypothetical state does not seem to conform very well to experiential data that refers to holistic, integrative and at times non-dualist concsiousness states. Scattered and confused experiences do exist, but not to such a degree that one can make a credible case where disjointed brain activity must cause a disjointed cognitive flow. Rather, the holistic opposite may in fact be the most common impression from Innerspace, particularly among experienced travellers.

David Nutt also comments that their various brain scans allowed specific parts of the brain that respond to psilocybin to be identified for the first time. Following up on his talk I came across an interesting video presentation (not from the conference) by one of the project scientists, one Robin Carhart-Harris:
Psilocybin & the Psychedelic State
Much like Nutt he mentions that the connecting hub(s) are turned down in the psilocybin state, and offers an analogy of an orchestra whose director has left the room, the musical result being chaotic and experimental.

However, on a phenomenological-experiential level I don't think this is an accurate description of the higher psychedelic state. I would rather say that one director (baseline) leaves the room and another one (innerspace state) enters. While known hubs and connectors may show less activity under psilocybin, the brain will still integrate its massive electro-chemical flow into a manageable unity--but this integration is semi-improvised and will happen in a different and less orthodox way than in the baseline state. The end result of this integration, as experienced a few hours into the trip, can be exceptionally powerful and creative.

Regarding visual distortions and pseudo-hallucinations in the OEV (open eye visuals) mode, Carhart-Harris talks of "a perceptual error... suppressed layers of the imaging ability are moved up in the hierarchy and made manifest" [not exact quote], which would explain those breathing walls and visions of faces. In the psychedelic state the brain "predicts appearance of faces". It is surprising to hear a modern scientist use positivist terms such as "error" and "wrong" when discussing human consciousness, but perhaps more remarkable is his disregard for the holism and intentionality that Innerspace brings forth. The way Carhart-Harris describes it, the psilocybin trip is a disjointed, chaotic experience dominated by invented visions of faces and other things that have no meaning. Again, there are trips like that, particularly among new-comers, but more than that it sounds like a low-dosage phenomenon. The research project may have produced sufficient data using only small or moderate doses of psilocybin, which could account for the incomplete view of the psychedelic experience. The most vital aspects of the tryptamine realm, such as the often radical intelligence and internal messaging faculty that my Psychedelia book refers to as the Overseer, are only encountered at full-range doses. Unless one has been through a few Innerspace trips with genuine depth, one should refrain from defining or commenting on the state. In the notes I took down when watching the video I wrote that "It seems they have too little phenomenological data, too few trip reports, and keep confusing what is typical with what is anomalous."

Harris offers some interesting input when he brings up the evolutionary aspect of the cerebral states, suggesting that "we go back to a stage in our history when we thought more primitively, magically, animistically...". Although he doesn't make the connection, this goes hand in hand with the idea of "predicted" faces that the subject tends to see in wallpaper patterns, tree foliages and such. Joining these two notions is the bio-evolutionary concept of "animacy detection", which I discussed in Psychedelia, and which refers to one of several survival mechanisms in the early hominid brain. Animacy detection entails a constant scanning of the environment to discover shapes and movement that reveal the presence of a living, physical threat, such as a predatory animal. The brain knows how to recognize a tiger hiding in the bush even when only a few parts of the animal is visible, and the animacy detection instinct matches the environment against this knowledge as part of the ongoing brain processing. Over time this ability is likely to have become epigenetic, and like its parallel ability, the agency detection, they survive to this day in the deeper parts of our brain. Based partly on the writings of anthropologist Michael Winkelman I suggest in Psychedelia that both animacy and agency detection reflexes play a part in the psychedelic visualizations, as consciousness in its unique, agitated state accesses and integrates older brain regions in order to contextualize the alien and possibly threatening state of mind. It is with this in mind that I find Carhart-Harris' comment on evolutionary retro-access during a psilocybin trip interesting.

continued in Part II above... 

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 19:13 CET

Updated: December 18, 2013 22:49 CET

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This photo dates from another psychedelic conference, long ago (late 1970s) and is previously unpublished I think. Only xerox prints survive, alas.

Alp, Ginz & The Hof

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 20:12 CET

Updated: December 16, 2013 20:37 CET

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After watching his 50-minute presentation, I would venture that Erik Davis maintains his position as Most Valuable Psychedelicist of the children of the '60s. He has the special Generation X ability to keep one foot inside the circle and one foot outside, moving between roles of participation and observation simply by shifting his intellectual weight around. 

Erik's talk dealt primarily with a re-examination of the Psychedelic Experience book and the Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book Of The Dead). As described in my Psychedelia and elsewhere, the Leary/Alpert/Metzner book was on one hand the only psychedelic guide that people truly used back in the 1960s, on the other hand it has aged badly enough to become an "embarrassment". Erik Davis shows how layers of Westernization created an end result which was far removed from the original Tibetan meditation instruction. The fact that people actually used it confirms the great need for guidance for virgin trippers, but except for some vague notion of Eastern death and rebirth, it's difficult to see how any acidhead could find concrete support in lines about how "the Lotos God of Dance may appear" when in fact the walls were breathing and growing hairs and your buddy ran screaming to the bathroom. On a personal anecdotal level, we pulled out the old Leary tome on a couple of trips, and I remember reading the translated Tibetan incantations with a feeling of zero relevance. Some friends tried using it to bring one head back from a negative mood, but I don't think it worked except in the sense that people cracked up when hearing the lofty lines read out loud. O friend, O beloved traveller...

However, after mentioning that he saw the concept of death as one of the key elements that the psychedelic experience casts light on, Erik Davis turns the Dharma wheel one more time, and points out that while Leary & co were wrong in a lot of ways, the fundamental notion that the Bardo Thödol and the psychedelic trip both dealt with (can deal with) death and rebirth experiences was in fact accurate. Perhaps on a purely intuitive plane, the Harvardites felt the parallels between the advanced tantric practice which the Book Of The Dead* describes and a powerful, ego-loss acid trip, even if their creative response to the Book was more wrong than right. As I point out in Psychedelia, the Bardo Thödol is primarily intended for a special 'dark cave' meditation for advanced yogis, who allow themselves to be walled in inside complete darkness, where after a few weeks, a death-like state will emerge and is to be handled in the way the ancient book describes.

Can the Bardo Thödol still be used for psychedelic purposes? Having read a modern, non-westernized translation of it, I would have to say "no". The mental state of the advanced tantric practitioner and a guy flying high on psychedelics are too dissimilar for the Tibetan tantrics to lend much use to someone getting towards the point of ego-loss and non-duality. There is so much other stuff going on in the psychedelic space (unless you are a fully realized being, but if you are, you won't be dropping LSD) as compared to the purified cognitive trickle in the 'dark cave' state, that the advise just won't apply. At least, that is the feeling I got after reading a modern translation of the (actual) Bardo Thödol, and its direct, tangible instructions. I did however get a feel of it being useful for someone in the actual state of dying, as it seemed very distinct in its presentation of the various stages one goes through near the end. If properly used, a favorable rebirth, or a good parking spot in heaven, will result.

That was my tangent rather than Erik Davis', but as usual there was not much of disagreement between the two. His presentation, done entirely without manuscript, was lively and arresting, and unlike some of the other video recordings the sound quality was quite acceptable. The first 10 minutes is a good summing up of the status of the psychedelic world right now, and the somewhat problematic span between new scientific research and surviving underground culture.

Erik Davis "Back to the Bardo" from Breaking Convention 2013 

*The title 'The Tibetan Book Of The Dead' is a complete Western invention, from the early translator Evans-Wentz, who also was responsible for much of the confusion and distortion of the actual source text--while admittedly still doing a great service to adventure-minded laymen and pop culturists for many decades to follow.

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:05 CET

Updated: January 5, 2014 01:13 CET

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Next up on my improvised stroll through the Breaking Convention conference material was an entertaining lecture by American Katherine MacLean, who is involved in the authorized psilocybin research currently going on in the US, incidentally some of the first psychedelic studies in progress since the moratorium that went into effect around 1966-67! Read more at MAPS about the current projects and their background. 

MacLean spoke enthusiastically of the research and seems an excellent spokesperson for the cause. A few comments worth preserving included:

- People who are classified as 'Open' on the classic personality matrix become even more 'Open' towards new experiences after taking psilocybin; a measurable fact. If I understood MacLean correctly, this increase in formal Open-ness has not been observed with any other psychological catalyst.

- The increase in Open-ness is positively correlated with the advent of a mystical experience during the psilocybin trip, a personality change that was still measurably present at a 14-month check-up.

- MacLean offered no hard biochemical data but mentioned that the serotonin-related process in the brain were persistently altered in people with life-long use of psychedelics, and again the Open-ness factor gave an atypically high reading.

- from her research she observed that 'high-dose' (exact figures were not offered) psilocybin trips had 70% of the subjects reporting a mystical experience, while around 30% experienced ego-death/ego-loss. 

The last point raises the interesting question of the precise difference between an ego-loss trip and a mystical experience, but the short time-slot available for MacLean did not allow for detailed looks behind these examples. There can be no doubt that this psilocybin research is highly promising, an impression furthered by MacLean's spirited yet professional presentation.

"Psilocybin and Personality Change" 

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 22:02 CET

Updated: December 14, 2013 23:24 CET

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Expanding on the post below, a few more comments may be in order with reference to Michael Hoffman’s theories on psychedelic cognition. As he deepens his philosophical inquiries he carries the persistent idea of self-revealing artifice with him into new conceptual domains. What began as a perceptual observation grows into a mental reflex leaving its signature almost everywhere it goes. A few quotes to highlight this tendency:

“The ego-entity exists as a real set of patterns and dynamics spread across time, but the ego is not solid, continuous, or autonomously powerful in the way the mind originally imagines. The self exists as a mental construct in the form of a time-slice series...“  (This sounds very similar to buddhist cosmology, but there’s more in store): “…This mental construct exists both as the entire series and as individual time-slices, with the continuant agent’s motion and control-power mentally projected from within each time-slice. Seeing the illusory aspects of mental representation of oneself, and feeling static spacetime unity in the absence of the accustomed sense of personal solidity, can be experienced as death. This death-experience is the ending of personal existence, because the egoic-mode mind identifies one’s existence with the projected image and sensation of the moving continuant agent and its control-power."

In other words, if I understood Hoffman correctly, the cognitive self-exposing reflex is vast enough to embrace the totality of one’s person, which is (as always) found to be artificially made up in order to be ontologically presentable. The buddhist idea of discrete mental quanta as the only real basis for a thinking ego is combined with two Western notions, one which is that the perception of time (and space)  correlates with the continuous flow of the ego-mind, the other which is death as an existential result of lost power and lost freedom. As the basic time-slice (quanta) nature of consciousness is revealed by our own reflexive scrutiny, the foundation for existence dissolves, since the notion of a solid, continuous ego existing in time, turned out to be false. The end result is the psychedelic ego-death, a familiar event given an interesting context by Hoffman’s theory.

I am not sure what he means  by “This mental construct exists both as the entire series and as individual time-slices, with the continuant agent’s motion and control-power mentally projected from within each time-slice”, but it seems to address a problem similar to that in Buddhist metaphysics, concerning the initial creation of ego-awareness when there’s nothing that exists except the energy quanta. The buddhists have, to my knowledge, not truly solved this rather central philosophical dilemma, settling for the invocation of transitional solutions such as ‘store consciousness’ in order to avoid getting stuck. Although these questions of individual existence and awareness appear very vital to the Western mind, the Buddhists (and possibly Hindus too) do not linger upon them with any particular fervor; except for the Abidhamma it is difficult to find existential topics covered at all. It is therefore not surprising that Michael Hoffman’s detailed exposition of mental time-slices is his own invention, even if the basic idea of the quanta came from the East.

When Hoffman states that “This mental construct exists both as the entire series and as individual time-slices”, we are dealing with a psychedelic philosophy that should be treated on its own terms, because there are no such ideas expressed in Buddhism. There is a certain affinity to the 'monads' of Leibniz, including Leibniz' use of the concept of 'necessity' but again the impression is of inspiration rather than true influence. Hoffman's model would have been well served by a lengthier description, but appears to mean that each time-slice aquires a self-awareness that clarifies its subordinate role in the total cosmology. These atomic time-slices contribute in the way that “the continuant agent’s motion and control-power [is] mentally projected from within each time-slice”. I e: from the aggregated attributes of all time-slices there arises the notion of a solid and continuous ego, which unfortunately does not know that it is artificial and phony until its physical vessel takes a psychedelic trip. Under psychedelics, the constructed, artificial nature of the coherent ego is revealed and the illusion is scaled back to reveal the underlying sequence of discrete timeslices instead.

Assuming that I understood this right, I think it’s an interesting model that goes some way to maintain its internal consistency. There is a formal elegance in how the same reflexive meta-analysis is applied first on the epistemological level of Plato and Kant, and then on the ontological level of Buddhist-inspired existentialism. There is however an aspect to the model which I cannot follow in full, and which concerns the event when the presumed ego realizes its nature as a timeslice only. The realization comes as an effect of freeing the consciousness through psychedelic drugs, where among other things the reflexive self-scrutiny and insight follows. This sounds like a perfectly possible thing to occur during an acid trip, but again its hard to see it as a generalized model experience. Does it happen every time, to everyone? One might also object that an understanding of the ego’s illusory nature can come about in several ways, including the meditative paths the Buddhists prescribe, and not only as the distinct process that Hoffman describes. Once more, it is useful to look at actual psychedelic experiences for a helpful ‘acid test’.

Mapped against a real-world experience of ego-loss (my preferred term for ego-death), there is an interesting parallel between Hoffman’s suggested revelation of the true, discontinuous self, and an often reported trip vision in which the subject visualizes him or herself pass through a variety of “roles” or “personalities” that make up the totality of the ego. This sequence, which again is familiar from Eastern thought (Hesse describes it in Siddharta), has received a memorable presentation by Richard Alpert in a passage concerning his earliest psychedelic experience (see Be Here Now, or Jay Stevens’ Storming Heaven). As the various personas that made up the totality of Alpert one by one fell away, he was left with what he considered the essence of his being, the fundamental ‘Alpertness’, and as this too began to fall away, he began to panick. But rather than dying or passing out, a voice in his head asked him ‘Who’s minding the store?’, proving that the mindstream continued even when all the fundamental elements of the ego had been removed. For Alpert this experience was an obvious step towards Eastern spirituality which he would take on in full a few years later.

What Alpert/Ram Dass found was in a sense the opposite of what Hoffman describes—beyond all the layers and ornaments that made up the totality of his personality there existed something that was larger than them all, and which maintained an individual existence; a thought which incidentally is decidedly non-Buddhist. Michael Hoffman on the other hand seems to say that once the psychedelically iluminated mind has realized its inferior position as one of many timeslices in a sequence which maintains the false illusion of a continuous and solid ego, the idea of the existing ego and its presence in spacetime collapses (ego-loss/ego-death), leaving no higher order residuals behind. What exactly is left behind after the false-ego revelation in Hoffman’s model? The notion of one-self as an atomic timeslice, powerless in its predetermined course through time and space? Or does the collapse of the maintained ego illusion put one in a nirvanic void? None of these variants seem to match observed effects of psychedelic ego-loss very well.

In the introduction to his main essay Hoffman has added that after the revelation, “Experiencing this model of control and time initially destabilizes self-control power, and amounts to the death of the self that was conceived of as an autonomous control-agent. Self-control stability is restored upon transforming one's mental model to take into account the dependence of personal control on a hidden, separate thought-source, such as Necessity or a divine level that transcends Necessity.” However, the possible transformation of the subordinate time-slice state into an allegiance to some form of intellectual supra-state (much like the voice Alpert heard) is never elaborated upon in the actual essay, leaving the issue unresolved on any finer level.

The classic description of psychedelic ego-loss is a period of bliss in a space completely free from attributes and dualism, from which one is ultimately returned back to the 3-dimensional ego realm, usually in an exhilarating mood. If the effect of this elusive event infallably or frequently would be what Hoffman describes, the state should come with warning signs attached, as it looks rather much like a nihilist-determinist inversion of the joyous breakthrough that Alpert and others have reported. I feel confident that Michael Hoffman and others familiar with his theories can clarify the “what happens next?” issue that I’m raising so there is a better understanding. For now, my view is the same as I stated above regarding the purely epistemological aspect of Hoffman’s model: the model seems to me a fully credible description of a cognitive process that can occur during a psychedelic session, but I do not consider it to be the standard or most common development of the trip.

Read more here: http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 20:55 CET

Updated: December 14, 2013 23:29 CET

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I've finally found time to go through the material produced during the past Summer's psychedelic gathering in England, 'Breaking Convention'. I was unable to attend (I really wish these conferences would upgrade their tech strategy to include Skype and video conferencing) but clearly it was an impressive round-up of hallucinogenists of all ages. Videos of many presentations are now uploaded, and I intend to go through a number of them and comment as time permits.

First off was "Seeing and Believing; The Cognitive Phenomenology of Mind Manifestation" by Joseph Bicknell. Ostensibly about psychedelic phenomenology, it does not deal with the classic Husserlian phenomenology to any real extent, but still covers some useful ground. A few minutes are spent on the semantics of the word 'psychedelic' which is both common knowledge and not terribly important. Bicknell then introduces a few familiar metaphors (such as Plato's cave analogy) to give an idea of what the psychedelic experience is like, and while these are agreeable enough, the use of metaphors would seem to pull in the opposite direction from phenomenology, which is the objective observation of mental events. I feel we need fewer metaphors within Psychedelia, not more.

Bicknell mentions the prevalence of empirical data such as trip reports on the net and in the psychedelic literature, but does not offer any concrete conclusions from having studied these. Moving on to a famous 1955 passage concerning Aldous Huxley's trousers, Bicknell observes that Huxley assigns the living, organic quality of the folded fabric not to his own psychedelicized mind, but to the actual trousers themselves, which is an interesting point. Without expanding on this, it is suggested that the hallucinogen undermines the solidity and stability that we find in the baseline reality, a statement hard to disagree with.

The most interesting passage deals with a reference to the psychedelic researcher Michael Hoffman (egodeath.com, Salvia magazine, etc). According to Bicknell and Hoffman, one main effect of the psychedelic state is a new level of self-awareness in the mind, by which the subject gains insight into his or her own representational machinery. In the baseline mind, we are offered streamlined representations which we take as ‘reality’, but when tripping we can see what goes on behind the facade; the process and mechanisms that create these representations. The Platonic-Kantian realization that what we see is not the elusive, underlying source object brings a sense of artificiality to the whole cognitive enterprise. Our consciousness shows us that what we thought was actual was in fact manipulated, but it does not, at least not immediately, show us what is truly original and actual.

As far as I can tell, Bicknell and Hoffman offer no analytical proof or empirical sources for this model of cognitive processing. The reader can instead gauge its usefulness by mapping it onto his or her own repository of psychedelic experiences and knowledge. The suggestion that the baseline world takes on a slightly cartoonish or unreal quality after the cognitive skin-shedding has taken place is a relevant point, but other aspects I find harder to swallow. The revelation of artificiality seems to me just one possible psychedelic effect among several others; not the only one, and hardly a truly fundamental one. Understanding the dualistic split between platonic forms and objects is not a very profound revelation, it may in fact have been one of the main purposes of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

On the General Trip Model scale a normal ‘2’ is a sufficient degree of psychedelization to enter the level of abstract thought where the mind is able to look back upon its own mechanisms. Some may find this discovery fascinating or disturbing, and for psychological reasons attach significant value to it, but it should be obvious that the reality-obliterating experiences in store as one reaches deeper into Innerspace are of a more radical order than the notion of Kant’s “ding-an-sich”. To understand how close Hoffman’s model is to classic epistemology, this quote may suffice: “The representation layer is present to awareness like a tangible painting, while the referent layer is a remote, speculative realm that is pointed to but is perceptually absent, like a foreign country one has never directly seen”.

The further discussion of this psychedelic revelation has a certain undertone of negativity to it, as though the dualistic self-insight might anger or depress the subject. The situation may take on an existential sheen: “A person lives their entire subjectively experienced life inside a simulation that their own mind produces by presenting mental constructs to awareness. In metaperception, personal control-power and personal movement through space and time appear as synthetic mental constructs” (M Hoffman, 1996). The scope of the “metaperception” is here broadened to its maximum range, offering a potential crisis when the phoniness in its totality is understood, not just as a conventional epistemological dilemma, but artificiality that cuts across the whole human situation. Again, this is credible as the description of an occasional acid trip one might have, but as a generalized model for psychedelic cognition and enlightenment, it appears overstated and in great need of an intellectual foundation.

Joseph Bicknell’s 15-minute presentation does not extend beyond this, and in view of its contents would have been better served by a heading related to “epistemology” rather than phenomenology, the latter of which there is very little in the material. That said, I appreciate any discourse on subjects like these, of which there are far too few in the psychedelic field in relation to their relevance. The natural link to Michael Hoffman’s intriguing research was another positive I gathered.

Hopefully I will be able to post more comments on the Breaking Convention material shortly.  

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:00 CET

Updated: December 14, 2013 23:26 CET

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This recent interview with Revolt Of The Apes came out fairly well I think, the blog editor (Ryan) asked some questions that were new to me & also caught me in the Summer doldrums, when time was available... it's all about trippy music, hallucinogens and the Lumber Island Acid Crew.

http://revoltoftheapes.com/2013/09/25/patrick-lundborg-author-of-psychedelia-an-ancient-culture-a-modern-way-of-life/

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 21:17 MEST

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After a false start, I realized that nothing readable would come from the "Psychedelia" project unless I had some kind of structure to carry the contents. Winging it as one goes along wasn't going to work this time. Somewhat reluctantly I went through a pre-production phase which aimed to identify and delineate individual chapters, and then arrange them in an effective sequence. The earliest step towards this goal was a mindmap of sorts, available in larger format here.

Posted by Patrick at Lysergia at 00:06 MEST

Updated: December 17, 2013 23:06 CET

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