ThunderIdeal

yep its a great thread and challenging too. there is naturally gonna be a strong bias here about the issues you call into question. i was more concerned about derailing your thread but perhaps my report will stand as proof, one way or the other.......... ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------- OFF-TOPIC TRIP REPORT i'll just be honest and explain things as i remember them. my one major doubt is that i had been reading T.McKenna between this trip and my last, and my trip was like a corroboration of everything he was saying over the years. the cosmic other, the cosmic lover, alien contact and machine elves. not like i would have imagined it, but it all fit the description. the setting was an enormous beach camping area on a long weekend, hundreds upon hundreds of campsites spread among the casuarinas, and i was horribly sick with phlegm. drank 2.5 g of what may have been quite a strong cube dust placed directly in hot water after sunset. this was a reduction of previous doses with shocking results, which i attribute to my receptiveness and the greatness of mushrooms. during onset i could notice lots of phosphorus in the waves at the beach, including one large, persistent lump of it, although i walked straight into a fence shortly after and got flung back into the sand. my fellow campers went to sleep and due to the monumental likelihood of getting lost, i just lay down on a noisy tarp for most the trip, conscious of the noise i was making rolling around and hacking up lung-oysters. my chronology will fail me here, i'll just describe the key things in three paragraphs, each one more life-changing than the last 1 - i was never fully submerged in the experience, always able to 'pull out' if it got too much for me, probably just by opening my eyes, which tells me i wasn't on a huge dose, i was just having a huge experience. this refuge allowed me to explore more comfortably. i felt that i could definitely 'bring things back' as i experienced them, and i have, but even at the time, trying to define things caused a relapse of my understanding.. explanatory sentences degraded in mere seconds. at it's most terrible, i thought that sharing this experience is probably not the right thing to do, but it is watered down now anyway and i want to. 2 - eyes closed, i observed the string-like nature of the hallucinations, and the manner in which the strings moved. i likened them to DNA in action. i had a strong feeling of work being done, things be accomplished, and that the ones 'building' this thing may not even know what they are building, they just keep trying until they hopefully get it right. so, the hallucinations were DNA, but then they were machine elves, morphing machine hallucinations. i saw transforming machines, very strange machines which would be impossible in our reality. they were always moving in inextricable ways, always changing.. to what end? to paraphrase mckenna they said 'do as we do', and following that instruction was like trying to hallucinate. the machines changed and i let them, submerging myself in the hallucinations. i saw it as some kind of work, culminating in the eschaton, 2012, and i believed this without any doubt. 3 - this next paragraph was intermixed with the previous, but has different themes. i was very sick, but not concerned.. on the whole i was UNCONCERNED about my physical welfare, letting my sinuses accumulate large deposits of phlegm for 15 minutes before doing anything about it. i even thought that this was allowing one of my brains to shut down, empowering my trip, and it may have (i've since 'confirmed' this brain-switching to be an effect of ). terrible hallucinations loomed before me, cutting my self to shreds, but to be precise i LET THEM cut me down, i was already quite convinced of my insignificance compared to this mighty other. what the other then revealed, through hallucinations, was the ********* nature of the universe. i don't know the word, but like a fractal huge contrivances rose from tiny beginnings. eyes and ears and hands and mouths were displayed on the ends of very spindly limbs, connecting to a consciousness itself very spindly, connected to reality by spindly means. these spindly contrivances were being ever reduced, even the terrifying other was like this (although it was demonstrating a point....). this all confirmed the truth of the non-state i was flowing with. i'm not sure what to make of this but i fleetingly saw one thing that was not reduced, although things did reduce into it, i think it was egg-like, and it made me think of kundalini. ? . although this other had been verbally offerering and threatening to kill and destroy me, i realised it's motivation was some form of pure compassion. the whole time it felt alien to me, as in, embodying that which i do not. i thought the other to be feminine somehow. having had hours of intermittent communication, i attempted to open up true contact, by opening my heart to it. what followed was momentary and inexplicable, and topped everything else. i can only describe it as a pulsing of the heart, completely foreign in my experience... and it has been foreign and unavailable ever since, but if you ask me where it's all "at" i will say 'heart'. the sun came up, i was first on the beach among thousands of campers, walked for miles in soft sand and then back again, my self now fully in control. when asked how it was i just said 'terrifying'. ------------------------------------------------------------

(late post) i reckon it to be mutant. i saw a giant mutant fly when i was a kid. about 20 metres down the throat of the xmas reef goldmine which my grandparents owned. hundreds of ordinary flies on the wall, including one giant, mutant fucking thing, even bigger than yours and a hundred times uglier. it was definitely a dipteran, and i reckoned it to be a mutated ordinary fly, though it's features were different.

a heavy length of wood. although i've heard something about an acid grenade and it seems promising.

for starters i don't exactly think unnatural is the right word for these experiences when there are so many cases of animals in nature medicating themselves. unusual experiences maybe? -what is on the other side? an ambitious question, i think it depends. you know how in hinduism there are many levels and extensions of god? i'm not talking about the demigods. i have experienced contact with a level of god and was entirely convinced of the reality of the experience. for a brief, self-induced moment the contact was not like communication, it was like pure contact. my conviction remains. -what is there to be found? truth! novelty! change! your worst nightmare! perhaps truth beyond usefulness, but i don't intentionally concentrate on matters of practicality. if you do, maybe you gain insight into things of a more useful nature, i don't know, rubbing two sticks together, hunting beasts, wearing their skin? i'm being silly of course, we are past all of that but we still have pressing issues to deal with. perhaps what is revealed (what is found) is exactly what is needed, as you suggested, but we don't immediately see that. as an arguable example look at nostradamus - his predictions are often explained AFTER the event (new orleans, sept 11), but that doesn't make what he saw irrelevant. -is it all worth it? worth what? is life worth it? it introduces novelty to my life in a way that many people out there couldn't achieve with their wildest night of binge drinking. i don't think it's a matter of cost. i think talk of 'cost' is the fear talking, in my case it certainly is. what have we got to lose? our health, our mind, our comfortable life? none of those are really ours anyway, and i personally don't see psychadelic endeavours as endangering those things. i've seen my self laid bare and there wasn't much there anyway. -has anyone been enlightened and changed in a life-altering way? i don't know if it's appropriate to launch into a trip report in this thread, but yes. i'm not saying psychadelics are greater than meditation but i don't think you can get the same results.. i think they augment each other. both provide experiences beyond ordinary means, and if they don't well you must have been meditating or tripping without knowing it. even pot changed me in life altering ways, gave my convictions strength when otherwise they might have disappeared and made it clear to me that i'm not going to spend this life 'fitting in' to consensus reality. i will be the judge of what is real, but that may not have been the case were it not for psychadelics. i feel more attuned to the changes rapidly happening in this world. also, my priorities are utterly different. i still attend to material concerns, heck they might even be at the top of the list, but at least the aren't the WHOLE list. -but what is reality? -Should this state of mind be used for creative purposes to further the knowledge of the human race? i tend to think that ordinary experience reflects reality, but is probably one of the furthest things from it. as for the masses? there are different philosophies on which path is nobler - self betterment, or helping those behind you. i choose the former. what if they're not really behind me, then all i'm doing is holding them back with my inferior consciousness. i'll let the cosmos help others just like it helps me. there are probably countless cases of one human being helping another to grow, but should i be so arrogant to think that is my place? i don't think so. if opportunities arise i will do my best but i won't chase them, and i won't seek the ears of the masses because they honestly won't listen anyway. through psychadelics my life is changed, through my actions the planet is changed, through this change others are affected. no need to get in peoples faces, i think, because you probably don't have a clue about their issues or why they are here. edit: stupid mistakes

nah. you're right about land ice being the major influence (and hard to predict!), but the sea level increases when floating ice melts. ... but the glass of fresh water doesn't. i've seen an experiment on this.

i downloaded every one that was still available :D but of the protected ones, only one of the passwords worked, the one on the first page i think.

having virtually no experience with those sorts of things mine would have to be.. reduced cactus

seen lots of your doofpix at the oztrance.com reviews, what a service, you should get free entry. good luck getting a membership to anybody interested

i agree

yes to yawning. i guess the number of g doesn't really mean anything but maybe less next time or try spreading it out rather than all at once. considering how LONG the experience lasted, it sounds like he had a giant dose. maybe he should try working on his paranoia first though, you know, find out what he's paranoid about and put his mind at ease a bit.

there could be multiple causes of gulf war syndrome rather than just one. a solid theory for one of the causes went something like this: in the gulf war yanks were supplied with all of the coke and diet coke they could drink. diet coke contained aspartame. all of this coke was stored in some fashion for months on end and due to the storage method and the climate, the aspartame (already bad stuff) turned into something else. my personal feeling is that it is the Depleted Uraniam munitions which america and nato use (which is sickening, because any country they "help" or "liberate" is then left with radioactive material strewn about, simply because it is a bit more effective than ordinary munitions)... and not surprisingly there is gulf war II syndrome cropping up, with a number of american soldiers sent home sick. don't rule out top secret stuff either. that said the innoculations theory is pretty solid.

yes there's been a few big bush busts but where is all the indoor at??!!

didn't notice that. i thought at $25 a pop it was great value. as for colourful shirts, i don't expect to get a beautiful t-shirt for any less than $40

yeah i guess i'm used to them, if you hear their call i don't think they can be confused with anything else. besides, what aussie gecko runs in and around your house making noise and eating everything? i was wrong about their relative harmlessness from the link: Asian House Geckos have displaced some native geckos in disturbed areas. While largely dependent on human environments, they have spread into bushland reserves in the Northern Territory where they could pose a threat to other native species. Another hidden problem may lie with hitch-hikers they carry. Two species of red gecko mites, Geckobia bataviensis and Geckobia keegani live on the toes of Asian House Geckos. Microorganisms carried by these sorts of mites have the potential to cause debilitating diseases in native Australian lizards.

useful links! one day i want to make a t-shirt with some text that i have HONESTLY seen on a t-shirt label. "Wear on body, below head"

Dodie i'm sure you are talking about what i call chitchats, the asian house gecko, they have a distinct "chuck-chuck" call and they are prominent around lights and buildings. they have spread to the majority of the civilised world!!!!! i have a reptile book from the nineties which states they had colonised a small area near darwin. a few years ago i noticed everybodies house (brisbane) was full of these things... less huntsman to contend with so i hardly dislike them - they are ravenous. the thing about these geckos is that man-made buildings, and artificial lighting works greatly to their advantage, which is why they have spread to places in europe and north america, and why they have made it from darwin to brisbane in a decade!! i believe they have reduced the number of small skinks seen around homes, i usually see larger skinks now... but not to panic! in no way do these critters overtake our bushland, as i said they rely on human buildings and artificial lighting for the dominance. i don't think anything is going to stop them, unless we humans change the way we build and live. you won't get anywhere trying to kill them. as for ID, you've got the chuck call to go by, and the fact that males and females have different colouring - one brown, one creamy/beige. actually here's a link http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/inquiry/hottopics/2004/index.asp get used to em bloke. i think ajna might be spared on his mountaintop but these critters are here to stay and who knows, five more years might see them in sydney, they are spreading faster than the cane toad. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- any shop caught buying lizards from unauthorised persons would be in deep shit and they would likely lose their permits, i doubt most businesses would take the risk. it seems more likely they are being traded illegally.

lucky for you guys, it sure as hell hasn't broken in brisbane. it had better soon, and i'm sure it will but dang... i've never lived through a drought that lasted this long. heck i quit going on two months ago.

i'm pretty sure i'm right though. form 10 mL's of water into an ice cube and place in water. though bigger than 10cc's, the cube only displaces 10mLs of water in order to float... further ice volume is above water level. assuming this happens in a large vessel and surface tension and stuff hasn't come into play, then the water level absolutely remains the same. edit: two people already posted this. consider it overstated!

this doesnt apply to melting ice caps because that is fresh ice floating on salt water. if the arctic melts, the sea level WILL rise. plus, i may be completely wrong anyway.

heh, i've actually heard that the melting of floating ice does not change the water level. precise changes would depend on temperatures but remember ice does not displace it's entire volume, only about 90% of it (some ice is above water level).

way to go journeyer, i'm gonna grab a lot of that when i figure out how to use rapidshare. palm pilot sounds like a good idea, or a projector. i probably have one of the largest non-fiction ebook collections in history, but i hate to read on a computer screen. searching emule or soulseek (or torrent sites, to a lesser extent) with terms like 'horticulture' and 'gardening' produces heaps of results, otherwise just search 'ebook' and start trawling. given time to prepare i could share some of mine on soulseek if anybody contacts me.

hold up there ajna... first you need to be able to dig at least 40cm down without encountering rock!

definitely mile-a-minute.. stay on top of that stuff, the name isn't much of an exageration.

... what was his debut called? very cool for a small budget film. nationalistic but i like thai values anyway. tony jaa definitely shows alot of promise.. has he made any movies since? i know that those filmmakers have done a second film. i've seen both and what really stands out is the stunt work!!! virtually all of it is real, except for the stuff that is far too dangerous to be real. tony jaa: a bit over the top but what movie martial artist isn't? he embodies muay thai beautifully, like the scene where somebody tries to punch him in the head, and he just headbutts the guys fist on purpose hahahaha.

i think it's just a basic principle of aikido... not to resist your opponent but to take advantage of their own strife. another principle is circular movement and generally moving in the most efficient, least contrived way, like water. if somebody tried to attack me i don't know that i'd be too concerned about how much i hurt them, but i must admit it is a beautiful notion.. aikido is the only martial art (to my knowledge) whose objective is to overcome an opponent with an absolute minimum of harm. i don't know if the stories are true but they say that the japanese guy who came up with this before world war two was never defeated by anybody. .... the mad max / abo hair thing.. i'm completely lost yet intrigued