Northern Gnome

These folks at the University of Hawaii are doing research on how psychoactive plant use transforms lives. You can fill out a questionnaire. For a multiple choice questionnaire, it's not too bad, plus there are comment spaces. You don't have to live in Hawaii to participate. http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/era/PsychoPlants

I forgot about the news, weather and commercials..... and now he is extending the open line call ins by 30 minutes. I guess they are having trouble getting a hold of John Harper, I missed the first hour or so of the interview earlier tonight, which is being replayed soon, so I don't know for sure when he will start the interview with John now, but he was supposed to have started by now, according to the announcement that was made at the start of the show.

John Jay Harper, author of the book Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century is being interviewed on the CoasttoCoastAM.com radio talk show tonight. Listen live through: http://2005.kfi640.com/pages/streaming.html - The interview lasts 3 hours. The interview already happened but will repeat on the upcoming top of the hour. John is into the spice and talks about DMT a bit. Here is a link to John's web site: http://www.johnjayharper.com More on JJH here: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts13.html I bought his .pdf e-version of his Tranceformers book online for ten dollars a few months ago, worth the read!

Yes, complete sense. Also, each choice we make in our lives creates a new path for ourselves.

Very good stuff, and that long hair antenna thing, I'm doomed! balding and short hair for what is left, does my long beard help? I've been wondering about that possibility for awhile now. I don't hear voices, but I think things which seem to be far beyond my individual realm of experience to come up with.

Edit: Removed, off topic. Moved.

Im not sure what DMT is or is not.... but would be happy to eventually come to a conclusion.

I'm a strange one, believing that the statements that God exists and does not exist are both correct. The way I see it, God is in the eye of the beholder, nowhere else. The above words I just posted might sound like I am being contradictory, but I don't see it that way. The all that is, on a quantum level, is One... I see the thing called "God" as that oneness but at the same time you can just call it physics instead of God. I don't believe in the God religions are formed around but at the same time I still believe that the physics of the universe somehow allow some kind of conscious singularity which is aware of all its parts, that thing to me is God, to a scientist it is just reality. Although science hasn't reached the point where such is in the text books the way I see it, science is becoming more and more metaphysical every year, especially in the last five years. The more science reviels about reality the more everything appears to be made up of consciousness itself.

That is the logic I use to get around belief or the need to believe something which I cannot prove for certain. What is IS, regardless of my belief or not. This kind of simple realization sure helps me from having to make a decision one way or the other on things I cannot really prove out. i.e. does God exist or not? What is IS, regardless of my beliefs.... I don't feel a need to decide or have faith etc., what is IS.... On the subject of creation, we obviously must be capable of creation, in slow baby steps, at least. This computer I am typing on wasn't anywhere close to being something we could probably have concieved 3000 years ago. It would have been either white or black magic to most people back then.

You mates that have those kinds of dreams, damn you, damn you all! I never have dreams like that!

Enjoyed your post mate, thanks.

Someone sent him some Mimosa root bark a couple of months ago, so I have no doubts he has done as he claims. I used to provoke people on what salvia could and could not do a few years ago when I was new to the entheogen community too but then I found out that these substances do not produce the same things for everyone and released judgment. Since then, I get along just fine with everyone... (knock on wood).

LOL.... I changed my handle here awhile ago and have been gone for a spell too, sorry for the confusion and thanks for the welcome back. Last night I dreamed that I was someone else and when I woke up I actually grieved for having lost my prior beingness, still believing thaat I was that someone else for at least a minute... then slowly, as I began to come back I realized that I was still the person I've been for the last near 50 years... and.... that was without smoking anything. Edit: I edit for the thrill of it....

I wish to myself that DMT could open up a port hole to a multiverse, I don't really know if it does or doesn't but I'd be one happy camper if it could. I have my doubts but would love them to completely disappear. I think it is fair for anyone to say that it takes many many journies to be able to state with much certainty what this substance is possible of producing when combined with our human wetware. I wouldn't judge it very quickly. That scarey experience you had with DMT is very close to the same thing I had when I consumed too much salvinorin A, yet.... after that I learned to never use that much anymore, too much just scrambles ya when using salvia and can make one go into a completey unconscious state for a few minutes. I imagine to much of any substance can be a scarey experience, drug or not, if you can get too much of it in your system. I can't personally speak in regard to DMT but from having read about it for over seven years now, spending many hundreds of hours reading people reports on their experiences over the years it is ok to say how you experienced it, what it was for you, but at the same time not label what it is or is going to be for someone else.

I had a whole handful of people go after me in a couple of forums, actually following me to another forum and then another forum when I left each one trying to get away from them. Why? Because I dared to give an alternate opinion in regard to Salvia divinorum experiences and wasn't nice about it either. One fellow who was selling the stuff claimed it could produce Out of Body experiences or allow one to join the conscious collective... I yelled BUNK! Because it was clear to me he was trying to make a following of believers when he opened up a forum and only allowed people in who would not give an opinion opposite to his own continous holyer than though crapola in regard to Salvia divinorum, claiming to have met Lady Salvia herself (whom I didn't believe in) who gave him the job of protecting entheogens... Man, O man.... did the crap hit the fan as the two of us clashed for months and months, him and a couple of other people I purposely pissed off because I was upset with them for being upset with me. After a few years of that it all died down, except for the mention I just made in this post again. After all of that back and forth bitchin.... I wish I had just quietly walked away and let him believe what he wanted, but I felt that he was spreading crap and that someone needed to speak up about it. Truth is, I don't really know much about what Salvia can and can't do in regard the the things he claimed, I never saw any of that kind of thing myself, maybe it is possible. If it is possible my idea about it is that it is only possible because we are spiritual beings having a human experience and because of that we could just as well have those experiences without entheogens.... although, I must admit, entheogens can be a wonderful key to opening a door which is difficult to jar without it help, even if that door is only within ones self. Although I suspect the door can exist, since we are not completely isolated from the all that is, I suppose anything is possible. Im all off track with what I wanted to say adding that bit of personal history, but what I wanted to say is that I would have done a lot better if I had just agreed to disagree and the other fellow too, but neither of us would do that.

I do it all the time too, but what drives us to feel the need to correct another persons view of reality when they are wrong, at least, to us?

I'm watching the Movie "The Night Before Christmas" - The boogie man was just unwrapped to expose what he was made of, a big mass of bugs, all of them falling to the ground. Sometimes I think that character also represents each of us, all just a gathering of many smaller parts all looking out for themselves within the body of a higher ordered being. All of the small little cells of our bodies making a sum greater than its parts. I think the universe works that way, we, all a bunch of bugs from the bottom all the way to the top, all bugs, but larger and larger sums of them, body within body, all the way up to the top Bug... Sorry for getting off topic, but the thought occured to me how much we sometimes bug one another with our different viewpoints and internal realities....

The way I see it, when using psychedelics we are totally immersed in an IBE, or Inner Body Experience yet I cannot deny that at the same time this is true many individuals report having external contact with teachers or beings outside of their normal reality. Perhaps there might be a way for each of us to be influenced by something outside our individual spheres of experience which leaves me open to the possibility. However, if such were possible I tend to think that such communication would be most effective if using thought forms and concepts we already have within us to communicate through. Anyone who has studied NDE's or Near-Death Experiences soon comes to realize that each individual only experiences them through the limit of their own understanding of the world or what might be possible beyond it, never anything more than that which to me further proves that outside communication only occurs through the prior to concievable, how else could it? Here is my take on consciousness, whether sleeping or awake we are still no less dreaming, dreaming about things within the matrix of our own consciousness. Either way we only experience the world to the ability of our own mind constructs gained through past experience and understanding of the world around us. I believe we are all dreamers, every moment just a dream, even during our normal day to day experiences everything which appears to be outside of us is no less just an internalized experience regardless of having "real" external stimuli to produce them. Our dreams all interal chemical reactions from the influence of the outer world upon our sense, the same chemical influences that we also have when completely immersed in a psychedelic IBE, or inner body experience whether while using psychedelics or dreaming when we sleep. While I am convinced of these view points I also believe that the brain is a kind of receiver as well as an independent dream generator. From this I cannot but think we are a kind of twain-brained creatures who are able to connect with the field which we are all a part of while at the same time, to more or less degree, dreaming the external world into play with our own consciousness which we obviously do so fairly accurately, within limits of course... At least, enough to understand physics well eough go to the moon and back and build such things as submarines and airships... So, we are very good dreamers and reproducers of external reality within our knoggins but even then still just dreaming. What do I really know for sure? Not much, but I can sure dream alot!

Well, don't be in too much a hurry to believe what you have experienced in just that amount of tries. It took me over 50 full breakthrough experiences with Salvia divinorum from very small to large amounts before I started to get a real idea of what it was capable of and even then I have not experienced some of the awesome spiritual things that others have with Salvia. It can take many many journeys at various dose levels, set and setting, to learn what is possible with these kinds of substances and the visions they can produce, years for some people who use ayahuasca. Edit: Im not hooked on drugs, but I do edit too much. Catch you another day, I've got to get to bed... 4:39 AM here, cheers!

Nope, only once.... a small amount. I know Salvia divinorum though! But, I don't even use that anymore. I don't use any kind of drug but I want to journey with the spice in the future, I figure, a dozen times might be enough to get a general idea of the territory but then, I'm unexperienced with that kind of thing, maybe it takes 50 times to get a general idea and even then much more to learn. I don't think even Terrence McKenna did it more than 100 times total, I saw an interview where he had spoke of having only used the spice some 35+ times and I think that wasn't more than ten years before he died yet he was the guru on the spice back then.

Did another journey produce a different viewpoint, or more gear turning alone? I like to hear about journeys if you have another one to offer.

But, your toilets run backwards down under, it's different for us on the top of the world. I've heard others sometimes refer to the spice experience as entering a vortex, I haven't seen anything like that myself, but only been there once and very moderate amount.

The Vortex sometimes offers gifts from far away lands but only in legal form, he had to do the work himself to get what he was after.

I guess I shouldn't lie like that, truth is, I am actually more northern than most of populated Canada. I just choose Canada as my location because I'm paranoid! Although, close enough. I don't consider myself part of the lower 48 states ;)

LOL, no one was ever able to wake me up in the forums, until I was completely rejected a few times over, now I'm still a bit droggy, but I think I'm getting there. One day I will be fully awake, whether that can happen here in this world or will have to wait until I cross over, I don't know.