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http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27586&pid=375925&st=0entry375925 For those of you who won't listen to the podcast, the headline is that in around 1988 or 1989 McKenna had such a bad mushroom trip that he never took them again. In the decade that followed he had doubts about his role as a psychedelic spokesman and resented feeling the need to please his fans with the usual timewave zero and time travel etc theories. This is going to be part of Dennis McKenna's book about there lives called the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss. I'm glad this has become public knowledge as it was obvious that he was a tormented character and harboured more than his fair share of demons, and hopefully now people can see him as human with flaws like all of us. It must have been quite a trip for him, even without the mushrooms, through the 1990's towards his eventual death from a mushroom shaped brain tumor in 2000. It must have seemed for the world to him that this brain tumour was a direct consequence of his dichotomous and perhaps dishonest existence. And maybe it was, as Bruce Damer said, on his death bed he finally opened his heart to the idea that its not about fancy ideas but simply love. I found Terence was at his best when he was talking about history, alchemy, shamanism, literature, and his travel stories, and not timewave zero, mushroom assisted evolution, ufo's etc which he would often repeat verbatim and it just feels like he is going through the motions to earn his pay. An intriguing person, can't wait to read this book.

This book just got a whole lot more intriguing... A Deep Dive Into the Mind of McKenna

You can't really refute one supposedly careless claim with another. I can understand that his material is not for everyone, but you can't dismiss the guys whole corpus based on a couple of listens. His ability to convey the impression of the psychedelic experience is quite unique.

Santo Daime is one of a handful of syncretic catholic-indigenous churches operating in the Americas. It is 100% legal in brazil. As far as I know its the more open minded of these churches, with UDV being more attracted to the catholic style church. Lots of info online.

Ritual doesn't necessarily mean participating in a group situation facilitated by a curandero. It can be as simple as taking some time to tidy up the space, blow some smoke, and meditate on what is about to follow. Its all about focusing your intention.

yeah I can see how rapidly evolving technology would lead to more fancy sounds and less creativity. now, however, the technology has kind of plateaued with most production being software based, and maybe that opens the door for creativity again. some of the tech/dub/psy fusion that is being produced now is quite interesting... doofs at their best embrace the orgranic vibe... outdoor venues, music infused with 'organic' sounds. weed, beer, acid and shrooms seems to be the intoxicants of choice for doofs. have even seen aya and cactus... I have never witnessed someone chewing on a foot of cactus in a warehouse, but tell me I'm wrong! the incorporation of things like smoking ceremonies, solar generators, tree planting, soundoff times and workshops etc shows that there is a bit of maturity happening in the doof scene and this is really important to try to do even if it comes across as hippy crap. i'm not trying to say one is better than the other just making an observation that doof parties now have a similar position in society as rave parties did in the early 90's as an alternative progressive force challenging peoples culturally indoctrinated ideologies. the one love vibe that you guys describe of these parties sounds really amazing, and I agree that is hard to come across these days in any genre. where is the love?

true, but that was the purpose of the experiment and there is value in proving a theory as it gives confidence to make further predictions.

Ahh yeah I was wondering why they were so sure this particle was the Higgs, thats a good piece of info. Its quite amazing that its mass is supposed to be over 100 times that of a proton yet it only decays into 2 hadrons and electrons... I guess these must have a very high energy? not at all that was very interesting!

interesting how rave has given way to doof, and more (but certainly not all) organics instead of synthetics. I personally find rave music hard to connect to, although I was a fan of spiral tribe for a while. what do you ravers from the 80's and 90's think of the doof scene?

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind. Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines. I don't think we should rush to the scientific method (e.g. double blind studies) to further our understanding of psychoactive plants, although it is certainly useful for investigating pharmacodynamics for example. There is more to a psychedelic experience than what alkaloid or spectrum of alkaloids are introduced to the synapse. The alkaloids may make the psychedelic state of mind possible, but the character of the visions seems to be driven more by more esoteric forces; the people and energies in the immediate vicinity, the phase of the plants and stars, the extent to which the individual having the experience participated in the preparation of the sacrament etc. For example if we imagine 3 people who each ingest exactly the same amount of DMT and harmine, but one synthesised the alkaloids themselves in their own lab, one extracted from plants they grew themselves and one did mail order, I am sure each will have experiences coloured by this. And three people with the same method of preparation will probably have different experiences again due to the unique and infinite set of preconditions for each individual. By just controlling a handful of usually materialistic variables, pharmacological blind studies totally disregard this nuance of the psychedelic experience. Thats not to say these type of studies are useless, but that they should not be our only tool for understanding how things work. The other tool is intuition.

put something underground to attract the gnome spirits, sounds like good psychedelic logic to me! when I was 10 I buried a time capsule in the forest behind me house... treasured items from the life of a kid. I could never find it again, I wonder what the gnomes did with my treasures? wouldn't want to leave plant matter underground for more than a few days, probably a good way to attract other underground dwellers like mold.

nice stories, I love synchronicity! weather, love interests and computers seem especially susceptible to strange occurrences. I seem to have developed a strange ability to predict when it will rain and when it will become clear, which is pretty difficult here in Germany as the clouds pass over reality fast; one minute it will be pouring rain, then blue sunny sky the next. last week a power surge fried my laptop power supply and was without computer for a week. turned out to be exactly what I needed, a week engrossed in books instead of a computer screen. not really a huge synchronicity, but an interesting case of the universe "giving you what you need, not what you want".

There needs to be a clearer distinction between religious belief and mystical or spiritual experience. I have no time for religious belief as it based on trust in the culture and society we are brought up in which is clearly more interested in control than in truth. In the same way science is rightly proud and confident of its basis in experiment and hypothesis testing, religion should put more emphasis on experience. Well said! The mystical is a mystery. Interestingly this comes quite close to the classical notion of `God' (or the mystery) as a force not bound to the rules of this world. , who or which exists in some higher dimensional superspace that incorporates our world and much more. I think religion may have many profound things to say about the existence, but just expecting people to believe it without evidence is a recipe for fanaticism.

the whole religion/god/spirituality vs science argument in popular media is a bit tiresome. both can make contributions towards explaining why things are the way they are. physicists that are hell bent on disproving the need for god, and evangelicals that insist on the literal truth of Genesis are not helping. I wonder if Hawking has ever had a 'mystical' experience? There seems to be a tendency for people that have not had paradigm-defying experiences to dismiss those that have as delusional. Its a rare minority of people how have had mystical experiences that are able to explain them away with the delusion argument. Having an open mind and trusting your own perception is the key.

that reminds me I need to renew my subscription, erowid extracts is great! there was another write-up on EGA 2011 on realty sandwich.

How do you keep your potted plants watered while your away from home for more than a few days? Would prefer not to use a pump. I have found a few ideas online. A gravity feed from a bucket of water: http://buddygarden.c...ng4-332x500.jpg Water bottle with small holes in lid buried in soil: http://buddygarden.c...118-500x332.jpg Piece of cloth supplying water to dish under pot: Any recommendations? Cheers.

the market in town is a good place to start, they were giving it out for free when I visited. just look for the indian guys with red eyes.

why do you choose not to have an avatar?

get money, f#$k b$%@ches, smoke trees... make that do something constructive with your life, make love, stay high and i'm in agreeance.

This is exactly what I am testing on the balcony at the moment. I first tried just a bottle with holes in the lid but the soil would block the holes and not much capillary action would occur. I think the cloth or shoe lace is a much better idea as it provides a clear pathway for the water to flow over. yeah that would be the ideal setup I guess. my plant collection is not too extensive at the moment, though, and I like the idea of trying to ghetto something from my recycling bin

chacruna is a very clean NN-DMT source, whilst acacias usually contain a spectrum of alkaloids?

Its like the universe is sentient and will twist space time to a persons benefit if their heart is open to this possibility. This is the way the universe has got itself to this point of amazing complexity in the first place, not through random chance but through a hyperspatial intelligence that links all life and shows the path of least resistance. Maybe the connection of individuals to this oversoul ebbs and flows, and at the moment it is especially strong. The past week as definitely been quite synchronistic for me too.

inspiring stuff EG! how do you go about managing the cold and wet european climate? do you have the cacti in a greenhouse all year round, or transfer them around between seasons?

I wonder if any megafauna were around when aboriginal people first came to oz? what a time that would have been! be good kids or kenny the giant wombat will get ya! he looks kind of friendly though... It seems that it has only been in the last 10,000 years that humans have become essentially free of natural predators. I guess its hard to come up moon rockets, michael jackson and all the trimmings of modern society when you never know what lurks around the next corner.

well actually what you want to look for with respect to MAOI potentiation is a monoamine compound (MAOI = monoamine oxydase inhibitor). given that idole has a single nitrogen atom hanging off a benzene ring I assumed that means all indole derived compounds are monoamines. anyone know organic chemistry? some Tabernaemontana species contain ibogaine type alkaloids and are supposedly used as ayahausca admixtures. maybe Ott or Schultes books have more data on this? remember that ayahausca is an MAOI + DMT, and DMT is very short acting by itself when smoked and inactive orally. ibogaine on the other hand can last for 12 hours when taken orally, so there is a huge different between these two indoles. using the leaves instead of root bark sounds like a good idea, and not just of iboga but the Tabernaemontana species. maybe there is a way of getting an experience off the leaves without a large dose of an MAOI.