Author Archive
Excellent short video: ‘The Psychedelic Experience’
From Aubrey Marcus, aka Warrior Poet, comes a terrific short video about the value of psychedelic experiences (whether mediated by chemicals or not). Similar style as Jason Silva, but less manic. My favorite part of the video: What can the Psychedelic Experience be? The cloth that wipes clean our lens of perception, The compass that points true north to our life’s calling, The lantern in the catacombs of our subconscious, The sword stroke that unfetters the muse, The sunlight that dispels the shadows of our past Or simply a respite of eternity, in the fast flowing river of...
Sacredness Is in the Eye of the Beholder
There is a logical fallacy that psychonauts tend to make called the Appeal to Tradition. Just as it sounds, this is when someone describes a particular method or system as superior because it is traditional. The truth, of course, is that a solution’s stature as a tradition has no bearing on its effectiveness. A tradition may be passed on for many generations and still remain fundamentally flawed. Even psychonauts with the best of intentions commit this logical error. Having come to deeply respect a particular entheogenic tradition — for instance, the Amazonian ayahuasca ceremony — they insist that it is...
My First Solo LSD Experience Discovering the Inner Sanctum with Some Molecular Assistance
I had taken LSD once before, but it was a smaller dose taken in a social setting. This time it would be 250µg, alone in the comfort of my apartment. Here are a few anecdotes and musings from that sunny April day. Some were written in my expanded state of mind, while others were recollected in the following days and weeks. It was one of the most remarkable days of my life. I peer in the mirror, in awe at the living being before me. My hand is pale but splotchy, a red and purple thing against the...
Trippy Must-see Short Film: Hyperspace
This is one amazing 7-minute head trip, loosely based on Terence McKenna quotes. Hyperspace was written, produced and directed by Isak Gundrosen & Ida Skjefstad. Liked this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed to get much more! Or enter your email address for weekly updates: Share this:
Stereodose: Streaming Radio for Psychonauts
Have psychonauts gone mainstream enough to warrant their own music player? Apparently so! One more sign that the Psychedelic Renaissance is gaining momentum and coming into its own. What’s next, a social media network? (Actually, there is one! I’ll post about it soon.) Stereodose an online music player dedicated to drug-induced states of mind. There’s the regular web app as well as one for Android. The iOS version comes out at the end of April. The interface is slick: select your drug (weed, ecstasy, LSD, or shrooms), your mood (with options like “thug life,” “shaman,” and “rolling balls”), and your playlist starts. What about...
Carnovsky’s Psychedelic RGB Wallpaper
Carnovsky is the Milan-based artistic duo of Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla, responsible for the trippiest wallpaper and scarves you are ever likely to set eyes on. Their RGB series of artworks combine independent colored images into fabulous, multi-layered bestiaries and jungles. From their website: RGB is a work about the exploration of the “surface’s deepness”. RGB designs create surfaces that mutate and interact with different chromatic stimulus. RGB’s technique consists in the overlapping of three different images, each one in a primary color. The resulting images from this three level’s superimposition are unexpected and disorienting. The colors mix...
Ketamine shows promise in treating “Fear of Harm”
There has been a huge resurgence of research on psychedelic and dissociative drugs recently. This is very promising because for 40 years, the study of these very promising medical compounds was shelved in the name of prohibition. Finally, after decades of hiatus, we are able to shed light on some of these compounds in controlled clinical settings. The studies may be small and few in number right now, but their positive results should help open the door to larger and ever more diverse studies. If early studies are any indication, the medical potential of psychedelics is absolutely vast....
Graham Hancock: the War on Consciousness
I find Graham Hancock’s TED talk about The War on Consciousness extremely compelling. He starts the 19 minute talk by touching upon cave art and the emergence of humanity as “fully symbolic creatures” who express themselves with language and drawings. From the 2 minute to the 10 minute mark, he talks about his experience with ayahuasca and how, when he finally decided to listen to the lessons it impressed upon him, it transformed his life. But my favorite part is the last six minutes, where Hancock describes the fundamental human right to sovereign consciousness and the war being waged against...
Hypnagogia, the Limbo of Sleep
I have always liked this story about Zhuangzi, the Chinese philosopher. You’ve probably heard it before in one form or another, but it’s a perfect opener for today’s post. Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction!...
Tree of Light Sculpture Diffracting Into Rainbows
I discovered this temporary light sculpture in a park in Austin, Texas and had to take a video. I was wearing diffraction glasses and tripping on shrooms, so every source of light exploded into a dazzling spectrum of colors. The effect was magical, as though the tree was scrawling across the sky with bright and fiery fingers. The music completed the experience. Nodding my head to the Geographer song playing in my headphones (“Paris”) and watching the colors drift across my vision, I had one of those moments. You know the ones, where the scene is so perfect...