| Things I've learned. |
[07 Sep 2009|03:34pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
bored |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Explosions in the Sky - Your Hand in Mine |
] |
I've been learning a lot lately.
Most of it, I've forgotten.
But one of them is that the full moon makes people crazy.
And going back through memory just proves it.
And another, is that life doesn't really throw you something really good after it throws you something bad, to balance things out. What actually happens is the bad continues, and then after a really long while you finally get used to it. And then life just throws you something normal and it seems freaking awesome and you feel amazing until you get used to that.
At least, that's the half-empty way to look at it.
When you're super spiritual and caught up in the ideal that life is love and God is joy, and the bad things are just the absence of light, then you start to have high expectations on life.
|
|
|
[01 Aug 2009|10:09am] |
|
Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day Every minute of every day.
|
|
| I'm a real asshole sometimes. There's a song for everything. |
[09 Jul 2009|10:37pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
cold |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Of Montreal - Voltaic Crusher/Undrum to Muted Da |
] |
♫
I write a thousand songs for you a day
But I never run out of things to say
You're my Ulysses that I'll never end
Now that I fucked up, lost you, sweet friend Everything is in the trash, and it's my fault
I've destroyed us, I know, it's unrecoverable
If there's a God he will repair your heart
If there's a God, send her an angel
Make him handsome and clever and not crazy
And you notice something wonderful
Someone to love her volcanicallyAnd please, please, please God, don't be a bastard
Christ knows she deserves something nice for a change
Christ knows she deserves something nice for a change
I am a flaw, I'm a mistake
I am faulty, I always break
I tried, you don't believe me, but I did
I tried to mature, be responsible, dot dot dot
But my heart is juvenile
And my character's not so hot
You gave me your hand, I gave you a fist
Please don't lose any sleep over me, baby
I hardly exist
You gave me your hand, I gave you a fist
Please don't lose any sleep over me, baby
I hardly exist
You gave me everything, still I resist
Please don't lose any sleep over me, baby
I hardly exist
I hardly exist
|
|
| A few thoughts, and clarifications on concept of god |
[19 Apr 2009|12:10pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
Jnana Atma |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Unidentified mantra Kirtan |
] |
All life is metaphorical. Life is a metaphor, for itself. Life is a metaphor for Life.
All physical phenomenae are electro-chemical. This means they are only as real as our delusions and dreams. Which means dreams and possibilities are just as real (if you look at the glass as half-full, not half-empty).
The one thing a camera cannot capture is the inside of itself. So it is with living people; one cannot know God or the Self in truth by using the senses or the mind.
__________________________________________________
When defining what the word "God" means in language, outside of belief, we must be very specific. It is possible to first limit, and then expand through logic, its meaning specifically by differentiating it from other like terms that are not the same concept.
1. "God" does not mean "deity". There is already a separate word for this, so do not confuse the two. Deity - "A revered and extremely powerful entity, a being having superhuman powers and control over a particular part of life or the world." This would limit the word god to basically, a person. The term God can later be expanded to include, but not be limited to, the concept of a deity within its scope, but really based on one's own belief. Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Jehova, Brahman, Krshna, Shiva, Shakti, Vishnu, Buddha--all these are not the definition of the word god, nor should it be assumed that one from a particular religious background is substituting the word "God" for one of these. These are deities, and not the same as the full meaning of "God".
2. "Divinity", "Lord", "Creator", "Providence". Once again, when we objectively talk about the word god, these terms are not what we mean, but they may be included in one's personal belief. Too often when I say "God", people automatically assume that I am talking about a divine decision maker, some anthropomorphized being that can be referred to as a "who" instead of a "what", that has some special care over the course of human affairs, making judgments and changing history with miracles. I assure you, this is not what "God" always implies. God does not have to be a PERSON with a plan, nor is God necessarily focused on ruling the Human race.
Through logic we can work out an objective, specific meaning for the term "God" when we use it to talk in general about universal, metaphysical, or philosophical ideas. Do not misunderstand me; This is not to say that we can come to "Know God" through logic. This is instead an attempt to derive an objective, agreeable definition for the word god in any language, so that even an atheist could use it in a discussion.
In the English language, we actually have two separate terms with different meanings and uses, differentiated by the articles "a" and "the". This is important, because they are totally different concepts, when used in relation to each other. Basically, "a" or "the" god (gods) is the same as a deity, and denotes a specific conception of a god for a certain culture, that is not an objective term to be used in discourse. It implies that the god we are referring to is a definite object that can be categorized.
So then using the term God (capitalized), somewhat pre-assumes that God exists. This may be a limit already on a universal view, but the language pretty much requires this. In most belief systems that include a concept of God, God is a supreme being or state of being which is regarded as infinite, perfect, omnipotent, and omnipresent, and usually as omniscient.
Starting our definition based on these prevalent concepts, lets look at omnipotent first. Basically in order to allow God to have this attribute, God must be outside the limits of time, space, and logic, which is basically a feature of language, math, and humanity. We can regard God in this sense as an abstraction.
God is also not limited to being male or female. This is also within the bounds of human logic and the duality of the physical universe. It wouldn't be wrong to say that God is a lifeform, or consciousness. But God is not alive like we are, as this would imply birth and death. Remember that God is not necessarily a person, or any living thing. To assume God is bound by the same system of physical nature as exists in human life would limit God's omnipotence, as if God did not create these rules. God does not need a body and gender for sexual reproduction. God has the power of creation.
Now lets look at infinite, and omnipresent. As these are always attributes of God, they must be true in our universal definition. These two terms are inter-related, as they deal with not only space, but time as well. In order to be truly infinite, God must have always existed, does exist, and always will exist. Also, as part of the definition of infinite, God can have NO BOUNDARIES OR LIMITS. If God had a limit, lets say, this person or place is not PART OF God, then God would be FINITE, not infinite. This means that the ENTIRE universe, and everything in it, (as well as anything outside the universe, or any possibilities that do not currently exist) is part of and included in God. It means that everything that exists is in fact made of one substance: God.
If a religion claims that their God is infinite, but then claims that God is this and not that, it would be contradicting itself. By the definition of an infinite God, there is nothing that God isn't. Including nothingness. God is everything.
One more way of looking at this: If before creation of the universe, there was only God and nothing else, and God was infinite, then what did God make the universe out of? Whatever God is, the universe was made out of that, and that's what we're made of. To say otherwise, as if God created something other than God, would be to say that God is limiting itself and is therefore not infinite.
So here is where we have to be careful, and make a distinction as to what "God" is specifically referring to. Just because everything is made of God does not mean that anything is God, in and of itself. It does not mean that You are God either. Everything is a part of God, as are you and everyone, but God is not a finite thing. God is the totality of everything. If you take away from the infinity that is God, God would still be infinite. So God is God with or without the physical universe. God is the fabric of reality itself, out of which everything else exists. God is not separate from this world, or separate from humanity.
Now it should be clear why using the word God implies God's existence. No matter what belief system you have, there is something which can be called reality, or existence, and this is what we refer to as God. God doesn't have to be anything. God just is. There is no why or how, these are Human terms of reason, and do not apply to the whole of reality which is beyond time and logic. Non-existence cannot be proved, as we are here already. The only choice is whether one chooses to look at all as miraculous, or nothing as miraculous. Either way, it's still there. Your belief does not change it. The question is not whether God exists, but how we can better understand God.
You can derive ethics and concepts of Good and Evil from personal deities; all of these are true, as all are aspects of God, whether paradoxical or not. Even if you choose not to believe in deities, but believe in what can be proved by science, the laws of nature, then these laws, this nature, that is your God.
The most flawed logic to argue against belief in God, is to say that something occurs naturally, not by "some miracle of God." Who set up the laws and events in nature? It is sad that today, society finds it necessary to separate the pursuit of truth done by science and religion. This is caused by the religious institutions' dogmatic manipulation of knowledge in order to gain more power. So many of these institutions have tried to deny scientific discoveries, for fear they would contradict the influence of their supremely good deity. But any religion that actually believed its God was infinite and omnipotent would have no fear of scientific discovery discrediting them, because they would know that anything discovered would only be more details God set in motion in the act of creation.
God does not have to cause dramatic thunder and lightning and project a voice down through the clouds in order to create a miracle. A simple chemical reaction that causes a protein to form an amino acid, leading to organic life, can be considered a miracle. Remember that according to probability, the chances of life even existing today is infinitely unlikely. Seeing something as miraculous is only a matter of perspective.
So here is our working universal definition for the term "God": The totality of everything that exists and does not exist, not limited to any one finite thing, infinite, limitless, not separate from any part or aspect of life or the universe, not separate from nature, creator of everything, not bound by time, logic, or any other faculty of human experience. In short, God is Life, synonymous with Reality in general, and completely ineffable. We have not really defined specifically what God is, only that when we refer to the word "God", we are referring to something that we all are spending our lives dealing with.
God is not a name. God is only a sound which we use to describe the ineffable. Don't let it lose its meaning and use by denying its existence.
|
|
|
[05 Nov 2008|10:33am] |
|
Welcome to the Human Race.
|
|
| Atman=Brahman |
[22 Oct 2008|04:33am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
accomplished |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Lotus - It's All Clear to Me Now |
] |
Jñāna In Buddhism, it refers to pure awareness that is free of conceptual encumbrances, and is contrasted with vijnana, which is a moment of 'divided knowing'. In Hinduism it means true knowledge, the knowledge that one's self (atman) is identical with Ultimate Reality Brahman. It is also referred to as Atma Jnana which is frequently translated as self-realization.
So if you apply this to fractal mathematics, and then start thinking about the reality of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder [Multiple Personalities]), then it is logical to assume the possibility with an open mind:
Atman, every self, the everyman of all existence, basically is each single consciousness in the universe. And since the self is identical to the ultimate reality, it's all really one encompassing consciousness, that each individual self consciousness is split off of. So we are all one consciousness, one mind. We are living within one mind. So here's the leap:
We are all multiple personalities within a single mind, the mind of a being the Hindus name Brahman. And here's where the fractal part comes in: That being/person possibly named Brahman, well it's safe to assume everyone he knows is also a multiple personality of some "higher" being. And of course, to any multiple personalities belonging to any people in our world, or to any fictional characters we create in our imagination, we are the higher beings. The wonderful thing, really, is this does not make us, or even our made up-personalities and characters any less real. It's all 100% real.
So basically, God and the universe we live in is just a normal guy with multiple personalities, and we're stuck in his mind, until we die or take DMT and see what its really like outside. Dig it? It's just a possiblity.
|
|
| A surprisingly enlightening experience |
[29 Sep 2008|02:40pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
contemplative |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Tabla Beat Science - Triangular Objects |
] |
Reminder to self and others: This post was intended as a rough draft, and I would like to edit it later to do more justice to the experiences herein described. Also, I've been meaning to write this down for a while, but it finally came out in response to a thread on 420chan.org/psy/, in which was asked, "any epic experiences on shrooms that changed your life?" Certainly this is not the most epic, but anyways...
The last time I tripped, it was completely different than the 7 or so times before. Usually, I come up gradually, with a mild nausea, and break through after about an hour, at which point I'm mostly euphoric for the next 6 hours, and experience awe at ever insight. Then I come down.
This time, I was being a little uptight, plus it was extremely hot outside, and while I usually like to eat shrooms once I'm settled in the place I want to be when I come up, my friends decided we should eat them in the car and then walk to our spot. So we walked for a while in the heat, and I wanted to hurry so I could settle down. We changed our minds about the spot and had to walk some more, so by the time I finally got to sit down, my heart was racing and I was sweating and because of all this and my lack of a full diet and my fast metabolism, the shrooms were already starting to come on, with that sudden body lethargy, and my thoughts were racing. And I was still being a little uptight about a few things.
Shrooms don't like it when you're uptight. They say, fuck that, you need to relax and be open-minded, or else. So at this point, when I tried to smoke some weed to help calm my intense nausea, it didn't really work as planned.
See, normally, smoking weed is fair advice at the beginning of a shroom trip to take away nausea, because it tends to propel you a bit faster into the psychedelic state, relaxing your mind so you start to see visuals faster etc., breaking through a little more smoothly. The visuals and relaxing experiences tend to help distract you from you bodily discomforts.
However, at this point I was waaaay to nauseous for that, and as I said the shrooms were coming on fast, because my heart couldn't stop beating so fast and my thoughts were racing. I really don't think I realized at this point how hot it really was. So when I took a 2nd hit of weed, what I experienced was like a rocket propelling me to the other side in a matter of seconds--this can be scary when you're not used to it. I can only compare this to the rapid onset of DMT--which like I said is scary when you're expecting a gradual shroom trip.
If you were to have been looking at my eyes, my pupils must have gone from normal to fully dilated in a matter of 6 seconds. Because what I saw in that time was an intense brightening of light and color--not a white-out, but beyond any sudden changes I'd experienced before. The visuals were all there, suddenly, at an amazingly beautiful and detailed level that normally would awe me into a total blissed-out state. The surfaces of objects were swirling rapidly, everything was beautiful. However, the shock of it escalated my subconscious fears, and the intensifying nausea added to this.
The very next thing, after those 6 seconds, I was retching in the bushes next to the picnic table, and reality evaporated around me as I started to puke, and see ineffable things. The experience was pure horror across all the senses, but part of my mind had to minutely appreciate the vividness of the experience as my body and the shrooms worked together to try to purge something physical of all the bad thoughts in my mind. Nobody would ever want to go through that. But it was enlightening. I had hit bottom, emotionally, at that point.
The things I saw during these moments as I threw up onto the plants were indescribable. Insane things, vivid, moving, fascinating things. I can't even remember most of it, except sometimes I get flashes. The world around me faded from sight as I viewed things within me or outside of the universe that aren't really physical things that eyes could see, but things my visual centers in my brain translated for me anyways. And of course it would be hard to focus on these things, as I was puking my brains out. Here is a bunch of art that barely comes close to describing elements of the complexity that I saw. The art is very beautiful, and so were my visions, if only I were feeling better at the time:
So try to imagine all of that going on in my eyes and senses at the same time. That's not even close to what I saw, but you can see how overwhelming and impossible to describe it was.
I sweat profusely in those few minutes, and my amazing girlfriend brought some cold water out to poor on me, and so I started to feel much better quickly, as the breeze cooled my wet skin off immensely. The feeling of relief amplified by the pscilocybin still in my blood was amazing. I felt so thankful to have learned how uptight I was being, and that I should relax while also still taking a bit more care and a little less brash self-confidence with shrooms in the future. I usually tend to be a lot more careful than I was that day.
The amazing thing was, as I sat there outside trying to recover, I was aware that I hadn't thrown up the shrooms too quickly...I was still in for the ride. The peaked visuals were still there; as I looked down at the table and my hands on it, I got a sense of awe from the bright lights and energy patters I seemed to see underneath the surface. I felt like I was seeing somehow in Alex Grey-vision. But unfortunately, I couldn't sit around and just appreciate all this, because I was still distracted by what just happened to me, and trying to make sure I recover and feel better.
It was very fascinating. I reached the peak of the mushroom experience (and beyond) in under an hour, which usually takes me about 2-3 hours, and then might be pretty stable for the next hour or two, or occur one or two more times. But since I activated all the shroom chemicals at once, so rapidly (and threw up the rest) my trip was an intense peak, and then a 5 hour come down. The mental processes were still immensely trippy for the rest of the day, and my senses enhanced, but the visuals I usually maintain were not there after the 2nd hour. I kept wanting them to come back, but nevertheless I was thankful after throwing up so intensely that I could still have an enjoyable trip with my friends. The euphoria lasted the normal length, too. So basically I entered and exited full-blown tripland very quickly, and then experienced an enhanced, over-beautiful, trippy normal world for the rest of the day, if that makes any sort of sense.
I've asked other friends, who while not having as intense an experience as this, have agreed that throwing up on mushrooms makes you trip harder than you ever have.
So the bottom line is, you have no reason to fear throwing up on mushrooms, as long as you give in to it. It's a brief bit of a bad trip, but only as much as you let your fear make it, and if you keep your spirits up after that, you can thoroughly enjoy the rest of the trip--maybe even more than before.
But if you're just looking for a cheap way to experience the level 5 trip of DMT, please don't make yourself throw up on shrooms.
*Update* I found a solution to experiencing this level of craziness cheaply, without throwing up. It's called lemon tek, or Lemon Technique. Basically you grind up mushrooms finely, and let them soak for 5-10 minutes in lemon juice, then drink this and ingest the mushrooms. The acid in the juice releases the alkaloids in the mushrooms allowing them to be absorbed very quickly by your body. The result is you start tripping within 5-10 minutes, and you trip twice as hard as usual, but for only about 2-3 hours. Extreme express trip.
Peace
|
|
| lysergic bliss |
[07 Sep 2008|02:12am] |
|
So I dropped acid for the first time at 4:30 pm yesterday, thinking it would be over in 8-10 hours like shrooms, couldn't get to sleep at 5am, and went to work at 8am this morning without sleeping. End of story.
|
|
|
[06 Sep 2008|04:43pm] |
|
The key is to maintain awareness of awareness. Stay focused on reality and don't let it get out of sight. Always stay focused on the entire picture, and be aware that you are doing so, focusing on the study of the essence, reality.
|
|
| Here's how I see it: |
[17 Jul 2008|02:43am] |
|
God is, currently, and will remain, undefinable. For God is the term for that which is undefinable in the universe, including the universe itself. However, the nature of the universe is quite debatable, and here I will do that. I read recently that futurist and technologist Raymond Kurzweil, who predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of a world chess master by a computer, described the universe as "full of dumb matter and energy." I stand to argue the the entire universe is far from dumb and lifeless, but it is very much alive, beyond even intelligent design, the matter and energy that fills the universe is so intelligent that it is always timelessly in the moment redesigning and inventing itself.
From recent reflection, I learned that the universe is really a complex system of energies and patterns, and energy which sometimes poses as what we call matter, which is really just vessels to hold and transfer other energies. Even the concept of the systems themselves cannot be considered inorganic, because it is simply impossible to create something within the universe that doesn't fall completely into the pattern of the overlying system or does not use up the same materials and energies already available within the system. This brings to light the constant 20th-21st century pointless battle of organic vs. synthetic, natural vs. artificial in almost every product we encounter in the human market. This is all just foolery and marketing being used to make people stupid and make them think that somehow something humans made is different from something the Earth made without us. In fact, it is hard to describe what I'm saying without even using the word "naturally" to relate. But somehow it is not considered "natural" for a human to change matter into something new, as if it is now somehow "outside" of nature. Well last time I checked, we're still on planet Earth, and nobody has found a portal or wormhole leading out of the universe, so this coke I'm drinking is 100% pure natural fizzy drink made right here in the backyard of the Milky Way.
But more importantly, the point was every spec of matter is in fact a wonderfully unique and intelligent cloud of possibilities, and those possibilities of randomness and chaos exist because the matter itself is intelligent and may choose to behave one way or another, bond to this molecule or that, and that's why fortunately for us, the universe is full of diversity instead of being a self-same clump of solid matter or gaseous particles. That said, I agree somewhat with the rest of Kurzweil's view of the universe, which is that the matter and energy can become charged with intelligence, due to our evolutionary union with electronic technologies caused by our accelerating curved path towards what is called Singularity. Except that the universe is already intelligent like I said, so the only thing that is changing here is that the intelligence which was once more scattered and not under our control, will become more organized and share the same goals as all of humanity, together as one, in of course, Singularity. I'm not going to go into the moral issues of that, because it is pointless, as you'll see why.
The truth about the universe is, as always, paradoxical and two-fold. The universe is here for us to build into what some would call Heaven. We are constantly driving down the path of evolution to become more intelligent and use technologies to become more disease-resistant, fragile, and more connected, and, together with the drive of human nature to constantly transcend and achieve more than what we have, we are moving always to create a place where love, compassion, creativity, and prosperity can thrive increasingly.
But lets go back a second and examine this place we are in already, where we came from, and what was here before. In the Semitic Bible and John Milton's Paradise Lost, we learn the story of how Adam and Eve were tricked into eating the Fruit of Knowledge, thus increasing their awareness of the universe around them, but causing their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, or, Paradise. So this is where humanity is separated from the rest of living things, from animals, etc. Because we have what can be called knowledge, we create and shape the world around us. So what is knowledge? Remember always the paradoxical nature of the universe, for even the concept of knowledge goes both ways and is often construed.
Some say knowledge is the awareness of truth. Yet that is more akin to wisdom, as it cannot truly be passed down, and is infinitely more valuable. So knowledge in the case of humanity is a collection of concepts and consciousness about the workings of ourselves and the universe, which builds overtime by storing and passing it down to new generations. It seems that knowledge is a new type of energy that humans have a special capacity for, that was first invested in us by that Fruit in the Garden. And this energy is the same energy that causes us to never accept what we have as enough, and to constantly search for more unexplored territory and new knowledge and new frontiers and to create new things and make the world a better place in our eyes. It is the beautiful drive within human nature that makes our entire history. And yet, it was Original Sin.
So what of the world before knowledge, and what were humans before we suddenly accelerated our evolution onto an exponential curve beyond the rest of the organisms on Earth? What was this place before we became aware of our own selves?
The Universe was in fine working order without our help. The entire planet and even the endless space and stars around it was beautiful and perfect; it was Paradise. Notice how all the animals in the world pay no mind to war, conquest, development, or rapid discoveries of technology and control. They are content to live their lives and evolve and change as the rest of the universe sees fit. And so were we, before the energy of knowledge came along. So when we suddenly were removed from the great endless timeless pattern of life, were lifted out and above to become aware of ourselves and our nakedness and our surroundings, we became delusioned and disconnected. We were aware of our individuality and lost sight of the ongoing directive of life around us, and so we lost sight of Heaven, paradise, Singularity, even, which we were already a part of.
This is how Paradise was lost. This is how we and the angels fell to Earth, reality, whatever you want to call it, where we are now, struggling out our days. We lost Paradise in the mind. The Heaven we came from was transcendent high above us in spirit. That is why spiritual moments are very fulfilling in that the entire world seems more real and beautiful and good and god-like. Spirituality connects those mystical people with a higher mind, allowing them to let go of the angst and struggles of today to just accept the beauty around them, and share in compassion. We return to that simple, empty state of mind, where the human race pales in importance next to the existence of the whole beautiful world and all life.
So was it a bad thing? Was it a sin, this new energy? Not at all. It certainly widens the spectrum, broadens the horizons of possibility and increases the beauty in the universe. The element of chaos and imperfection is apparent everywhere in the cosmos, and the more complex and diverse, the more wonderous and perfect it all is. Besides, change is always good and can be viewed as progress. So Kurzweil is wrong, the universe was already intelligent, not dumb. But he was right, we will change it forever and increase its overall intelligence. Or is it really us? Is it all part of the pattern of the larger systems in play? Down our road of evolution and technological unification, we may reach the Singularity once more, where we will thrive spiritually as one with the rest of the energy in the universe.
And that is where you start to see the grey non-existent line between the organic and inorganic. Because if we reach spiritual singularity through machines, and all of this is part of the pattern of the overlying system, and that system exists within a greater system of even more systems, where does this ongoing automation end? Where did it start, and how? and by who? Is it all empty machines designing and creating it all? Once again, God is the unexplainable, the nothingness in between. We are all one and creating the world around us together, particle by particle, and that is God enough for me.
|
|
| Natural Philosopher |
[17 Jun 2008|04:30am] |
|
The biggest fallacy in the history of human knowledge was the separation of priests from scientists with the creation of organized religion. How preposterous an assumption that the science of the physical properties of the universe have no connection with the spiritual essence of life!
|
|
|
[07 Jun 2008|09:15pm] |
|
It's difficult being a crazy person when you're aware of it.
|
|
|
[29 May 2008|01:57am] |
|
I've just noticed I only seem to write while I'm reading a lot. Or when I don't sleep. Lately I haven't been reading anything.
|
|
| Mephistopheles |
[01 May 2008|03:01am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
tired |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Mikesnack" by Lotus |
] |
Have I been developing a Faust complex? And who, or what, then, is my Mephistopheles? Faustus' alchemical quest appears innocent and noble in my mind. The true sacrifice to benefit the education of ignorant Mankind. So what will come of this madness?
|
|
| I am the Borg. |
[25 Apr 2008|01:07am] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Pnuma Trio - ** Pnuma Trio ** 1-20-07 |
] |
I may have just realized something detrimental about my psyche. It's possible I may have emerged from all of my recent ego-loss revelations more and more confused about the nature of the self on some subconscious level, once my ego was restored. Basically what I'm saying is that after experiencing a sense of one-ness with everything, I may have started to treat all those around me--the rest of humanity--as a part of my Self; and all of the abstract areas within me and my mind, and within the realm of digital dataspace, these I treat as the outside world, the realm of life. I might have it backwards.
Anyways, a thought:
We must never make the mistake of fearing that we are becoming slaves to or dependent on our technology, nor must we try to avoid this by seeking the alternative of making sure technology and humanity stay irrevocably separate--and by that I mean by creating artificial intelligence. Both perceptions as a zeitgeist in our current stages of evolution would end in disaster. It is my belief that we must all eventually come to understand that technology is an essential part of our evolution, as it has been since we became the first animals to use fire. The technology is not taking over our humanity; it is merging with it. It already has. People who are afraid of the computers and the information age have a block against it which makes them slow to learn and futile at retaining any skill at using them. This is because they think of them as complex machines that are outside of their life or human psyche: It is the computer that sends the message via email, because I instructed it to. But the ones who are adapted to the modern age, especially those that are young, find it natural, because when they use a machine, it is simply an extension of them into the world, no more, and the tasks they accomplish with them are normal ones: I send the email, because I choose to. It is the mentality of an internal locus of control.
So we must be prepared for the next step, when the technology begins to make its way no longer on our exterior life and society, but into our biology and consciousness. It's not a leap at all, its just an illusory, material change in technology that is already a part of our lives and minds. We all already spend hours every week thinking about whats going on with our email, facebooks, blogs, online stock portfolios, text messages, etc. If the technology was inside our bodies, and we took out the physical presence of a computer tower and a monitor, then we could still manage our digital lives the same way, although maybe more efficiently, and without having to sit in front of a screen.
Every US citizen already has antibodies for polio or chicken pox floating around in our bloodstream--antibodies that we researched and engineered. These are not living things in any scientific sense, and they are not a part of our organic bodies--yet we pay them no thought, and we don't fear that we are too dependent on them like they're some kind of separate entity. So our lives will change, but unless allow it to, human nature need not. We will still love, create, think, be individual, and social, just like we always did. If anything, these changes will make us more human, as we will further make ourselves unique and separate from all other living things on this planet. If people are so afraid that we will let machines and technology do our work and thinking for us, then lets us stop and look back at how long we've relied on the wheel for travel, or paper and ink to keep records of our memories intact over the centuries. The changes may be occurring more rapidly now than ever, but time isn't a constant measurable dimension. These developments are only a small part of our greater evolution as intelligent life.
Resistance is futile.
|
|
| Things within things within things |
[17 Apr 2008|07:16am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
amused |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Shpongle - Nothing Lasts...But Nothing Is Lost |
] |
You know those times when someone says something that makes you wrong, in a way, and you can't argue with it--and then a few hours later you think of the perfect answer that proves you right again? Yeah, the thing is, I get those a lot, and what's interesting is: I don't like to prove people 100% wrong. My favorite result of arguing is when I turn something that they said into support for my ideation, so that I'm really just expanding their perception to allow more possibilities in.
Before I waste more time rambling about human nothings, here's the point:
I was commenting to a friend earlier that I had realized that it's not so much the specific drugs that I'm interested in, whether they be mushrooms, or DMT, or LSD, or even the experience to be had from them. Instead, I find myself using these drugs because I want to build upon my beliefs, which currently hold that there are other layers to the universe and reality, which we cannot possibly detect normally, or even interface with technology, but that we can perceive temporarily with the use of these drugs--mechanisms far more advanced than anything we can construct or devise. So she naturally responded with the most rational approach, saying that it has nothing really to do with the universe, its just what's in your mind that you perceive. It's just perception and consciousness. I would never disregard that as a distinct and likely possibility, but I'm no scientist to mechanically cut out everything else with Occam's Razor. Occam would never have been able to find a more suitable beginning to the universe than the unlikely Big Bang scenario. Then again, he did leave room for things unprovable, yet still necessary.
After this conversation, I thought back and remembered that I had known about the holographic nature of the universe from studying Torah. This means that like a hologram, each part is an exact representation of the whole. This can be seen in things like the human body: all we are is DNA at the center of every cell, the exact same molecule replicated billions of times. Scientists now apply fractal mathematics to the universe and see its organized pattern everywhere. So I came to the conclusion that this would mean--especially in my belief system--that even if the experience of these psychedelics were all just in the mind, it would be the same as if it were other dimensions I was physically exploring. To know the mind would be to know all of reality.
Now I don't seek to have perfect knowledge of reality, but if I got just a glimpse, I would be content--since once again, the part represents the whole. Now any open-minded techno-hippie today should already believe in the two concepts of a holographic universe, and one in which all things are connected and interrelated, and all events effect all others. Frankly I don't believe in physical differences; I do believe separate dimensions are illusory, and all the layers occupy the same space. Nothing is really "outside" the universe, we're already touching and interacting. We just aren't aware of it, and this is what I seek to change, even for a moment.
Some people seek knowledge, or power, or beauty, or whatever. Each person's quest is endless, until they settle on being content with love--which is infinite. I'm starting to think my hunger is for wonder. Every thing I believe in or try to attain results in a glorious moment of novelty and amazement. First times are the best: I long for the ability to see further and further past the limits of what currently exists in our visible universe. Ego, consciousness, and memory are what trap us here in discontented lives. When they say "ignorance is bliss", it could mean many things. But what if nirvana would be a state of consciouness without ego or memory--no sense of time, just an everlasting moment of surprise and wonder at the newness of all things. When we notice time pass, events start to fade, simply because the longer they are true, the less we can actually interact with the fact.
I've started to truly feel the daunting smallness of our presence in the universe and all things. I feel humbled, simply using my imagination to look at the possibilities. To me, there is no difference between possibilities and reality. I remember once saying, during "The Trip", that the only thing that doesn't exist is nonexistence. This is very much like dividing by 0, in the metaphysical sense. I believe in limitless possibilities, endless layers of reality, there is something outside and encompassing every boundary.
I feel there is a tendency towards a contemporary world view in which the universe has some "edge" however far, beyond which there is nothing but God, or Heaven, or nothing. So in this view, all that exists is within these borders. Just beyond the last dying quasar, a trillion light years away, there is an invisible wall. Now, even the humble scientist who knows that we only know a small part of what actually exists within these borders, would feel comforted by the limit placed on his world by this border. Even now, scientists run their numbers, trying to find the "unifying theory" of math, science, and everything. This is all just the desperate nature of humanity to have some sense of control over things. If Knowledge is Power, then our power certainly stretches, albeit thinly and with many holes, to the farthest star we can detect on radio telescope. To some this is a comforting thought, as it allows them to continue believing that we are the highest form of life, chosen by a thinking God to serve in this life and reap the benefits of Heaven.
The truth is the universe is infinite in all directions, and our seemingly vast cosmic bubble with all its stars and galaxies, is certainly the size of an atom to some other race of beings. Although, size is really only an illusion, and meaningless. When you start to visualize your own planet, galaxy, the entire known universe, as being essentially 1 compared to infinity, the feeling is immense.
Any system we ever devise to explain things will always only limit it and make it finite. Language is far to one-dimensional to communicate the concepts of infinity. While String Theory is a beautiful attempt to explain things mathematically, it will only ever be part of the picture, because the more complex something is, the more unique it is, and the more unique it is, the less like everything else it is. I remember once describing a concert experience I had as "intense calm". This goes back to the paradoxical nature of everything. This is very evident in the image of a fractal. It seems very very complex, with all its offshoots and intricate spirals until you fully understand that each one of those, when isolated, is the same is the picture you're looking at to begin with. So the perfect way to describe the universe then, would be "Complex Simplicity" or "Simple Complexity".
There needs to be a word that combines the terms complex, simple, and infinity in order to clearly convey this meaning. I think that this really is the meaning of God. God, to some religions, is treated as a verb. The book God Is a Verb accurately describes how Judaism looks at God for the perfect way to live a good life. In a way, this is true: God is everything, interconnected, and so all patterns and possibilities have an organized flow to them. You have free will, but things work the way they do because of the way everything interacts with itself.
God really is all parts of speech, since God encompasses everything. God cannot be defined, and, while I don't agree with religious statements of any kind, a true or good religion should find it a sacrilege for one to define, explain, or in any way limit God. I suppose this is the true reason why Orthodox Jews do not verbalize any name of God. Even Christians confusingly refer to God as three separate entities. All they are really doing of course, is on one hand, showing that God is all things physical, metaphysical, and spiritual, while on the other, trying to separate these aspects from one another.
I think the concept of God has been completely obscured, destructed, and by all means defiled for the use of power. In order to harness religious power for himself, Man has needed to do to this concept what he does best: limit it. Now, with all the contending forces and influences on the minds of modern individuals, even the most intellectual and well-equipped human will be confused by these terms of what God is. Some people understand the predicament, and so embark on a search to purify this concept and discover its true essence by studying religions and finding the best idea from all of them. However, this leads to folly, as the more one studies the sources available to us now, the more one limits and confuses his understanding of the pure concept of God. This should be obvious from all the reasoning above, but I will make it clear: All these sources are written in human language, which limits, and of course, each individual writing a source will limit it in a different way, since the language always reflects the unique and imperfect individual speaking it. And of course, all the sources available to us now have been written in the last few thousand years, when people have been using God for power through the tool of religion. When you think about it, we might have been better off without language or civilization, as far as understanding God is concerned.
I've come to the decision to simply agree with most of my trusted and enlightened companions when they refer to God in some way, because I understand that we've come as close as possible to agreeing on language that describes God, so in all likelihood we see God in the same way, despite not being able to communicate it identically.
Here is the most true way for humans to describe God with our limited language, limiting God as little as possible: God is infinite, perfect, paradoxical, balanced, and beyond all human capacity to understand more than this. If two people were to agree on this, and believe nothing else, then they share the same image of God. I see no other way to truly agree on the concept of God.
Today we have many fallacies about God which stem from the power devices of Man, and of course limit God into something imperfect. Among the most common is anthropomorphizing God, in any way. Most of the problem with the language of religion, is not that the ideas are wrong, but that they lead to too many interpretations. Most people that believe in God today think of God as a "He" (some probably think of God as "She" out of spite). This is among the basest limitations I can imagine in any sense. If taken literally, it not only means that God has some sort of finite physical body, it also excludes half or some of all attributes of life, as we assign all thoughts as being either masculine, feminine, or neutral. If taken metaphorically, as in, God is male in the sense that He injected life into the void of the universe as man injects sperm into the womb, that separates God from the rest of reality as well, creating something that is "not God" or not part of God's totality. Logically this is impossible, given that God is infinite in all senses, so everything is a part of God.
God is anthropomorphized in other ways as well, like simply ascribing to God direct actions such as speech. I think it is not entirely false to say that God has a message. However, a simple statement such as "God said to Abraham" leads people to imagine this literally: a voice speaking words to a man, because an individual being made a conscious decision to do so. I think it would be more accurate to interpret this as saying that Abraham, in a prophetic moment, learned something true and divine by expanding his awareness to detect a part of the infinite pattern of life, and thus determined his course of action. This statement can be expanded to include a scientific or logical discovery, such as the benefits of circumcision. Now I'm not denying the possibility that a disembodied voice of some being actually did speak to Abraham directly--that's no weirder than the self-dribbling basketball machine elves lurking outside the universe waiting for some kid to take DMT. But the idea that this voice came from something like a person, leads to worse things. Does this person have feelings? Does this person have needs and wants? What created this person? All these questions contradict the perfectness of God.
So in effect, I believe God is not a thinking entity. Thought operates in time, and is linear, the most limited of all patterns. Also, God certainly cannot be ascribed human emotions, nor does God make decisions in the moment or based on any action. These are all misguided ideas that we grow up with and are stuck with, because as far back as the beginnings of Christianity, major religions have referred to God as a King, or Lord. Worship, as seen in religious services today, applies mostly to the idea of this King of the Universe, or the Savior, or some entity that exerts will into the events of the world. God is the entire universe, and it should be enough to worship everything.
Here is where control comes into the issue: If a Christian told me that I would be saved if I believed in Jesus, I would agree, and have no problem saying that I already believe in Jesus, because Jesus is just the same as God, is he not? But of course a Christian who didn't share my thoughts on the subject would probably be conditioned to believe in a specific view of a God with specific attributes, and unless it was clear we were agreeing about a specific literal historical figure named Jesus who was born as the messiah for all humanity, well, then according to his religion I'm still a lost soul. They want you to go by their book, because its ideas give power to the Church.
I have no need to make people change their beliefs if they're happy with them, and we can all get along. But yes, if someone believes that God is a person who created me and wants me to do certain things in life because they have a secret plan, then in my not-so-humble opinion, that someone does not actually believe in God.
Even atheists and agnostics don't understand the concept of God. Agnostics, naturally, are just confused because they can't figure out the purest concept of God. Atheists are just misguided:
These scientists that set out to prove that religion is false because God didn't cause the Ten Plagues of Passover in Egypt, and that Nature or physics in the universe did, well they're right, and they're wrong. They were led to believe that God is this giant man in the sky that causes miracles such as locusts or frogs or tidal waves or whatever, by pushing a button on a control panel, or having some old man wave a stick for him or something. And of course, this was never corrected because some people actually believe some of these things. But if they were to understand that by God it is just meant the universe itself as an interconnected organic machine, they would see that of course God caused these things. Besides, this is a weak logical argument, as claiming physics over God as the cause of something doesn't work unless you've already disproved the existence of God, which can't be done. Because, who set up the laws of physics or nature in the first place? Maybe not a bearded man in the sky, but some organized force did. That's God.
So maybe atheists believe in God more than anyone else. If we're talking about my idea of God here, which we are, then you can't escape believing in God, no matter what. Even if you think that everything you see and do every day is really just going on inside someone's head or dreams or in a book, well, that could be true. Those things to me, are absolutely 100% real.
There is also the idea that God is somehow in control. This idea that once again leads to things like God making decisions and spontaneously intervening in our lives, or consciously choosing to organize the patterns and write the laws of physics. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, among others, believed that God's only act was the creation of the universe we live in, because to assume God is manipulating or intervening the actions within would only evidence some imperfection in God's creation. This is along my current lines of thinking, but they were somewhat unimaginative, I think. In this discussion when I refer to the "universe" I am referring to all things in existence, reality in its totality, and also to God in its infiniteness. So our present known universal bubble, with its laws of physics that we assume permanent and absolute, was in fact created within the larger scope of infinity, within another layer of reality, which already existed. There was no "beginning" to reality. There was always something there, even if it could only be called God (as really, it can only be called now).
Control is an utter meaningless concept. We all know when we look deep inside, that we have made the decisions we are going to make, because of who we are and what we believe. Our purpose here is to understand those choices and enjoy them if we can. Yes, you can pray and hope that God will hear it and do something about it in return. Actually, one way or another, God does hear and react to every prayer. Because every action influences everything else in all of existence for all eternity, forward and backwards in time. Power is an illusion where one action coincides with another at the same time, so one induces that the first action directly caused the second action. There are many more factors involved, infinite in fact, since every single action influences every other.
So maybe the concept of God is only as important as we make it. It's just a concept. We're here in this reality whether we like it or not, and nothing is going to change that. There really is no absolute truth about anything. Within this infinity there is endless paradox, because that's just the essence of it all. You can see that clearly if you look for it in anything, every day. Instead of trying to decided whether or not a certain religion is true, or whether or not God is a certain way, we should all be listening to the advice about living here, in this world, that all these religions has to offer. Because knowledge is only temporary, and more importantly, so is your time as a human being. So before you move on to become a cat, or a sofa, or a basketball or elf or whatever's next, don't forget to enjoy everyone around you here. We look for other ways to explain it or see it, sadly. Our quest to make life longer, is just our desperation to end the constant change. Humanity and all conscious life longs for permanence. But it all comes down to what William Blake said: "Nothing lasts...but nothing is lost."
|
|
|
[08 Apr 2008|05:58am] |
|
As crazy as it sounds, I think I'd like to conduct a study of the mythology of an ancient race of Elves on earth that Tolkein studied in the Norse and Celtic traditions and evoked with such imagery in his masterpiece of fantasy, Lord of the Rings, linking it to the stoned-ape theory of evolution which Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis proposed. This theory describes how as the proto-human apes emerged from the jungles of pre-history, their diets changed to include a regular amount of the psilocybin mushrooms that would be readily available to them from manure sources while they nomadically followed herds of cattle. This psilocybin sustained in humans a blissful orgiastic society for several thousand years of no history, which McKenna attributes as the source of the Garden of Eden myth. The mushroom diet also would heighten the visual acuteness and sense of color of humans beyond what is evolutionarily necessary, and produce the glossolalia and synesthesia which would lead to the development of language. Eventually, climates changed, especially in Africa where our primate predecessors originated, and the mushroom became less abundant as the weather became drier.
It is my hunch that, if McKenna's theory were true, it might correspond with the source of the Elf myth in many archaic cultures. One note in McKenna's book, True Hallucinations, caused this connection to occur to me: During the extended MAOI-induced cognitive hallucination which he shared with his brother in the Amazon over the course of two weeks, as a result of an experiment involving psilocybin mushrooms and the MAO inhibiting ayahuasca, Terence experienced a period of many days where he felt no need for sleep, nor did he sleep during that time. While anyone who's had psilocybin in their system knows this feeling for a short while, his extended feeling of timelessness and peaceful wakefulness reminded me of that trait of Tolkein's Elves; some said they needed not actual sleep to regain their strength and spirit. Their joy of the nature around them kept them in a rested state, and a short period of waking dreams or daydreams was enough to refresh them every day. Is it possible that, if in fact humanity was in a beautiful state of psilocybin-induced bliss for thousands of years, living in an empire of paradise and equality, that the later humans who would live in a time after the abundance of mushrooms faded away would remember those beautiful creatures as Elf-like and mysterious? Some blending of human reality and magical fantasy caused this image to exist solidly in our archetypes.
More to come on this later.
Also, more musings on the nature of the mushroom and its trip:
Another thing I noticed in McKenna's story of his sleepless week of cognitive dreamlike hallucination: He mentioned that as time progressed and he remained certain that he were living in eternity, he perceived the world around him as becoming more perfect in his mind, and symmetrical. His story of the events during that week progressed with a poetic order, and he observed the strangeness of this order and symmetry through time. I too, have experienced in my journey to that layer of reality, a level of perfection and symmetry and order, which I assume to be a common effect of the mushroom on the mind. McKenna's description made it as if in his perception, something sentient or alive were actually trying to actively change reality around him into this orderliness and perfection. My speculation is, what if the mushroom actually is this manifestation of some intelligence from a higher dimension, and when it enters into your blood and your mind, it tries to show you what this world would look like if it existed there instead of here. What is the mind and the body? What is the spirit and consciousness? These unanswered questions will remain so forever. But perhaps part of us actually travels somewhere on these trips. It travels not through our 3d space, but away from this regular physical reality and into some other layer of the cake.
Enough of this. Infinity is inexpressible.
|
|
| THE Trip |
[07 Apr 2008|04:04am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
enlightened |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"It's All Clear to Me Now" by Lotus |
] |
This is a report of my experience tripping on mushrooms for the fifth time.
I have begun to call this last shroom trip, “The” Trip. Being the fifth time I’ve ever tripped, over the course of 6 months, it was as if I was doing the drug for the first time. It was like a different drug, as if all the other trips didn’t count. This was definitely due to all of three major factors: The extreme potency of this particular batch of mushrooms (I am in the belief they are from a strain aficionados call Reality Benders), the fact that the trip’s setting, the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University on an empty Friday, was so unfamiliar to me, and the fact that this was the first time I tripped without a sitter, and with only one person, my beloved girlfriend, Camille.
This was the best and also most intense of all of my shroom trips, and it met and exceeded every desire I had ever hoped to experience on mushrooms. It was so different and separate from my other trips because for the first time, I couldn’t pass off the things I was seeing as effects and visuals caused by a drug; I was firmly of the belief that either reality had actually changed or I was seeing reality as it had always been.
I drove up from Miami to Ft. Myers on that Friday at noon to meet my girlfriend and have the shroom trip. It turned out to be at first a little bit of a cloudy afternoon, but we went and found a nice grassy spot under a tree by the lake on the Everglades campus anyways. Having been warned to eat less than 1/8 an ounce of these particular shrooms, we each started with half-eighth of finely chopped shrooms in a tuna sandwich and a chicken salad wrap. Camille didn’t really enjoy the tuna sandwich, saying it didn’t really mask the taste or texture very well, but I personally recommend a chicken salad sandwich like the wrap I had made, as the mushrooms were barely noticeable and it was delicious.
At any rate, we finished every bite, and settled in to listen to some Debussy on my portable speakers and meditate. At this point the extreme potency of these shrooms started becoming apparent. We very quickly felt the first effects of the mushrooms—within 10 minutes we both felt the common tingling sensations and a similar high. Another 10 minutes and we had returned from a quick walk to a nearby bathroom back to our picnic area, and were starting to feel the intensity of it all. This is where I would make my first important assumptions about what I learned on this trip.
As we sat there, the intensity continued to rise, but the disorientation and slight nausea of the shrooms were giving me a bad vibe and uncomfortable disorientation that I trusted from previous experience would dissipate very soon. However, the discomfort continued to rise and I found myself turning in on an intense introspection, which is not the right direction to take to enjoy shrooms. At this point, I was in the midst of a not uncommon phase of the shroom trip that my friends and I have started to refer to as “The Stacking”. This is a stage that occurs, not every time but occasionally, usually earlier on in one’s shroom trip, where the mind seems to become sticky or choppy, and every thought leaves an afterimage that stacks above the last, creating an uncomfortable clutter in the mind. This also feels like every time you try to internalize a thought it gets chopped or deleted before you can finish it. I had changed the music from Debussy a bit too soon; I chose upbeat music that would be better suited for the later blissful and euphoric stages of the trip, and listening to Bassnectar now was just a little too intense.
It was Camille who, feeling similar discomfort, made me realize this important assumption about the shroom tripping process. She noticed my tension while I actually started to pull into a fetal position on the ground, and discouraged me from pulling so into myself and not focusing on what was around me. She finally solved our feelings of discomfort by the end of the hour when she made me try changing positions and looking at different things to observe instead of pulling in. When she made me turn in the opposite direction and face across the lake, we started to feel our tension lighten, and right when we had finally relaxed, something I did made us both chuckle, and this seemed to free our spirits and connect us with joy so that as one, we broke through to the other side of the dimensional barrier and it felt like we were finally there. This was the true beginning to the mushroom trip. Everything before had just been a challenging digestion.
As quickly as it had come, although I never noticed it happening, all feelings of intensity and discomfort were gone and the trippiness of it all became the focus. We were smiling, laughing, and entering a very euphoric state, and the immensely pleasing visuals began to take form. Now, the assumption I have made is that every shroom trip experience takes you to a metaphysical gateway in the mind or spirit, a barrier of the psyche between the layer of reality we commonly experience, and this deeper one. So, the stronger the mushrooms, the thicker the barrier between the worlds, and the harder the push it is to break through it. Where I was as far as my social energy state during the first hour when Camille and I were tense and overexcited was stuck in between the barrier of both states of consciousness, or stuck between dimensions if you will. It seems we could only break through this time if we opened our minds to each other and went together, thus activating the true happy shroom trip and leaving the lower perception of reality completely.
Coincidentally during this moment of opening up, although I was not aware of it till later, the cloudy skies had cleared up into a beautiful open blue sky with white clouds and bright sun. This rise in light certainly did its part to make the surroundings more beautiful in magnificent light and brighten our spirits with energy. At this point things started changing from our normal perception drastically, and we’ve confirmed for the most part that our visions at the time were the same, as we were very connected from then on. The tall swamp pine trees, we noticed, started all moving and swaying around in a very animated dance like way. It was very precise and repetitive, and this greatly pleased my senses and added to the euphoria I was starting to feel.
It was like I had suddenly become one with the entire universe and could feel it all as if it were the parts of my infinite body, all in harmony and unison, and the treetops were dancing to express my joy. I FELT it. This was very strange and powerful, as my feelings began to grow. My visual perception of my environment and of reality in general, began to change into a very clear and simple one, yet one very powerful and complex. Words come to mind to describe my senses at those early stages, such as digital, liquid, energy, and even computer-animated. The way those trees were moving seemed unreal, yet there it was.
One thing that I had said powerfully different about this trip was that the things I saw and experienced didn’t seem to fit into the realm of “hallucinations”. The term “visuals” just didn’t seem to encompass what was happening this time. Going into my first trip, I had heard many descriptions from friends who’d had powerful experiences, such as seeing plants morph back and forth through their birth-death cycle, seeing clouds forming faces and moving like kaleidoscopes, etc. And meanwhile, my first four trips, while all very powerful cognitive and emotional experiences of the mind and senses, all contained visuals that like I said, I could for the most part ascribe to the effects of a drug. These included seeing still photos of space and of artwork become briefly animated, seeing Camille draw artwork that would also temporarily become animated, or seeing objects distort slightly in size or position, only to return soon after. All those glimpses were extremely captivating and enjoyable, but seemed to lack meaning, and would usually occur for a fleeting period later on in most of my trips (not to say I don’t still think all of those trips were crazy and amazing to this day).
Now I was already clearly seeing everything around me dancing with living spiritual energy by the time less than an hour and a half had passed, and it wasn’t fading away or stopping once until I came down 6 hours later. In fact, after this began, all of visual reality seemed to lose its solidity in my senses. Solid, liquid, and gas seemed to lose meaning, as I felt one with the world around me, and everything seemed to be made of pure energy, to be shaped by the active will of God and all living things together in unity. Change was constant and nothing was necessarily static or constant from one moment to the next.
The next few visuals I experienced were all lovely and beautiful to the psychedelic mind. All of the repeated patterns started emerging in the shapes of everything around me. The fractals were more evident and prevalent in everything than ever before. Also, the visual patterns of the long grass we were sitting in and the pine needles all around would often warp my vision into very mechanical perfect zigzags. The sense of aesthetic perfection in everything kept rising until I began to see symmetry everywhere, from our faces, to the trees, and even the sky. Looking at the sky triggered an overwhelming sense of wonder and oneness, and for a time it seemed that all the clouds had been cut as if from the same cookie cutter. I began to truly believe that M.C. Escher himself were a god or higher being, and that he was actively painting us on his canvas right then, in one of his perfect tessellations. This lasted for a time, until the constant change took over again, and lying helplessly and rapturously on my back with Camille in the grass, I saw other patterns; more symmetry, faces and shapes emerging from the clouds, and mirrored effects like the sky was a giant kaleidoscope.
Camille eventually led me on a few adventures to walk around and inspect the surrounding buildings, one of which happened to be an art building, filled with exciting stimuli for my ever distorted mind. Every single moment and event was changing and exciting. When we got to the bathrooms of the arts complex, my euphoria was still plateauing, and the unfamiliarity of a school that wasn’t my own wasn’t even on my mind. Being in an interior for the first time in 2 hours was a very rich and complex experience, and stimulated my perception immensely after being in the expansive sunlit day. While in the bathroom alone (I’ve always found bathrooms to be the most interesting places while tripping, don’t ask me why) I became extremely amused, and started laughing. Nothing about the dimensions of the place was staying the same. At this point, my mind and focus were very clear, although lacking any sense of ego, but to me it seemed that the distance from the sinks in the bathroom to the stalls had doubled between my walk in, and my walk out. Also, on my way in, I swear I saw only one or two sinks, and when I returned there were four. The walls were certainly moving, and my reflection in the mirror was enticing. Meeting Camille out in the hall once more, she wondered what had taken me so long, and was amused I guess by the similarity and strangeness of the experience. Voices from some theatre workshop down the hall were drifting in, and seemed artificial, as did really everything around me at that point. I could certainly relate to Alice, or any other adventurer or psychonaut who has tried to describe the trip to Wonderland.
We further amused ourselves by reading aloud and laughing hysterically at the many different artistic and literary flyers on the walls in this hall. One had some kind of rhyme about Tchaikovsky that was especially amusing and trippy (No wonder people say "Gesundheit!" when you say "Tchaikovsky"!). Anyways, we continued our exploration of the constructs around us, and the experience still continued to intensify and accelerate. I wondered if the logic and sense of reality would continue its dismantling forever, or would we someday return to what had previously been called normalcy? Time seemed to have no meaning, since there was no difference anymore between what was supposedly real and what not, so how could I trust that the sun would still spin regularly around the earth? But of course, I had forgotten it was, in fact, the other way around.
We arrived at a curious empty room with glass walls and windows to the outside, and decided to walk upstairs to get a better view to investigate it. But we were held up in the stairwell. Many people have noticed that perception of sound is already very echoey while shrooming, and this stairwell certainly amplified that exponentially. It was the kind with one floor of stairs halved into two flights, and it had stark white/grey concrete painted walls, and metal railings. The sound was so unreal here, that we were mystified, and sat down by the door on the top of the stairwell, contrasting the silence and the amplified sounds. I thumped a rhythm that reverberated through the entire metal railing, while Camille documented the incident on video with her digital camera. The rhythms and the sounds were keeping me speechless and in a trance, because it caused disorienting distortions in my perception of time. The most shocking thing is, that upon viewing the unedited video of that moment later, the quality of the sounds on the recording did falter and distort temporally and then return to normal for a brief moment. It excites me dangerously close to claiming that here is factual evidence that what we experienced was real, but I will abstain from claiming anything that far-fetched.
We finally left the stairwell after a few minutes, and sat in some sofas in the mezzanine upper-level of this building. This was definitely the most intense moment, cognitively, of the entire experience, as I delved inward and my sense of self evaporated completely for half an hour, making me wonder if I were really just an imaginary consciousness in someone’s dream, or if I was in the mind of an insane person, not actually experiencing anything real my whole life but living as a dream figure on the inside of his imagination. The room and building around me swirled in my eyes and lost form, and I assumed it was really just an illusion to begin with, only held together by our belief in it, or by a more complex, self-sentient karmic energy which only the Buddhist monks fully understand. I pondered with my feelings over the meaning of a sense of control, and decided that it was only an illusion caused by isolating one’s ego from the rest of reality into one individual point of view which thinks it is making decisions.
The fractal patterns from before had also taken effect of my mental processes, and I felt as if the shape of reality was some multi-layered multi-dimensional infinite fractal. It felt like my mind was a complex replication of many other minds within a single consciousness, and that within my reality were many other replications of itself, within every particle and spiral center of each fractal. Infinity went on in every direction, and I could feel the existence of other spatial dimensions beyond the 3 we know. It was all very complex and I don’t think I did a good job just now conveying the feeling of it all in words. Our brains and bodies are not meant to perceive of such things, and our language has no means of expressing them.
We continued our walk for an hour or so more, and all the while, the trees continued their bewildering dance, and stood out as one of the most interesting things in our environment. Meanwhile, the sun set, and we gathered our things and made our way to a long boardwalk in the swamp which connected the area we were in to the parking lot. In the center of the stretch of boardwalk, immersed in the tall pines, there is a bench built into it, with lights all around it. Here we tripped out some more, and recollected parts of our day, still not really out of the trip yet, and still euphoric. The beautiful moon rose, and Camille recalled an amazing thing she had experienced alone the night before.
She was walking over the boardwalk to her car after class, and a huge owl the likes of which she’d never seen flew over her through the trees, making a wonderful and eerie hoot. Camille is obsessed with birds, and loves things like this, so of course she was very excited. A short while later, the most unexpected thing happened, but of course, not one, but TWO of the great birds appeared out of nowhere from the trees, and settled into a branch high above us, making their sound so we could watch them in awe. As if the day didn’t have enough strange occurrences, here was one more. Still deep in the effects of the drug, I wondered to myself if we had simply caused this strange thing to happen with a subconscious decision in our collective mind, like all the other shared experiences that day. They flew off and left us pensive, but blissful and content with our magical day. We wondered what would happen next.
The trip dispelled fairly quickly after that, though I didn’t really notice the change until a while after it had passed, and we were back to normal. We spent the rest of the night with some close friends, and then went to sleep.
This trip, more than any other I have experienced, changed the way I will experience the rest of my life. I don’t think I will stop thinking about some of the things it made my mind believe, and I think I am more aware and open to the possibilities of what this great contraption of reality really is now. Uncertainty is still paramount, but I can say that the magic and insight I experienced that day was limitless and eternal, and it went beyond satisfying my desires and curiosities about shrooms. My eagerness to plan the next trip has abated somewhat from my previous trips, now that I have reached this level. I’m still excited for the next potential journey to that realm, but the things I took back with me this time are enough to keep me content even if that is not for a long while.
I suppose I am a relatively inexperienced psychonaut, but no one can read minds or memories, so there’s no way to ever know for sure whether this experience was the most extreme type or not, nor is there really any way to measure such qualities. I believe the possibilities are limitless, and extreme trips are incomparable. But this was the most extreme I have ever experienced, and, while I might be surprised next time, I don’t think I could conceive of a more intense dismantling of reality on this particular drug. It may require trying acid or DMT to find anything more startling, or maybe not. Either way, I am firmly against doing anything in excess, so I don’t think I could benefit at all from trying a higher dose of mushrooms. I’ve taken between an eighth and half-eighth every time, and I’ve never had a bad trip. I don’t see the point of every changing the effective dose. I certainly feel very fortunate to be blessed with such an amazing chemistry as to be compatible in such a way with a drug that will cause so much joy.
Ultimately, I would call this experience the most successful I’ve had in my life. I’ve always said I wanted to explore to the very edges of the universe. I feel as if I’ve done that, yet at the same time I believe in a way there are none. Beyond the edge is just more.
|
|
| The Witching Hour |
[03 Mar 2008|03:57am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
wired |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
STS9 |
] |
I am haunted by a wicked energy to be up so late. I believe a few nights ago some transdimensional energetic being started trying to possess my body, but somehow, perhaps through intervention of malachi, seraph, or some otherwise feline beings, I've been managing to fight it off. This revelation came to me in a vivid dream in the dead of the night, brimming with lucidity, which I later remembered through a flashback, just as vivid. I am driven to accelerate my search for purpose and growth, and thriving at all hours, but especially night, as I seem to when my feeling of freeness returns to me.
Meanwhile, I uncovered some relics of history, artifacts of music which inspire me beyond anything else to date:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RmPbzj2_mA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-d07YyoNI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEOaxNkAXNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EhTJXpOfuA
|
|
| Creation=mistake |
[22 Feb 2008|02:22am] |
|
Once upon a time there was an infinite, singular being. This being, since it was infinite, left no room for any other being to exist, and therefore was the only thing that existed, yet it was one with itself, and it lived in unchanging perfection, a blissful nirvana without time. However, that all ended when the being's own nature took over, forcing it to create, driving it to know another. This paradoxical urge shattered the being into infinite shards, each pulsating with a reflection of the being's own essence, each essentially an incomplete piece, yet a complete piece in of its own. In doing so, the being created time, multiplicity, and duality, and, no longer being one and unified, paradoxically created the perfect imperfection that is: the universe. Every living being, harboring the One's essence, is driven by one cause: to return to oneness and unification; to connect with all others, while in this universe it is impossible to connect to any being but your own consciousness and perspective. Some of us desire spirituality, and harmony, to meditate and lose the self to become one with others. Some crave power, subconsciously believing that the only way they can truly be one and connect with others is to have them following one shared belief, and orders coming from the top. Others yet desire sexual connection, financial success, and still others infer that in order to join together as one once more, this life must end...and so they kill, whether as warriors, soldiers, or murderers; but this is their purpose. They are all the same goal, and we are all here lost in the same life, because of a single imperfect impulse causing paradox to destroy a perfect being. Was the creation of our existence a fatal, irreversible mistake? Is perfection really something that can never be achieved except in the mind, or through a subjective view of imperfection? Are we lost here forever?
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
zenbedouin's journal
