Psychedelics as Medicine and Teacher For the Soul

Here is a little bit of rambling brain fodder from my cranium on the topic.

I'm only going to ramble on about the big three traditional substances, Mescaline, Psilocybin and LSD. I do this because they have the longest history and widest distribution of use then most others substances. Plus they are the ones I have the most experience with personally and it is my brain fodder rambling after all.
I know DMT should be in there as well, but I don't have experience with that substance. I'll leave that task up to Spicey Cat.

First off let me say that I firmly believe these substances offer a perspective and insight into all aspects of reality that is profound and life changing. They have been used from before recorded history and along with that usage was always a recognition of how deeply spiritual these experiences can be. They also provide us with a new perspective and heightened sensory perception which I'm sure aided in the development of language, both oral and written, art and music in the early human critter.

Here is how I think these three psychs give us each their own unique perspective and focus and spiritual experiences. Note that there is a lot of overlap in the type of experiences I'm rambling about, but each substance does possess a distinct character and it is that which I am rambling on about.

Mescaline
Of the three mescaline offers the most nature based and focused experience. All of my experiences have had the same underlying theme;
Unity through diversity. We gain acceptance and inclusion into the grand parade of life because the randomness of nature dictates that all are special and unique and possessing of inherent value and worth if for no other reason than there has never been nor shall there ever again be another one exactly the same. That applies to everything from snowflakes to galaxy's and beyond. Somewhere in that mix is the Sol system and this little green and blue clump of rock that we all exist on. By virtue of that simple diversity, we all gain entrance into the club.

That club includes everything in nature, from a one celled diatom floating in the ocean to you reading these words, for all life is unique and worthy of admittance.

Mescaline would be useful for healing a broken connection to nature.
It very profoundly "reconnected" me to how intricate and fragile nature can be. All that my flesh consists of derived from the Earth, all that sustained me and gave nourishment sprang from her and will again return one day. That is the "rightness" of nature.
Sometimes we need to be reminded of and reconnected to the source of our physical vehicles that carry the observer we call "soul".

Mescalines spiritual characteristic is the transcendent connection it gives to nature. You are an integral part of the pulse and flow of life on this planet.

That is what mescaline has taught me.


Mushrooms
Ahh, mushrooms.
They can connect you with your inner emotional self and elicit the most joyful, blissful self appraisal available. Looking through your relationships and reveling in the joy you get from being loved and loving. Feeling and emotions such as love felt at a level that transcends language, animal like in it's urgency. Love radiating through your emotional core to the point of rendering you absent from body and enraptured in a blissful eruption that defies communication.
or
they can zero in on every personal flaw and mistake with laser like accuracy and dissect you with out so much as a shot of tequila to ease the pain.
Pulling emotion out of you to the point of physical pain and dragging you through the implications and ramifications of your actions as if through a field of broken glass.

For me mushrooms have been the most Bi-Polar substance, but with good reason. I feel mushrooms awaken and connect you with a very basic, primal emotional self.

They are useful for honest self appraisal at a very emotional, almost symbolic and archetypal level. Good for confronting and working through deeply emotional issues and seeing them in a new, non-ego centered perspective.
Where mescaline is very Earth focused, I find mushrooms to be very primal and animilistic in character.

Mushrooms spiritual character is in it's ability to elicit an honest and thorough examination of yourself and your relationships.

That is what psylocibyn has taught me.


LSD
LSD is the most analytical of the three. LSD offers gateways into the same arena's as the two others, but goes about it in a very analytical, "quantum" manner. The sense of unity and spirituality offered by LSD is one of expanding levels of perception, from the infinitesimal to the universal. All is perception and energy.
Mescaline connects us with our physical selves and it's source, Mother Earth.
Mushrooms connects us with our emotional selves and shows us that self in the glaring light of honesty.
LSD connects us to the energy that permeates all.
It allows minute scrutiny and unbounded perception of all in our sensual reality.
From the infinite mobius strip of energy that empowers all that is, we are sourced and given wing to soar as the unique expression that mescaline honors, experiencing, reacting, and feeling as the person that mushrooms connects us to. This energy takes form and interacts with other manifestations of this infinite source of being.
We call it life, reality, the universe.
The energy may have different expressions and a galaxy certainly doesn't resemble a bullfrog, yet they are of the same essence of energy at their most fundamental, infinitesimal level.

All is one and unified by energy. We are the vibrations emanating from the strings of some cosmic harp playing out realities and universe's. Life percolates and forms and we come into being as unique individuals and last as long as the time for the next vibration to come along and we merge. Like ripples in a pond, we find a moment of significance and honor, only to return to the pool from which we arose. Enjoying a brief interlude, the ripple rejoins that from which it came, having never lost it's core essence, just reshaping it temporarily.

LSD can allow access to memory and thoughts from a "third person analytical" perspective and facilitate a kind of detached yet honest appraisal of ones life and situation. In that it is a wonderful psychological healing tool.

Call it what you will, but it connects the human soul to the spark of life itself from which we all derive our energy for being.
We are that energy, vibrating through existence at a particular wavelength that gives rise to our form, our persons and our very souls.

LSD's spiritual character is in it's ability to connect us to the vibration of the universe, original energy, the initial singularity, Om.


That is what LSD has taught me.


Mescaline celebrates the wondrous complexity inherent in the simplicity with which the universe expresses itself through the medium of our material, natural existence.

Psylocibyn celebrates the many layered and fantastic interplay with other expressions of life in a corporeal form existing in a matrix of energy and mass spiraling through the construct of what we call time. Our loves and hatreds all form the fabric of interaction that give rise to our emotional selves.

LSD celebrates the source energy that permeates and gives life to all that is in all its infinite expressions and manifestations that the infinite multitude of possible vibrations can give birth to in this thing we call reality.


At least that is what I think tonight. I'll know less tomorrow, but enjoy it all more.
There is always another page of script to be written in this play, take care what you put on the page.
Life is always to be continued next episode.....

All these ideas are from my experiences, your mileage may vary.

Well that's enough rambling brain fodder from this old fart for now.

 

I'll add a bit too, as I made something similar to this on myspace last year and I never brought it over and I don't feel like making it for every single substance. But it seems I be one of the more experienced with Salvia so I'll go there.

Salvia Divinorum:
An experience that is often a very challenging couple of minutes. The physical surroundings are often completely obliterated or left to be barely recognizable as it stutters like the pages of a flip book. Many times you take the viewpoint of inanimate objects such as the bed, the wall or some interdimensional machine and watch as this new reality is constantly flowing and unfolding without your interaction to it whatsoever.
I often feel duped that the reality that I hold onto so tightly and we live in appears to be nothing more than a sham and there is a realization that at one point my body will be completely dead/still, a somewhat opposite effect of the feeling of the flowing nature of most the hallucinogens that effect serotonin. The salvia entities that reside which are often felt more than seen appear to be ruthlessly having their way with my seemingly meek soul and mind.

I sometimes feel the soul trying to escape my body and flee from the place in the first few minutes but on the latter half of the trip it often gives way to something more subdued and a peaceful acceptance. Once The mind settles it feels free to explore separate dimensions, multiple realities simultaneously as it relaxes in the grid which the soul lay on here. I often envision family members and close friends spirits residing in this grid or pods with me in the salvia space. This latter half also feels extremely natural and there is a sort of urgency to protect these ancient realms and the spirits that dwell there, to never forget that this place is real too and there is connection here and then soul peacefully returns to the body rather quickly to a mild psychedelic state of reflection and disbelief.

Salvia is all about the vision, just a flash image usually remains to remind you that you were there, the mind often races but We do not have quick enough neuro processing to make sense of a fraction of what goes on in this space. It's a 5 minute high but it's one that I'm usually content with and can make peace with experiencing only a few times a year at most and often I can take longer than a year before I dare try to tread the Salvia breakthrough space again. Often on the introductory trips people usually laugh, drool, speak in glossalia and have other physiological symptoms that just show how overwhelming Salvia can be to the primate body and mind. Once one gets accustomed to the space and realizes there is no recreational value to this substance in the least it can then become a very trans formative soul healing journey and for me it almost always redirects my course of psychedelic exploration when I feel i've hit a wall in entheogenic development.

 

This is a truly great post! Alas, I must spread more rep

You put all your findings and thoughts into such a fluid and concise passage seemingly without effort. I have no experience with mescaline and only one experience each with mushrooms and LSD, but I look forward to exploring all 3 thoroughly in the future and taking some of your influence to help me shape my own ideas and discoveries from these substances. I genuinely enjoyed reading this, thank you for sharing

 

GB - the first half described my salvia experience precisely. The second half is what I hope to achieve in subsequent trials, when I finally muster the guts to visit again. I'm glad that you are able to report on the positive aspects of the experience and prove that it is possible, as not many return with something good to say about it.

 

Threads like this are perfect examples of what makes this forum so beautiful. Thanks PB

It won't let me rep you yet, but I'll get back to ya

 

Thanks, just a bunch of stuff that was leaking out of my ears the other day

Let the experiences shape themselves for you. This is just my attempt at interpreting the underlying "essence" that I have experienced with each of these substances.

 

GBL, the first half was almost exactly like my salvia breakthrough

 

Man PB I really like this post. I read it slowly 3 times looking for anything that I disagreed with and just felt like you had taken the words out of my mouth . . . an excellent comparison and summary of the three substances. I wonder how a Cannabis summary would look from you? I find this one the most difficult to dissect and classify.

gave me goosebumps this is what draws me to LSD more than anything.

I may write a little ditty about mdma, ketamine, and dpt when i have the right focus. apparently i don't do dmt right and 4-aco-dmt is captured in essence in your psilocin summary.

 

Thankyou kind sir.
I would love to read your "impressions and lessons" that have been learned thus far from these wonderous substances, as well as everybody else's here.
So come on folks, share what you have learned.

 

MDMA:. For someone who is and has been at least since a teenager fairly closed off from the majority of people, this drug allows me to empathizes with people and open up in ways I rarely have been able to do sober. It allows the complete understanding of another within the space of a few hours, a sense of innocence and wonder much like the traditional psychedelics, an ability to find the common ground, often that understanding and positivity slips as the drug tapers off but if used with good intent the emotional bonding and ability to verbalize is unparalleled to mdma and lessons learned from mdma lasts well beyond the experience, Truly a medicine. The music enhancement also can be truly healing on the soul and the ability to face one's own personal emotional conflicts in a completely positive manner can be very inspiring and encouraging..

As far as the effect of the soul goes though, the description above is with spaced out and limited use, on the negative flipside it can easily destroy and eat your soul as well when habitually used. You can become a hopeless rollmantic caught in the grasp of idealized love and forsaking anything less than the unattainable visions in your head. It can drain ambition and worthwhile desire and give an apathetic and jaded emotional state. Some feel diminished effects after awhile seeking ever higher doses to try to recapture the magic, perfection and wonder of the first few MDMA trips. MDMA is one to use carefully, sparingly and wisely.

 

Nice GB. I love that you also pointed out the pitfalls of abuse.
Interestingly enough this is a substance that I haven't tried yet. It was offered to me once looonnng time ago, but I turned it down as it was at the time when I was totally burned from abusing acid and had no desire to introduce a new chemical into my body.

 

N,N DMT:

How to describe the non-lauguagizable? Sure all psychedelics are beyond language, but for me, (as for Terence McKenna) N,N DMT is the center of the target.

DMT is the end of the asymptote on synaesthesia and mind expansion. It gives one an awareness of just how tenuous the connection between mind and body are and just how un-trustworthy our sensory information is. Frequently i "launch" completely from my body and in hyperspace have the completely convincing hallucination that breathing and heartbeat of stopped (Of course they have, i am a disembodied soul AND those things are not needed for the comfortable continuance of consciousness in hyperspace.). The only thing that feels weirder than the launch is feeling my soul literally recompress it's expanded self back into the shell of my body . . .

DMT allows me to accomplish psychotherapy type goals in an afternoon that would take 18-24 months of in-depth therapy. It permits NO bullshit. It does NOT permit me to lie to myself. It puts me in rather direct and sometimes disturbing contact with my subconscious. It insists i deal with things going on that i have tried to repress. It trains me to ensure proper set and setting every single time. It teaches me so much. Strassman calls it The Spirit Molecule. i call it The Teacher Molecule.

DMT is an extremely arty, spiritual and pushy material.

ARTY: Even at low doses, the hallucinations/visions are remarkably geometric and fractal-like whether 2-D or 3-D. DMT has taught me a new way of looking at art while in a baseline state of mind. DMT, upon opening my eyes from trance, has shown me the world completely transformed into a vision by various artists with names like Van Gough, Munsch, Gieger, Dali, Monet and many others . . .

At higher doses, it goes off the experiential scale on the art/beauty front. i am a person with low vision (including being legally blind in one eye) that is continuing to fade. There is a level of "edge detection," and polished, shiny sharpness, a kind of SUPER-resolution with a level of movement and detail that often leaves me stunned in hyperspace and wondering, "How will i ever describe this?"

SPIRITUAL: i was a atheist before i become a DMT user. i returned to psychedelics after a long absence looking for "healing." i was shocked and awed that this healing took the form of a spiritual awakening. DMT hyperspace frequently convinces myself and others that we are dead, even if we remember we just smoked DMT. There's NO way this could be reality, a DMT trip, anything experienciable in life. . . .

There is an essence to many of the areas of hyperspace that feel like areas where dead souls reside. There is an essence to many of the areas of hyperspace that feel completely entangled, truly All-One, beyond petty and physical/body concepts such as life and death. DMT can put users in direct touch with the numunious, the spiritual, the mystical.

There is an inherent sense of infinity within hyperspace, including the infinity found within Planck Time, the smallest measurable unit of time known to humanity. . .

There is a feeling to hyperspace that i would frequently describe as joyous and welcoming, like coming home. i am a middle aged woman - most of my family is dead or estranged. i can never "go home." Yet, i "go home" every time i smoke spice . . . it feels like i am getting back in touch with the place that was the genesis of my soul, where a piece still resides, where all of me will return upon the death of my physical self.

DMT feels like a privelege, like getting access to secret knowledge, inadequately hinted at by organized, Earth-bound religions. DMT trips, to me, more so than other psychedelics, feel like really, really good practice for death.

PUSHY: DMT is the pushiest substance i have experienced to date. It has a huge physical body load, that includes increase in heartbeat and blood pressure and a strong trance and feeling of heaviness/paralysis in the limbs. This can fool the inexperienced user into believing they are not breathing or drowning (especially if something in the vision is backing up this idea).

DMT forces me to face my fears all of them, down to the ugly roots. There is something about it that seems to trigger fear in users - i think it saturates the Amygdala, but do not really know. It frequently screens out users this way. DMT shows us as much as we are ready to see at that moment in time, . . . and sometimes a bit more . . .

Higher doses always generate entities for me and the higher the dose, frequently, the pushier the entities. Sometimes they are really, really ugly, and still coming at me so fast, lunging to within 1/4 inch of my vision . . . curious in a pushy way, crowding me and each other, changing, moving, replicating, sometimes fractally, sometimes like films of pillow-lava in the sea . . .

There is also such an INCREDIBLE feeling of energy and vibration in hyperspace. It is often accompanied by an audio hallucination (carrier wave) that i frequently experience to be richly synaesthetic - the tone is a line, a point on the line has all possible information, past, future, living, dead, etc. . . . This vibration can be part of the pushiness. The energy feels off the scale, like what the Large Hadron Collider people wish their machine could achieve, and the inter-dimensional doors open up . . .

The time dilation effects can also be pushy - getting caught in infinity in a second and knowing there's 5 minutes to go . . . Everything is impossibly accelerated and one experiences The Universe and Eternity in single moments . . . and all the thoughts that comprise such things . . .

Seems there might be a inverse (perhaps even inverse square) relationship between pushiness/panic and willingness to truly and authentically surrender to anything, no matter what, even one's death . . .



DMT challenges me like nothing else. It takes me to deeper levels than anything else. It inspires users to new acts of creativity. It also seems to compel users to spread it . . . It is an amazing blessing and i am so grateful to have discovered it at this time in my life. . . .

Of course this does not begin to do The Molecule justice . . . i wish i had something more or better . . . .

Peace & Love,
Spicey Cat
Brrrrrp!

 

Thanks for your input spicey, as you would appear to be the resident DMT go-to girl, I looked forward to your input.
I have yet to sample this teacher molecule, and consider it with mixed feelings of wonder and trepidation.
But that is what these forums are for, sharing and educating one another from our own repertoire of experience. We weave a tapestry of psychedelic knowledge that I hope will be a help to those just beginning to venture into the great unknown of inner space.
Good read SpiceyCat.:cheers2:

 

Good explanation of the unexplainable SpiceyCat. You answered One of the questions I was pondering the other day regarding visions of entities and some of the other visual effects. I was wondering if eyesight had any role in being able to see these entities and other things but you claim to have poor eyesight and I have really good eyesight, so I guess that debunks that theory. I realize we're not seeing anything externally but to simply pick up on the structure or something it seemed like visual processing may play some role.