Explosion

He'd never felt so powerful. Waves of energy spilled forth from his core. His boundaries expanding...ending. His essences splashing and saturating his surroundings. Nothing escaped. Narcissism peaking, he understood cult leaders, false prophets, dictators, gods.

The pulse of the music gave birth to the heartbeat--the life source--of a never before realized but always existing nonphysical entity. She is. He hadn't known. Now, they both knew. Free will from this point was not. The metaphysic convulsions, convergence, and connection surged with the collective passion of all sentient beings.

What is the indescribable when described? Whats a miracle to a scientist, evidence to the religious, advice to the complaining, exceptions to the determined, consolation to the widow; what is truth to the individual. 

DMT

Borders give words meaning. We require rules, systems, and containers to communicate. Thus begins the paradox of trying to explain an experience like this with words. To further complicate things, our memory is far from perfect. We store events as stories and every time we recall these stories and deliver them, the memory changes as the retelling of the story does. Lastly, at least for me, the entire experience was boundlessness/borderlessness. To use words is to place a border on it. To use the structure of a story is to place a boarder on it. So know, as hard as I may try, my explanation and recollection of the experience is mostly a futile endeavor. With that in mind...

Imagine there is a two dimensional field gathering and growing out of the smoke swirling inside the pipe. Its 10 ft by 10 ft. As soon as I inhale the smoke, that entire field beams through me and I instantly feel altered perceptual information coming from every sense organ my body harbors. I have never experienced a change this quickly and this drastic. I remember taking in a 2nd inhale. The last three inhales, no memory.

The chronological order from this point is pointless. I have no way of remembering when anything occurred, but I do have some distinct landmarks I can describe.

There were no borders. The mental process where we view ourselves as separate from others was checked the fuck out. The predominate colors were rich hues of red and gold. Bassnectar was pulsating in the background but I couldn't distinguish it at the time. I felt a distinct female entity, sexual, powerful, and accepting. My consciousness, the colors, the music, and this entity were all moving through, mixing with, and absorbing each other. It was like my soul was making love with a ethereal femineness created by the music.

There was a distinct moment where I said to myself, "There are more dimensions." It was a matter-of-fact statement. My post hoc rationalization of this unprovoked thought is that my perception of this borderless dimension was a higher dimension than the 4 dimensions we live in. String Theory's mathematics suggest there are 11 dimensions and that each of the higher dimensions embody all the lower ones within it. I don't know what realm I was believing I was perceiving, but it was definitely not this one.

The most mysterious recollection of this experience is so fuzzy in my mind that I know as I attempt to explain it--it will be altered forever. Oh well though, better than forgetting it.

At the beginning of the trip, my mind desperately tried offering suggestions from experience as to try to explain what was happening. It failed completely. I scorched through every perspective my mind is able of adopting--and found each one worthless in this attempt to establish meaning. However, this seemingly destructive experience provided something I've never thought about. I remember their being six or seven distinct "windows" shown to me. At one point, I felt like all of them were in front of me and I sat removed from them, peering through them, looking at the aggregated story that is my life. These were the specific biased perspectives I filter reality through. It was absolutely the most psychedelic thing I've ever encountered. The tragedy, or maybe the miracle, is that I can't remember what these perspectives were. Imagine the insight I could gain if I could remember.

The entire experience lasted maybe five minutes. Afterwards, I felt like an infant. My mind had been so throughly thrashed, I didn't know what to do. I got up to go outside and the door wouldn't open. I was still in an altered state. The dimensions of the room felt funny and the thought zapped into my head, 'What if you're hallucinating this and you're still in the trip?" The moment before I was sure to dive into a horrible negative loop, a beautiful girl opened the door and I made my way outside.

It is my ritual now that after an experience, I lay on my back sprawled out in an X, and just take deep, slow breaths.

-----

The cynical scientist in me thinks that this drug causes neural wiring to cross communicate to the point of massive sensory overload and confusion. Senses meld. It obliterates the organizing consciousness and allows the subconscious to explode forward. As soon as baseline is established, the remembering self alters the experience by trying to attach meaning and coherency, much like a dream. Can experienced trippers learn to control the experience like a lucid dreamer controls a dream? Imagine the implications.

----

A true thank you to all the people involved with the leading up too, experiencing of, and following aftermath of this experience. It was easily the most memorable day of my life thus far.

Don't be cunty, forgive yourself, and realize your perception of the world is the most powerful tool you possess--and it can be managed.

Love

Metaphysics

Watch this first. 

What I'm going to try to lay out is basically my metaphysics. This is my first time trying to get it out of my head. It'll be sloppy. It won't be nearly as logically rigid as I'd like it to be. I really would like to be questioned and debated on these ideas by those who are interested in this kind of thing. I also think this may be the route I take my academic psychology career. Lemme try to do this.

P1(P just stands for premise and 1 is because its the first): Each individual's entire life, everything they ever perceive and experience, is a subjective journey.

P2: Each individual's subjective experience of reality is constantly adapting based on information received moment to moment.

P3: This constant adaption, and the mental framework it creates, can be called a reality filter.

P4: Our reality filters are constructed primarily from our subconscious and secondarily constructed from our conscious mind.

P5: The subconscious construction of our reality filter is mostly influenced by natural laws, such as gravity, the ways our bodily senses work, lights interaction with objects, etc.

P6: The remaning percentage of our subconscious mind that is responsible for creating our reality filter can be manipulated by our conscious mind. (See Two System Theory for a little background.)

P7: The most powerful system humans have at their conscious mind's disposal to alter and manipulate their reality filter is metaphysics. Which is to say, the systems of beliefs one holds which cannot be contradicted by natural laws. (This is wear it begins to get murky.)

P71: I think there is explorable psychological ground on just how much an individual's personal metaphysics can influence their reality filter. Examples: how they explain coincidences, Deja vu, natural disasters, tragedy, human poteintal, motivation, problem solving, to name a few.

P8: Each individual is free to construct their own metaphysics.

P81: Most do not and accept the metaphysics offered by culture.

P82: The metaphysics offered by most cultures is religion.

P9: Your metaphysics, depending on the intensity you believe and integrate them, change the way your subconscious operates.

P91: Your subconscious can be your helper or destroyer depending on the metaphysics you adopt and the lifestyle you live. If they are in harmony, you will prosper, if they are not, you will suffer.

P92: There is no metaphysical system which will work for all people. One must understand their genetics, biochemistry, heuristics, and biases when creating their own metaphysics.

P93: An "enlightened" person is someone who has brought their metaphysics and lifestyle into harmony. There are very, very few of these people, maybe none is an absolute sense. I believe there are measurable differences between these persons, or those close, and the other 99.9% of humanity.

I'm going to rein it in here. Most American's fall under varying factions of Christianity or Atheism. Both of these groups have metaphysical systems. One is rich and the other bare. I think one induces tremendous suffering on the majority of its followers because the metaphysical system does not coincide with the influential biological drives our physical bodies have accumulated over the centuries, while the other is susceptible to ignoring the tremendous power, bliss, and happiness that can arise from creating a metaphysical system. (There are exceptions of both groups, but this is true for the majority.)

I'd really enjoy feedback from my knowledgable christian friends, those who are philosophically inclined, and anyone who casually read this and thinks some ideas should be explained more or in a simpler fashion.

My conclusion is that the word "God" is the individual's label for their metaphysical system. You can create your God. Enlightened people reflect their God. They become an expression of their God.

Time

His feet hadn't felt grass in years. The thought needled him. Where had the years gone. His phone vibrated. The irony kissed him. The years had been given to her. She hadn't asked for them. He hadn't known what to do with them. Gone they had gone, all the same.

The grass was young and hugged him. The sun embraced him. His phone again buzzed him. His past chasing him. But the moment was pure. This place was his cure. Here he imagined. Dreaming of the life he had failed to procure.

There was only the present.

He felt. His eyelids tore apart. He searched his body. There were no wounds. He was weeping. The gut curled. The jaw locked. His throat produced a primal grunt he had never known. There was only the moment.

Once the moment had passed, and he could breath, he checked his phone. The text told him what he already knew, it said she was dead, that they had done all they could do.

He nestled back into the grass. Free from his past.

Two Systems Theory

There are no paradigms in Psychology. To be blunt, we don't know what the fuck we're doing. We've some theories about how the mind works, some seem correct, but they don't easily coexist with one another. Like physics seeks to unify unrelated theories into a unified theory called M-Theory, so too, in my opinion, must psychology if we wish to have a unified paradigm. Now, the entire enterprise of believing we can map out the human mind or physical nature is quite audacious and may not even be possible, but this has become a tangent and I haven't even introduced the topic yet.

A prominent and current proposed paradigm in psychology and all of its branches is the Two Systems Theory. It proposes that the mind is made up of two major systems, or players, or whatever analogy does it for you. System 1 is our intuitive, subconscious, fast thinking, heuristic forming, habitual mind. System 2 is our critically thinking, conscious, slow, self controlling mind.

These two systems are always playing a game. Your unconscious and intuitive system 1 is fucking powerful. Some assholes would argue it runs the show, thus relieving you of free will, but we won't go there. System two is your consciousness. This system can willfully assimilate new ideas that can affect system 1, but this is a slow and effortful process. Most cognitive dissonance, if not all, stems from our system 1.

An example of System One:

Within a moment, you can tell his emotional state, or whatever emotional state an interdimensional DMT smoking space lizard can experience. This is your system 1 working correctly. Some areas this system regulates are:

• Detect that one object is more distant than another.
• Orient to the source of a sudden sound.
• Complete the phrase "bread and..."
• Make a "disgust face" when showed a horrible picture.
• Detect hostility in a voice.
• Answer 2+2
• Read words on large billboards
• Drive a car on an empty road.
• Understand simple sentences.
• I also think this system is responsible for our interpretation of phenomena we don't understand based on the belief systems our system 2 has created i.e. religionosity, nihilism, atheism, naturalism, etc.

Now an example of System Two:

18x27

Unless Rain Man is reading my blog, you can't compute this intuitively. You probably know 123 is too small and 3,325 is too large, but you would have to allocate deliberate effort in coming up with 459. (Yeah, my lazy ass Googled.)

Other examples of System 2:

• Brace for the start of a gun race.
• Focused attention on players at a sports game.
• Focusing your attention on a singular voice at a loud party.
• Looking for a woman with white hair.
• Search memory to identify a surprising sound.
• Maintaining a faster walking speed than is natural.
• Monitoring your behavior is a social situation.
• Telling someone your phone number.
• Filling out a tax for.

An interesting and complicated problem is how to combine this with our model of memory. How do drugs effect these two systems? How do companies exploit these system's short comings? Why did our minds evolve in this fashion? How can technology manipulate these systems? Do these two systems cover all mental activity?

I think my next few posts will be about this topic. I'm reading Daniel Kahneman's Magnum Opus on the subject and it nears 500 pages. I'll leave you with this:

 An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows: "Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail."

Is Steven more likely to be a librarian or a farmer? Why?

Love

What is love? This is not a definitive stance on the subject, but a single sitting meditation. I'm not sure where it'll go. I'm just going to let my mind wonder. These posts are more practice than anything. I consistently come across Eric Ericsson's research on experts and his idea of 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. Wiki that shit. Its interesting.

So, love? What is it? Well, I think its an emotion. I think its grossly simplified. I think its simplification is maybe the greatest cause for mankind's suffering. Melodramatic? Yeah, maybe a little.

So how should one even broach this massive and intimidating subject? I think I'll start from an evolutionary standpoint and work from there.

Pop neurology claims that the serotonin and dopmine interaction that causes love is triggered differently for men and women. This pop science, and I say pop science because I've seen it on memes, and if its on a meme, well...this pop science claims that men experience this mixture of neurochemicals only when they look at their genetic offspring. Women however experience this cocktail whenever they make love and also when they give birth. If this is true, it offers an intuitive understanding of the darwinistic application of love.

Also, I remember hearing that there is a genetic mutation in a small percentage of women were this does not occur, meaning to say they experience the love chemicals as men do. "Lucky them'" I imagine many women thinking.

So from this perspective, love is an evolutionarily nurtured phenomena that causes women to follow men who will protect them while caring for their offspring, and that causes men to care for their offspring. It seems slightly cruel of nature to develop love this way. I imagine it would be equally beneficial for men to love their wives, but as I write that sentence, I am already forming a rebuttal. Scientists believe that all of us descended from a population of roughly 1000 humans. If this is the case, it would have been beneficial for the men to get their genetic material in as many lovely ladies as possible. (Check out Coolidge effect)

However, this idea of love appeals to few. Love is almost a magical word. Some boys learn of its power early and break a few hearts. Some women have such a skewed sense of the word they end up broken hearted, mentally altered, and with cats. So many cats.

Where to go from here, I don't know. I could go the route of love being a manufactured fantasy by companies to create an unhappy populace which will in turn fill that void with things those companies happen to make. Maybe another time.

Maybe I'll go a little poetic.

God is playing a game with herself. God chose to divide into billions of separate pieces. A cosmic hide and seek. The only way to find herself through the multiple dimensions is love. Love is the momentary realization between seemingly separate consciousnesses that they are one. We are not we but I. I am me experiencing myself. Love is the tool which allows for this understanding.

Far out dude...

In everyday language, I think Love has distinct categories. Love is not an all or nothing emotion. Those who view it this way are choosing to suffer. Love also has stages. There are surely as many as you care to create, but for me there are a few major kinds.

We've got family love, friendship love, humanitarian love, and romantic love.

Romantic love has stages. Understand this point. Unless the fairytale ended in the death of all parties involved, it is not a true ending. Romantic love has that indescribable bliss period. Nothing matters but them. This is mankind's most beautiful exercise in attempting to forget the guaranteed kiss from death. It ends. Humans have a wonderfully tragic adaption mechanism in the brain that causes this. Without ruining your night, long lasting love hinges on both understanding that this bliss period will end, and also having an active pursuit of keeping the metaphoric flame alive. Add spontaneity to the relationship. Avoid patterns.

But seriously, what the fuck do I know, I've been single for years.

(Genetically mutated ladies...message me.)

Jokes aside, this is an importent aspect of our lives. This post fails in every regard to address the larger issues and seriousness of what love is and causes. Maybe I'll have a better grasp of the concept once I've experienced it more passionately.

Epistemology: A priori or A posteriori?

Epistemology is basically the study of knowledge. Webster defines it as: “The theory of knowledge, esp. with regard to its methods, validity, and scope.” The next step it to define what knowledge is. Again, I will offer Webster’s definition: “Information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.”

We already have a problem.

The very language used to describe the word ‘knowledge’ forces it into the container of A posteriori knowledge, which is anything learned after birth, i.e. from experience. What are we to do with a baby’s instincts, reflexes, ability to swim, to cry, to recognize the mother’s voice, the intuitive understanding of gravity and interpretation of light, or the baby’s presupposition to understanding, mimicking, and producing language?

Our culture’s definition of knowledge answers the question “Is there any knowledge before the fact aka a priori?” The answer is no.

Behold the bondage of language.

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Absolute Knowledge is a whimsical and unobtainable notion. All knowledge depends on the existence of conscious minds. Objective information is information that is true outside or apart from human bias. This is obtainable in some sense, but not in an absolute sense. Thus, knowledge is the collection of statements the group with the most power believes to be true. If the group with the most power believes the rock is blue, and the individual believes it is black, well, we know how the individual will be dealt with.

Now, this definition of knowledge allows for some ugly conclusions. History has been a great teacher in this regard. What did Copernicus’s truth mean to the Catholic Church? What did Goebbel’s truth mean to the rest of the world? What did Iraq’s truth mean to the Bush Administration? What has the truth of a weaker minority ever meant when opposed by a powerful majority?

Truth and knowledge is a byproduct of power.

So the question that follows is what is the best system to implement which allows for the least biased truth to reign free? Our society’s answer began with myths, then religions, and now is called science.  Science is the best system we have produced thus far in our quest to attain knowledge.

Science

As mythology and religion were exalted in their day, so too is science now. Science has its temples, its monuments, its high priests, its bibles, and its worshipers. Behold the colleges, the theoretical theorists whose work can be understood by none but themselves, the miles long particle smashers, the textbooks, and the mass of students and pseudofollowers. Science also has its charlatans. Beware of bad science. Science is a system created by humans. It is not absolute, but it is the best we have. Science's followers and leaders currently are the powerful majority, thus the gatekeepers and distributors of truth for our age.

The Individual
A choice can be made by the individual. S/he can choose their own "truth." Many of us do this without awareness. Most of our truths will adhere with physical laws, but the metaphysical universe is your play ground. You can create your own God. Do you want ghosts? Do you want mechanized elves? Its your chose to make. Create a system that brings you and those around you the greatest happiness. However, beware; the group will react if your beliefs are too different. Choose how far you care to deviate from the heard.

My weekend with LSD

Disclaimer for the worried:

I'm sure some friends will be worried that this post is following a post called "My weekend with 8 grams of Mushrooms". To the friends who are truly worried about my safety, thank you and I'm okay. The reason I'm wanting to experience these drugs stem from a scientific curiosity. As someone who wishes to be an authority on consciousness, I think it is only logical that I experience as many altered states of consciousness as is safe. I've many more to go.

A little babbling

Saturday, I ingested 3 tabs of LSD. I did so at 1:10 pm. I had full intentions to note my effects as they arose. My notes were abandoned 93 minutes in. At 2:43 I was documenting how my sense perception was slightly altered, but nothing was significant. As i was trying to explain my lack of affects, shit got cray.

It was time to put the notes away.

I read a quote from Nietzsche thursday were he more or less stated that one should not analyze the experience as it is happening, because to do so, the experience ends. I decided that I would allow the day to go as it would instead of trying to steer it.

The Trip

Setting and mindset, friends. I read Timothy Leary's "Your Brain is God" as soon as I woke up. Got through a third of the slim book and rolled out of bed. I haggled with my friend to take the LSD first. I am rather selfish of my health, and he cares little for his, so it was an easy agreement. He took one dose, than 30 minutes later 3 doses. He wasn't vomiting, speaking in tongues, or fighting with elves, so I felt safe to proceed. I went to the frige, unfolded the tinfoil that housed the litte white mints, with a hue of blue stained around them, and popped three in my mouth. (I could see where the acid had dripped off of his mints, and I helped myself to the residue. The accumulated amount of runoff acid was about half the size of one of the mints and it seemed to be mostly chemical, I didn't disclose this act of thievery to my friend. He will surely read this though. Sorry brolosopher)

As my body and the chemical did that dance they do, I watched the artistic orgasm that is "5 centimeters per second." By the time the hour long movie had ended, I was unsure what I was feeling. I felt a little weak, like I hadn't ate. Then I realized, fuck, I hadn't ate. I went and got a banana, but only finished a 3rd of it. Eating felt strange, like I didn't need all of it, and to eat all of it was more of a reflex than an innate need.

I started feeling the chemical. Its tempting to say something zingy like, those who have experienced it need no words, and no words will help those who haven't experienced it, but I'll try.

About an hour later, I felt a nice peaceful tranquility that centered in my gut. I had a long and deep talk with some friends for 30 minutes. Words seemed to be less meaningless this time than when on the mushrooms. As the talk ended, and I began documenting my lack of visuals, the visuals as if on cue, presented themselves.

Light became the show. We don't realize it often, but light is interacting with everything we see. Everything. I was starting to become enthralled in the way it refracted from, absorbed into, and was reflected off of everything. It was a fun ride.

I was sitting on my back porch at this point. The weather was dreary, but beauty could still be found. From my back porch, which is atop a slight hill, I could see a lone house maybe 3 miles away. As I fixated on that point, my entire field of vision began warping in a calm and peaceful way. A game began. As soon as the scientist in me began trying to analyze what was happening with my eyes, its wiring, and the interruption of the information by my brain, the illusion would stop. As soon as I would stop trying to break down the moment, the wave/warp continued. This made me laugh.

Some details and about 20 minutes later, I was in a parking lot facing the road, while my friend got some food. Yes, I had entered into a car with a human flesh sac who was experiencing reailty through 4 tabs of LSD. I had my seatbelt on. Safety first.

As I waited, I was seeing something strange with the cars. If I fixed my eyes on a point past the road, the cars began having trails, kinda like the light bikes in Tron. If I however focused on the car and tracked its movement, no trail. I played this game during the eternity he was out getting food.

When we got home, I couldn't help myself. I had to go for a run. Now, last time I ran on a psychedelic,  I destroyed my body. Today was literally the first day I could walk without limping. I proceeded with caution. So naturally, I ran a mile and a half barefoot.

Shoes just didn't seem like a good idea. I wanted to feel the ground. I ended up making it home limp free and without a staph infection, so I considered it a victory

I think the run got my blood circulating at a new level because this was when the peak experience started. I found myself once again, as I always seem to find myself on psychedelics, laying on my back, stretched on in a 6 foot 3 inched X, staring at the ceiling. Pondering life. This lasted three hours. I could control the visuals. I could control my thoughts.

I thought about all the things that bothered me. There wasn't much. Last weekend really did something to me. Like a detox. This was like a reintegration. I reestablished my goals, my perspective, and my life.

My main realization is that I crossed a barrier a couple of years ago. I think I could get esoteric really quick but I think the bottom line is that I've discovered its possible to step out of my culture. I can't stay outside of it, but I can visit that mental place where I am detached from it. This is where change can be made. This is where larger patterns can be seen. This is a place I think that sparks those really deep and disturbingly bad trips. When I first got there, I was sober, and it knocked me on my ass. I can hardly imagine the terror some would experience if they broke through that barrier while tripping.

We as a species have set up a game we call civilization. It has rules. The people who make the rules are governed by rules. Knowledge are these rules. Wisdom is learning these rules. Enlightenment is using these rules, or rejecting the game and creating your own rules.

What scares most players of the game, is learning that they don't have to play. What about the house, and the car, and the job, and the sports, and clothes, and guns, and the toys? The freedom is crushing.

I have many, many, many years of learning to do before I dare give up the game. I think its most logical to learn the rules, become a good enough player to change the game, and leave before it consumes you.

I'm starting to rant. Overall, the trip was pleasant and not overwhelming in the slightest. There were more visuals than mushrooms, but mushrooms seem to be much more emotional and forceful. My ego would like to think that I'm so awesome thats why the LSD didn't blow my mind, but what is more likely is that I didn't receive good quality and/or the mints diminished the potency  I don't feel like I'm done. I really am thankful to all of you who read these. I love you. Good luck with the game.