This is A WORLD OUT OF MIND, my Online Journal where I explore Consciousness and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by the intentional alteration of my own belief structures, using Salvia Divinorum and additional self-altering meditational techniques drawn from Western Ceremonial Magic.

I always attempt to adhere to the scientific method as much as possible in my explorations, and while I often speak of these experiences as if I knew they were Truth, I always consider the alternative, that it is merely self-deception on my part, and think accordingly. Thus I maintain two parallel world views at once, one aspirational and one a safe fallback into standard materialism.

The more I journey into salviaspace, the more I think the former worldview is the correct one, but there is no objective way to prove that to the world, so I'll let you, the reader, decide for yourselves.

-Saint Brian the Godless

Follow me on Twitter @AWorldOutOfMind



Wednesday, October 5, 2016

A Flick Of The Finger



Warning: I fully realize that this report is difficult to believe. I agree. However, this is how it happened, and even though I was in an altered state, I was not incoherent nor lacking in self-awareness, especially toward the end of it when the most unbelievable parts happened. As to the "finger tap," frankly it's the part that I remember best, since at the time it shocked me greatly. I'll never forget it.

Two nights ago, sitting upright in chair near my bed, eyes open. 50X, third dose. Also employing OTO techniques to raise energy.

I am relaxed and feel vast flows of energy coursing through my body, especially in a straight column from my sacrum rising to the crown of my head. As is typical when I first dose myself I start to feel a sense of slight discomfort, as if subtle objects of some sort, barely visible, barely real, are interpenetrating my body everywhere, over and over.

I have been at this point many times lately with no clear visions following it. I believe I am developing a psychological resistance to them, or rather to the mental state necessary to get them, which is a delicate halfway-point between wakefulness and immersion. Tonight I increased the dosage slightly. This worked, better than I had planned.

I felt my attention start to drift a bit, then I noticed movement around me to my lower right and to that side. I re-focused immediately and saw etherial, ghostly images of myself repeated over and over down my right lower side and rising up in the distance like a wave of my doppelgangers, many, many versions of myself sitting there, over and over. I could also feel them, distant echoes of my own body's sense of kinesthesia.

It was a very long line of "me's" all sitting there in the same position as I was. I've been in similar visions before, albeit this was the clearest this effect of multiple "me's" had ever been. As has happened before, I could feel myself *shifting* between one body and the other, my consciousness "taking a step" to the right and passing through the skin of my body and entering the skin of my other body seated to the right. Like passing through a membrane of darkness. Or maybe more like that membrane passing through me. I can even control this, moving instead to my left if I so choose, or not moving at all. The line of my bodies appears infinite. The (minimal) movements of all my other bodies echoed mine perfectly... until they didn't. Suddenly everything *shifted* and they either changed to or were replaced with a large (but much smaller) group of similar human-looking but not very detailed bodies clustered haphazardly around me, their movements now independent of mine. Now I was no longer certain that these were alternate versions of myself. I seemed to now be the center of their (my?) attention.

These *beings* seemed to be looking at me, discussing me, even trying to communicate with me in some way, verbal or nonverbal I couldn't tell, because I could not hear them, nor could I see their faces. Some short time passed, perhaps thirty seconds, and then I felt the need to apologize to them for not taking salvia divinorum seriously enough, or something related to that. (This part is not clear in my mind). It seemed like this is what they were trying to say, that I needed to be more serious about it. Not sure why or how they meant that, though.

This continued on for a short while, and then the effect of the salvia started to wear off a bit and I became much more curious about them even as they began to fade, my normal curiosity having been much suppressed during most of this experience, as is typical for these things. They seem almost completely normal somehow at the time and it's only later you realize how abnormal they really were. So as I was feeling more and more curiosity and wonder at these beings still barely visible around me as they were fading away, I felt something on my right hand that was loosely hanging off the end of the armrest. My right hand that was hanging nearest this group of fading netherbeings.

I clearly and distinctly felt someone flick the underside of my ring finger, moving it, lifting my finger perhaps an inch upwards momentarily.

That's correct, I'm saying that one of them touched me physically, flicked, and physically moved my completely relaxed finger. My finger hanging in open space with absolutely nothing near it whatsoever.

The feeling I got when that happened was a combination of absolute amazement, and being extremely "creeped out." I cannot stress how clear and sharp this experience was, how distinctly I felt someone tap my finger with theirs. It's not like it's a feeling that's easy to mistake. At the time it was simply impossible to doubt it had happened, any more than you would if I flicked your finger in the real world.

So there I sat feeling amazed and spooked, and then I noticed that I could see a glow around my hands, and it was really beautiful, and for all intents and purposes looked like what I've heard an aura described as. It was all around me. I could even manipulate it a bit, extend pseudopods outward a few inches, make it swirl about.

After perhaps ten minutes of experimenting with that, the effect began to fade.

58 comments:

  1. What do you make of that? "They" were physical in "our" world for a moment? Two different "physicalities" were able to touch for a moment? Hallucination of physicality?

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  2. One of those. If it was really a total hallucination, then it was more realistic than any I've had on salvia, because my hand was relaxed and someone flicked my finger and made it move significantly. I was dead-still throughout the whole experience, no movement, barely breathing, then that happened. Hard to mistake the feeling and the vibration of the finger being tapped.

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  3. Oh, and of course my eyes were open the whole time as well. Seeing them move about, kinda milling about around to the side where I could clearly see them, and behind me through peripheral vision. I even think I saw one move as I got flicked, but not sure, since I wasn't focused there since I was coming out of the vision at the time.

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  4. It's very Whitley-Strieber-esque! Not sure that's a comparison you'd want to have drawn, but it does remind me of some of his experiences of being poked at, and pushed, and so on. The thing about being more serious with salvia...this is almost identical to something in J.D. Arthur's book.

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  5. Saint Brian check out these lecture excerpts from Buddha GrandMaster Li Hongzhi, they point to a multidimensional view of the universe:

    Lecture excerpt 1:

    “The body from your life’s origin is in heaven to begin with. Yet this concept of “heaven” isn’t the same as the human concept of distance, as you imagine it to be. Think for a moment. If you observe the earth from Mars, isn’t the earth in the heavens? It’s also in the heavens. Take the area of space that’s less than an inch from your finger and pointed at by it, isn’t it heavens? It’s heavens as well. It’s not like the heavens that you imagine with the human concept of distance.

    For example, from macroscopic matter to microscopic matter, like cells in the human body, cells are composed of molecules and followed by atoms, atomic nuclei, and neutrons, until at last they reach the point of quarks or neutrinos. This is still very elementary. It can go on and on to even more microscopic levels.

    From the perspective of the human concept of distance, they, being in your body or in any objects outside of your body, haven’t much distance among them and are almost united. The scope of that cosmic body, however, is extremely enormous.

    The more microscopic a substance, or the more microscopic the particle of a substance, the greater its overall domain. One particle is tiny, but since it’s a whole body composed of innumerable particles, it is extremely enormous and even surpasses the scope of the dimension of humans. The dimension of humans looks really large, when in fact it’s not large at all.”


    Lecture excerpt 2:

    “What I just said was to tell you that living beings exist on every planet. Moreover, many are living beings whose appearances are similar to humans, only they don’t exist in this dimension because different particles form different dimensions. If you want to enter those dimensions, you can’t understand them with the concepts of today’s human science—this science is simply too shallow.

    For you to enter those worlds, you have to conform to the modes of being, forms of life, and ways of thinking in those worlds. Only then can you know them. You will discover upon entering one of those worlds that its particles are smaller than those of the human dimension, yet its dimension is extremely vast. We humans exist between these two types of particles, molecules and planets.

    Air is composed of molecules, isn’t it? But you can’t see it. Flowers, grass, trees, iron, steel, the clothes you wear, your flesh body, your hair, everything you use, and everything around you, all of these are composed of molecules. Soil is made up of molecules too. We humans call it “soil.” But actually, gods think of everything in the human dimension as composed of soil.

    Gods regard molecules themselves as soil. Someone asked me about the statement by Yahweh, the Lord of Western people, that he used soil to create man. In fact, everything in this dimension, including air, is soil in their view, only we humans can’t understand it.

    You’re simply covered with soil, surrounded by soil. Humans are crawling around in mounds of soil. Everything is composed of soil, and humans are in this soil. I think that after I’ve explained it like this, it shouldn’t be difficult to understand the story of man being created with clay as told by the Lord of Western people.

    If you want to know the way living beings exist in other dimensions, you will have to conform to the ways of existence in the dimensions of the planes of smaller particles. You can’t understand it by using today’s scientific theories; you have to throw out the concepts of modern science before you can understand. Once you understand it, you will discover that it isn’t the concept of time and space held by humans.”



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  6. Thank you for that. These general ideas seem to permeate all mysticism. Science does claim that there is a limit to how small a thing can go (the Planck length) but who knows...

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  7. You're welcome St Brian.

    Take a look at this excerpt from Zhuan Falun, it is quite long but worth the read. It elaborates on the concept that a human is indeed a small universe:




    "So Daoists consider the human body a small universe, and that makes a lot of sense. They’re not saying that its compositional structure is like the universe’s, they’re not talking about the form our body takes in this material dimension. We want to ask this: what’s the material body’s state below the level of cells as today’s science understands it?

    There are all kinds of molecular particles, and below molecules there are atoms, protons, nuclei, electrons, quarks, and the smallest microscopic particle that’s been researched so far is the neutrino. So what’s the absolute smallest microscopic particle? It’s just too hard to research. In his later years Shakyamuni said, "It is so large that it has no exterior, and so small that it has no interior." And what’s that mean? It means that at the Tathagata level, in terms of largeness, you can’t see the edge of the universe, and in terms of smallness, you can’t see the smallest microscopic particle of matter. That’s why he said, "It is so large that it has no exterior, and so small that it has no interior."

    Shakyamuni also put forth the theory of 3,000 boundless universes. He said that in the Milky Way galaxy of our universe there are 3,000 planets that have beings with carnal bodies on them, just like the human race. He also said that a grain of sand has 3,000 boundless universes like this one in it, so a grain of sand is like a universe, with intelligent human beings like us in it, and there are planets like this one, and mountains and rivers.

    Sounds hard to believe, right?! If it’s true, then let’s think, isn’t there sand in those universes? And in each of those grains of sand, aren’t there 3,000 boundless universes there, too? Then isn’t there sand in those 3,000 boundless universes? And in each of those grains of sand, aren’t there again 3,000 boundless universes? So at the Tathagata level you can’t see the end of it all.

    The same goes for human molecular cells. People wonder how large the universe is. I can tell you that this universe does have boundaries, but even at the Tathagata level it still seems like it’s boundless and infinite. But the inside of the human body, going from its molecules down to its microscopic particles in the microcosm, it’s as large as this universe. I know it sounds hard to believe. In the extreme microcosm of what makes up a human being, or any being, his nature and the unique elements of his being have been formed. So our modern science’s research on this is still miles away."



    excerpt 2:


    "Now, we know that material things are composed of molecules, atoms, and protons at their microscopic level, and you can trace it all the way down. If at each level you’re able to see the plane of that level instead of a single point—if you can see the plane of molecules’ level, the plane of atoms’ level, the plane of protons’ level, the plane of nuclei’s level—you’ll see the forms in which different dimensions exist. All material things, and this includes the human body, they all exist simultaneously with, and are connected to, the dimensional levels of the universe’s dimensions.

    In modern physics when they study the microscopic particles of matter, they only study one microscopic particle at a time, and do that through sectional analysis and fission, and they just study its post-fission composition after the nucleus undergoes fission. Now if we had an instrument that could unfold its whole plane and let you see a complete display of all the atomic elements or molecular elements at that level, if you could view that, you would have broken through this dimension and seen the reality of another dimension. Human bodies correspond to external dimensions, and they all have forms of being like that."

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    1. I didn't answer this fully enough, sorry. I have had many experiences where I sensed this "infinite Russian nesting dolls" nature of reality, and that my other selves each dwell in one of these universe-dolls. I've even seen it literally, on more than one occasion. Now, can I just believe it? Well, not yet, not yet. Still trying to nail it down.

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  8. St. Brian I'm not sure if you have checked out Zhuan Falun yet but if not I highly recommend it.

    It expounds on these matters in depth and in great detail. It has filled in for me many of the puzzle pieces and made me realize that indeed, this world is multidimensional and there is far more hidden underneath then what our current scientific paradigm currently knows about:

    https://www.falundafa.org/eng/eng/pdf/zfl_new.pdf

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  9. Hmm. dense stuff.. Seems applicable, but I tend to think in more western terms. I think it's not a surprise to me since I tend to think much like this anyhow, that there are levels and levels and at each higher level the truth of the previous one is invalidated, etc. Thank you for this. Had never seen it.

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  10. Sent you an email, Brian :)

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  11. Shit, must have missed it, I deleted about a thousand yesterday, thought I'd read all the senders... can you resend?

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  12. Any more recent stories/trips?

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    1. I'm facing a kind of writer's block brought on by two very startling trips... I almost wrote about them yesterday... sorry.

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    2. It's fine, I mean take as much time as needed. I was also wondering if you always took high extract doses? and how much of it would you take? Do you think you could break through on some 5, 10, or 20x? Not sure if youve felt any reverse tolerance as of late.

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  13. Saint Brian, I enjoyed reading this; your detail is remarkable. I am still attempting to put my first salvia experience into words.

    I did two hits of 40X. The bedroom I was standing in transformed into an endless meadow with a bright orange sky. There were three beings there that were very human like though they told me they were not from where I was from. I walked with them through the meadow as they told me about the universe. It seemed like we were walking and talking for hours. My boyfriend who was monitoring me as I did the salvia said that I was in one spot throughout the entirety of my trip so even my physical movements were hallucinated.

    The window in my bedroom appeared in the meadow and the colors around me became even brighter. The beings said that it was time for them to leave and that they wanted me to go with them. As they started to head for the window, the texture of everything around me resembled what it looks like when you crinkle a potato chip bag up.
    I shouted to the beings, "What about my world? Will I ever come back?"
    The beings stopped. They turned to me and said "This is all material. You can take your world with you"

    This time when they turned back to exit through the window, I followed them. The closer I got to the window, the more things around me got brighter and began blurring/moving together in a way that seemed to be creating a tunnel to the window.

    My human body at this point lost its balance and fell. My boyfriend asking "are you okay?" caused everything around me to disappear. When I "came back" I wasn't anywhere near the window, but on the opposite side of the room. I felt as though I were pulled out of a world back into this one which made me confused and angry. After a couple of minutes of anger and my body feeling hot, it was over.

    Despite those last couple of minutes, the experience was incredible and existentialistic.

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    1. Amazing experience, I kinda envy your meeting beings like that, I don't see anthropomorphic beings, just beings of energy, and only rarely. Recently, two in one week, very difficult to write about. I'm getting there. Hopefully this week. Plus another interesting multiverse experience, but not too much new in that.

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  14. "Plus another interesting multiverse experience, but not too much new in that."

    This is why I stay tuned to this channel ;)

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    1. thank you so much for "staying tuned." Appreciated!

      The new multiverse exp was similar to so many others with one difference. While a crowd of me was sitting in one spot surrounded by more of me, as usual, one of me walked by the rest of me. That part was new. A stray. Not associated with the crowd of me all in the one spot.

      The two "being" experiences were too much, one was like meeting God and the other was like meeting a very angry God, pissed off at me. So I don't know where to even begin. I'll be writing them up soon though. I just needed time to integrate them into my mindset.

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  15. First of all I really enjoy reading your blog and have gone through it all in one evening. I find salvia reports very fascinating and how the experience has reoccurring themes for so many and find it immensely important that there are salvianauts/psychonauts like you who go in there solely for research and try to bring as much as possible back to report on.

    Personally I have only tried salvia once 20x and it was only a boarderline breakthrough experience, I really would like to try it again if I got my hands on it. But I have had numerous experiences with mushrooms (psilocybe semilanceata) and one such has stuck with me for the last nine years and not really a day goes by where I don't think about it. Your post The Darkest Interpretation really gave me flashbacks as it has aspects that are very similar.

    This one was 4 dried grams in a tea.
    It started like all of them where every boundary to this reality gets cut, at that point in silent darkness I got comfortable and curious and the knowing that I was having a trip faded away, my curiosity automatically lead me to seek answers that I instinctively knew were there and I navigated that space like my own neighbourhood with a sense of familiarity, before long I went abolutely brakeless into the abyss to a state that I call the true situation.
    This is the situation I have always been in and will always be in, no beginning no end only the eternal state of me as a mere point of unturnoffable consciousness staring into a spiral shaped (like a knot shape moving into it self)infinity while at he same time being it observing myself being it, sensing endless amounts of beings in the same situation while knowing that they are only aspects of my self. Seeing the unescapable nature of this state I felt this absolutely overwhelming feeling of pointlessness that I have never experienced in my physical life followed by catatonic despair realising the totality of it all and at the same time repeating the same cyclical pattern over and over Ad infinitum. I saw that the pattern was life death and rebirth, me frantically having sex with myself creating copies of my self just to keep this illusion of life going and the amnesia that comes with it.

    At some point after spending infinity there the experience slowly faded away and I was back. For two days I thought nothing of it, it was just an intense trip but then I started remembering bits and bits and put the pieces together and realized that I had been in hell or if anything could be branded as such this would be it. Wanting to do as propably most people would, brush it off as just a bad trip I have been unable to do so. After all this time I am certain that what I described is only 0,1% of the experience and what what I have been able to remember and put into language.

    I have had many experiences after this one with higher doses and none have been even close in terms of content, not surprisingly because naturally I never had the same level of intent to seek information. I have rarely heard or read about people having similar experiences with mushrooms, only stronger psychedelics like salvia or 5-meo dmt like detailed in the book Darkness shining wild by Robert Augustus Masters.

    I wonder If i can ever try one of these stronger substances without going back to that true situation as I feel it to be the core of all truths and if I can experience it without the overwhelming terror and despair, as I believe it to be the reason we are in this escape we call life to begin with. My hopes are I can to at least some degree embrace it. Anyways I avoid talking about this because its a drag for most people, just wanted to share it and compare with others.

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    1. If you're on Twitter, say hi to me at @AWorldOutOfMind. This really goes for anybody reading this, as well. I don't always check this blog every day.

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    2. My wife had a similar experience with DMT several years ago - realizing that it is all just one (her) - and she wasn't very pleased about seeing that 'truth'. It gave her a feeling of isolation and loneliness like being locked away in a mental institution. She says it doesn't bother her so much after having some time to sit with it...possibly because of the nature of how things like that tend to fade over time like a dream experience.

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  16. I have consciously come to terms with the fact that this is the case, if that is what it turns out to be, so that I can report back to my central self that they despair isn't necessary and perhaps comfort it somehow. Is that strange or what? I mean, just in case, in case not only are we all one, but that one is only the many to distract it from it's own despair. However, if I were to succeed, I just realized that we would all cease to exist as individuals and the one would integrate us once again into it. So bad for us, in the sense that we'd all realize rather abruptly that we are literally figments of a vast imagination.

    I recently had several experiences that I have yet to write about. One of them was a deity-like being that stripped me bare, and ***showed me*** in a way that I could not deny, that this was indeed the case. When I asked it to prove it was real, my AC running in the background as my white noise, whined loudly for about a second on cue. And yet I STILL CAN'T FULLY BELIEVE IT. Then another time two days late, I met a very similar entity, seemingly the same one, who was rather harsh with me and seemed to be threatening to end my existence. I was pretty scared, and told it I would stop doing salvia. But turned out I lied, because it just wasn't enough proof for me, not yet. Still more to come... I need to be in the mood to write all this up.

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    1. Brian, it would seem strange though, if the "being" is annoyed with you taking salvia, that salvia exists in the first place. Why would salvia exist in the "escape dream"? Was that an oversight when the one split into many? Or is it placed there on purpose as a possible route back?

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  17. I've also recently learned that different light colors in my room lighting while I trip, can have large effects. I bought some variable color light bulbs and I have found that in red light, trips happen much easier and sooner, with lesser doses. Easier to see multiverse visions and there's lots of "outer darkness" in the room all the time while I'm tripping. Bluish-green light is the lighting I had on when I saw the entities, it seems to bring on more complex and interactive visions, like of a "higher frequency." The dark indigo blue is interesting, it makes me buzz with energy sometimes to the point of actual discomfort to where I have to change the color.

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  18. Another time more recently, getting back to those two entities, I think I started to see another one, and I stopped the vision from happening, intentionally.

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  19. Oh, back to the lighting... if I get too buzzed on the indigo lighting, I feel like a battery with too much of a charge, literally buzzing, so I change the light to red and it unwinds me, it drains me of the buzzing, it relaxes me. Amazing I never noticed this before but I just happened to get a multicolor light bulb to experiment with on a lark, and WOW.

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  20. I think this one as many is a legitimate part of the whole picture, although I expect also that the one "escaping" itself as the many is an emotional slant that we are putting on it, whereas other slants can exist. It assumes that source can experience despair, for example. Maybe it can, but I'm not so sure.

    The problem I have with the distraction/video game idea, as sort of espoused in the post by "anonymous" (great post by the way...I'm not challenging your experience) is that I am very much *not* distracted by unpleasant experiences and suffering. Why would we do that to ourselves (or "I" to "myself"?) if distraction was the goal. If anything, unpleasant experienced bump me out of any story I might feel myself getting involved in and instead raise trouble existential questions and existential angst in general...again, the very thing this supposes I am trying to distract myself from. I just don't see how that works. Immersive joy is what distracts human beings not suffering...or would distract "another consciousness" as human beings. In fact, why not take it further? Existing as animals would be the ultimate question, because such creaturehood doesn't give rise to existential questions. Why have a human creature at all if distraction is the goal? Maybe the source forgets itself so badly that suffering arises, I don't know, but this, taken alone at least, can't be the whole story. To coin a phrase: "something is rotten in Denmark!"

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  21. I think this one as many is a legitimate part of the whole picture, although I expect also that the one "escaping" itself as the many is an emotional slant that we are putting on it, whereas other slants can exist. It assumes that source can experience despair, for example. Maybe it can, but I'm not so sure.

    The problem I have with the distraction/video game idea, as sort of espoused in the post by "anonymous" (great post by the way...I'm not challenging your experience) is that I am very much *not* distracted by unpleasant experiences and suffering. Why would we do that to ourselves (or "I" to "myself"?) if distraction was the goal? If anything, unpleasant experiences bump me out of any story I might feel myself getting involved in and instead raise troubling existential questions and existential angst in general...again, the very thing this supposes I am trying to distract myself from. I just don't see how that works. Immersive joy is what distracts human beings not suffering...or might distract "another consciousness" existing as human beings. In fact, why not take it further? Existing as animals would be the ultimate solution, because such creaturehood doesn't give rise to existential questions. Why have a human creature at all if distraction is the goal? Maybe the source forgets itself so badly that suffering arises, I don't know, but this, taken alone at least, can't be the whole story. To coin a phrase: "something is rotten in Denmark!"

    (sorry, previous copy of comment above was published before editing...please feel free to delete it)

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  22. Suffering is a bit of a mystery, I admit. Seems part and parcel of having to experience a realistic interaction of matter and energy in a plane inhabited by multiple consciousnesses, though. This is one of those times that I can more see the idea of "all is mathematics" to be a better answer than "all is spirit" or "all is consciousness." Math is uncaring.

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  23. Don't let the blog die! This is now probably the ONLY (somewhat still living) and interesting salvia blog on the web. At least, in this universe ;)

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  24. I'm not, just many other things on my mind lately, thanks for that, though.

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  25. Hey, great Salvia blog! I wonder whether you have ever perceived or understood something about 'astrology' (the way the cosmos affects us) during some of your trips? Basically, there were experiments done using LSD (I think it was Stanislav Grof who did them) and he saw that the content of the LSD trips of his patients was archetypically and symbolically matching current astrological transits. Earlier, an astrologer, Cyril Fagan, has noticed that some of his night dreams's symbolisms were matching astrological transits. I myself have observed this latter phenomenon even before I found out about Fagan and Grof. For example, I may dream about some group of friends swimming in a deep ocean, and as soon as I wake up I know "oh Neptune(=ocean) is rising right now!" and then I go to check the astrological transits and indeed - for my location at that point of time Neptune was rising (in the case of this particular dream it was even more symbolic because Neptune was in Aquarius(=friends) ).

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    1. My thoughts? If you know the language of astrology and give it credence, synchronistic events can occur in that context, just like they occur in other contexts. I get a lot of synchronicities. In fact, they are what got me started in looking beyond the borders of science for possible answers.

      This happens to me with the Tarot, another language that once familiar, starts to take on significance in the world around me. Astrology is similar to a system of divination, similar to the Tarot. In fact, the signs and planets can be assigned to the cards, and indeed are in the system that I learned, which is a kabbalah-based one.

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    2. To add to this, it seems to me that this reality is such that our surroundings are linked to our thoughts somehow, anyhow. So I admit the possibility that things like astrology and the Tarot can indeed have validity beyond mere chance. And that synchronicities are related to that, as perhaps a strong thought having resonance somehow.

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  26. Oh btw heres this very interesting NDE report that seems very close to what is experienced during salvia trips: http://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1wilson_fde.html

    It seems the guy manages to remain conscious and switches realities in real life.

    AND also found some report on Stanislav Grof and Richard Tarnas's work on LSD experieces (and other alternative states of consciousness) and astrology: http://www.stanislavgrof.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Richard-Tarnas-and-Stan-Grof.pdf

    Quote: "For years, Grof and his colleagues had looked unsuccessfully for some kind of diagnostic system—such as the DSM categories, Rorschach, and others—to predict the inner experiences of their clients in deep self-exploration. Decades later, when Tarnas discovered and systematically applied the Rosetta Stone of archetypal astrology to this problem, Grof had to ironically concede that the one successful predictive system turned out to be something that was even more controversial and beyond the purview of conventional science than LSD psychotherapy. But the correlations they observed were dramatic and consistent. Whether the catalyst was Holotropic Breathwork™, a psychoactive substance, or a spontaneous eruption of the unconscious contents, (astrological) transits provide, in Grof’s words “the only system that can successfully predict both the content and timing of experiences encountered in non-ordinary states of consciousness in experiential psychotherapy”

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  27. I had not heard of this. Not sure why the correlations exist, why astrology has predictive power over psychotropic states. Astrology, like Kabbalah and Tarot, can be a way to dissect one's own personality, and provides symbolic representation of complicated states of mind rather well, so perhaps it's related to that. Interesting, thanks for this.

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  28. I have it. Astrology provides symbols representing many varied states of mind, and that's a symbolic language that penetrates to the subconscious, and in turn the subconscious is represented in the stars, all laid out for examination. So factors described in astrology actually have a real existence in the human mind, where we access them at deep levels with psychoactives like salvia and LSD.

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    2. This whole take on astrology is getting interesting. I only studied it briefly. Too vast and complex.

      I think this calls for a Salvia trip after impressing the mind with the topic of Astrology

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  29. That was an interesting NDE. However, I'm not entirely sure that I buy it. It is so much like a salvia experience that I'm left wondering if the writer hasn't read a bunch of salvia experience. Either that or it actually IS a salvia experience.

    Anyway, real or not, it brings me back to the same issue. What use is all this stuff about parallel universes if we can't have a practical action in them. This comment is not meant as criticism of anyone, least of all Brian. But seriously, if these things ARE real, then there must be a pathway to practical action that actually means something...otherwise it all becomes hot air. Parallel probabilities are really interesting and so on, but they are only really interesting if they actually exist and you can actually traverse them. Just as airlines are only interesting if you can actually get on them. Maybe salvia is trying to open us to that possibility, but if it is, it is being damn cryptic about it all. Thoughts?

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    1. "Either that or it actually IS a salvia experience"

      Here's a notable part of an NDE which suggests that there could be some correlation between Salvia and other experiences.

      "Your life never existed. The world never existed. Your family never existed. You were allowed to imagine it. You were allowed to make it up. It was never there. There was nothing there. There never was anything there. You're not real."

      This feeling or realization that one doesn't exist and life is pure imagination is a classic for most anyone who has ventured with Salvia

      http://www.near-death.com/experiences/archetypal.html

      http://www.dancingpastthedark.com/the-void-nde/

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  30. Hey Brian I commented before to ask if you had new experiences. Just checking back. Have you been taking any Sally D or other psychedelics lately?

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    1. was also wondering if you always took high extract doses? and how much of it would you take? Do you think you could break through on some 5, 10, or 20x?

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  32. take a look at this Brian... then take another and another look.. these are computer generated.
    Who is to say that your salvia worlds aren't just mind generated, just like these sincere sounding articles?
    http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/

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    1. That immediately hit me as gibberish. I didn't need to read it multiple times.

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    2. I'm actually planning to write about just that, how all of this could easily be us fooling ourselves. It relates to how salvia distorts the "dream" we all construct based on sensory input, that science has admitted we all create, that is indistinguishable from a sleeping dream in EEG's. To alter that dream is to alter one's reality completely and utterly, and it will seem "realer than real" because of it.

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  33. I think it's important to retain perspective, and we all can be wrong on this. We also can be onto something. I'm content to still pursue it in spite of knowing that it all can easily be self-created. I'm still not a "believer" in anything.

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  34. I apologize to my readers. Truth to be told, our new presidential administration has me too preoccupied to write about anything lately. I think that's a big part of my writer's block as regards these matters, which are still very dear to my heart, but hard to be happy about when reality is so screwed up. I'm not enlightened enough to let it all slide by me, apparently.

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  35. Hey Brian

    I wouldn't let Trump put other aspects of life on hold. Seriously. He's not even worth it. I know there's fallout from his election, but I doubt the administration will survive beyond the minimum term.

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  36. With respect to the "multiverse" nature of your experiences, the one concern that has always been at the back of my mind is whether it is simply the brain "representing" the reality around it (or its imagination of that reality) and then generating a whole stack of recursive repeats of that representation in a kind of feedback loop...like images in two mirrors back to back. Now I'm not saying that this has to be so, just that it's been a nagging thought at the back of my mind. This generation of "recursive repeats" might be the core "brain fart" that is caused, and then, your prior knowledge of, or fascination with, multiverse theory, causes your experience to be colored in those terms.

    This is why I still think it would be a worthwhile project to try to eliminate that possibility. I know that's difficult...perhaps bordering on impossible...but I still think it is worth the try, The trouble with any conclusions 'under the influence' is that the substance might be substituting your entire perception of reality. No matter how certain you may subjectively be that you did or did not do a certain thing, it simply can't be guaranteed, finally, without an outside reference. Example: you see a green wave travel across the room, touch your wife, and wake her. But it's not inconceivable that you may have made a noise, coughed, or even moved and poked her in the back..which, under the influence, your perceptions constructed as a 'green wave moving through the room and waking someone" Again, that might seem a bit far-fetched (and perhaps it is) but it would be nice to eliminate the possibility.

    ps I sent you an email.

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  37. Well, I am fully aware as I trip, you could ask me questions and I'd answer coherently, and I always sit still, and many of those were when I was fairly far from my wife.

    Read my new post. I talk about falsifying basically everything I've ever written here. I can do that

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