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



Thursday, July 13, 2017

"My Two Gods" plus "Possible Falsification Of The Monad" and a Multiverse Afterlife Speculation

(Note: It's been a long time since I've written to this journal. I've been demotivated to write in this political climate, but I feel the need once again. Sorry for my long absence.)

>My Two Gods

Six months ago, I had two experiences, about two weeks apart. Both of these were incredibly profound and the latter one was fairly scary as well. Both were in a darkened room, with a bluish-green light source. (I vary the color of the light source for different kinds of meditations now.)

In each, I basically met God personally. No wait, hear me out.

On the first night, sitting in meditation, a very large "being" for lack of a better word, approached me quickly from my left side. It was very large, perceivable through the walls and floor and ceiling of my room, like a glowing mountain-sized amoeba. I'd met something like this BEFORE.

This time, the being grabbed me. What I mean by this is that it came at me and engulfed my body about halfway, so that I was partially embedded in it, stuck fast. I could not move. The left half of my body, the half that was embedded in it, painlessly dissolved into it so that I felt like I was partially-digested, almost. I was integrated into it somehow. I felt like I was a tiny fly half-stuck in amber.

Then the communication began. None of it verbal, all fast-moving pure concepts thrown into my mind, pure understanding without language. I could see what I truly was. This being was showing it to me. After all, I'd been asking for my entire life.

This experience reduced me to a mere thought in that being's mind, nothing of what I thought that I was, no real body, all false, all a dream. I was just a thought, a piece of information in this being's vast mind.

I could see myself, but what I saw was not a body, but a symbol. It reminded me of an Arabic numeral, the number seven (7) only was more ornate, with "hitches" or slight curves to the top, horizontal part. I was this symbol, and nothing more, not to this being.

Along with my symbol, I suddenly saw many other such symbols and was made to understand that these were all the other people in the world. Also merely the thoughts of this being.

So I was not alone, this was not solipsism. This was worse. Even I didn't exist. Nobody exists. Not as anything more than this being's thoughts.

And yet I was not dismayed. There was a beauty to this. At least I could understand it.

Towards the end of this experience I asked the being, out loud "How do I know that you're real and not my imagination." As I finished the question, in less than a second, my air conditioner started to whine loudly. On cue.

Now, my air conditioner whines occasionally. However, not very often. So it was a bit scary and rather convincing that I got an auditory reply to my question.

And then it was over, except I still had that "embedded in another being" sense afterwards, which gradually faded over the next hour or so.

Incredibly profound, and it left me with a very positive feeling. A sort of lasting euphoria. That persisted until two weeks later, when, in another meditation, the being returned, but now it was angry.

Again I was embedded, as before. This time however the being showed me clearly that it wanted me to stop meditating on salvia, forever. I was in no position to disagree at the time. It was like I was in the jaws of a tiger and it was telling me what to do to avoid being eaten. For that was the implication, that the being would simply stop me, by causing me to die. At that very moment. So I agreed.

It released me.

Apparently I lied to it, because I decided not to stop. I haven't had any more experiences with the being since. Truly, it's been hard to trip at all since. It's like my mind refuses to succumb to the beginning of the experience so I remain lucid. My rational mind dominates me too much to trip.

This added to my lack of desire to write about my experiences. I seem to be getting over it, though.

I think these experiences, had they happened to anybody else that did not prioritize remaining linked to reality and not succumbing to beliefs, those people would have been transformed by them, believed them, and become a believer in God, at least a Deity of sorts. I did not.

This brings me to another important thing: I am not a true believer, at least not yet, even with these two incredibly realistic and profound experiences. Here's why:

>POSSIBLE FALSIFICATION OF ALL SUCH "MONAD" OR "HOLISTIC IDEALISM" TYPE VISIONS:

I've been thinking lately about how we perceive reality, the scientific view, that is. Science tells us that each and every one of us constructs a "dream" that is literally our only waking reality, based on the data we receive from our senses. So when I see another person, what I'm really doing is interpreting sensory data in signal form from my optic nerves and **translating** that information into a dream-form of the person I'm looking at. We only think we directly see things, directly sense things, but science tells us that this is not the case. We construct a dream of reality and confuse it with actual reality, which none of us has ever truly directly seen. Same with all the other senses. Our mind has no "direct contact" with reality, other than a hyper-realistic dream we all construct representing it.

So, this is science. Not mysticism. This is how we see reality: We actually don't. None of us do.

Taking this scientific fact into consideration, I think it is possible, under deeply altered mental states produced by various means including drugs and meditation, to become able to perceive that your reality is "nothing but a dream" and still be wrong. You may be merely perceiving the fact that, yes, reality is a dream to all of us, because that's how the brain processes sensory information, by constructing a dream to fit it. You may be perceiving the actual dream of reality in all of us, not some overarching dream reality in the mind of The One, or a Monad of some kind. We ourselves may be the Monad. Our own minds may be the culprits here. We may be merely perceiving our own World Dream, not an actual dream-based reality but a necessary evolved function of the normal mind required to integrate sensory information.

This would also neatly explain why so many people who use psychedelics and entheogens report that the experiences seemed "realer than real life." When you consider the fact that your "real life" is a constructed dream based on sensory information and you're looking under the surface of that constructed dream from an altered state that is more basic, closer to your inner self than your constructed dream is, of course it looks "less real." It is! We made it! At some level we realize it isn't real.

Now, do you think that I believe that?

Of course not, I don't believe anything, remember?

I just wanted to make it plain that I do truly retain my rational side throughout these experiences.

I also have had so many experiences in visions and meditations with salvia divinorum that have seemingly affected reality, from awakening my wife or dog on cue, to things like the air conditioner whining or other sounds perfectly on cue like that, that I must still remain neutral and uncommitted. Once I simply took my salvia, the "rush" hit me, and all the lights in the house went out for about 4 seconds. An actual power outage, rare here.

Another thing: Lately I'm also directly sensing, while meditating, that mathematics is involved in my own mental processes.

I'm beginning to directly sense the mathematical nature of thought itself, so I think it's possible, as stated in previous entries here, that mathematics, not consciousness per se, is the "ground of all being." As in, we're all literally "made of mathematics." Everything is math.

To read more on this idea, again I present this link to Max Tegmark's BOOK.

However, what does this mean, if true? It means that all our most emotional experiences, even love, and all our most abstract thoughts and imaginings, are still "merely" a flowing, incredibly complex mathematical process.

(Such incredible complexity is to be expected when considering the vast spans of time involved in our development.)

It means that all consciousness is a mathematical process. All consciousness is mathematics. Therefore, mathematics can be consciousness, or even conscious. Therefore certain aspects of our mathematical reality can seem to be consciousness-based when they're really mathematics-based.

As I've said before, what can you think of that would still remain if you eliminated space, time, matter, and energy?

The only thing I can think of that quite possibly cannot *not* exist, is mathematics.

Food for thought, no?

Addendum:
>An Afterlife Speculation Based In The Multiverse

Science, specifically physics, tells us that the past is real. We can never journey to it, but the past, at least according to our best mathematics, is still "there" somehow. If we could go back in time, there would be time to go back to.

Think of the implications.

All our memories of the past... we're still "back there" making them. We're all still alive in the past, experiencing, perhaps over and over, those remembered experiences. If I could travel back to my past, I could see myself making the very memories that I carry of that time in my head.

When I die, science tells us that I will still be alive in my past.

We are all still alive in our past timelines after we die. Quite literally, forever.

Now, let's add in the concept of a multiverse, since this seems to cry out for one. Let me explain:

If I die, but I'm still alive in the past, it is *possible* that I, or rather my consciousness, will merely, as I expire, return to a previous time that I can remember in my past.

But then there would be two of my consciousnesses there. Or would there be?

What would likely happen would be a split, a divergence of universes, creating a new one in which I explore a different path. A different future. A different death. And the cycle continues. We'd all explore an infinity of paths forever. Literally forever.

Ahh, sounds kinda nice. Certainly better than many religions.

Do I believe it?

You know the answer by now.

I wonder if I'll ever truly believe anything, ever again. Best not to, I think. Too dangerous.

228 comments:

  1. Hi Brian.

    I think you are being too hard on yourself. It’s perfectly okay to believe things, especially if beliefs are part of the agency of nature, that can cause things to happen. I can’t quite go all the way with you in believing that reality is secretly and really “all mathematics.’ I don’t “believe” that, you might say, and I can easily conceive of scenarios in which reality is “really” consciousness...without any much difficulty at all, in fact.

    I’m glad you are still experimenting. Your experiences of these “beings” are interesting, and I don’t want to “analyze” those experiences, Freudian unconscious style, but since you are defying your instructions from “God,” I wonder if you really believe, deep down, that you met God. Your own living force, or general living force “manifesting” to you in a form partly governed by your hopes, fears, and expectations, perhaps? Well, you don’t finally believe anything, as you said, so I guess I know the answer.

    I do sense what I think is an unconscious concern at “rule breaking,” which may be showing up in this experience. There’s nothing like Spiritual High Management showing up to confirm a worry that you’re GOING AGAINST THE AGREED LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE! (or something). My hunch is, you’ll be alright and “God” won’t kill you. But then I’m not a mountain-sized amoeba, so you take your chances ;)

    Please keep sharing any multiverse type experiences that you have. I always love those. I think there’s something to them. Just not sure in what exact way.

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    1. "It’s perfectly okay to believe things, especially if beliefs are part of the agency of nature, that can cause things to happen."

      Yes. Let me explain what I do more clearly. I have my "everyday" life in the world, in which I adhere to consensual reality. This is my anchor to the world. I don't want to lose my anchor, so I refuse to alter these basic "beliefs" unless I were to receive absolute proof. Now, I also have another set of "beliefs" (quotes because they're *situational beliefs*) that are more flexible, that I use with salvia experiences. In many cases I have to believe a lot in order to see anything. In a few, my belief had to be tuned up to "absolute belief" in order to see what I was trying to see. I have had a LOT of practice in having temporary beliefs, and situational beliefs. I compartmentalize myself that way. When I need to believe, I can make myself believe, then later on I turn it off or whatever is necessary. It's weird.

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    2. but WOW, how realistic. Seriously, I meant what I said. I'm glad I was prepared for this, by all the other experiences, to not just jump into absolute belief. I think most people who were not prepared would have been utterly convinced and "gotten religion" so to speak. Hell, I almost did, for a few days there.

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    3. I often find myself in a vision and I repress my rationality, shrink it to a tiny little kernel at the back of my mind so I'm barely conscious of it and can barely remember ever being rational, but I do remember my little kernel back there is there if I need it... then watch the vision, with perhaps 1% of my consciousness remembering that kernel... a tiny thread for emergency purposes. As soon as I see something really worthwhile I "pull the thread" and turn on my rational analytical side, SLIGHTLY... only the barest amount of reason, for too much will scare away the vision... fine tune it... fine tune it... a little more reason, no, too much, a little less... ahh... maintain this level, maintain this balance... and so on. It's a true battle to see the maximum amount but maintaining at least a thread of reason ***or you'll forget the vision***...

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    4. Incidentally, the "little kernel of rationality at the back of my mind" is what eventually evolved from my "back room meditation." Used to be a whole back room with a window, but now it's like it's a "sub-mind" "back there" that I'm not present in anymore, but a small part of me is. Like a helper. I keep my sanity in a jar, lol.

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  2. Thanks! Yeah, at first I thought it might be a contact with "The One" but after the second experience I reasoned "no deity I'd want to talk to would behave like that." Besides, if I'm it's thought, it should just stop itself. Then on more reflection it seems plain that it was a manifestation of my own guilt remnants from my Christian upbringing.

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  3. Also, if I'm interrupted when I'm in a vision, I "pull that string" all the way, turn on my rational analytical side completely, and although it's slightly uncomfortable, *shut the vision down* and deal with my interruption. Back when I was a beginner, I wouldn't have even thought that possible.

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  4. Still have multiverse visions from time to time, but nothing new to report. Which is why I didn't. And yes, I also can see how my mind might be faking those, too. This is the problem when you're your own devil's advocate... but I have to be just that, to make sure I retain my sanity while doing all this.

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  5. My old friend PBoy who showed up in the last post's comments near the end, was for a long time my "mentor" in a sense. He gave me a very highly rationalist point of view to refer back to. He taught me that no matter how realistic these things seem, it's still prudent to adhere to reason unless you encounter incontrovertible proof that others can see and test too. So my "rational" persona is kinda based on him, lol. He still thinks I've slightly gone off the edge here, but I still love the guy.

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  6. You know, I still think there is something to the “multiple realities” intuition…broadly considered. You have a prior interest in physics, but it shows up a bit too often in widely differing people’s salvia experiences for that to be the only explanation. Of course, I like the idea that there may be better versions of my life existing somewhere in the “spacious moment”. I would like it even better if they could be accessible somehow, although that seems problematic under salvia. Is it literally “other universes.”? Or is it some kind of liquid relation between the Potential and the Actual? Who knows.

    It’s almost like “Potentials” have a secret or deeper kind of reality that we don’t quite grok in our monkey consciousness, and as you said in one of your own posts, as if they actually have their own kind of existence somehow. So maybe the correct answer in quantum mechanics is not simply “superposition” and not simply “other universes” but a third thing that somehow contains both of these. Not sure anyone’s done a math for that one yet though, LOL.

    PS Thanks for removing the hanging post fragment. Appreciate it.

    I’m always around to have a discussion if you want, either here, or via emails.

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    1. I agree, the multiple reality thing is also of high interest to me as well. I can posit a scientific reason relating to that "world dream" I talk about above. If a chemical can disrupt that dream, the effect can be as realistic and as profoundly incredible as anything you can think of, because it's altering your entire world, quite literally. But I like to think there's more to it, and I think there is. A lot more happens while I'm in that state than I can recall, I lose much when I come out of it, but I am getting a sense that if I could remember it all, it would be obvious to me that it's a real effect. In other words, I get the feeling that I conduct tests "out there" and it passes them. But it's so vague.

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    2. As to the math, it occurs to me that if "all is mathematics" I might be able to answer that. All timelines exist as mathematics, but our consciousness is also mathematics that follow a given timeline to the exclusion of all others. One path, but all forks are realized, but we can only take one path. I remember as we speak now that I've sensed this, as if the paths are all there, like a vast inverted tree root, so many paths, and impulses travel down them periodically, with a regular periodicity. Like rhythmic pulses of electricity, only the pulses are our individual consciousnesses, repeatedly pulsing from birth to all varieties of deaths at the ends of the "roots." Each pulse is one of "me." It's too vague to go any further with the description though. That's about all I got.

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    3. This is why I like talking about these experiences, it jogs my memory and I can recall more things.

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  7. I like discussions here because others can see them too, and I can more easily refer back to them in the future. And I like email exchanges if it gets too involved, so either-or, really.

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  8. I also get the impression that we change universes or paths or whatever, every split-second as we live our normal lives. Even if you're just blinking your eyes, you're traveling to the appropriate next-moment universes where such body and eye positions are already there awaiting your presence.

    Like I said, it's a strong impression, and I get it all the time. Every time I take it, really. I sense "jumps" like from frame to frame in a movie, with ***nothingness*** in between them.

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  9. When I say ***nothingness*** I mean it. It's not like I see darkness and don't sense anything, it's that I see darkness and don't sense anything *including me.* It's like my whole being "blinks out" for a microsecond and then I'm back, but in a different body in the next "frame."

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  10. One thing that intrigues me a lot is what keeps us locked in a single probability? Is it really some set of rules or some being…or is it more like just a kind of dumb inertia. The same kind of dumb inertia that would have kept humans trapped on one continent, unless they actively took up shipping and air travel to get themselves somewhere else. I know that you are saying there may be very small moves all the time…such as moving into the pre-existing frame where you blink or sneeze as you put it. But there seems to be some kind of “unwritten law” that moving suddenly and far across the “tree” has a high inertial barrier against it. The sort of move that would cause “Brian” to become “Mike” or that sort of thing. Or just a rather different Brian.

    It may be that salvia reduces this inertia, sort of like a catalyst in a chemical reaction which reduces the “activation energy” necessary for the reaction even to take place. Without reducing that inertia, without that catalyst, the reactants could literally sit there inert forever, and the reaction would never occur.

    Or another way I sometimes tend to think about it: as if our experience track is like a groove on an old style vinyl record. There are multiple grooves to each side of the one that the needle is running, but unless there occurs some fault or glitch in that groove or unless the system is “bumped” by an outside force, shifting the needle across the surface of the record…again that needle will happily just go on and on in that particular channel forever…or until the end of the record at least. Maybe salvia is like something that can bump the stylus across the surface of the record, and temporarily at least folks can end up in another groove…though there also seems to be some kind of homing mechanism involved…like a spring tension in the stylus arm.

    Only thing about salvia, even if it is a force that “bumps the stylus”…it seems like a bit of a Russian Roulette. If we were really going to have something conceptually like shipping or air travel in probability space, even if we just went on very small journeys to begin with (think bamboo raft across a river) it would need at least a minimal measure of control possible.

    Just my ramble here.

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  11. I think reality is very much like a dream, but the nature of that dream is to only progress to futures that are totally consistent with our past experiences, so we steer ourselves always to futures that can fit our pasts seamlessly, or almost so. Of course I often think the dream is mathematical in nature, but it may well not be, right? I might be making those "symptoms" manifest myself.
    Last night, another profound experience, this time c I'm sitting there CLEARLY seeing that my reality is a dream, and CLEARLY sensing that there's a larger mind dreaming it, and dreaming me. Dreaming me up. This was as clear as a sunrise. So now, the question is, what is it that makes me think that, if it's not true? Why is it so clear? And why so clear that there's a larger mind dreaming me up? And why is my consciousness centered in the dream, and not the mind dreaming it up? Why am "I" in the dream, and not the mind dreaming it, that I can clearly sense. If it's my mind, my subconscious mind, "out there" then it means my conscious mind is being entirely dreamt up by my subconscious mind, either in a "world dream" that we all make to fit our senses, or ENTIRELY. That's my problem. I can tell it's a dream, no doubt. But is it my own subconsciousness' dream, or is it a vaster being's dream... or my higher self, whatever that may be?

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  12. And while this dream has been giving me evidence of "other universes" when I alter my mental state with salvia, is that also just part of the dream? Or do they exist as parallel dreams?

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  13. I was so clear last night, so rational and conscious in my eyes-open meditation, and I'm sitting there looking around at my surroundings, and watching them warp and split and seeing the *texture* of everything as a dream-texture and not a waking texture at all, and seeing waves and warps and splits in reality that pass through my body, and *feeling* those gaps and splits inside of me as well.. a gap passes through my head and my head momentarily ceases to exist, then returns... my own body clearly is also a dream. Even my mind, seems to be someone else's dream, and when I say "seems to be" it's not due to lack of certainty in the moment, let me tell you. It's only due to my rational mind afterwards thinking that I need to not just believe in this, that I need to analyze and test it more.

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    1. What if this reality is simply as you observed in this meditation but the rational mind is what stops the continuity of this awareness?

      I feel these states are readily accessible without Salvia but the rational aspect of the mind is so dominant that it's a great challenge to do so without it. The rational mind is about being certain, being without certainty creates a sense of fear.

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    2. HOW did I miss this reply? Hope you read this:
      I sense precisely that, all the time. How could we alter reality when doing so would terrify us beyond madness? This is the nature of "The Gatekeeper." Part of ourselves, deep down, that is TERRIFIED of anything that "doesn't fit" with reality. Excellent point.

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  14. I do remember a moment last night while I was absolutely certain that reality is a dream, thinking "of course it is, I knew that Donald Trump had to be a figment of my imagination or someone else's based on my fears, since he's too stupid to be real. I took some comfort in that for a bit, lol.

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  15. I think that larger mind "out there" has to be my own subconscious mind, but it's so VAST. It's more like I'm dreaming me up, so there's a tiny "me" in my imagination, but he's dreaming another me up, and so on and so on, forever, like a "nested" chain of me's all dreaming us into existence.

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  16. So my current dilemma is, who does that vast mind belong to, me or someone or something else?
    How to test for that?
    Seems to me that if it was my subconscious mind, I wouldn't feel so separate from it, as an individual. My sense of my own "core" to my personality is part of the dream, not part of it. Why?
    But it can still be my subconscious mind, since we really don't know how deep our own subconscious minds go. Still, for my subconscious mind to seem and feel like a different, larger being entirely? Seems odd to me.

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    1. Fascinating. I wonder if there is a way to test this.

      If that vast mind indeed belongs to you, shouldn't you be able to exercise some control over it (hypothetically)?

      When you are in that deep state, is there a way you could keep expanding your awareness to the point that you would fully transcend your perception of individuality, and totally "become" that vast mind. Maybe by boosting up your lucidity somehow while in that state?

      I bet this could bring some great insight. But even then, could you truly believe it? :-)

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    2. Precisely what I'm trying to do now! Excellent... you are on my page.

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    3. Was wondering last night... wonder if my "core" mind, my subconscious, more has aspects of my child-mind of the past. Wonder if childhood memories might help me access it. Anyhow, taking control of it or at least "communicating" with it, is my goal now.

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    4. "maybe by boosting your lucidity while in that state"

      That's the deal, it's precisely "boosting my lucidity" that ends visions entirely. So I have to delicately introduce more lucidity somehow, more "rational mind," without disturbing the delicate process of receiving the vision. Which I have been able to do, but not enough yet.

      This is often a long process. I find myself in a vision, confronting a mystery. I can't solve it yet. I have to come back to this state, time and again, each time being able to remember more and more about my past reactions when I was confronted by the same kind of mystery. Over time, when I confront it, I can remember what I want to DO in that state, how to TEST it, and can do it while "out there." Takes time.

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    5. See, now I've confronted the mystery, I will plan what to do and how to test it, and *hopefully* the next time I "meet" it, I can introduce some of that. Impossible to think of how to test it when "in vision," such concentration would kill the vision as I attempted it.

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    6. Note though, that when I'm in vision, I can consider introducing more of my rational mind, or not. That much rational mind, I can let through. That's my "thread" to my "kernel" of rationality.

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    7. I will second that when in the Salvia state - everything always seems like ME. No unity/overlapping with others.

      I still haven't had a chance to explore a white-out type experience with 5MEO-Dmt, but I think if you ever have a chance, you should consider taking it. I would love to hear your experience. It seems to be the molecule that has a chance to get you to the full, infinite, be-everything-at-once experience. Coupled with your Salvia experiences, I imagine you would have great insights and possibly many answers. I believe I've suggested the book 'Tryptamine Palace' by James Oroc previously, as well as Martin Ball and his 'Being Human' book. I haven't heard you mention them so I'm guessing you haven't taken a look yet. Both people are very experienced with 5Meo, but neither seem to be as experienced with Salvia as you. And based on your skeptical/(non)-religious background, I think Martin Ball would resonate with you well. He is definitely against any fluff...but after his first experience 'being God' (not meeting or seeing God...but experienced BEING God) he now has no trouble using that word.

      Salvia seems to get one to the ultimate 'me' place, and 5meo seems to take one to the ultimate 'everything' place.

      Thanks for writing again...I've been checking your blog daily since last October waiting for some new experiences :-D

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    8. Ah, great stuff! For me too, many experiences have seemed to be superimposed with manifestations of "my own" subconscious mind.

      In general, I have found a lot of similarity with what Brian describes. I like to speculate that all of us individuals (and all our myriad timelines) stem from a single higher-dimensional mind, almost as if we are being "dreamed" by that mind. (More evidence needed, of course.)

      I'm very curious about 5-MeO-DMT too based on what I've read. Maybe one day I will finally have that opportunity.

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    9. And yeah, there is that delicate balance between "preserving" and continuing the vision, while also being capable of pulling in more and more of your rational "awake" mind. To me. it seems like an "exercise" that would need to be practiced many many times (a long process, indeed).

      The problem I kept encountering was, each time I would re-discover something crucial, but then I would have forgotten it again after the experience was over. I remember that I discovered the crucial thing, but I can't remember what it was (except for small fragments). I think the continued practice of pulling in more rational mind and keeping stable through the whole experience would have been extremely helpful.

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    10. I'd love to try DMT. How does one go about doing that? Isn't it illegal? SD is at least, legal where I live.

      Chris: Every DAY? I had no idea anybody was that interested in my blog. Might motivate me to write more, thank you.

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    11. D ZZZ: You said this:
      "To me. it seems like an "exercise" that would need to be practiced many many times (a long process, indeed)."

      Going on seven years now, yep. This is the key part of salvia exploration, I think. Repetition. Thinking (and writing) about the last trip(s) and deciding what you *should have done* the last time. Then hopefully next time something similar happens, you've got your response "ready in your quiver." You don't have to analyze and think too much about what you're gonna do, you can just naturally do it with a small enough amount of concentration so as to not disturb or forget the vision.

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    12. 'Every DAY?'... Well, I have a job with lots of down time so I have a few links/forums that I check daily for new posts. It only takes a moment, but yes, I usually check daily. There just are not many discussions on Salvia out there, at least not by well-experienced enthusiasts.

      I concur that reading about other's experiences helps me remember my own. Additionally, I find I reading other's experiences are almost as good as having them myself, unlike DMT/LSD/etc. With DMT experiences - they are just all over the board and seem very unique to each individual. Salvia experiences seem more global in nature in many ways.

      Yes, DMT is illegal in the US. If interested enough, one can extract it themselves from mimosa hostilis root bark which can be purchased on eBay. The DMT-Nexus has many teks for the extraction process. Many use dangerous substances such as lye, but some use safe substances such as lime and vinegar.

      However, note that 5MEO-Dmt is MUCH different than "DMT" which is 'n,n-DMT'. Above, I was referencing 5MEO, which is much harder to obtain. That substance can be obtained from a particular frog found in the Sonoran desert, or made in a lab - which is how most people experience it I believe.

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  17. I do think that there have been several times on salvia when I could sense another version of me that was different or even very different from this version, and seemed to have the chance to go there and be him, be that version, but every time I try to push into that at all, to even see more about the other version of me, I feel my own heart go into palpitations. It seems that we need to die here to go there, to me.

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  18. For the larger being to be my own subconscious mind, my own subconscious mind must be both much larger than we tend to think our subconscious minds are, and also be much more **independent** of my conscious mind, literally more like another mind trapped in my head with little resemblance to my conscious mind. A very alien "being" trapped in my skull, dreaming up a non-alien, familiar dream for me to enjoy.

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  19. Also, noticing that while my newer salvia experiences do not wake the dog sleeping next to me, he almost always has bad dreams when I first trip every night. I trip, feel the "rush" pass through me, then I often hear him whimpering in his sleep, as I did last night. So there's that, slim as it is.

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  20. Note on precision of my prior remarks: He always *starts* whimpering *precisely* as I start to trip, at the same point in the beginning of the experience. Precisely. And it's real, I am not imagining it, it's not part of the trip, an illusion. It's definitely real.

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  21. If God exists, I know His nature: A vast being that dreams me up.
    If God doesn't exist, I know my nature: A small being that dreams God up.

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  22. In a way, the dog having a bad dream is better evidence than the dog waking up. I might do something, make some noise maybe (even though he's mostly deaf, no ear canals!) or a motion or something that wakes him, but what can I possibly be doing that gives him a bad dream? Lol...

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  23. I think there's no "bottom cork" on the subconscious, and so away from the ego, that probably opens out, if you go deep enough down there, into "all reality." I think this is where a lot of the stuff is coming from. I think "deep down" reality ITSELF (though it may not be a "self" knows that reality is a kind of dream...that phenomena are its progeny or creations...and that this truth can be directly sensed in deep experiences. That said, even our own structure as an "individual being" may have much deeper roots going down there than we are normally aware of. The ego or awake consciousness might be like the flower at the top of the plant, but it's supported by leaves and stems, and deep down, dark roots, that we aren't able to see. And then deeper even beyond that, maybe the individual finally merges into the ALL, or else you are really just the ALL playing a game of being YOU. John Wren-Lewis (near death experience) used to say it was like the universe was playing a temporary game with itself called "John Wren-Lewising."

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  24. The heart palpitation is fascinating, and part of that makes me wonder if generating a living organism is part of what must "condense out of possibility" if you heavily lean your mind and intent (during the salvia trance) into an alternative experience track.

    Yet I must admit this one also puzzled me. You must go with the sensed truth of your own experience of course, but I am left wondering why one experience track must "die" for another to be "activated." in certain ways it has always made more sense to me that all branches of the tree are really alive "all the time"...we are alive in all of them...and it is simply a kind of deep attentional focus that shifts. It's hard to justify that we can move from moment to moment without our heart stopping every time, especially if there is "nothingness" between each frame, and yet we have to die to go to a clearly alternate line. Maybe death is a different phenomenon from track changing, though death might be one (quite possible even the main) stimulus bringing about such a change. This seems to at least be the naive suggestion of some "glitch in the matrix" or ("I thought I died in that accident, but I seem to be alive") type stories. One twiglet of the tree is pruned, but your attentional focus jumps to the next twig over. From the standpoint of observers at the accident, you died in the wreck. Who knows?

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  25. I've thought that too, since I've run across the idea enough in my past adventures learning about the occult. That the subconscious mind is really a part of Yesod, the Astral Plane, etc. etc. While that would be splendid, I actively search for such a connection and while I certainly plumb my depths, I haven't found a solid indicator of it yet. Except... things like awakening the dog, so many times... and the wife... and appropriate sounds... weak tea in the real world, I'm afraid. No scientist would take any of that seriously.

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  26. Ah, didn't see your last response. Yeah, I don't know, it just seems that there are certain things that trigger my heart when I do them. Perhaps it's more the *kind* of effort that I'm making at the time, because it's a "hardening of focus" that requires some mental effort, that might trigger the tachycardia.

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  27. I think I have changed tracks, many times in fact, on salvia. Just "nearby" tracks that are almost identical, except for say, the fact that my pain just went away. I do self-healing on pain, and it usually goes away. My visualization involves shifting to a nearby plane where my pain is less. Also, many other situations. Like when I awakened my wife by selecting a "picture" of her out of a grid of them, and she awakened just like the "picture" showed.

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  28. I think the effort required to reach tracks that are different enough to notice gross inconsistencies, might be excessive. I've heard other's trip reports though, where the person comes back from the trip and the drapes are different, completely different, and everybody remembered them the way they were but him. Had some similar though lesser experiences too, like a clear memory of a conversation with my wife that could not have happened given she wasn't sleeping in the same room that night. And a couple of other anomalies.

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  29. I’ve heard of a number of cases out there of people experiencing alternate tracks. Of course, it’s always possible, perhaps even likely, that a few of these are made up, but they tend to come in just a few repeating types (so far as I see anyway).

    1) People returning to feel that the reality they returned to is somehow “just a little bit off” from the one they left. Not as dramatic as the drapes thing, but more subtle than that. As if they came back near to their launch point but not exactly to it. The feeling fades after a while

    2) More dramatically…people cycling through a number of different lives and environments and then ending the experience on one of these, but not being sure whether it was the same one they started on or not. This is probably the most dramatic type. It’s not that they sense a whole bunch of discrepancies, drape style…more that they feel the whole “memory package” of where they now are loaded along with arriving there…and so it’s impossible to tell whether that’s where they started from or not, or whether they’ve just always been there (does that make sense?). I’ve seen this once or twice, but I wouldn’t call it common.

    3) People having a powerful sense that they could choose to enter a certain life, and all the memories and “software” of that life would wrap around them and seem entirely normal (just as in scenario 2) but they deliberately choose not to do so, in the case I read because they did not want to make the sacrifice of leaving their current life behind…and felt they might never be able to return to it. What fascinates me about these is the strong sense of choice involved.

    4) Actually living in a completely alternate track, but only temporarily. When the experience ends they are back in the world they started from…or at least appear to be. This is sometimes accompanied by a kind of severe grief for the loss of the reality they were in.

    I know you said you sometimes have the experience of (1). Things being “just a little off.” Can you share any of those (not already shared)? Your medieval room experience sounds a lot like an example from (3).

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    1. I've had #2 more than once too. I've awakened from trance, opened my eyes, looked around at my normal room, then, without ever closing my eyes, I open them **again** to another version of my room, then **AGAIN*** over and over, opening my eyes without ever closing them, to new rooms, afraid it will never stop, then it does, and I've stopped, but the room that I've stopped in seemed random, probably *not* the one from which I started.

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    2. I've also come out of a vision by seeing versions of my room through a window and then like, rolling out through that window back into my room and awakening from the vision... seemed like I could have come back into any one of many versions of the room that I saw blinking into and out of existence through the window as I rolled out of it. That happened only once, barely recall it now.

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    3. Oh, and ALSO: I've come back from a salvia vision feeling like it was a different universe but then the universe "normalizes." Like you said, as if when you arrive, you download all the "local body" information. It implies a separation between the self and the memory. Like the self, the consciousness, can go from body to body, but not realize it because the memories all change when you get there.

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    4. But often as I go through the next day I see something that **seems off** like perhaps it is different that what I used to know, but when you try to pin it down, it either normalizes or the feeling goes away.

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  30. "Except... things like awakening the dog, so many times... and the wife... and appropriate sounds... weak tea in the real world, I'm afraid. No scientist would take any of that seriously."

    But if they were really there, taking measurements etc, this might destroy the presence of any subtle effect acting. It looks like it might be akin to a kind of consciousness-observation thing, with a quantum feel. In the altered state, your subjectivity is melting out into the "environment" so that the distinction between you and environment is not really valid so rigidly any more. But it only happens in a relatively smooth and quiet environment, with one or two other familiar beings, preferably asleep. It's like your mind folds over them for a while, even their behavior, or as if they are really discovered to be part of the same continuous "cloth" of consciousness that you have been all along, but it just doesn't present itself (usually) except in the salvia states.

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  31. Even if they didn't destroy the subtle effects, I think they'd dismiss them even if they saw them. Too subtle, too easily dismissed by coincidence. Even though it's repeated over the years many times.

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  32. I have a book, a Field Guide to North American birds. Went to FL as a kid, loved the Turkey Vultures, had my guide with me. The guide showed at the time, that their range only went up to about North Carolina. I remember this clear as a bell. Fast forward to about twenty years later, and one summer I noticed Turkey Vultures in MY AREA, in New England. Took out my trusty guide book, the exact same identical book that I had with me 20 years before when I went to FL and saw them, went to the back of the book to check their geographic range again, and whaddaya know, the range NOW SAID that they went up as far as Massachusetts. I swear, that range changed over the 20 years that I didn't look at it. But how? Now I think I might know.

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  33. Hi Brian. Were the different rooms you opened your eyes to, or could have "rolled" into visibly (or otherwise) different in some way?

    That's interesting on the Turkey Vultures. You mentioned this. Sounds like "Mandela Effect"..we spoke about it with respect to Interview with A/The Vampire and Berenstein/stain Bears.

    I have a kind of similar story, but I don't know if I'm imagining it or not. Seem to remember going on a camping holiday with my parents as a kid (went on many) to a particular place. I remember the name. Except lo and behold this location doesn't seem to exist. Not only that, but I can't locate any evidence that it ever existed. Kind of freaks me a bit. Even I am just "misremembering" or whatever...that still freaks me...because I remember it.

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  34. "It implies a separation between the self and the memory. Like the self, the consciousness, can go from body to body, but not realize it because the memories all change when you get there."

    Exactly. Pretty much expressed in precisely those terms by the person whose account I had in mind:

    "Somehow, I knew that I could go into any of these realities and it would become my own and would begin to make sense as a full world to me. I understood that if I chose any of these, it would become my new life – memories would return to me from that life and I would simply “come down” there and pick up living that life." (salvia@20x)

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  35. About two years ago I had just come down from salvia, and had a conversation with my wife about several things that I clearly remember, and I was positive that it was a real conversation, but about a month later I was recalling it and realized that it couldn't have happened since she was sleeping in another room during that period, in our son's room because he needs supervision at night. But I still remember it clearly. It did happen, I'm certain of it. Yet it couldn't have.

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  36. Note: (to whom it may concern) I just answered comments from "D ZZZ" several comments up, might miss it if you don't scroll back.

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  37. So, Brian, are you saying in a comment above that there were other episodes, other than the medieval room one (and the "life energy" one) where you felt the heart palpitations when you tried to move towards a "different me"?

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    1. Yes, quite a few actually. I only record the salient ones. I have visions or at least significant meditations almost every night, I record a very tiny fraction of them. I recall several other times that that happened. However, I've also had it when I've concentrated on my third eye point too strongly. With salvia you can turn up the concentration to a point where it's unnatural. When I do this I see flowing light between my sacrum area and the crown of my head, and my forehead area. If this gets strong enough, sometimes my heart skips a bit, nothing harmful. (Had heart checked abt 8 mos ago, totally fine, textbook even)

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    2. Also when I awakened the wife that time when I selected the appropriate *image* of her awakening from perhaps twenty of her still sleeping, out of a grid of images, it sure seemed that I went to the universe in which she happened to be awakening, since her movements on awakening were precisely the movements that I had just seen of her stirring and waking up. I didn't see that image at first, all the images in the grid were of her still sleeping, but I instinctively "reached out" to one of them with a *visible* "pseudopod" of my own will, moved one of the frames aside, and underneath it, saw one in which she was waking up, then, using that same "pseudopod," selected it and it happened as seen.

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  38. If there is really movement between "different versions" I am honestly surprised that detectable discrepancies don't show up more often. Since your salvia experiences, have you ever had any events that would fit into the "glitch in the matrix" reddit? Your turkey vultures would be one that qualifies, for instance.

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    1. I'm not. I get strong impression that we're dealing with a very high number of parallel planes here, and so the "nearest" ones, differ from ours only in very tiny ways. Almost identical, virtually indistinguishable. Planes with salient differences, that are easily distinguishable from ours, require us to change too much to go there, or so it seems.

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    2. When I heal a pain, say a toothache, which happened, I concentrate on the pain but simultaneously imagine a nearby plane whose only difference is that, in that plane, my headache is not present. So I "feel around" for the painless plane, while on SD. I usually find it. I don't sense the plane directly, but I sense a "place" where my pain is less, as if it were real. I pour my concentration into ONLY that image, ignoring my real pain that I'm in for the moment. Then, it "switches." I feel no pain. It's gone. This is how I heal pain, and it seems to work even for pretty severe pain, like sciatica that I also had a month ago. That one took about a week of these visualizations though, since it was very severe. Gone now, except for a "ghost" of it, every now and then.

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    3. I feel it switch, by the way. I feel a transition point where, for an incredibly brief instant, I do not exist, then I'm back, without the pain.

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    4. I see that I switched "headache" for "toothache" in the above response, but you get the idea. I do it with headaches too.

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    5. Another time I was in my typical "multimind" state where I'm sitting there, and also sitting all around me in perhape thirty or more of my bodies, present in all of them. Usually, they all act just like me, sitting there, still. Sometimes one of them moves an arm or something. But one time, I'm sitting there in a crowd of "me's" all acting similarly, and goddamn if "one of me" literally just walked by us all, walking erect, acting NOTHING like the rest of the "me's." An outlier! But physically seemed farther away, outside the physical perimeter of the rest of the "me's." So for this and other reasons I equate universes that are "more different than this one" with being "farther away."

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    6. When you do the healing sessions, do you feel you need a good dose of large extract to get there, or could you do a tiny dose? I haven't used an extract in quite a while, normally quidding plain leaf or smoking a cannabis/salvia spliff. Quidding never gives multiple-plane type experiences, but there is always a very definitive 'crossing-over' point. As soon as it happens, I can tell whoever is around me "ok - I'm out now".

      For healing, I use that space for body movements and massage where it works great, but haven't been able to get other types pain to go away long-term, such as a toothache. Perhaps I need to go into deeper level experiences?

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    7. I think key is practice, at least it was for me. I really concentrated on this over time. Had chronic tooth pain for a year. Used to use different technique involving self-stimulation creating pleasant sensation, such as tickling my own hand, then merging the pleasant sensation in my mind with the pain, cancelling it. Refining it, I found that what it seemed that I was really doing, was visualizing "no pain" accurately, remembering what a healthy tooth feels like, imagining the sense of relief when the pain is gone, even imagining my other, healthy teeth opposite the painful side, and duplicating that feeling on the painful side. I realized that what I was doing was imagining a painless tooth, then "finding it" somewhere "else." Then merging with the painless-tooth-situation, and the pain is gone. Seemed more like switching universes to me at that point, so I changed the visualization to more of that, gained effectiveness for me.

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    8. As to dose, this is best if you dose just to the point where you're disoriented and have mild visual effects, not a full-blown trip level, too hard to concentrate on a goal in that mode.

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    9. You need to be disoriented. Disorientation is how you let go and change planes, IMO. A moment of utter confusion, a "darkness" even, then snap, you're in a different plane. Very hard to notice unless your mind is silent. I encourage that sense of confusion most at the moment where I'm visualizing the universe where I feel no pain, trying to "hop on board" it as a vehicle.

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    10. Related point: When my mind is absolutely still and I have no real thoughts in my head, I can notice these tiny moments of discontinuity, these tiny flashes of darkness and confusion, every second or so as I move and breathe, as if even those actions require shifts to other nearby planes. Weird.

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    11. Thank you for the very detailed steps...I will give them a try next time. This feels like 'Alchemy 501' :-)

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    12. You're welcome. And it is alchemy. Mental alchemy.

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    13. Exactly. My wife took a course called 'Mastering Alchemy' from a guy named Jim Self a few years back. It consisted of many exercises in mental visualizations, etc....aimed at controlling your feelings/thoughts etc.

      For example, combining multiple word/feelings such as 'Confident'+'Gracious'+'Capable'+'Happy' into a tetrahedron with one word at each point. Then visualize being in the center of that pyramid's vibration. That was Alchemy 101/201.

      Your methods are graduate-level+ work!

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    14. I've studied some actual Medieval Alchemy. They spoke in code, to avoid persecution and misunderstanding. Their "gold" was enlightenment, their "lead" was all the crap we need to get out of our personalities to get there.
      They spoke a lot of "rectification." This meant, finding all the pairs of opposites in your own personality and reconciling them, understanding them, seeing what you lack by doing so, and adjusting yourself accordingly. Self-analysis and rectification. Pretty powerful stuff.

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  39. The conversation that never happened, for one. I've noticed other minor differences on occasion, but you can't be certain, just suspicious.

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  40. Last night I didn't even trip, just meditated in a slightly altered state, but I noticed something that I decided to bring back with me and I retained it. Never brought it back before, but see/hear it all the time. Activity!
    What I mean is, I remember being in a state of openness and stillness and hearing/sensing my own mental activity. Sensing a LOT of activity, an amazing amount of simultaneous information flowing around me. All around me, verbal information coupled with visual concepts, pure information from perhaps hundreds of sources, all clamoring at once. Like being in a concert hall full of people having complex discussions, but you could even feel the content, not just hear. All of it at once, too... no soft voices, all strong. But it wasn't like people really. Just an amazing mental state where I was immersed in flowing information, and feeling far from human. It didn't feel human. It felt like I was a vast computer or something. I get this all the time when I first take SD, perhaps every time, but usually pass through it with little thought of remembering it later. This time I did.

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    1. Care to go into more depth on the computer feeling? (I'm a software developer, so naturally that fascinates me)

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    2. Well, it's hard to describe. I dose, then I feel my mind seem to recede into my head. I feel like my face and eyes kind-of disappear, replaced by a cloud of static that somehow can still see. And then it's like I'm in an auditorium, with data all around me, data in the form of many, many conversations going on, but they're not conversations, they're more like repetitions of facts and data, like all this data is just hanging in the air there, and I can sense it all around me. I've had similar before, what I have called "The Hall Of Phonemes" and "The Hall Of Sentence Fragments." In the first I only hear parts of speech, consonant and vowel sounds, the building blocks of speech, all being constantly repeated and repeated. In the latter I hear actual sentence fragments, again repeated over and over, many of them. This time it was more like facts and knowledge, perhaps all mine, perhaps not, impossible to tell. Likely mine.

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    3. I've thought before, that this is how we remember things. For each thing we remember, there's a tiny tiny part of my brain that is assigned to keep repeating that something, over and over, forever. Then there's another tiny tiny part of my brain that is "assigned" to that remembered thing cycle, to allow the larger mind to access it whenever it wants to. This is what I sense.

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  41. It's clear that, for every one thing that I bring back to talk about, I forget perhaps 99 other things. The majority of my experience is not recallable.

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  42. A peculiar thing happens to me in “meditation” sometimes. This is not on salvia or on anything, just in regular visualization, especially if near the edge of sleep. I visualize a scenario which, if “all possibilities exist” must be another version of life somehow. Now at times, though only at rare times, it almost seems as if this imagination or visualization gains enough nearness of presence that the sensation is…if only I could somehow focus a bit MORE in a certain way, or exert my intent a bit MORE effectively in a certain way, or with greater density or something, that reality would swap in and I would actually be there.

    Now this might just be my imagination. I cannot dispel that possibility. But to be honest, and especially at those unique moments, it doesn’t FEEL like “just imagination.” It seems like something else. The perceived nearness of the possibility sometimes makes my heart race. Like I’m operating on reality somehow…just without sufficient voltage or power for some act to complete itself. So it is either “very persuasive imagination” or it really is something else. I'm not talking about just a minor alternative, like an arm or leg being in a different position for instance, but quite a radical difference...more like your medieval room (not quite as radically different as that though...just quite a different life circumstance).

    That sense of being on a brink only occurs infrequently though. Most of the time I can visualize the situation, but I am aware of a strong differential between it as visualization and my physical surroundings, even if still and relaxed.

    Now, however, the one time I was able to legally access salvia, I noted that this sensation was definitely stronger, and in fact just looking at a photograph which contained imagery relevant to this other possibility from this “other life” was sufficient to bring on the sensation.

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  43. I've often felt that I was insufficiently powered to break through a barrier of some sort. That I needed more energy somehow. Maybe that is indeed it.

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  44. FYI to all: If you scroll halfway up the page, I just posted some new replies to Chris and D ZZZ.

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  45. I'm finding that I'm often missing replies that happen way back up the page. Maybe if you answer me or comment *way* up above, leave a post down here at the bottom to let me know? I don't like missing replies.

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  46. I'm sorry, I'm probably boring you with my comments about parallel timelines and such, but all of this finally only seems of *use* if it has a practical purpose, and if somehow one can move a nontrivial distance among these "parallel selves" (and not just to where we're blinking a little differently or something). Don't get me wrong. I get the value in removing pain and would never want to diminish that. Is that a parallel self thing though?

    I wonder how far could be moved if you moved a little in each trance? (not that I'm necessarily suggesting you try this). I have a desire to move or for things to change. You may have a desire for things to remain much as they are. I understand if this is maybe producing a difference of opinion or focus between us?

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  47. I've also wondered recently if it is really a case of "alternate universes" or whether it is really a "probability dimension" of ourselves we don't have the sensory apparatus to perceive. We could say a similar thing of memory. If we are a "trans-temporal creature" we don't have a "sense organ" that can perceive that effectively, at least in ordinary consciousness. "Memory" may be the equivalent of a kind of weak "sense organ" that gives limited access to our trans-temporal dimension.

    Similarly, we may have a "trans-probability" dimension which we may not have a sense organ for at all in waking consciousness. But perhaps in the same way we artificially divide time into
    "moments" we artificially divide our probability dimension into "universes." There are really no such things as "moments" but they are a useful kind of prop that helps us to at least discuss our trans-temporal dimension.

    I dunno. Burningmouth always used to imply that there was something more "fluid" and "flowing in to each other" about these alternate worlds than is capture in the Other Universes idea alone. It's almost as if it partakes of BOTH concepts of Unactualized Superposition where your entire probability dimension is like a kind of quantum wave, and "parallel universes" where there are detectable discrete possibilities in that wave, particularly if you focus deep inside it or "observe" a portion of it.

    Or I dunno...maybe I'm just ramblin' :D

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  48. I don't really consider future splits in our universe "parallels" because since they haven't happened yet, they haven't split yet. So when I move to a new universe, I have a choice of many. I'm trying to select the one (or one of the many ones) in which I have no pain. This is markedly different than traveling "sideways" to an already-existing parallel universe "already in progress."

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  49. You never bore me and I love to talk about these things. You've seen it yourself, talking about them helps me remember experiences that have long been buried. Also it gives me better ideas for future directions to take when I'm 'out there.'

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  50. What if all time is simultaneous though, as many mystics insist? Wouldn't that imply that not only "the" future, but the future of parallel possibilities too, is "already there"? In a way, it's hard to believe that our fleeting notion of the now is not conditional in some way. If it is possible to go back to a moment from childhood because it is "still existing" in the past, it seems to make sense that the same would hold for what we think of as the future. Now we don't have a "sense organ" for the future (unless you include "precognition") so it may not be easy to access, but if all possible pasts exist, it seems to me that all possible futures inferred by those pasts would exist too.

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  51. We only have one past, but perhaps infinite futures. Perhaps that's why we can remember the past but not the future. Odd thought that just popped into my head, sorry.

    It seems to me as well, that all possible branches are "out there somewhere" already in existence. Somehow.

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  52. Yeah, there's only one past that would be directly accessible if we were to "time travel" down the tree of particular decisions we are aware of, and which may make up that picture we interpret as "memory." Memory may actually even be a sort of specially loaded program that encourages us to buy into the idea that certain events drawn from all_possibility are the "real" or "actual" ones. But if we can cross to parallel twigs or branches, logically it would seem to suggest that the relevant pasts must come with those branches. Such as your turkey vultures example. I think the options are either that you misremembered, or that small lateral jumps can happen several times in a lifetime (even without salvia) but we write them off as the first option ("oh, well, I must just not be remembering right"). The curiosity, to be honest, is not even that the past you inhabited changed to one in which Turkey Vultures always had a range to Cincinnati, but that you remember a different past where that was not so.

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  53. Connecticut. Yes. Those are the options.

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  54. haha, right! That's embarrassing. I didn't even remember it right for a couple of days.

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  55. This is off-topic, but I'm not sure there is anywhere else to place this - so I'll put it here for now...

    To Brian, Panther, and any other regular users reading this...have any of you had an opportunity to use Salvia simultaneously with another experienced user? This is something I've wanted to experiment with for a few years now, but haven't had any opportunities to do so.

    I've mainly use quids nowadays, which gives me an hour or so at a low-dose level that can be controlled quite well while being able to inhabit both regular and salvia space.

    While I'm skeptical it could really work, if there is any way to actually communicate on another level - 'telepathically' - it sure feels like Salvia-space is where/when it could happen while not trapped in body.

    Regular communication is quite easy when quidding - I occasionally talk to or interact with my wife once I've swallowed the quid. So even if non-verbal communication is not possible, it would be very interesting to see if multiple people could sense similar things happening in the room - such as the energies that Brian uses to wake his dog and wife.

    LOL...I just had a mental image of a room full of Salvia-magicians all 'casting spells' simultaneously ;-)

    I did find one person willing to experiment over video conference, but it never panned out.

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  56. No, never happened for me. It would be interesting. I can come out of most visions at will, unless I really dose heavy. I am almost always lucid during trips and could have a conversation while having one, unless it's one of those times I'm "at war" out there fine-tuning belief and disbelief trying to get to a goal. Then I'm too involved to do anything else.

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  57. Quidding for me is pretty tame, only good for establishing a nice "baseline" from which it's slightly easier to trip with my regular extract.

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    1. I agree that quidding is tame in general. But it's enough to get me 'out of body' so to speak. Similar to looking at a magic-eye picture. When you look at it normally, you can't see the picture. But once you look at the correct visual depth, the picture comes into focus. And once you're have the focus, you're there. It's binary...either you see it or you don't.

      It feels similar with Salvia. One needs *just enough* to expand their consciousness out of body, or go inward, or however you want to phrase it. More salvia at that point will of course take you further and deeper, but you're definitely "there" at that point. You're either "there" or "not there". It's a very subtle line, but very obvious.

      Personally, I tend to do a lot of physical work in that space, as well as personal reflection, work on relationship issues, etc. If I wanted to explore multiple dimensions, then I would definitely need to smoke.

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  58. I'd like to try it some time with another salvianaut in the room, would be very interesting esp if both were fairly experienced.

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  59. I've only quidded, and must await the opportunity for legal use again, alas. Honestly too risky with the fascists in the State where I currently live.

    There were some weird phenomena, even at the relatively mild dose. For example, I would feel myself oddly "strething"...kind of like I was a plant growing upwards, or as if I was being gently "pulled" in a vertical plane like soft toffee. Weird. And then, the heaviness, which I presume is the Salvia Gravity thing folks have talked about...at least the lower end of it. I remember going to the bathroom and feeling like I had lead weights added to my bones.

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  60. My best friend and I used to smoke extract together. On one particular occasion, we both had extraordinarily heavy trips.

    At the end of my trip, a message was plastered across my field of vision. The message was short and was written out in red letters for me to read.

    As I began coming out of the trip, my friend was also coming out of his. I will never forget what he was mumbling to himself.

    He was mumbling the SAME message that I had just seen within my trip. After realizing this, we both said to each other very surprised, ".....You saw that too??"

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    1. That's great to hear! I've read plenty of anecdotal stories of shared trips while using LSD, mushrooms, etc. But if it ever happens to me, I'll be flabbergasted!

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    2. Just spoke to a woman on Twitter yesterday. She had a friend and they were walking in the sunlight one day and she had some kind of weird blackout. She'd had weird things happen before apparently, no drugs involved, either, but this time her friend experienced the same blackout, an instant when the everything went away, even their bodies. Freaked them both out. She seemed cogent and honest, too; not coming across as flaky. I'm obviously especially intrigued with the idea of shared experiences.

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    3. Hey Brian - I was trying to find a way to contact you in a less public setting. If you're interested, my twitter account is @kartingpilot. If you follow me, I can send you a DM...

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  61. Also spoke to someone about four years back who told me that he was on salvia and was in front of the TV with his girl, and saw a weird black face poke out of the TV. (I had very similar experience with my "Demiurge" character once, detailed in previous post)
    His girlfriend saw it too. No salvia.
    I'm taking people's word here of course, but both seemed awed, not making it up.

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  62. One guy claimed on Errowid I think or some site where they have trip reports, that he came back from a trip and the drapes in his room were different and unfamiliar. Everybody else remembered them that way, though. He figured he'd managed to "switch."

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  63. Was that this one by any chance?

    http://www.salviadragon.com/report2.htm

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  64. It's been years, but I don't think so. Maybe. Not sure. I don't remember the part about rolling around with stuffed animals at all.

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  65. Yeah, it's funny. I seem to remember another drapes story too...but I can never find it now.

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  66. Found something interesting, albeit a tangent back to my "mathematical universe" ideas:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcumNZ4Y3Ck

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    1. These videos are surprisingly good! Thanks for passing this along!

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  67. Okay, what if consciousness is equivalent to a mathematical iteration?

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    1. if you're looking for practical uses and tests, I'm not sure. It's a rather new idea. I do think that the fact that many scientists think we may be living in a **simulation** is possibly due to this, though. It would be a similar thing, except with no alien overlord race with advanced computers, just reality AS a massive computer-like thing.

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    2. Well, I was just thinking that a mathematical iteration like:-
      (the future Z, in however small increments one wishes) is equal to (a huge algebraic equation including a bunch of Zs that are the old Zs)
      Rinse and repeat!
      It actually makes sense if you think about it.
      This instant of reality is(if that's how we see it) just an iteration of reality that is not in the past!
      ANDDDD, now this instant can be that same equation, just putting in the newer past reality that was just some small period of time ago.

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  68. Is "intention" (ie magickal inten) more effective in a salvia state... or is it only more effective if you have already trained your mind in meditation? I find it one of the interesting questions about psychedelic states. People often say that synchronicities break out after a deep psychedelic, even though they didn't specifically intend that. It's almost like something got a bit rearranged or tripped somehow in the "reality engine."

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  69. Alright, I can take mathematics being reality...as in reality is something abstract and nonphysical, but still structured and ordered...provided that mathematics is also itself consciousness somehow. If math produces consciousness this seems to me like just another version of the same problem with "particles" producing consciousness. It seems to me that Consciousness is Reality, or at the very least, can never be left out of the simultaneous reality equation. So to me it looks like reality is something like consciousness-math-energy. Each of these has a "role" in the picture, but it's all really the same "thing"...it's just that we don't have a word subtle enough to describe an existence like that. Just imo ramble.

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    1. I was wondering if you were replying to me, if you misread, mathematical iteration, as intention?

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  70. pboyfloyd, I wasn't replying specifically to your comment though I certainly saw it and may partly have been triggered by it, if that makes sense? I already knew that Brian had this mathematical reality fascination for quite some time though, so I had that in mind mainly.

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  71. Part I:

    This is going to be a rather long post - split into a couple due to character limitations. Brian - if you deem them too long, let me know and I'll delete them.

    However, I think it may be of interest to the group here reading/discussing the nature of reality/god.

    I mentioned Martin Ball in above posts. He spent about 7 years working with clients in a one-on-one basis giving full-release doses of 5-MEO-DMT. He also used the compound extensively by himself in large doses, and also used the molecule while doing his one-on-one sessions.

    I look to Brian's comments because he has very extensive experience working with high-dose levels of salvinorin-A. I haven't found anyone with more high-dose experience - at least nobody that writes about it and articulates it as well.

    Similarly, I look to Martin's works because of his very extensive experience working with high-level doses of 5-MEO-DMT, which as far as we know, is qualitatively the most intense psychedelic compound known. It also seems to be the best one for dissolving the ego temporarily and allowing one to experience non-duality (being infinite) directly.

    Martin retired from doing client work earlier this year, and has since written a comprehensive book on how to work with 5-MEO-DMT to experience non-dual reality for yourself. Although he has given out much of this information in previous books, lectures, interviews, etc...the fact that he is retired now gives him a bit more legal comfort in discussing his experiences in full detail.

    This book just came out this week, and I'm not half-way through it yet, but one particular section where he gives a description of the nature of reality/god seemed like a good one to share here. I've clipped a few sentences here and there to try to keep it as brief as I can.

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    1. Far as I know I have no character limitation on this blog, so if it's pertinent (as your post was) then why would I object? :-)

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    2. After I posted, I saw it wasn't as long as I feared ;-)

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    3. OMG! The horrifying longtitude of this post! I'm glad I learned to find the home keys 'cos I had to gouge my eyeballs out with lint from under my bed, sleepers from where my eye-corners used to be and god-knows-what from between my toes!
      Or maybe that was just a dream? Tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel!
      And keep it in your pants!

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  72. Part II: Excerpt from Entheogenic Liberation: Unraveling the Enigma of Nonduality with 5-MeO-DMT Energetic Therapy (Kindle Locations 939-996).

    "The Radically Awesome Nature of God:

    The nondual experience is not made of individual elements... It is a direct experience of infinite totality.

    It is not possible to have an idea of the infinite. It is, however, possible to experience it. Knowing it is derived from experiencing it, not as an object of knowledge or belief, but as a direct reality that is felt at a profoundly intimate level. Because this is not a matter of belief, anyone can have this experience.

    Unlike religious or metaphysical propositions, no belief is required – just a willingness to submit oneself to the energetic process.

    The full nature of God, the universal self, is not an object of experience or perception. It is experience and being itself. When directly and fully experienced, the reality of God becomes obvious and self-evident.

    There are many ways that it can be described, but any such description is partial and incomplete, because it is all of these things and none of these things simultaneously. At best, we can say that it is what is.

    Such an experience is awesome and incomparable. It’s like an orgasm that just goes on and on and on, and just when you think it can’t possibly get any bigger or more total, it does, and then it goes beyond even that.

    And above all else, there is the direct knowing that God, being, and all of reality is the energy of love, with no judgment, no conditions, no expectations, just absolute love and absolute freedom and pure being.

    Attempting to wrap your mind around it is impossible. Trying to pin it down or figure it out is also impossible.

    God is pure consciousness.
    God is pure being.
    God is infinite, unconditional love.
    God is pure energy.
    God is fully aware.
    God is truth.
    God is reality.
    God is everything and everyone.
    God is beyond all mental constructs.
    God is you.
    God is every thought, every feeling, every perception, every experience.
    God is eternal.
    God is continually transforming. God is evolution.
    God is total.
    God is limitless.
    God is structured.
    God is fractal.
    God is geometric.
    God is mathematical.
    God is expression.

    To experience God, to experience yourself as God, to know yourself as God, is to find exactly what you’ve always been looking for, perhaps without even knowing that you were looking. It is the most profound experience of coming home and coming into reality that is possible for a human being to have.

    There are no substitutes and there are no comparisons. To be immersed in God is to expand the individual sense of self and being into a boundless ocean of infinite love and awareness that is timeless, eternal, and without limits or boundaries. It is an experience of total freedom. It is simultaneously empty and full of all potential.

    Every possible thing is contained within this endless totality.

    It is not static. It is in flow, changing, endlessly transforming, always becoming. It is alive and aware, and it is your very own self. It is what you truly are. You are not separate from that which you experience. You are the very energy of reality and all being. It/you is life.

    In this state, all of reality, everything that exists, everything that occurs, is directly experienced as the expression of God. Reality is God being itself, expressing itself, experiencing itself. There is nothing that is not God, and there is nothing beyond God. God is total.

    And God is structured. The energy of reality is not chaotic. It has structure and pattern to it, and it is these very structures that allow for reality to manifest as a coherent and consistent expression. These structures are geometric, fractal, and mathematical in nature. What is revealed is that all energy is structured into form that expresses itself via the ongoing flow of space and time. Yet all things are just temporary manifestations and expressions of this fundamental unity."

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  73. I should explain to everyone that my old friend pboy was for years my anchor to reality and will energetically shoot all of this down. I appreciate him for that in my life.

    That being said, as to the recent post above. About God.

    I really hesitate to call anything God. It really bugs me a lot.

    If reality is mathematical in its most basic nature, I see it more like a data bank in which we smaller patterns exist within the larger one. Is the larger one actually a conscious being though? I like to think not. However, it's possible. This begs a definition of what "conscious" is, though. What consciousness is. Presuming we are mathematical processes and not 'really' matter/energy/space/time, this means that our personal consciousnesses exist within our patterns as another mathematical process, a self-referential and self-conscious one!
    Hence, literally, all known consciousnesses are 'merely' mathematics. Given this, given that all consciousness is math, this means that math can be consciousness, and even conscious. So the overall, overarching mathematical object we think of as reality, may have some sort of consciousness on its own, much as i dislike the idea, since it tends to put me in a category with Deepak Choprah, a man who may have one good idea, but is a bit of a grifter about it.

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    1. Thanks for that shout-out Brian. I'd like to tell you that I'm not coming on here to be some kind of foil against you. I believe you guys are sincere. I reserve the right to interject a joke, a bit of fun, but I'm not in any way trying to denegrate your experiences.
      Still love you Brian, in a manly, manly way! Hope the best for you! (But, you knew that, right?)

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    2. Sorry to assume, sir! I was kinda looking forward to it, to be honest. But anyhow, yes, I knew that. Glad when you stop by. Always welcome, and no need to hesitate if you ever do want to "denegroeate" my ideas.

      Thought I'd outdo your typo lol.

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  74. Also, referring to my explanation in this blog comment as to how people like me may be fooling themselves, this also neatly applies to Martin Ball. While on salvia, while in the thick of visions, I have gone into analysis mode and realized that even my most convincing visions can be false. So when I see others talking about God, all I can think is "if a man has a God-shaped hole in his heart, psychedelics would be "only too glad" to fill it. A cautionary tale for me, at any rate.

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  75. We also have to consider that if we're part of the overarching mathematical "consciousness" or "God" then we just might be ***the smartest part of it** in the sense that no other parts of it have achieved self-awareness as yet. We may be the very brain of that "God" everybody talks about. Looking around for a superior consciousness for millennia, we failed to realize that we're pretty much it. So that's another possibility.

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  76. As to practical applications, hard to say. Considering the universe as math may bring solutions to problems we've been battling, or at least explanations. If it does, that's a way to "prove" it. At this point though, it's conjecture and entertainment for us, more than anything practical.

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  77. Consider my two experiences in my post above. My two times meeting "God."

    First one, hyperrealistic, even included an audio confirmation from my air conditioner. Hell, for 2 weeks I was convinced I'd made a breakthrough to something solid. Still had reservations, but it was really that profound.

    HOWEVER, so was the second one. That one didn't "fit" the first one. Same "God" but different personality altogether. A personality that I could easily trace back to my own deep subconscious mind and my old Christian conditioning of a God that will get pissed off at you and issue ultimatums, with your life being forfeit if you do not comply. This shattered my illusion of the first encounter in like five minutes. I became convinced that both encounters were entirely machinations of my subconscious mind. So tell me, my friends, what of the man or woman who **only has the first experience without the elucidating effects of the second? They become a CONVERT, something I'm absolutely terrified of ever happening to me.

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  78. Pboy would tell you all that my earliest experiences of "the paranormal" and salvia caused me to think that reality might be "consciousness-based" in some form. Before that I was pretty much in line with our scientists, and M-Theory was about the most esoteric that I got. So I was convinced that science was right, then due to personal experiences, I was more convinced that it was consciousness that everything was based on. But an eternal consciousness? Silly. But equally silly to think that consciousness arose from nothing. And even sillier to think it was a deity of some kind. Then, my salvia experiences seemed to point to the idea that we're "made of information." I kept getting strong indicators that we're all informational in our most basic nature. And then I ran across Tegmark's book, and it clicked. Mathematics. Pure mathematics, not the symbol-language that we created to describe it, but the math that lets us glance at a road with oncoming traffic and do complex trigonometry in our heads instantly to judge distance from oncoming cars, the math that photons obey, the math that *existed* long before anybody thought to describe it. This made sense. Again, I come back to, "what thing do we know, that simply might not be able, to NOT exist?" What thing exists even in the absence of all other things? For me, it's rather compelling.

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  79. I think the major barrier in people's minds to accepting the idea that reality may be mathematics, is the fact that when we hear it, we try to place that idea within our own "knowledge" of space and time and matter and energy. We imagine mathematics *existing* as a *tangible thing* *within* our universe! On even a cursory examination it is obvious that IF "all is math, then everything we sense and see and touch and are familiar with, is an *expression* of an *underlying* mathematical reality and not something that will manifest itself in a recognizable manner to us, for we are embedded in it. We can't and won't see it around us, for all we see is the result of it, not the thing itself.

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  80. If someone says "mathematics has a reality all its own" or "mathematics is the basis of reality and we're all made of math" this conjures visions in the minds of sane and rational people of an equation sitting out in space somewhere that is laughing at us for not seeing it, lol. This is of course, a bias we have, a "reality-bias" and nothing close to what the truth would be in the scenario that I describe.

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  81. Pboy would remember me talking about my synchronicities. A lot. Sure, easy to explain away as changes in my ability to see a broader perspective on reality causing me to finally see what was there all along, coincidences that I was missing before, and so forth. That never satisfied me, because I lived it, and it was a lot more spectacular than that, but I admitted the possibility that that was all it was. Now, reconsidering them in a mathematical reality, I see the idea of a fractal-reality and possibility of "strange attractors" in a sea of mathematical possibility as one explanation, one that makes more sense to me than all the others I'd considered.

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  82. Also, I've since meditated on my own stream of consciousness, and I notice (not easy to notice this, btw) that my streaming consciousness is composed of "terms" that are bits of language and emotions (all of which can be reduced to admittedly complex mathematical processes) that fit with those that came before and those that come after, just like a mathematical term in a long equation would fit in with its predecessors and subsequent resulting terms. I can see the math in my own mind, in other words. It really can "all be math."

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  83. All ideas that I have, even my more creative ones, are based on pre-existing terms in my mind, bits of information that I already have. I take bits and pieces and assemble them into something new, but not really new in the sense that it came to me "ex nihilo." I don't think that anybody ever has a truly original thought, in this sense.

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  84. Another thing: The Multiverse.
    Gaining wide acceptance nowadays among serious scientists, it's a concept that beggars the imagination. Whole new universes springing into existence, perhaps in infinite numbers or such large numbers that considering them infinity is close enough. Where there was one galaxy with billions of stars and star systems, now there is two. Or five. Or a million. Honestly, to me this is a lot more "incredible" than the idea that all is math. How can a duplicate sun just pop into being "somewhere" with our duplicate earth orbiting around it, with all the billions and billions of stars we can see and even those we cannot see, being duplicated as well? From whence does all the new matter and energy arise? When you think of reality as we're used to thinking of it, this seems a bit much to believe, and yet it's given serious consideration by our best minds. Now, consider our reality as a mathematical process. How difficult is it to believe that a mathematical process can split itself and duplicate itself into many such similar processes? Easy. No alarms go off in our tiny minds, no wondering where all the mass and energy "came from" for all it ever was originally was our view of a vast mathematical process **from the inside** of that process. From that perspective it's all "real" since we're only "real" in the sense that we're a mathematical process in the first place.

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  85. Pboy, how long agon was it when we first met on Dinesh DaSouza's old blog on AOL? Has to be at least a dozen years if not fifteen. My first introduction to Christian obstinance and deception. Then I started a blog when that one went away, and some ppl followed me there including Pboy. We had this Jesuit apologist, I think his name was Chris, not even sure anymore.. Well, the first day he showed up on my blog I thought "man, this guy's easy, all I have to do is follow the twists and turns and show him at each point where he's wrong." LOLOLOL!!! What an idiot I was, huh? Anyhow, after like two years, one day I lost patience with him and kicked him off the blog. A mistake, as it turned out. Still, I can't regret it, since all he ever did was lie and lie and lie some more, building complex castles on shifting sands for me to poke at while he was building yet another one. A "Gish Gallop" of lies, but really smooth lies that sounded good unless you spent the time to look closer at each point... Still though, he was why the blog was popular, in retrospect. Someone to tilt at, like our pet windmill. I think that's when I lost patience with religious people, and I have yet to get it back.

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  86. Then there was this other Christian woman, this one just an Evangelical... can't even remember her name, that used to pretty much hit on me while spewing her dogma. Really weird. She'd show up with a giant word salad once in a while.. always entertaining. And another guy, who I sometimes would actually convince that he was wrong about something, then he'd show up a week later like it never happened. All I could imagine was that he'd gone to church in the mean time to have his conditioning refreshed. Good times.

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  87. Another recent experiment: Listening to the air conditioner. Attempting to alter it's pitch. One time a couple of years ago I had an experience where I altered its pitch at will and in the end, made it whine loudly, but ever since that night I've not been able to re-create that phenomena. So the other night I was trying this, by careful listening to its sound and hearing all the tinier sounds that composed it, and focusing on only one of those, bringing it into prominence in my mind. This is how I did it that one time. So I'm doing it the other night, and the sound of the AC **momentarily** obeyed me and started, just started, to make ONLY the part of the sound that I was focusing on... and I felt a flash of FEAR and it shut down. I'm being blocked by my "censor." But this time, I sensed the censor, clearly. A tiny part of my mind ABSOLUTELY REFUSES to let things like this happen, or so it certainly seems to me. As soon as I heard the sound altering, it kicked in with a vengeance.

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  88. This causes the possibility to arise that we *can* alter our surroundings, but we've programmed ourselves not to, out of existential terror, since altering reality means reality isn't really "real" and that's fucking terrifying to us at a very deep level. We want reality to be real. We need it to be.

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  89. It occurs to me that, if this "censor" is real, it's probably the thing that makes sure that we adhere to only one timeline by assuring that each next "step" we take makes sense in relation to all previous steps. On pain of terror. A terror strong enough to cancel out any steps we might wish to take into alternate lines in which desired results occur.

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  90. Thank you for taking the time to write out such a long response!

    "I really hesitate to call anything God. It really bugs me a lot."

    Heh - That's the exact same way Martin felt before he had his first full-release 5-MEO experience. He's a religious studies professor and his general take is that religions and spirituality are all egoic projections and constructs - a fantasy - and previously didn't like the word God at all. After his first full 5-MEO experience, however - he said for the first time he had absolutely no problem using that word. However, he throughout his writings, he constantly says to be on guard for turning any psychedelic experience into a 'spiritual' or 'religious' thing. He suggests it's easy for your ego turn it into something like that as a way to continue being 'in control' so to speak.

    "Also, referring to my explanation in this blog comment as to how people like me may be fooling themselves, this also neatly applies to Martin Ball."

    I so wish you could work with 5-Meo as well to combine the information from both types of experiences. I realize that may not be in the cards, but it seems to me if someone can have extensive experience with both substances, all questions might be answered :-) While Martin worked with Salvia a decent amount before experiencing 5-MEO, I don't get the impression he worked with large doses frequently. So he only has one side of that equation, while you seem to have the other side. When I've asked him about his take on some of my salvia experiences, he always tends to encourage me to look at it from a purely energetic perspective - so I don't get very far with him. It seems to me he's missing out on a lot of useful aspects of salvinorin.

    I hesitated for a moment about posting that particular section because of the frequent use of the word GOD, as I realize it's not a word you currently like. I've read and listened to several people that also previously hated the word God before their 5-Meo use (such as Martin, James Oroc, and others). It seems par for the course for that experience I guess. But it helps to show what he considers to be God, and that it is not any type of dualistic entity to be worshipped, etc.

    I was also concerned that this passage may make you think you and Martin have little in common. However, I believe you two probably have about 95% in common. You and Martin are two of the most grounded, non-metaphysical, non-fluff psychonaut writers I know. If you think you'd at least give the start of the book a read, which would explain his position in much more detail, I'd love to gift it to you. I'm very curious as to your take on his experiences, as well as to see if any of his info could help you answer any of your open questions, etc.

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    1. Oh, I'll read the book, definitely. I'll even buy it, but thank you for the kind offer.

      "Entheogenic Liberation: Unraveling the Enigma of Nonduality with 5-MeO-DMT Energetic Therapy" is the title?

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    2. That's the one. It's available at Amazon.

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    3. It's on my list to read. I'm in the middle of a series right now, about three or four books left, so within the week probably.

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    4. I'd love to try 5-MEO DMT obviously. Not likely tho. Also would love to try other entheogens, even LSD. Again, not likely. From what I've read about DMT in books like Rick Strassman's, everything he says it does, I've experienced with salvia. Including total ego loss. So maybe I'm not missing as much as I might think I am.

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    5. A documentary is *hopefully* going to be made in September filming Martin working with 5 clients. They have a kickstarter going now. I started to apply to be one of the 5, but they said the filming dates are Sept 15-18, and I have a family event on the 17th that I cannot miss...so I'm out of the running before even sending in my reply :-(

      If anyone else is interested, applications have to be turned in by this Saturday Aug 5. You can find out more about the project at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2143070069/mb5-the-martin-ball-dmt-documentary or https://www.facebook.com/groups/1798034540487513/ .

      I'm not sure where it will be filmed, but they you will need a current passport.

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    6. While I have no experience with 5-Meo, I have tons of experience with N,N DMT. They have some similarities in terms of creating a visionary state, speed of onset, and duration. The two show me completely different things. However, my wife's DMT experiences sound similar in ways to my Salvia ones. DMT seems to work on everyone in different ways. Salvia seems to be much more consistent from person to person.

      I would say you are not most likely not missing out on much from the N,N version.

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  91. "It occurs to me that, if this "censor" is real, it's probably the thing that makes sure that we adhere to only one timeline by assuring that each next "step" we take makes sense in relation to all previous steps"

    Regarding the discussion re: Martin...he would say that is basically the job of the ego/censor...and that is what you are trying to transcend. And he defines the ego as an energetic construct. I'm not sure if this is different than the mathematical idea or not as I haven't delved into the ideas of math as the structure of the universe.

    This may not be a short question, but in general, how does energy and math relate with that theory? In my mind, energy would work via mathematical properties, but math and energy would be separate things.

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    1. I did transcend it the night I could make it happen, but it subsequently re-asserted itself after I realized what I'd just done, and it's now a barrier, but at least I can sense it now and I know what to work on. I've transcended it many times, but I can't do it consistently. Just when I'm not trying to. Dammit.

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    2. And that's the main Zen/Buddhist method, right? You can only transcend it by not trying at all :-P

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    3. Or... or you can not try but be trying in secret in the back of your mind, which is the balance I seek to reach.

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    4. I want to be able to reach it when I want to reach it, not just by accident when I'm definitely not thinking about it. And I've managed to do that a few times. I'll be "out there" in a vision, and I feel my rational mind in the "back of my head" basically telling me "hey, you know I can analyze this for you if you want me to" and I say NO and then delete even most of my memory of it saying that and it's gone again. Done it a few times, but it requires a prompt response and determination.

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    5. Determination, oddly enough, to not be determined. A weird feeling when you can pull it off.

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  92. No, in this scenario energy would still be based in math as well, a mathematical function of some sort that we perceive as energy, heat, electricity, etc.

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  93. "energetic construct" means to me, in the context of the idea that "all is math," a mathematical subroutine within our mathematical minds that equates to our ego which monitors our own minds in a sort of vicious circle of observation. I'd avoid the term "energetic construct" as a bit flowery for me.

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    1. Yea - as I re-read it, I thought that I'm not sure I could give a definition for it, but was in a bit of a hurry and left it...

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    2. Just did a quick search in that book and he uses the term 'energetic construct' a dozen times. I'm not sure he gives a specific definition, but it makes sense within his contexts. Doesn't make a lot of sense out of context and without a better description though. Your point is well-taken.

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  94. Energetic construct brings to mind a pattern of energy that remains stable, at least to me. Another way of saying it would be a pattern of complex self-referential self-observational ongoing or 'streaming' mathematical processes linked together in the mind, using my preferred phraseology.

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  95. I personally don't have any problem with the idea of "eternal consciousness" any more than "eternal math"...both seem quite easily possible to me, especially if they are somehow the same thing.

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    1. Agreed, with the addition that I see 'eternal math' as the best way to explain 'eternal consciousness.'

      Although, if I can get by an eternal consciousness, it would explain where the math came from.

      Still, I see math as something that can be eternal 'easier' than consciousness could be.

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  96. The idea of a censor of course plays a role in magickal "effort" as espoused by Carroll and others. The chatterbox in the brain is like a small monkey bouncing and shrieking in a cage...it's purpose is to maintain the "conventions" of waking state consciousness. Problem: you can bypass this monkey, but then if you do it too strongly you bypass the "good" aspects of it as well, such as being able to maintain a specific focus, or remember what you were doing.

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    1. That nails it down for me too. I've read Carrol. Agreed.

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  97. It looks like this censor is part of an evolutionary spear-sharpening of the human mind. It allows monkey-man to focus on survival-related tasks with laser clarity. And this may be the inertia behind how the brain prunes our awareness of multiple options, if indeed that is what it is doing (and I think there's a good chance). On the other hand, it is a little bit puzzling why it would take that too far, because at least a subliminal awareness or ability to jump to nearby options (for example, the one in which that tiger is not quite close enough to eat me) would be beneficial.

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    1. I have a good idea how we "prune" reality in obedience to our censor. My next post will be about it. My newer view of the multiverse, updated by recent experiences.

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  98. So it looks to me like this censor or this brain insistence that we only see one linear reality branch, may be an artifact of our neurology, but one that features a very long standing habit. The odd ability of lost animals to track their way home etc, sometimes for hundreds of miles, hints at least at the intriguing idea that they somehow instinctively sense a "wider probability arc" than we do, at least sometimes. Not that they somehow trace the very very faint scent of their former homes or owners for hundreds or even thousands of miles (fairly ridiculous), but that they can somehow "see" the choice that will lead them home, yeah?

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    1. I was thinking simpler than that. A primal terror of the "next thing" not fitting in with the "last thing." A fear of reality not being real.

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  99. There was quite a well known experiment in parapsychology where newly imprinted baby chicks were able to influence the random walk of a small robot device, so that it spent more time hanging out near to their little cage (lol). They were imprinted on the robot and so considered it "mother."

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  100. So the issue is whether it's just a tough old inertia that in principle could be loosened up, and that our future is free to explore the possibility of branching in multiple different timelines, much as we presently do with movement in physical space...or (the more sinister option) whether something, or even someone, specifically has put "wheel clamps" on us that actively inhibit us from doing that. I don't like this option, but I can't deny there are times when it concerns me. I don't know that I'm even talking about "God." I don't know who or what I'm suspecting, just something...or someone. But maybe it's late and I'm paranoid ;)

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    1. If "someone" did this, there's only one suspect. Ourselves. At some deep, or perhaps some higher, level.

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  101. My new view of the multiverse entails us occupying more than one 'frequency' or universe at the same time, all the time. Just that they're so similar they can overlap and we won't notice the tiny discrepancies. Like we occupy many at once, actually. I've got it all visualized, now the challenge is getting it into words and writing them down. Not easy. I really need an illustrator for this one.

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  102. We have to remember, we view this from a weird position. At each second, we "split" into two or more of us. Each one of us then believes themselves to be the only one, not remembering the split. It's seamless from our pov.

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  103. So inside my body and all around me and even on the other side of the galaxy, there are trillions of quantum events that require the universe to split. Most of these splits are so similar one to the other that the only difference was one atomic interaction at the quantum level. We have to be living in more than one universe at once, just so similar that they're practically identical. We occupy a bandwidth, not a timeline.

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  104. From ANY POSITION on that band, from the point of view of an individual person, all nearby universes are too similar to be differentiated. This is the key to my idea that I'm working on.

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  105. So it's not like the next universe over has President Clinton. The next universe over is the same as this one except for one neutrino somewhere.

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  106. Now, let's pretend that we want to move to where President Hillary Clinton is in office. That would perhaps require moving not one or two or three, but millions of universes away.

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  107. Okay. Gonna be devil's advocate here. That's at risk of being a bit unfalsifiable...all major alternate universes are "out there" but we can't see them because they are "too far away." To be honest, it seems a bit convenient. It's also granting independent reality status to particles or quantum states, which they may not have.

    Deep salvia experience often suggest that radically different universes are accessible, at least to observe, unless those cases are "hallucinations." Again, though, it becomes artificial to call other people's experiences hallucinations or to maintain that there is somehow a threshold of largeness or drama at which they become hallucinatory. Also, it would seem to me that if they are accessible enough to be observable, then it is hard to make a final argument that they are not in principle accessible in other ways too. Observation is a kind of interaction, after all.

    I may be beginning to suspect that our own particular kind of consciousness "freezes" our experienced reality out of a deeper probabilistic melt. What we call the "brain" (which would itself be a freezing of a probabilistic melt, albeit an important one) does this so rigidly that it literally enforces or coerces a single linear story from the melt with a plausible "timeline" or what we are fond of calling a "consistent history." No such *necessary* construct exists in the melt, and so many alternative "freezings" are possible, which show up as the artifactual construct of "parallel worlds." I think the concept of parallel worlds has value, but I also suspect it is an artifact, kind of like biological tissue viewed under a microscope. It "represents" life...but it isn't life itself, as it is. That is the Melt, and we can't perceive it directly without observation altering or freezing the perception to a single-fiber linear narrative "reality."

    Additionally

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  108. We can access any of them, in visions. Not able to "go there" though. Too "distant" (by which I mean, too unlike ours.)

    I subscribe to the idea of a multiverse as Hugh Everett described wherein the waveform never collapses, where the particle in question is merely manifesting *here* where we observe it to be *here* and is also manifesting in all other *possible* locations, each in its own separate universe. I'm building on his idea, since I find it the most elegant and parsimonious. Given new universes cropping up at that insane rate, I made deductions about our own existence probably happening in many very similar universes overlapped at once.

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  109. I also sense strongly while on salvia, that this is how it is, that there are many parallel planes in a state of near-perfect overlap, and that is true no matter where you are on the "band." This doesn't mean that we have one body that exists in a bandwidth of universes, it means that while we each have a separate body in each of these universes, they're so similar and act the same that the perception is of one universe and one body. We are perceiving not one, but many of our bodies, with many of our minds, at once. This perception is again, the same, no matter where you are on the spectrum. All beings would necessarily exist likewise in a superposition of nearly identical universes.

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  110. Perhaps along the bandwidth of universes, clustering around significant events occurs. A large cluster of "me's" that see this "uinverse" and another large cluster that sees the one in which Hillary won the election. Because of the significance of the event to me, it would have produced a "split" or gulf between the group of "me's" that see President Trump and the ones that see President Clinton. So an event isn't merely a split of one universe into two, but a stream of parallel universes split into two streams.

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  111. I meant "we don't see them because they're too far away" as "we don't *normally* see them in our *waking day-to-day life* because they're too "far away," too different, from that waking life. We can see them with salvia and other substances.

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  112. If I understand what you're saying about "freezing" and "melts" then it's similar to the idea of all possible futures existing but only in potential, and when we take any one of those myriad paths, it "congeals" into a reality. Is that it?
    I've also thought about that as well. Seems hard to believe, if the collapse of the waveform is really the particle appearing in all possible locations, each in a separate new universe. But maybe that's it.

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  113. Another interpretation, another basic shift in the idea, would be that everything is a dream, and we've formed the dream over vast spans of time, "we" being all living things including us, and things like mathematics and the apparent mathematical component of everything we study is something we've imposed upon the dream by our collective expectations of how it should act in order to be real and consistent. That was one of my earliest hypotheses.

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  114. "We can access any of them, in visions. Not able to "go there" though. Too "distant" (by which I mean, too unlike ours.)"

    The killer question is though, has anyone ever really, *really* tried. You had your medieval room incident, but you backed out almost at once (not saying it wasn't the right thing to do!). But who knows what might have happened if you had pushed through that, if your will had been very determined. I don't know that we can know. And then there is the issue of how we can know in general if someone has "succeeded" at this. They may (or may not) "die" or "disappear" from the reality in which we know them.

    Some salvia users have certainly felt that (if they chose) they could have remained in the realities they saw, but they declined. Of course again, there's no way of knowing for sure, but I find it interesting that the certainty arises inside their experience.

    Of course, I'm not a salvia user. You can safely ignore everything I say.

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  115. After all, you once said yourself that Will Equals Certainty.

    What if your will had equaled certainty in its solidity of determination to push through into the medieval room...heart palpitations be damned?

    I'm not recommending it as a course of action, naturally, but it's a damned interesting question is it not?

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  116. Last night, two things:
    One: I was in more than one body at once, and could clearly tell that my bodies were not identical, were moving in different ways. My own body sense as well, indicated that my hand was in more than one position simultaneously. I could clearly feel it when I 'broke through' from being one person to suddenly being two and then more than two. I could see out of more than one pair of my eyes, and could process having two **slightly different** views coming into my mind at once. There was no doubt that it was different.
    Two: I also could clearly sense the room around me. Twice, then more than twice. My "Gestalt POV" was clearly replicated over and over. I could "feel" the other universe(s), as separate, yet very close by.

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  117. Also, twice now that I recall, I've been in a salvia trance and was remembering an incident from my distant past, and it became so clear that I really felt that once again, I had the option to die here and go back to that point in my past, as if it were still real "back there" and I could just merge with my past consciousness at that point. Again, didn't want to.

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