[HN Gopher] 19th-century trippers who probed the mind
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19th-century trippers who probed the mind
Author : rbanffy
Score : 42 points
Date : 2023-05-11 12:27 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| 20th Century, but here's a great article on Benny Shanon, perhaps
| the foremost researcher on DMT:
|
| https://www.waggish.org/2011/benny-shanon-the-antipodes-of-t...
|
| One of the reports of his own experiences with the substance was
| as follows:
|
| >Another pattern of interpreting-as is one I shall characterize
| as seeing the particular as generic, or rather, seeing the
| generic in the particular. I have experienced this on a number of
| occasions. The first, which for me was very striking, occurred
| during the daytime. It was in a village and I, intoxicated, was
| sitting on a small verandah overlooking the meadows. A farmer (a
| real one) was passing by, and I saw The Farmer, the universal
| prototype of all farmers. Again, as in the previous example, the
| standard perception and the non-ordinary one are related. After
| all, I saw The Farmer, not The Fisherman or The King. Yet, while
| normally I would have seen just a farmer, this time I saw The
| Farmer. While semantically linked, experientially these two
| perceptions are totally different. I have heard accounts of the
| very same phenomenon from my informants.
|
| --
|
| I've never taken DMT, but I'm curious if people who have can
| report similar experiences of effectively seeing Platonic forms
| (or at least, believing they have).
| sammalloy wrote:
| You don't need to take any DMT (or any other substance for that
| matter) to explore and experience this subject. The interesting
| thing about Shanon is how he collected data about Amazonian
| archetypes unique to ayahuasca. Jeremy Narby and a few others
| followed up on this, but it is considered the very definition
| of fringe science and isn't well understood. Shanon, Narby, and
| McKenna were convinced that there was informational content
| within the drug that is passed on from the ingestion of the
| substance to the user, akin to Neo uploading Kung Fu directly
| into his brain. Sadly, however, nobody has ever been able to
| substantiate this claim or support it with the most basic kind
| of evidence.
|
| But there is something to be said about culture and language
| and the Platonic forms that are communicated through writing.
| The domain of art, psychology, philosophy, mythology, religion,
| comparative literature, and theatre is chock full of it, and
| has enough material to keep you busy for five separate
| lifetimes. Archetypes, metaphors, symbols, and images in these
| disciplines are all different aspects of these so-called
| Platonic forms. In the theatrical arts in particular, there is
| a very strange body of literature surrounding the French
| troubadours that you may want to start with. The lore suggests
| that they were using poetry, music, and themes about love to
| spread these kinds of archetypes.
| n4r9 wrote:
| This type of thing is relatively common in psychedelic trips, I
| believe. I've read for example about someone making love to his
| girlfriend while high, and it felt like he was making love to
| the essence of womanhood. My guess is that psychedelics brings
| to the surface abstractions that we normally take for granted.
| sammalloy wrote:
| That's correct, but each substance itself also has a similar,
| corresponding description or form. The "essence of womanhood"
| is often associated with the correct dosage of Salvia, for
| example, with people actually hearing the voice of a woman
| (or goddess as it is often described). Mushrooms are often
| associated with the form of the teacher, while LSD seems to
| have a highly technological or computing form associated with
| it. Some people will disagree, with McKenna associating
| mushrooms with aliens and science fiction, but that might
| have more to do with his heroic dosages.
| sebmellen wrote:
| I've always felt LSD is highly "electric", whereas
| psilocybin feels almost aggressively "analog".
| sammalloy wrote:
| Interesting. Ayahuasca has been described as the
| archetype of the Amazon jungle, while DMT alone has the
| archetype of the circus.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I've had quite a lot of this an ur-type experiences on LSD at
| high dosages.
| dekhn wrote:
| The worst part is when you come down and you still see the ur-
| form for everything for extended periods of time. Kind of like
| being Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces.
|
| In fact Campbell even went to a Grateful Dead show and hung out
| with the artists. He is exactly correct that a Dead show (now
| Phish shows) are Dionysian. One has to wonder if he partook:
|
| What he saw reminded him of the Dionysian festivals, palpable
| proof of his theory that the ancient myths and rituals he
| studied still echoed today. "This is more than music," he told
| his audience. "It turns something on in here [the heart]. And
| what it turns on is life energy. This is Dionysus talking
| through these kids." Campbell's understanding of Dionysus was
| far deeper and more nuanced than the popular caricature of the
| happy, wine-soaked god, but his point was not to rehabilitate
| that older understanding. "It doesn't matter what the name of
| the god is, or whether it's a rock group or a clergy," he
| concluded. "It's somehow hitting that chord of realization of
| the unity of God in you all."
| lonetripper wrote:
| I have seen "The Warrior" while looking at myself through a
| mirror on shrooms
|
| I may have seen "The Garden of Eden" while sitting on a bench
| in a park on shrooms
|
| And for what it's worth, I have seen a Tetrahedron on DMT with
| my eyes closed (and it was the calmest Tetrahedron I've ever
| experienced)
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Yes and this isnt just DMT but probably a feature of all
| psychedelic drugs
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My dentist got rid of Nitrous Oxide after I had only been going
| there a few years. Too bad. The few times I had it were great.
|
| "Where did the Nitrous go?" I asked finally.
|
| "We got rid of it. Everyone working here were getting too much
| exposure."
|
| Maybe they know something now that they didn't back then with,
| (FTA):
|
| > after absorbing as much gas as humanly possible by enclosing
| himself in an airtight box filled with it for an hour and a
| quarter
| mturmon wrote:
| I have been reading Michael Pollan's book, _How to Change Your
| Mind_.
|
| In the first couple chapters, Pollan is trying to link some of
| the newer (1960s+) perceptions that we have about drug-induced
| mystical experiences, to those of earlier investigators. He
| goes back to the noted 1800s American philosopher William
| James, who wrote _Varieties of Religious Experience_.
|
| Turns out James was an experimenter with Nitrous. As I remember
| Pollan's telling, James used a lot of nitrous, and preferred it
| strongly to some other substances available at the time (that
| maybe gave less well-controlled experiences?). According to
| Pollan, it was not a harmful thing. Wiki has a little more (htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James#Philosophy_of_re...).
|
| The Pollan book is quite worthwhile, BTW.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Hooke tooke cannabis?
| tilne wrote:
| Very cool. I'd be very interested in other similar reading
| material if anyone has some recommendations. It reminds me of
| when I was a teenager and I stumbled upon Alexander Shulgin and
| PiKHAL (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHKAL).
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