Leo Gura

@FirstglimpseOMG There's very little visual effect. Vision remains pretty much the same but with a bit of very subtle patterning on large flat surfaces. And then vision becomes infinite. It's like you can see infinity, but it looks like transparent empty air. The amazing part is not that you see anything new, but that everything you saw before get seen as the infinity it is. You see the mystical baked right into the mundane.

There's also 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT So technically even 5-MeO-DMT is ambiguous. If one's not smart enough to know the differences, one probably shouldn't be touching it.

@Psychonaut I know for a fact that N,N-DMT Fumarate and many other psychedelics can be plugged, so MAOI activity can't be a factor. Just don't plug it super deep. MAOI activity is in the intestines, not in the rectum from what I understand. Plugging seems like the best RoA for many psychedelics. Including N,N-DMT I suspect. I would much rather plug N,N-DMT than smoke it. But don't be plugging freebase. You should only plug salts. For some psychedelics, like 2C-B, plugging is MORE potent than oral dosing or snorting. So start low. And never take 5-meo orally.

@Tancrede Pouyat I can't speak for other people's experiences. I've only ever had positive experiences with 5-meo. The tricky part is the come-up and the surrender. After the ego surrenders, there's no suffering. Can't imagine what would happen if the ego refused to surrender. That thought alone makes me surrender. But even though there is no suffering, there is still existential terror. At least for me.

The most important backfiring mechanisms have to do with the inner workings of your mind: Your modes of thinking, your emotional reactions, your fears, your motivations and values, your habitual behavior patterns, your beliefs and justifications, your paradigms of reality, etc. As a simple example, how might valuing sex or money or security backfire? As a more advanced example, how might valuing spirituality or enlightenment backfire? As a general rule of thumb, once a system reaches sufficient complexity, the greatest danger to its survival becomes a backfiring of itself. A sort of collapsing under its own weight. Which is why to reach the greatest heights requires shedding egoic material, or purification to the point of nothingness or spirit. The word "spirit" connotes lightness of mechanism, and this is a good pointer of what you should be working towards. To be conscious, it to be able to see how a mechanism truly works, and its backfire potential.

This is exactly 30mg of 5-meo HCL: As you can see, not a large quantity. But that dose will knock you to floor and your life will never be the same again.

@ZeN It's funny how my last mushroom trip was very similar to yours. Although I didn't tell myself I was never doing them again. Like 20 minutes into the trip I immediately realized this was gonna be an asskicking for my prior arrogance. So I went with it, and got my ass kicked.

Not every value is ego driven. In fact, your genuine values -- once you become really consciousness of them -- are ego-transcendent. Which is why values are such an important piece of the puzzle. Without that, it would not be possible to transcend ego other than maybe through blind luck. But ego-transcendence has little to do with blind luck. This is something divine inside of you which is pulling you up all the time. It just largely goes untapped, undeveloped, drowned about by all the noise of life. A paradise lost.

I once asked Peter Ralston how long he's been contemplating. He said, 24/7, his entire life from toddlerhood. Try to imagine 100,000 hours of contemplation. Now you get a taste of the magnitude of the achievement of the highest masters. It's inhuman.

@cetus56 They are identical. Infinity = void. Void isn't void because it's empty blackness. It's void because it's EVERYTHING without discrimination. When you gather up everything possible, it turns out to be nothing particular, see? Discrimination is what things ARE!!! Without discrimination, everything collapses into absolute indiscriminate fullness. Infinity is like pure potential waiting to precipitate. The precipitate of infinity is finity, or the familiar formed world of duality. As I believe I've told you before, void feels more like this than like a bottomless pit: At least that's what 5-meo feels like to me. But you have to understand that it's formless. It has no color or shape. It's utterly empty. Pure consciousness.

@AlwaysBeNice You CAN smoke HCL, you just wouldn't want to it. If you're looking to smoke 5-meo, you want freebase. BTW, it's pretty easy to convert freebase to HCL, and HCL to freebase at home with some basic solvents. Smoking 5-meo is incredibly fast-acting, and it will hit you like a freight train. Snorting is gentler, although it still gets crazy-intense after 10 minutes. HCL can also be used sublingually and rectally. Both methods are worth experimenting with, as snorting tends to waste substance as it drips down your throat. It's not easy to get a full dose by snorting unless you have experience manipulating your nose and really massaging it into the nostrils for a good 10 minutes. Don't try to snort freebase, it will burn like hell. My preferred RoA is one that's completely fool-proof, always consistent, and wastes zero substance. Both smoking and snorting are not ideal in this regard. My best guess is that rectal is the best RoA. But I haven't tested it yet.

Yopo seeds contain very little 5-meo. It's largely bufotinine, so not at all the same thing, but still trippy. Between frog juice and yopo, very few people have tried 99% pure 5-meo. It's like powdered metaphysics and has this hyper-lucid quality.

In other words... exactly as I've told you guys I like this idea. I'll start it, you guys contribute.

Don't underestimate mushrooms. They can kick your ass harder than any other substance. There's nothing inherently "newbie" about mushrooms, especially at higher doses. Any psychedelic can hand you your ass. And if you do enough of them, it's pretty much gonna happen. So best to treat them with respect and go in very humble. Or they will humble you like you've never been humbled before.

I've found in my journey that lots of action was very helpful in the beginning when I didn't know every much. But as I learn more, action becomes less and less relevant to growth. The best action becomes simple introspection and genuine contemplation of the problem. And then it tends to melt away and save years of action, years of action in a circle. One of the problems with people who preach massive action is that they are acting towards things that will NEVER resolve with action. But of course, true introspection is hard work, and might be called a kind of action. And external action is still important. Especially depending on where you're at in your growth.

@RossE He shouldn't have to explicitly say it. You gotta read between the lines and connect up with a bigger picture.

I will look into creating an RSS feed. Should be easy enough. As for email notifications, that's more problematic. Don't want to spam people to dead. I'll gave to give it some thought. For now, just check back once a week.

@Donald Yes, the mind doesn't like confusion, which is why people rarely invest energy into this process. And why they end up playing for it for the rest of their lives. You're gonna get what you give.

Right, well... you're a true philosopher: a lover of wisdom. I'm the same way. Philosopher's tend to love exploring the conceptual domain of reality for its own sake. Often to the brink of madness. Nothing wrong with that per se, as long as you're careful and you don't treat it as the Absolute, but more as play or art. I tend to justify my highly conceptual work to myself these days as "just my art-form." One the greatest joys I get in life is from thinking about deep abstract stuff. Then gain, if you ever do taste the Absolute, you might slap yourself in the head for all the time you've wasted lost in thoughts and how pitiful that pleasure is compared to the Infinite love contained in the Absolute. But until you do taste it, it's just hearsay, and can have no impact on you. In the end, whatever your path turns out to be, that's how it should have been. If it takes you 40 years of philosophy to finally taste the Absolute, then that's your karma. Although it would be wise to get your priorities straight as soon as possible. Because tasting the Absolute tends to change your entire outlook on life. When you know there's a big epiphany to be had which can flip your entire paradigm upside down and inside out, it might be worth making that your first priority. But that's up to you to decide. From a strategic thinking point of view, you don't want to spend too much time arranging the pillows on the bed before you've laid down the bed sheets, because you'll just have to arrange them all over again. But if something gives you joy (that is, philosophy), you do have a right to pursue it. Love requires no justifications. Basically, follow your deepest passions, AND grow your consciousness. But also keep in mind that you could just be fooling yourself And this really could all have no more significance than a dream. Maybe your karma is to be the guy who's jerking off in his own dream to the sound of his own thoughts

@username Absolute Truth -- if it exists -- is SO beyond claims or words, that it's best to not even speak of it. My approach to epistemology is totally open. Which means one doesn't know if Absolute Truth is accessible or not. At least not until one's accessed it. At which point, you'll have to make a determination. From a position of being outside Absolute Truth, it's not possible to know how you'll feel about Absolute Truth once you're inside it. And whether it's truly Absolute or not. It's sorta like you're asking what's inside a black hole. Well, you'll never know unless you enter it. You don't even know whether it's possible to enter it. But if you ever succeed in entering it -- by means you can't presently imagine -- you'll know. But you'll never be able to tell anyone what you saw. At least that's if you believe me. The reality for you, is that you don't even know if what I'm telling you is true. So now you're left with the choice of whether you want to risk seeking out the black hole, or stay on your comfy couch. What if you spend all these years chasing down this black hole, you finally figure out a way to go inside, and all you see is nothing. Wouldn't that be a trip!

1) You need to be prudent with how you do your testing, because you have very limited time and energy. So test out the stuff evidence suggests is worth testing out. And the other stuff will remain uncertain. Over time, as you study 100s of sources and your big picture congeals, you'll be able to sort stuff out much faster and better. There is convergence that happens after years of doing this process. Your intuition will pick up on subtle clues and large-scale patterns. But even then, you still gotta always be vigilant that you could be mistaken. This is not a fool-proof process AT ALL. It's fraught with landmines. That's just the nature of the situation. 2) You are even more deluded if you take the position that some things are fundamentally impossible. Notice that's a groundless assumption. Be very careful pre-judging what is and isn't possible for reality. That would a rather arrogant position, and reality will ultimately prove you wrong. The way to minimize delusion is to devote lots of energy to test your deepest beliefs with direct experience. For example, if you suspect that enlightenment might be true, you MUST go verify it with direct experience, because if it turns out to be true, it will flip your entire web of beliefs upside down. Whereas verifying something like PizzaGate probably isn't worth your time. 3) Everything is technically relevant when you start, but you can quickly cut through lots of crap. If you prioritize your research by 1) Truth and 2) Living a good life, your inquiry will become very focused and a lot of irrelevant nonsense will be easily avoided. An inquiry needs to start with a deep question. Here are some quality questions to focus your research: What is ultimately true? How can I discover what's ultimately true? What is the biggest picture of life? How do I live the best life possible for a human being? What is the highest wisdom mankind has discovered? What is most meaningful or significant to know in life? If you stick to those questions right there, you'll eliminate 99% of the dead-ends.

Religious fanatics and atheists have much more in common than religious fanatics and mystics. This is what atheists aren't conscious of. Atheists are clearly dogmatic and stuck in their minds.

If you do the exercises every day, you'll start to see noticeable gains in awareness within just a few weeks, and definitely a month. The only way to fail is to avoid doing them.

@John Flores The number of people killed by rationalism may far outnumber the number killed by Islamic fundamentalism. Don't forget who created nukes and who is most likely to deploy them (Hint: not Islamic fundamentalists). If the entire world is destroyed, it will be because of rationalism and stage Orange consciousness, not stage Blue and much less stage Red consciousness. On the list of world problems, terrorism doesn't even make the top 20.

I've visited a float tank a while back. Felt like I could meditate better just sitting on my couch at home. Dealing with the water and salt and being naked is actually a big distraction for me. Sensory deprivation is not even a desirable thing for meditation. Just meditate on whatever the senses serve up.