bmcnicho

My interpretation is that right now our consciousness is essentially playing a game with itself where it’s focusing its intelligence on keeping a particular human body alive. This isn’t a physical body though, I guess you could call it a thought-form. One of the challenges of this game is that the “brain” is energy intensive to keep running, the food required to obtain energy is scarce, and if the brain stops running, the dream ends. Of course with access to infinite intelligence, all challenge would cease to exist, but if our level of consciousness is arbitrarily capped relative to brain complexity, then challenge is maintained as a more complex brain would require too much energy. Therefore, a well adapted person’s abilities and attention are limited mostly to things that either directly or indirectly benefit their survival. Where psychedelics come in, is that plants and fungi are surviving in the same way. Chemical defenses are an effective strategy to avoid being eaten, and altered versions of neurotransmitters are a logical choice, as they will incapacitate animals such as insects or slugs, while being harmless to the plant which does not have neurons. The chemicals of particular interest to us are altered versions of serotonin and melatonin. Serotonin is primarily responsible for maintaining wakefulness, the consistent reality we must survive in during the day. Melatonin induces sleep, a time when, while the body is inactive, our consciousness is more free to exist temporarily in alternate realities (nighttime dreams) that can benefit the mind in waking life. Serotonergic psychedelics, being somewhere in between the two in structure and function, therefore induce what I would call a waking dream state. It combines the energy and clarity of wakefulness with the freedom and mysteriousness of sleep. The result of this is that human limitations on consciousness can be removed, as the serotonin system seems to be central in how the mind constructs its reality. This can be taken to the extreme of completely losing connection to the human form and gaining connection to radically expanded levels of consciousness and intelligence. One thing to consider though is that we didn’t have knowledge of chemistry until very recently. Before then, “psychedelics” as a concept didn’t exist. Instead, these experiences were thought of as coming into contact with a living spirit, whether existing within the plant itself, or in a transcendent realm with the plant being a deliberately placed sacrament. This conception sounds more “spiritual” than describing it as physical chemistry, but I think they’re different ways of describing the same thing. All human understanding is metaphorical, as reality is always more complex than mental models, so both conceptions have their own strengths and weaknesses. The difference between “physical” and “spiritual” is merely a construction of the mind.

@Jannes Based on my limited understanding of the biochemistry, I don’t think it would cause psychedelic tolerance, although I don’t know if anyone’s tested that. It does seem to develop a slight tolerance with itself though. They recommend cycling 5 days on and 2 days off

@Nilsi Probably right brain is more what I’m looking for. I would say that LSA leans more towards left brain and ayahuasca is more right brain, although both have a nice balance. I would say that the integration of the two towards higher order synthesis is where the true value lies. So since I’m naturally left brain dominant, right brain is where I’m lacking.

Very interesting! I listened to the podcast and it sounds like it doesn’t directly bind to the receptor like psychedelics do, but rather increases the receptor sensitivity. For that reason, it’s limited to microdose effects, but people are saying positive things about it. The effects seem to peak at 200 mg for some reason, with larger doses being weaker but longer lasting. It does sound like this could be used to potentiate other psychedelics though, I think I’ll test it out and report back. It’s cool to be on the cutting edge of a new substance, I guess this was just released a few months ago

@Leo Gura I hope you’re joking, I’ve never heard of anyone benefiting from that, seems pretty horrific and dangerous. You would obviously know more about it than me though

My thinking is that if psychic abilities do exist, then perhaps the people who have them are actively keeping it a secret. Either that or these abilities are subtle enough that from the perspective of an outside observer it seems plausibly natural. I just think that despite how flawed modern science is, if these abilities really existed in the way some people think they do, then something conclusive would be able to be demonstrated about it

@M A J I I generally agree with what you’re saying, however over the last several months I’ve surprisingly noticed that some of my trips have altered my baseline in various ways. Not necessarily in the sense of “higher consciousness” - I agree that meditation and self-inquiry are the proper tools for that - but more so in changing the way I think about things One factor I’ve noticed is that only waiting a few weeks in between trips has been more effective than having months in between when I was first starting out. Especially if the trips are at fairly high doses, I’ve been able to generate momentum over time, which can help avoid the trap of getting too absorbed back into normal life and losing touch with the insights I’ve also noticed that for about 2 weeks after an intense trip I’ll have occasional periods of feeling a little “altered” in various ways. It might have something to do with the serotonin system resetting, I’m not sure. But yes, it’s not like the substance causes real transformation on its own. The integration work afterward is arguably even more important than the experience itself.

Yes, I do plan on trying LSD sometime this year, seeing as it’s chemically similar to LSA, that seems like a promising candidate. You make a good point that it’s very much an individual thing. I’m just starting to see the true potential of this work, but I understand that just being flooded with the chaos of the transcendent would be counterproductive. There’s probably good reasons why we don’t yet have access to certain things.

I’ve had some success with this so far, specifically with ayahuasca and Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds (LSA). While tripping, I’ve been able to access ways of thinking, understanding, perceiving and generating insight beyond what I previously thought was possible. Surprisingly, I’ve been able to partially integrate these new ways of thinking back into the sober state, although it has come with a fair amount of confusion and reduced stability. This is making me wonder how far this can be taken, to what extent can we tap into higher intelligence while still existing in a human form. So far, the only other substances I’ve tried have been mushrooms and high doses of sativa edibles. While those experiences have been equally profound, they don’t seem to raise my baseline state as much as ayahuasca and LSA can. So I’m wondering which substances people have tried that are good at enhancing cognition in various ways? I know that many people have described accessing godlike levels of consciousness and intelligence, but how much of this can be retained back in the sober state?

I’ve been following all the AI advancements recently and thinking about how radically it could change society. There’s many credible people predicting that we could have human level intelligence as soon as this decade. The thought that in not too long we could be sharing this planet with a superhuman intelligence might recontextualize spirituality quite a bit. My main concern is that things could unfold very quickly and the AI would be so advanced that we wouldn’t be able to understand what was happening. So I’m speculating that spiritually advanced people could be useful in a situation like this. On psychedelics, I’ve had small glimpses into enhanced cognitive states. I’ve used it to accelerate my progress in contemplating, but so far it’s come with a lot of confusion. So I’m wondering if sufficiently gifted and advanced people could use psychedelics and other practices to directly understand how superhuman intelligence operates, even if in a different form. Then they might be able to help guide humanity through this difficult transition. All this, however, is based on the scenario where superhuman AI leads to the emergence of some kind of hyper-reality that we can’t understand. It’s also possible that the AI would observe that humans are ignorant and fearful and decide to keep things mostly the same for awhile

I think this is fine as long as the harmala is sourced from Syrian rue. The Huasca vine is a threatened species, so there would be an ethical issue there

All relevant data shows that unions are essential for workers. The destruction of America’s unions is why wages have been stagnant for 40 years despite productivity and corporate profits rising dramatically

I wonder if taking 10 grams with an maoi would have the same effects. I’ve done 3 grams with harmala and it strongly potentiates. Might be easier to keep down that way. For now normal doses are crazy enough for me though

As far as the underlying metaphysical cause, I have no idea. However, I’m considering on a practical level that having knowledge of the future would make you want to change the future. Seeing as we live in a world of billions of people with a large number of conflicting agendas, I think that could result in an infinite chain of futures overwriting other futures. In that case, I wonder what future exactly you’d be seeing, as any events that would not actually come to pass would no longer be the future. This might result in some kind of vast time war that would potentially make all humans completely insane and unable to act or understand anything. Or somehow all possibilities would converge to form a singular future that no one would want to change. But then there would be no room for individuality or independent thought. This is an interesting example of how reality must be structured in a very specific way to make any kind of sense and allow minds like ours to exist

@Danioover9000 1:53:00