Scholar

I would be careful around this substance and probably recommend not using it again. We have no idea if this is spiritual or something in your brain. There is always risk associated with these substances. Martin Ball basically fried his brain using it, he was not able to sleep for a year or so, and I am not sure if he is any better now. But he took it daily. The fact that it gives you powerful experiences means it creates powerful changes in the brain. And it is not a drug designed for anything, it's literally just throwing something at your brain and it happens to have certain deconstructive effects. It might as well cause other changes in the brain that are harmful and make it unable to sleep. And maybe it causes certain changes in your brain that it does not cause in others. Whether or not this is the case, this is a real risk that you should consider. You could destroy your brain with these substances, especially if they are less researched.

Maybe your body being covered was one of the reasons why your body disappeared during the trip?

Did you ever do LSD or psychedelics while doing sensory deprivation? Like blindfolding and plugging ears?

The way you think about reality by default is the following: The world, outside reality, exists. In that world exist I and other experiencers, actors, who travers and interact in that world. The experiencers are not the world, the world is not the experiencer. The experiencer is experiencing the world through sense-organs, which create a subjective reality. Subjective reality is not consistent with the world, and unlike the subjective mind, the world remains constant. Therefore, the world is real and the mind us unreal, because the world is consistent, it is permanent, it is actual. This is the default assumption through which you look at existence. However, these assumptions are baseless, because you are positing two substances: Mind substance and matter substance. Inner world and outer world. Yet, when you point at the world, whatever you believe it to be, it has to be made of the inner world. As long as you are aware of it, it is the mind, and so any conception of the world you could possibly have is mind. But it is even worse. You assume there is an experiencer, and consequently, you confuse pure existence by the concept of experience. When you look at redness, at colors, at visual imagery, you call that perception. You believe there is someone who perceives the color. The color doesn't just exist on it's own, like an atom would. No, the color exists because you perceive it. And you the perceiver, the experiencer are fundamentally not experience. This is all false, and illusion. You do not experience anything, experience does not exist. Rather, everything you call experience, perception, sense data, including thoughts, emotions, colors, feelings, are all made out of existence. They are reality itself. There is nobody experiencing them. What you call redness being perceived, is nothing but redness existing. You have taken existence and labelled it perception. You took ownership over existence itself, and somehow claimed that you are the source and ground of existence. But you are nothing but one object of existence. You are the ego, a substance of reality much like the color red. It can exist, and it can cease to exist. Yet, it ceasing to exist will not make colors cease to exist. You can die, and yet, colors will continue. Feeling will continue, warmth and cold will conitnue, thoughts will continue. You have to set aside the above described construct and adopt a new one, which is: All the exists is existence. The universe is just existence. And the universe, is made out of infinite forms of existence. It is unified, it is one thing. Yet, within this Oneness are infinite forms, infinite parts. All of these parts relate to each other. Some of these parts relate to each other in certain ways. You can think of this as the atoms of the universe relating to each other. Now, certain atoms, parts of reality, form specific relationships. These relationships you call the brain, or brain activity. These relationships are what your human mind is. This is what would be referred to as dissociation or individuated consciousness. Within existence, relationships form, and these relationships are their own form of existence. Now, when you ask "So, if I am everything, why can't I control another body!", it is because you still are in the old framework I described above. In the framework that is accurate to existence, this question is nonsensical, and I will demonstrate how: If all of existence is unified, and that unified existences creates relationship between parts of itself, then all it is to say to be a human mind is to say that you are the relationship between certain parts of existence. And when you say "So how is it that I cannot control another body?", it is like to say "Why is this relationship within existence not this other relationship within existence?". It would be like asking, why is the moon not earth? Why is the flower not the rock? Now, here comes the second confusion: Because within the relationship of existence that is this individuated consciounsess exists ego and selfhood, which is a relationship between parts of unified existence, it is not recognized that existence simply is existence. Rather, existence has a structure that says "This is my, I am the perceiver, I am the one who is the ground of all of these other parts of existence! They are mine!". The reality, however, is that existence is simply existence. Once this relationship between different parts of existence dissolves, that's it. It dissolves. But existence continues. The "I" will be dead, but existence cannot die, existence is eternal, it is absolute. And that's all there is to it. All that exists is existence, and all in existence is existence. It could not possibly be more simple. Yet you are confused because, what you are, what the selfhood is, is a form of existence that is by definition confusion, illusion. So, to ask why you cannot control another ones body, is akin to asking why red is not the blue.

What type of music can you guys recommend for a proper 150mcg trip? Will the music I usually like work well for an LSD trip, like some Max Richter or the like? I usually use that to enter deep contemplative states to ponder the nature of existence, but it makes me very melancholic. I enjoy melonchonia, it feels existentially very gratifying, but I am not sure if on LSD it might not activate negative thinking patterns or the like.

But why relate it to the human emotion of love?

I just don't understand how 20mcg could make such a difference. I still feel completely in flow and in a meditative state. I feel like I could easily figure out the solution to any problem. So many egoic structures seem to be completely eroded or weakened. How long will this last?

If a spider species evolved that does not have psychological love for anything, I don't think it would refer to what you call Love as love. It doesn't make much sense, therefore it could be that the conceptual frame you use is tied to what you are as a human being and how you relate to the qualities of existence. I believe that is Ralstons point.

What would be the reason then? Would a being that has a different psychology to human beings refer to it as love?

If Love is acceptance, then it is nothing at all. Because acceptance is just a lack of resistance. If there is no resistance, which is an egoic dynamic, all that is left is existence. A pure existence is of something lacking resistance already is fully "accepted". It just exists, which is what it means for something to be accepted.

His point would be that if what we call love normally is a human emotion, and the Love you talk about is not that human emotion, there is no reason to call it, and refer to it as, Love in the first place.

I am worried that if I take a higher dose it might erase the subtle effects I am currently experiencing, and on the other hand I wonder if those same positive effects will be exponentiated. I expect there will be permanent and significant changes to my brain structure. With the amount of brain connectivity I gained from 20mcg, I am curious if 100-150mcg will actually be 5-7.5 times higher, or if some sort of peak is reached before that. I also kind of want to go with a lower dose before going higher, like first doing 100mcg instead of 150mcg. I want to do a 100mcg dose anyways, and I wonder if it will be underwhelming, or in fact not even as powerful, once I took 150mcg.

Wow this is only a week after my last post, but it feels like a month has passed. Was on a short family vacation, and I noticed a pretty significant yet subtle shift in my consciousness throughout. To keep things short, I feel like even just the 20ug did somehow resolved certain things I have been working on for years, or at least pulled me from a plateau. I am still much more in the moment and am far less prone to be caught up by certain habitual thought patterns. Usually I am kind of left-brain, intellectual minded, and I definitely feel less "autistic" in that way. My memory seems better as well. I also had certain strange hang ups that just kept me in loops because I just did not have the perspective to truly imagine possibilities outside of them, which now feels utterly silly. In general, I would say there is less friction in my life, it I am flowing far better. To be clear, my intention with these first psychedelic trips and the usage of 1V-LSD is primarily self-improvement oriented, and more specifically oriented towards my current life-purpose goals. My main intention is not spiritual, although over the past few days I have realized the two are not really as seperate as I thought. I will be taking my proper trip in the next week, and I can't imagine what it will do to me if 20ug seem to have already created such significant shifts. I still do not know if these changes in consciousness will just disappear after a while, I imagine that is possible, especially with bad habits. Also, I feel like people just became more attractive to me? Women just suddenly all look much more gorgeous and feminine to me, whereas before I had harsher criteria for what I found visually and socially appealling.

10mcg was much more subtle, could also be because I still felt in R-Mode flow after 3 days of taking the original 20mcg dose. I still feel super exhausted the day after though. I didn't get quite enough sleep, but it feels like I ran a marathon or something.

What do you guys think of prodrug safety? I have 1V-LSD lingering around, and am not quite sure what the risk profile would be. I am reading that it is pretty much equivalent to LSD, but at the same time it is obviously not a well-researched drug. Does anyone here have experience is 1V-LSD? Never used psychedelics before and I want to do my first trip soon.

How safe do you guys evaluate taking analogues of LSD in general? Do you guys know of cases where analogues caused some long term significant negative side effects, as opposed to normal LSD?

You can switch between R-Mode and L-Mode if you are familiar with them, this wasn't an exercise to find deep truth but just me testing out the substance and taking note of some things. In the notes you will actually find me talking about that it's probably better to remain in R-Mode during a full trip, which is basically the advice you are giving. Also, imaginary is just another word for existence, and you are partaking in existence when you say logic is imaginary. Anyways, I still feel the effects of the substance. I don't know if it actually changed something permanently in my mind, but I definitely still feel like I am basically in the moment. I am immersed in everything I do such that I do rarely have subtle anxieties that would otherwise kind of always be present in the back of my mind. I kind of lose myself in the activities I partake in, which to me is actually a tremendous benefit. I will take another 10mcg dose tomorrow to test how that will affect me, and then take a two week break before I do a full trip of 100-150mcg. I am curious to see how long-lasting the benefits of this substance are. I can see why some people microdose it to treat or dampen depression.

I'm not looking for a psychedelic experience with this trial.

Alright, I'll do 20ug and am expecting basically caffeine-like effects, I will report later I suppose.

Never took psychedelics before, am pretty sensitive to things like weed, coffee, alcohol and I metabolize things very rapidly. I ate the wrong things yesterday and have had a headache and barely any sleep today so I will not be able to trip, as I think that would be unwise. This means I have to wait for another 2 weeks before I can trip, which I think might be better anyways because I will be isolated from all things hedonistic. Though I am contemplating to take maybe 20-30ug today, just to maybe see how I react to the substance. Would that possibly undermine my trip in two weeks, in terms of tolerance or other factors?

I ate edibles (too much for how sensitive I am) once after spending a day blindfolded because I was training my visualization capabilities. Jesus Christ, it's so easy to just completely lose yoursel in the darkness, especially if your mind was attuned to trying to detect the most subtle phenomena and kind of pull it into your imagination.

What do you think, 150ug for a first trip? Or go for 100ug?

Idealism claims that reality is fundamentally mental, and while in a sense that it true, really, this framework or idea is just a reactionary position to physicalism or dualism. A dualist might say the following: "There is reality, and in that reality exist agents, like us, who have perceptions of reality. The perceptions of reality are fundamentally a different substance than the objective reality, which is material, as opposed to mental." Now, the idealist will then say "No, this is not true, actually, reality is completely mental, the only substance that exists is consciousness, subjectivity!". Here is the problem: To say reality is mental only makes sense in a dualistic framework. The truth is, existence is just existence. It's not imagination, it's not mental, it's just being, existence. The concept of imagination and the mental is only relevant as so far as it describes a certain functionality within reality, but in terms of ontology, those terms are meaningless. When we critique the dualist materialist, we simply have to point out a confusion they partake in, namely that they deny the existence of what they refer to as consciousness. When redness is in what you call "your awareness", really, that just means redness exists. It's there. That's all it means. Redness isn't being experienced by anyone at all, that entire framework is materialist framework. All there is, is the existence of different dimensions of existence. One of those dimensions is redness. When the dualist says that there is a fundamental different between the mental and the objective reality, they have to point to redness and say "This is not what existence is!", which is obviously absurd. Of course redness exists, it is pure reality, it could not possibly be anything else. The dualist will try to point out and say "But clearly redness is not reality, because a person can be wrong about what they perceive, it's clearly subjective!". What is happening here is that the dualist already defines existence as whatever is outside of the dissociated existence (what they refer to us subjective experience), meaning the world or the universe. He makes the claim that reality is there, and then there are subjective agents which walk through reality and perceive it. But this is obviously delusional. It has to be the case that what is referred to as the subjective experience, is actually itself part of the world and reality. The entire framework therefore is confused. The correct framework looks more like this: Reality is one unified thing (let's conceptualize it as the universe), and within that one unified thing or substance, there exist relationships between parts of this one substance. And the relationship between those parts of those substance then are what a dissociation, or individuated consciousness, or "subjective" experience, is. To say reality is subjective is just to say that different parts of reality relate differently to each other. That's all it is saying. What you call your own personal mind simply IS a relationship within existence or reality. So, what a physicalist would conceptualize as brain activity, and what you would call individuated consciousness or dissociation, is always part of the greater whole. This obvious "being part of the greater whole" is always present, because reality obviously is reality. It's undeniable that existence is existence, unless there are specific relationships in existence which ARE the denial of that indisputable truth. That is it's own relationship within reality, and that is the relationship within existence which is dissolve upon taking psychedelics. So, you have the overarching relationship of "parts" of reality that constitute what you call your individual mind, and within this relationship that are egoic relationships that identify certain things as self vs not-self. When this structure gets dissolved, there will be a realization within the overarching relationship of existence (the individual mind) that it actually IS reality itself, that everything simply is the self. And really, that is delusional too, it's all reactionary. There is no self, there literally is just reality. And everything in existence is reality. That's all there is to it. It's not a mind, it's not imagination, it's not subjective, it just IS. To say reality is a mind because it has the qualities of a mind just reveals that you have been confused about what reality is from the beginning! It's not that reality has the qualities of a mind, it's that what you call a mind has the qualities of reality, of existence, that these ARE the qualities of existence from the get go. Of course it has, what other qualities could it possibly have? What else would redness be, but existence itself? So, this is where idealists like Bernard Kastrup partake in the materialist and dualistic delusions. They are so entrenched in this framework of "mind vs reality", that they cannot recognize that they partake in it when they define reality as mind. There are no minds! There is just different forms and relationships within existence, and they are all existence. To say "My true self is God!" just is to recognize that "Existence is existence, and anything that exists is existence!". This entire idea that existence belongs to someone is the crux of the problem. What is referred to as the experiencer is just one form of existence, and it is a sense, nothing more. It is not fundamental. There is no experience, the very notion of experience, imagination and the mental is delusional.

Have fun with the permanent brain damage I suppose.

This, children, is why you don't take powerful mind-altering psychedelics 30 days in a row.