Terrance McKenna The Eugenicist? Psychedelics, Feminism And Transhumanism

[LUH 3417]

The Jan Irvin article:

He stating that Key Kesey was an employee of a CIA program. He never calls him an agent, but a serious charge nonetheless.

If you follow that footnote you will find that it simply takes you to Kesey's New York Times obituary. No mention of the CIA is made by The New York Times in that article. I have seen nothing indicating that Kesey was ever paid by the CIA besides the $75 he got from being a one-time LSD guinea pig.†

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest was a seriously good book. I can't see how this would advance the CIA's agenda. Jan Irvin seems to seriously berate anyone in the comment section for challenging him. He uses profanity in all caps and is constantly hyperlinking his trivium ***t, ostensibly both as an appeal to authority and for self-promotion.




Jan Irvin has written a 2,800 page book on Albert Einstein. Here are some quotes by someone* who has glanced over it:


*An Open Letter to Jan Irvin – Allan C. Weisbecker
†Ken Kesey: Government Guinea Pig?

I was listening to the Gnostic Media podcast where Kesey is mentioned. The charge against Kesey is that in making a Native American the hero of the book, Kesey is promoting a reversion to primitivism, in the same way McKenna promoted the archaic revival. That's a pretty weak connection for claiming someone is an agent, but then again how did the pranksters just manage to get a bus and drive cross country doing very ridiculous things? I asked a friend about this and was told that Kesey was paid to write about the pranksters and to also film them. My friend also suggested that they were not just a random group of thrill seeking young people.

 

[LUH 3417]

There's a quote somewhere, I think it's audio of Leary on gnosticmedia, laughing about how there were no spiritual LSD experiences until they injected that meme into the culture. Then you look at Huxleys connections, his "soma", and the timeline of those elements.

Well the bohemians of the 40s and 50s were also the lost children of the wars. They were obsessed with the romantics and this idea that to be brilliant you had to be mad. The romantics were committing suicide or dying from TB. It was not hard for the CIA to equate madness with genius as I think that had been a fascination for many, and LSD was supposed to be a tool for some sort of genius revelation.

 

[Sucrates]

The Jan Irvin article:

He stating that Key Kesey was an employee of a CIA program. He never calls him an agent, but a serious charge nonetheless.

If you follow that footnote you will find that it simply takes you to Kesey's New York Times obituary. No mention of the CIA is made by The New York Times in that article. I have seen nothing indicating that Kesey was ever paid by the CIA besides the $75 he got from being a one-time LSD guinea pig.†

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest was a seriously good book. I can't see how this would advance the CIA's agenda. Jan Irvin seems to seriously berate anyone in the comment section for challenging him. He uses profanity in all caps and is constantly hyperlinking his trivium ***t, ostensibly both as an appeal to authority and for self-promotion.

It's not a great reference, the assertion I think is well founded based on a lot of related circumstantial information. He was working in the same hospitals where the experiments were taking place (VA Palo Alto Health Care System). Went on to be the major supplier of LSD for a time in the U.S. . His back story is all over the place. Do you know of any claim as to where he got the money for all the drugs?

Jan Irvin has written a 2,800 page book on Albert Einstein. Here are some quotes by someone* who has glanced over it:
*An Open Letter to Jan Irvin – Allan C. Weisbecker
†Ken Kesey: Government Guinea Pig?

I've never heard Jan talk about writing a book on Einstein. There might be some confusion there. One of the books usually referenced on Einstein and racism (and Zionism) is "A Biography" by Albrecht Folsing. (I haven't read it)

I think it's a little unfair to expect a Jew to be all "Imagine" during the period in question, but there are quotes that could be used to say he's a racist.

"I'm very disillusioned with politics right now. Those countries [the Allied powers] whose victory I thought, during the war, would be by far the lesser evil, now show themselves to be an only slightly lesser evil. On top of that, there's the thoroughly dishonorable domestic politics: the reactionaries with all their shameful deeds in repulsive revolutionary disguise. One doesn't know where to look to take pleasure in human striving. What makes me happiest is the [prospective] realization of a Jewish state in Palestine. It seems to me that our brethren [Stammgenossenen] really are nicer [sympathische] (at least less brutal) than these awful [scheuslichen] Europeans. Maybe it can only get better if the Chinese alone survive; they lump all Europeans together as 'bandits.'"

Letter to Paul Ehrenfest
March 22, 1919
Physics Today , April 2005
Translated and annotated by Bertram Schwarzschild

Albert Einstein and Zionism

 

[Sucrates]

I was listening to the Gnostic Media podcast where Kesey is mentioned. The charge against Kesey is that in making a Native American the hero of the book, Kesey is promoting a reversion to primitivism, in the same way McKenna promoted the archaic revival. That's a pretty weak connection for claiming someone is an agent, but then again how did the pranksters just manage to get a bus and drive cross country doing very ridiculous things? I asked a friend about this and was told that Kesey was paid to write about the pranksters and to also film them. My friend also suggested that they were not just a random group of thrill seeking young people.

You really need to look at the context in which it's all happening. See Gregory Bateson on "Native Revival", David H. Price, Weaponised Anthropology. Communists were discussing the use of an "Archaic Revival" long before Kesey and McKenna. I'm sure McKenna was very much aware of it.
Marx-Zasulich Correspondence February/March 1881

 

[LUH 3417]

You really need to look at the context in which it's all happening. See Gregory Bateson on "Native Revival", David H. Price, Weaponised Anthropology. Communists were discussing the use of an "Archaic Revival" long before Kesey and McKenna. I'm sure McKenna was very much aware of it.
Marx-Zasulich Correspondence February/March 1881

Thank you for the link

 

[LUH 3417]

You really need to look at the context in which it's all happening. See Gregory Bateson on "Native Revival", David H. Price, Weaponised Anthropology. Communists were discussing the use of an "Archaic Revival" long before Kesey and McKenna. I'm sure McKenna was very much aware of it.
Marx-Zasulich Correspondence February/March 1881

Weren't anthropologists especially interested in madness? Bateson and Mead went to Java or wherever they were specifically because the Dragon/Witch dance included trance states that reminded them of schizophrenics.

 

[Sucrates]

Weren't anthropologists especially interested in madness? Bateson and Mead went to Java or wherever they were specifically because the Dragon/Witch dance included trance states that reminded them of schizophrenics.

Madness and "sexual liberation". Mead is most famous for work in Samoa, leading to "sexual liberation", because native tribes are liberated and peaceful. Work that wasn't well supported by other studies, and in which observations reported that were opposed to her ideology were simply classified as due to "western influence". Also classifying jokes about the sexual activity of young girls in Samoa as the cultural reality, when, in fact the opposite was true.

"In 1996, Martin Orans examined Mead's notes preserved at the Library of Congress, and credits her for leaving all of her recorded data available to the general public. Orans point out that Freeman's basic criticisms, that Mead was duped by ceremonial virgin Fa'apua'a Fa'amu (who later swore to Freeman that she had played a joke on Mead) were equivocal for several reasons: first, Mead was well aware of the forms and frequency of Samoan joking; second, she provided a careful account of the sexual restrictions on ceremonial virgins that corresponds to Fa'apua'a Fa'auma'a's account to Freeman, and third, that Mead's notes make clear that she had reached her conclusions about Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. Orans points out that Mead's data support several different conclusions, and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an interpretive, rather than positivist, approach to culture. Orans goes on to point out, concerning Mead's work elsewhere, that her own notes do not support her published conclusive claims."
Margaret Mead - Wikipedia
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-hub.cc/doi/10.1525/aa.1996.98.4.02a00320/pdf
Margaret Mead’s fantasy island of sexual fulfillment

 

[Badger]

Travis, thank you for putting out some real scholarship and objective analysis on questionable claims.

The Jan Irvin article:

He stating that Key Kesey was an employee of a CIA program. He never calls him an agent, but a serious charge nonetheless.

If you follow that footnote you will find that it simply takes you to Kesey's New York Times obituary. No mention of the CIA is made by The New York Times in that article. I have seen nothing indicating that Kesey was ever paid by the CIA besides the $75 he got from being a one-time LSD guinea pig.†

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest was a seriously good book. I can't see how this would advance the CIA's agenda. Jan Irvin seems to seriously berate anyone in the comment section for challenging him. He uses profanity in all caps and is constantly hyperlinking his trivium ***t, ostensibly both as an appeal to authority and for self-promotion.

Jan Irvin has written a 2,800 page book on Albert Einstein. Here are some quotes by someone* who has glanced over it:


*An Open Letter to Jan Irvin – Allan C. Weisbecker
†Ken Kesey: Government Guinea Pig?

 

[Travis]

...but then again how did the pranksters just manage to get a bus and drive cross country doing very ridiculous things?

Book sales! Ken Kesey had written a very popular book.

Jan Irvin has done some serious work on Gordon Wasson. In the book Entheogens and the Development of Culture: The Anthropology and Neurobiology of Ecstatic Experience, Irvin had written the final chapter called Gordon Wasson: The Man, The Legend, The Myth.

Besides citing books by Eustace Mullins (I like Eustace Mullins), Bernays, and Hoffman; Jan Irvin had gained access to the CFR Archives at Princeton, The Paul Charles Blum Papers at Yale, The Frank Altschul Archives at Columbia, The Bernay's Collection in US Library of Congress, and The Bertram Wolfe Papers at Stanford. But he was denied access to The Wasson Papers at Harvard after making his intentions fully known. You can read the correspondence with the librarian in the book chapter.

I think it's a good book chapter. Gordon Wasson most likely went mushroom hunting on the bidding of the CIA. Nobody seemed to be interested in psychedelics back then besides the CIA, Aldous Huxley, a few organic chemists, and a few psychiatrists. The 1957 Time Magazine article Seeking the Magic Mushroom can be found here.

And Dave McGowan published his popular book on Laurel Canyon.

But the connections between Esalen and MK-ULTRA don't seem to be as strong as the ones that he made between Wasson and MK-ULTRA, or even between Laurel Canyon Music and the CIA. Irvin insinuates that co-founder Richard Price was an agent, in more than one of his articles:

We know that at least several in the department, including Dr. Henry A. Murray, Dr. Thomas Chiu, Dr. B.F. Skinner, and Dr. George Estabrooks, were involved in the CIA’s MKULTRA program. Others in this same department at Harvard doing similar work at that time, who also appear to have been MKULTRA researchers, include Dr. Timothy Leary, Dr. Ralph Metzner, Richard Price, Dr. James Fadiman, and one of MKULTRA’s most famous victims – Dr. Theodore Kaczynski,

This is done simply on the basis that Richard Price spent some time at Columbia University, in the same department in which Henry A. Murray taught. Richard Price never got his PhD and went back to California.

It's true that some twisted behaviorist psychologists were residents at Esalen, but so were people like Linus Pauling and Buckminster Fuller. Richard Price was somewhat of a Beatnik even before LSD came on the scene, and seemed actually to be a victim of psychiatry after being drugged and incarcerated for schizophrenia at one point. Apparently, both Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts helped him build Esalen. He probably only knew Aldous Huxley through Alan Watts.

Alan Watts did not promote LSD. He actually discourages its use. He can hear this in some of his lectures.

Robert Anton Wilson also taught at Esalen, and in 1990 a graffiti artist spray painted "Jive ***t for rich white folk" on the entrance sign.

Terrence McKenna only recommends taking psychedelics about once every month or so, and sometimes not at all for some people. He recommends doing it alone. This doesn't seem like an effective way to promote brainwashing or degeneracy, and he doesn't promote the use of alcohol or opiates. Irvin's use of "eugenics" to characterize some of McKenna's quotes is unfair, since he only advocates a reduction (or arrest) in the population growth rate by voluntarily limiting the amount of children created. He never says anything about race. If he were to say that "Mexicans should limit breeding", then I would probably agree with Irvin. But McKenna gets the message out to essentially "rich white kids" only (or whoever pays the lecture fee).

But maybe Jan Irvin is right, however scantily-documented the connection is. The problem with investigating the CIA is that they are an intelligence agency so they intentionally make things hard to trace. But, maybe all of this would be obvious if I would just study the trivium!

And yes, you did attack. See the trivium so that you begin to understand the fallacious rhetoric you use, but may not see. –Irvin

I just did. I know how mind control and this operation work. When you put your cognitive dissonance aside and study, including the trivium, you’ll understand it too. –Irvin

Now you’re beginning to wake up and understand the importance of this. You’re starting to see the light at the opening of Plato’s cave… Now if you’ll apply the trivium you’ll free yourself the rest of the way. –Irvin

 

[LUH 3417]

Book sales! Ken Kesey had written a very popular book.

Jan Irvin has done some serious work on Gordon Wasson. In the book Entheogens and the Development of Culture: The Anthropology and Neurobiology of Ecstatic Experience, Irvin had written the final chapter called Gordon Wasson: The Man, The Legend, The Myth.

Besides citing books by Eustace Mullins (I like Eustace Mullins), Bernays, and Hoffman; Jan Irvin had gained access to the CFR Archives at Princeton, The Paul Charles Blum Papers at Yale, The Frank Altschul Archives at Columbia, The Bernay's Collection in US Library of Congress, and The Bertram Wolfe Papers at Stanford. But he was denied access to The Wasson Papers at Harvard after making his intentions fully known. You can read the correspondence with the librarian in the book chapter.

I think it's a good book chapter. Gordon Wasson most likely went mushroom hunting on the bidding of the CIA. Nobody was interested in psychedelics back then besides the CIA, Aldous Huxley, a few organic chemists, and a few psychiatrists. The 1957 Time Magazine article Seeking the Magic Mushroom can be found here.

And Dave McGowan published his popular book on Laurel Canyon.

But the connections between Esalen and MK-ULTRA don't seem to be as strong as the ones that he made between Wasson and MK-ULTRA, or even between Laurel Canyon bands and the CIA. Irvin insinuates that co-founder Richard Price was an agent, in more than one of his articles:

This is done simply on the basis that Richard Price spent some time at Columbia University, in the same department in which Henry A. Murray taught. Richard Price never got his PhD and went back to California.

It's true that some twisted behaviorist psychologists were residents at Esalen, but so were people like Linus Pauling and Buckminster Fuller. Richard Price was somewhat of a Beatnik even before LSD came on the scene, and seemed actually to be a victim of psychiatry after being drugged and incarcerated for schizophrenia at one point. Apparently, both Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts helped him build Esalen. He probably only knew Aldous Huxley through Alan Watts.

Robert Anton Wilson also taught at Esalen, and in 1990 a graffiti artist spray painted "Jive ***t for rich white folk" on the entrance sign.

Terrence McKenna only recommends taking psychedelics about once every month or so, and sometimes not at all for some people. He recommends doing it alone. This is not how you promote brainwashing or degeneracy of any sort, and he doesn't promote the use of alcohol or opiates.

But maybe Jan Irvin is right, however scantily-documented the connection is. The problem with investigating the CIA is that they are an intelligence agency so they intentionally make things hard to trace. But, maybe all of this would be obvious if I would just study the trivium!

Lol. Thank you for doing some digging. I'm still confused about this entire thing but like you said that's seems to be the intention!

 

[Badger]

"The problem with investigating the CIA is that they are an intelligence agency so they intentionally make things hard to trace."

I read thread earlier today and I was going to point this out, but you beat me to it.

Book sales! Ken Kesey had written a very popular book.

Jan Irvin has done some serious work on Gordon Wasson. In the book Entheogens and the Development of Culture: The Anthropology and Neurobiology of Ecstatic Experience, Irvin had written the final chapter called Gordon Wasson: The Man, The Legend, The Myth.

Besides citing books by Eustace Mullins (I like Eustace Mullins), Bernays, and Hoffman; Jan Irvin had gained access to the CFR Archives at Princeton, The Paul Charles Blum Papers at Yale, The Frank Altschul Archives at Columbia, The Bernay's Collection in US Library of Congress, and The Bertram Wolfe Papers at Stanford. But he was denied access to The Wasson Papers at Harvard after making his intentions fully known. You can read the correspondence with the librarian in the book chapter.

I think it's a good book chapter. Gordon Wasson most likely went mushroom hunting on the bidding of the CIA. Nobody seemed to be interested in psychedelics back then besides the CIA, Aldous Huxley, a few organic chemists, and a few psychiatrists. The 1957 Time Magazine article Seeking the Magic Mushroom can be found here.

And Dave McGowan published his popular book on Laurel Canyon.

But the connections between Esalen and MK-ULTRA don't seem to be as strong as the ones that he made between Wasson and MK-ULTRA, or even between Laurel Canyon Music and the CIA. Irvin insinuates that co-founder Richard Price was an agent, in more than one of his articles:

This is done simply on the basis that Richard Price spent some time at Columbia University, in the same department in which Henry A. Murray taught. Richard Price never got his PhD and went back to California.

It's true that some twisted behaviorist psychologists were residents at Esalen, but so were people like Linus Pauling and Buckminster Fuller. Richard Price was somewhat of a Beatnik even before LSD came on the scene, and seemed actually to be a victim of psychiatry after being drugged and incarcerated for schizophrenia at one point. Apparently, both Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts helped him build Esalen. He probably only knew Aldous Huxley through Alan Watts.

Alan Watts did not promote LSD. He actually discourages its use. He can hear this in some of his lectures.

Robert Anton Wilson also taught at Esalen, and in 1990 a graffiti artist spray painted "Jive ***t for rich white folk" on the entrance sign.

Terrence McKenna only recommends taking psychedelics about once every month or so, and sometimes not at all for some people. He recommends doing it alone. This doesn't seem like an effective message to promote brainwashing or degeneracy, and he doesn't promote the use of alcohol or opiates. Irvin's use of "eugenics" to characterize some of McKenna's quotes is unfair, since he only advocates a reduction (or arrest) in the population growth rate by voluntarily limiting the amount of children created. He never says anything about race. If he were to say that "Mexicans should limit breeding", then I would probably agree with Irvin. But McKenna gets the message out to essentially "rich white kids" only.

But maybe Jan Irvin is right, however scantily-documented the connection is. The problem with investigating the CIA is that they are an intelligence agency so they intentionally make things hard to trace. But, maybe all of this would be obvious if I would just study the trivium!

 

[Travis]

It's always in the back of my mind ever since reading about this about a year ago, but sometimes I hear a Terrence McKenna rant and I think "No way. They wouldn't let a disinfo agent talk like this." This is one of those rants—starting at [03:12]. (Don't mind the packaging and the goofy title. This is just the editors cut of a few dozen different clips. I decided not to listen to this hack-job since the volume fluctuates so much. I wasn't trying to "use Magic to Hack my Brain and Evolve" like the title indicates (I swear I wasn't—really). I was just clicking on new videos that I haven't heard. In other words: don't judge a video by its title (or its silly Clint Eastwood–Jesus painting.))

 

[Regina]

It's always in the back of my mind ever since reading about this about a year ago, but sometimes I hear a Terrence McKenna rant and I think "No way. They wouldn't let a disinfo agent talk like this." This is one of those rants—starting at [03:12]. (Don't mind the packaging and the goofy title. This is just the editors cut of a few dozen different clips. I decided not to listen to this hack-job since the volume fluctuates so much. I wasn't trying to "use Magic to Hack my Brain and Evolve" like the title indicates (I swear I wasn't—really). I was just clicking on new videos that I haven't heard. In other words: don't judge a video by its title (or its silly Clint Eastwood–Jesus painting.))

Thx Travis, Nice find! Enjoying so far.

 

[AJC]

I assumed you'd already been using Magic to Hack your Brain and Evolve...hence the stellar posts.

 

[Regina]

 

[x-ray peat]

It's always in the back of my mind ever since reading about this about a year ago, but sometimes I hear a Terrence McKenna rant and I think "No way. They wouldn't let a disinfo agent talk like this."

It seems that a lot of people missed this post but Terrance Mckenna has openly admitted he has been working for the FBI since 1971 and in "public relation" i.e. disinformation or psy ops for at least 15 years. I wouldn't recommend listening to anything this guy has to say. Taking LSD or Shrooms or whatever is exactly what the CIA was promoting to derail the anti-war movement and destroy a generation of teens and make them easier to control. Ironic that your avatar is of Aldous Huxley as he was also very much a part of the program. The CIA's involvement in drug distribution has been proven over and over.

And certainly when I reached La Chorerra in 1971 I had a price on my head by the FBI, I was running out of money, I was at the end of my rope. And then they recruited me and said, "you know, with a mouth like yours there's a place for you in our organization". And I've worked in deep background positions about which the less said the better. And then about 15 years ago they shifted me into public relations and I've been there to the present." Terence McKenna

 

[Travis]

The audio can be found here.

When that quote is written down like the way you wrote it, it looks pretty bad. I mean, it does sound bad even in the audio—but a bit less incriminating.

Here is my version:

Context: He's lecturing to a bunch or middle upper-class intellectuals, quasi-intellectuals, and the just plain curious with an inclination for this stuff inside The Esalen Institute: a nice facility in Big Sur which has an interesting history. Many famous people have taught there. Lecturers have ranged from one end of the woo spectrum (Deepak Chopra, ect.) ➝ to the other (Linus Pauling, BF Skinner.)

Questioner#1: I’m real curious about one thing: Why is it important for you to do this?

Terence McKenna: I wonder myself. You mean: "Am I the alien ambassador...

Crowd: [laughter].

Terence McKenna: ...whether I like it or not?" [laughs]. Well...Often when asked this question I've said, "It beats honest work." I mean, my brother is a PhD in three subjects and works in hard science and...uh. I don't think it's brought him immense happiness—not that he's despondent—but...I was always kind of a slider, ya know? And...Certainly when I reached La Chorerra in 1971: I had a price on my head by the FBI; I was running-out-of-money I was at the end-of-my-rope. And then: ‡They...Recruited me.

Crowd: [laughter].

Terence McKenna: And said: "You know. With a mouth like yours, there's a place for you in our organization."

Crowd: [still laughing].

Terence McKenna: And I've worked in deep background positions—about which the best...the less-said the better. And then, you know, about 15 years ago they shifted me into public relations and I've been there...to the present.

Questioner: ['s eyes are probably telling him to keep going. Sort of like, "I paid $1,000 for this frickin' weekend workshop McKenna.]

Terence McKenna: Uh...I think ideas get me high, and I like...the feeling of understanding. And I love...diversity to the point of weirdness. I mean I...

Questioner#2: There's more to it than that for you because, you know, being tuned-into ideas and turned-on by ideas is one thing if you can keep that just to yourself—but the sharing of it with someone else, that's what we’re getting at.

[Considering the topic, it's probably worth noting the questioner appears not to have taken what Terrence had just said as an admission of FBI-recruitment since he persists in asking for a motive. Perhaps he took Terrence's quote, "They...Recruited me." to be facetious? Maybe referring to "DMT elves from hyperspace"? Listening back on Terrence's impersonation,* "'You know. With a mouth like yours...'" [4:22:56] you might think that he was impersonating a DMT elf. Maybe so: maybe not. But if he was making a confession about an FBI recruitment, it was a pretty goofy FBI agent he was impersonating—perhaps even goofier than the cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover.]

Terence: Well one thing is: I'm really fascinated…I think of myself as a pretty savvy person and not...easily led into false dogma. And yet! this is such a strange idea. [Probably rolling his eyes towards Deepak Chopra's office] And so—basically it's a plea for help. I am...It's—it's not a cult. It's not that I want you to join me in believing in this, it's that it's so outlandish that join me as'a scientist would join'a research team and let's cut-it-to-pieces and show that it was simply a misunderstanding-of-information-theory coupled-with bad-mathematics spliced-onto'a...weak-ontology (or something like that.)

Crowd: [laughter].

Terence:You know. Because this idea...I could unde – I could live with The Timewave if I only had to read about in Time Magazine and that it was being developed by Negroponte† and Prigogine. The thing that sets-up the cognitive dissonance for me is that I—from the point of view of most people—thought it up. And I am so aware of my limitations, that to me that's the strongest argument there is that it's malarky.

*I personally do my FBI impersonations in sternvoice.

†Jan Irvin missed this gem. This could be a reference to John Dimitri Negroponte, who was only a US Ambassador at the time but who would later go on to become the first United States Director of National Intelligence. But since McKenna was talking about his Timewave—which is a computer program—he is most likely talking about MIT computer professor Nicholas Negroponte. Hypothetically mentioning both "Negroponte and Prigogine" as creating a better Timewave makes sense when their names are parenthetically-overlaid onto his previous comment made while attacking his own Timewave: "...it was simply a misunderstanding-of-information-theory (Negroponte wouldn't) coupled-with bad-mathematics (Prigogine would do better) spliced-onto'a...weak-ontology..."

‡Perhaps go up⇑ to "They...Recruited me" and consider that he was simply referring to The Esalen Institute?

 

[Herbie]

After almost losing my mind after mushrooms I have been thinking that maybe the people who are using psychedelics "just to party" are actually better off than people like myself. I was absolutely serious with the spiritual stuff i wanted from them.
So yeah I've been thinking maybe the seth rogen-type people who just take mushrooms etc for the laughs actually have a healthier relationship with the stuff than the spiritual seeker type people.

''After almost losing my mind after mushrooms'' I thought that was the point of the exercise?

I think the just to have fun type is anticipating the experience might not be so scared of dying. Where the serious spiritual seeker could be projecting an expectation onto the experience. The most self proclaimed spiritual people I have crossed paths with are the most afraid of dying which is contrary to being 'spiritual' They should refer to themselves as self proclaimed 'human' people.

I have taken LSD with people just for fun and have witnessed people go into psychosis and turned violent to strangling a friend to unconsciousness. As much as my experience leads me to think it can be beneficial in the correct context, I find it hard to imagine that many people could handle the intensity. I respect that these substances are illegal.

The Shaman I spent time with said that "the worst journeys turn out to be the best journeys" in the long run in regards to learning and evolving, it becomes a paradox of what is actually defined as good and bad. The bad experiences are easier to explain and remember than the greatest of experiences.

 

[damngoodcoffee]

''After almost losing my mind after mushrooms'' I thought that was the point of the exercise?

I think the just to have fun type is anticipating the experience might not be so scared of dying. Where the serious spiritual seeker could be projecting an expectation onto the experience. The most self proclaimed spiritual people I have crossed paths with are the most afraid of dying which is contrary to being 'spiritual' They should refer to themselves as self proclaimed 'human' people.

I have taken LSD with people just for fun and have witnessed people go into psychosis and turned violent to strangling a friend to unconsciousness. As much as my experience leads me to think it can be beneficial in the correct context, I find it hard to imagine that many people could handle the intensity. I respect that these substances are illegal.

The Shaman I spent time with said that "the worst journeys turn out to be the best journeys" in the long run in regards to learning and evolving, it becomes a paradox of what is actually defined as good and bad. The bad experiences are easier to explain and remember than the greatest of experiences.

Yeah it's just a thought.

And although I don't recommend psychedelics to anyone, I am still very much open to the idea that my difficult experiences where good for me etc.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I respect that these substances are illegal.