Ok it was nothing of what i expected. I am still a little buzzed from what happened.

I did not expirience any hallucinations or i don't remember any. I felt pulled to my right with great strength. It felt like my consciousness stretched out and became a rope that was being sucked in. I was so weird that i resisted and tried to come back into my body. I completely lost the track of time or space and i started hearing a voice mentally telling me something like "come here, follow me, let go" I remember saying ok but then getting freaked out a little and resisting it resulting in me sobering up quickly. It was as if someone female gender was attempting to lead me somewhere playfully. Hmm interesting.

There is talk of Salvia coming across as a female Goddess/spirit. Whether you believe in plants having male/female characteristics I don't know, I've not had an 'encounter' but I've also only sample Salvia once. Since its reverse tolerant I think the same dose again would result in a more pronounced 'trip'. Be careful though, freaking out is not good for your soul

I don't believe in soul : \

Then call is psyche; but then again, I am guessing you don't believe in mythology either As humans we have the capacity to think metaphorically--it is not productive to get caught up on language so long as you understand the concept.

That term is confusing, so I avoid it too. For example, mainstream religionists believe that at the instant of fertilization (when the sperm merges with the egg), a mythical entity called "God" imbues the newly formed zygote with something called a "soul", something that animals don't get imbued with. If that is the case, then there must be some identifiable way in which the "ensouled" zygote is different from the unensouled one. Nobody can provide that definition, so the term "soul" is useless, and because it's confusing, worse than useless. Things that are worse than useless, in my book, are to be avoided.

I think the reason you find the concept of 'soul' confusing, is because you seem to me to be a hyper-logical being. To me the "soul" is our capacity to think metaphorically. In this way, it is not at conception that the soul is imbued in the body, but rather is developed throughout a lifetime. I am sure you use the term "psyche" which is "soul" the only difference is the connotation of the words, which is a bi-product of this metaphoric thinking.

I couldn't disagree more.
Psyche implies knowledge of psychology and perhaps materialist/token identity type person. In this case it would imply doing things in self exploration inside the mind or perhaps psychotherapy or mood elevation.

Soul implies spirituality. The use of the word is often by those who favor Dualism/Qualia type of approach to body/mind problem. The word also implies someone doing it for "spiritual" reasons usually implying survival of "soul" after death or some kind of objective purpouse of his existence or some kind of "evolution of the soul" or reincarnation.

So while objectively soul/psyche might mean the same in terms of what is actually influenced by the drug, subjectively they are radically different. I do not believe in any survival of anything after death, so soul is not a logical word for me to use.

It is like saying that ghost and wind are the same in a case of a door opening in a middle of the night. While objectively it doesn't meter because the door opened, subjectively it is very different to say a ghost opened it then wind opened it.

Like I said, your metaphoric thinking is altering reality. The only difference is your connotation. Your interpretation is the ghost, you are creating two terms, when in reality there is only one.

Eros and Psyche, figures in Greek mythology
Psyche (psychology), the original Greek conception of the self Soul or Self (psychology)

Yes as i said i do accept the fact that reality is the same but the connotations are important nevertheless. You cannot ignore connotations of the word.

You mean if someone has given a word connotations that are meaningless to you, you are forced to acknowledge all attributes linking to the beliefs and ideas of mainstream insanity?

But to give importance to connotation, is to give importance to alternate realities, which invalidates any sort of empirical thinking. Thus you have a contradiction. You can not believe in reason and some mystical realm of connotation.

I don't see it that was at all Flex. Plus i don't label myself as strictly empirical person although i often try to use it as a bullshit protection tool.

Well I think the topics slightly diverged, most posts here would rather split hairs over the term 'soul' than the strange concept of a female Goddess within the Salvia experience! Surely if your going to shoot anything down, or take an interest at all, that would be a more fruitful topic?

Soul, Psyche, Living Essence, State of Mind, Pneuma, Spirit. They are concepts that paint pictures in your mind. I could have just as easily said 'Freaking out can be terrifying, and that is bad for you overall state of mind'.

I wish I saw/heard a female Goddess... I was just a sidewalk From watching youtube videos, I have also gathered that a good number of larger people see snack foods, so I don't think the Goddess has any profound meaning.

Unless its the Goddess of Desire! I'm surprised McDonalds hasn't spiked their food with Salvia lol

I wish my country didn't have one of the most draconian drug schedulings, Salvia sounds like fun

It seems your country is simply ahead of its time, since most others are falling into the same trap of prohibition that never worked at any point in history.

Hopefully the change of government over here will bring about less increase in hysteria than what has been experienced over the last decade.

Thank you.

Religionists seem to have an immortality connotation with regard to the term "soul." What do you make of a statement like "he sold his soul to the Devil"? It would imply that the Devil has a claim to posession of the person's "soul" after he or she dies. You said that "soul" is roughly equivelant to psyche (or mind). Do you believe that a psyche is immortal?

Note to TL: entheogenic use is part of a quest for religious truth, so this splinter topic is relevant to the thread title. The very term entheogen implies religious quest.

"He sold his soul to the Devil"

I think in terms of metaphor, so I do not take it to imply that there is a being "Devil" who literally lays claim to the persons "soul". To me this statement is not in regards to death, it is in regards to life.

i.e.

I think of paying taxes to fund a war as literally selling your soul to the Devil. In my statement, "Devil" implies an entity of which I determine to be of evil (the government), the term "selling" literally means selling (monetary exchange for a good or service), and "soul" is what is being sold (moral, righteous living, in exchange for the comfort provided by the evil entity).

Selling your soul to the Devil does not have to have any religious implications, I am simply alluding to mythology. I think you would be hard pressed to find any real instances of the "Devil" in the Bible. I think your notion of "Devil" and "Hell" are the products of poets, not the religious texts.

Now bringing this back to Salvia--I think the experience from a trip is very similar to what I believe dreams are--metaphoric representations of subconscious. A dream to me is like watching a story, and through the anecdote, observing some greater wisdom. Just as reading mythology or fiction can give one greater insight, so to I believe can dreams. In this sense, psychedelic experiences IMO can be very beneficial in understanding "ego" or lack thereof, depending on the individual experience. Psychedelic experiences may also allow our subconscious to manifest itself, and in doing so help our conscious being to communicate with other levels of consciousness; in this sense, psychedelics may provide a gateway to the soul (subconscious). Who knows, perhaps psychedelic experiences could potentially be used as a means of therapy.

I have tried salvia numerous times with astounding results. I was once a the letter "J" on a pack of juicy fruit....and once I was a dolphin swimming through the ocean. After a while, my trips began to take me to the same place time after time. It is a very difficult place to describe, but it is a happy place. I become a part of some other race and we all seem to be working toward some specific goal.

Also (from my experience) females tend to have a bad experience with salvia. Not sure why though.

I believe that all living things have a soul. It's the universal connector.
It what connects us to each other, the earth, planets, universe and GOD.

I believe the soul is pure energy and part of the purest energy that resides in everything.

I think if you take to time to stop analyzing and just be, you can feel it's presence inside and all around you.

As far as ghost are concerned. They are real. It dosen't matter if you believe in them or not. They seem to be a lesser form of energy. I'm sure in time we will be able to prove their existence for those that need to see the "scientific proof"


peace and love

The "soul" is the consciousness. The awareness of self and others.

I believe in the existence of soul and supernatural, it's just that not everybody has the sense(sixth sense) to perceive them. I have witnessed a relative of mine being possessed, it was amazing that he spoke a different language during the possession.

I think when you speak about soul, you're speaking about the realisation and appreciation that all things are interconnected. If you die, your body will be food for microbes and give them life. At some point your matter will be reused in some way (new life, food, fuel). This wheel/circle/foodchain of life has been spoken about for a long time. It doesn't have to mean literal immortality and a God given soul.

If by now we don't have any scientific proof of something which literally would rewrite our knowledge of reality, in this age of recording and measuring technology, its highly unlikely they are real. I think you need to open your mind to the possibility that you've been duped by your own mind wanting to believe. It really does matter if you believe them or not! It is possible for a presence to be induced, hallucinated or faked. Not once have I seen a real ghost on the TV News. In fact Unfortunately, if you're looking this hard for Ghosts, eventually you'll believe anything you see on youtube. Remember special FX can fake any situation, including ghosts.

This is how I see it. The thread of life through everything is in conciousness. If another animal is capable of thought, no matter how rudimentary, it has been given that through evolution to the pattern thats unfolding around us.

I'd love to see some of these events first hand. I'd be skeptical from the outset, because people are easy to fool, moreso if they want to believe. I'd be recording the language, finding out what it is, what was said, investigating my relatives history to see if they knew it etc.

OOOoOOo, I like the male/female spirit thing.

I've had 2 distinctly different experiences: where the 2nd and 3rd/last times were like the female experience that zhenka provided and the first time was a black and white wormhole that felt like 48 hours which were actually sucked into something like 2 minutes.

I saw things that evoked such high emotions that when I came out of the wormhole I expected to never forget those feelings and why I had them for the rest of my life(and they could even be something that was on my mind constantly); only to find that I forgot most of what I saw. I was sucked into a finite point, spit out, and at the end speechless.

Wormhole illusions, serpentine hallucinations and kaleidoscope effects are common on most entheogens. Most put it down to the biology of the body, especially the biology of the eye. This 'revelation' was taken as an end to anyone saying the illusions could be important - however I think they only increase the importance!

If the biology of the body can create profound illusions in the mind, then these chemicals could be the key to understanding how the mind-body link works.

Its like taking a photograph from one angle and trying to recreate the world in 3D. You would be guessing on many levels. By altering that angle (entheogens) you can triangulate positions and create a more accurate 3D model of the original photograph. Seeing reality from many angles, or many perspectives (thought excercises etc.), can only help you understand the source material.

Any other issues humanity has with drug use are moot. The importance far outweighs our fear.

So how would we know where to start?

I guess only by doing analysis on people who have had life changing entheogenic experiences. By finding out what changed and why it changed, we may be able to draw conclusions or at least the odd hypothesis. Something so profound that it can alter a persons behaviour is extremely important. Its what many techniques have been trying to do for millenia.

I agree, and it's too bad this isn't incorporated scientifically around the majority of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7yKpvBQhTw

So would you consider a behavior change from acid something to also include?

I've had experiences in my life which should have changed it for the better. I've chosen to ignore those life lessons. I've had an experience on some very low quality acid that changed my point of view completely. It wasn't as if it was my only acid trip, I've done quite a lot especially in my youth. Most of the experiences were profound, some nightmarish. Only the last one had an impact that actually changed my behaviour.

Maybe it was the conversation, my usual friends are not really cerebral. This one trip I took was with my girlfriend on a relaxed and sunny day talking about the Universe. In fact it probably was entirely set and setting, because most official LSD studies are done with creativity and spirituality in mind.

Off topic but I found this amusing at the time:

Gf: "Look at that dog, its only got three legs poor thing!"
Me: "I've seen a dog with no back legs at all."
Gf: "Thats impossible!"
Me: "The back end was in a type of trolley with two large wheels to keep it steady"
Gf: "Poor thing. Imagine if we'd never invented the wheel."
...
At that point I was ROFL at her worrying about what would happen to the dog if humanity had never invented the wheel... That'd be the least of our worries! Out of the mouth of babes...

Sounds like something a girl would say...which I enjoy very much. I'd love to talk about that sometime, but back to the topic:

I'm with you on the whole set and setting dilemma. The first time I tried was the time that produced a major behavioral change...any other times afterward were nowhere near the same experience, and I gave up on that specific drug. It was the first time in my life that I ever thought about how silly my life was, and how dictating many outside things were that spread to such far lengths.

What was more interesting to me was the symbols that I hallucinated. At one point, I left my body and was watching overhead, then in the aftermath it happened to be sunrise. That's when i started seeing the symbols, and at the same time started to go into a reflective state. It really got me to think, what if these things were always around and I just didn't pay enough attention.

Well, the outcome was me figuratively paying attention to more symbols involved in my life. From that experience, I learned that there was more going on than what I was paying attention to...the only thing that controlled it was what I chose to take in.

Looking back from now, it sounds dumb that I didn't know that. At the time, I was 17, and not too happy with the things that were guiding my life(everything but me);so, I guess that's how mind/setting played a part for me.

I just wonder if I hadn't had that...Would I have figured it out by now? What kind of choices would I have made if I didn't? I'll never know, but I can say for sure that it was well worth my time.

I tend to see something similar to the Mayan calendar disc, except with people holding each others shoulders and walking around the edge. Very odd, but quite appealing.

I wonder if two people could ever see the same strange images?

Now that would be something. The old 'sharing a dream' fantasy. It'd be cool to have the exact same experience as someone else. But to do that you'd need identical brain chemistry and function, then I guess the experience is literally in the pattern of brain activity and could be displaced onto another.

I've heard about narrated trips, and I tried it one time. Sit in a dark room, have a narrator, listen to similar sounds like music, and say things like see the green star. They probably will never see exactly the same thing every time, but maybe they can be traced by writing down what is seen by the narrated group.

My first experience on Salvia didn't produce any special effects i expected probably because i smoked foliage instead of a concentrate. Then, second time i tried it (the concentrate!), it blew my mind. I spilled my bong water on the floor without any realization of what i was doing but the main part was that it totally shifted my reality and when sometimes you still have a grip on what's going on around you when tripping, lets say on shrooms, then salvia trip basically "ripped my head off" and i didn't have a slightest connection with the world around me. Salvia has its own character when it comes to tripping - it makes me a little uncomfortable when a trip is fading away - it's similar to waking up when you don't want to... like you're trying to hold on to the "reality" it brings ...

DMT, DMT, DMT

I'm too lazy to extract it myself. One day!

That's funny that you likened it to waking up.

Anyone like to share a DMT extraction that they like, or an easy brew/smoke?

No experience with DMT, but I am working on a mescaline extraction next weekend.

I believe that would have this death feeling experience with it. I tried pedro once, but i ate it....and I couldnt finish; I was just a little hasty. What are you extracting from and what method?

No doubt Flex is using San Pedro, because of the speed and size the cactus grows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro_cactus

This is one chemical I've not tripped on. I'd love to have the experience, but unfortunately my girlfriend panicked so much at the Ayahuasca concoction I brewed, its unlikely I'll get to do it anytime soon.

I absolutely love the in-your-face names of psychedelics. San Pedro was named that because the native americans would only partly convert to Christianity, they refused to stop using their sacrament, and instead named it after St. Peter at the gates of Heaven. LSA is a precursor to LSD with similar effects, and its found in the seed of the Morning Glory (nickname for a youths morning erection lol). The three highest concentrations of LSA are found in the varieties 'Heavenly Blue', 'Pearly Gates' and 'Flying Saucers'. Anyone seeing the reason why they're called Entheogens? I love it, it makes me smile.

A guy at work who thinks canabis is very bad thinks that its called Dope because of the effect it has on the brain, and it makes you permanently dopy. Well I explained that it was nonsense, because it has over 100 names and by that logic beer should be called 'loud-mouthed-argumentative-piss-yourself-cunt', but he didn't think that was a point. He'd love the names of the psychedelics, which of course he's dead against on principal. Its people like that I'd love to trip with out in the wild. Tearing open their institutionalised brains for fun, sign me up please!

Anyway, DMT is usually taken orally in Ayahuasca or Hoasca or similar. Its only really called Ayahuasca when you use the Vine.

The extract is fairly easy, not much more than breaking the material up and then boiling it. I think you use lemon juice to help extract it.

You can read about my exploits with DMT and many others at Brainmeta here:
http://brainmeta.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17080

They had some in the head shops in Amsterdam, but I didn't have time to respect the dietary restrictions, and I was on a munch

If you've taken any hallucinogens before, and thought them profound, you simply have to have some kind of DMT experience. It makes your mind and its functions take form in front of you (or the back of your eyelids depending on dose) in the most awesome way. The landscape I saw was extremely mathematical and I know why people mention the machine-elves and it fills me with wonder. The transformative power of DMT and its visions are the number one most profound thing to have happened to me. I really do feel there is a separate and Universal consciousness within our own bodies, probably within DNA. Sounds wacky huh?

I hope anyone who has experienced hallucinogens would feel the separate and universal consciousness within their body. If not, you may just be a little slow...or maybe underdeveloped.

Now are you ingesting the brew? I hate that idea because it'll take forever and taste like azz. Any other ways of immersion into dmt land?

Its actually the LSH in the seeds, which are broken down rapidly into LSA which are potent. If immersed in a red cherri wine, its supposed to prevent the LSH breakdown, and convert LSA back to LSH. LSA is supposed to be something like 10 times weaker than LSH.

I'd like to take a different easy form of an maoi, and smoke whatever substance or ingest some kind of potent small extract.

Well I can tell you its an absolutely foul brew, and I struggled to get 2/3rds of my extract down. My late-bro got all his down, then had to be sick within a minute of taking it. I held it down for 15 minutes. My dose was very weak, but very eye opening nonetheless.

I've never heard of the LSH conversion, only the LSA. I'd advise against ingesting the seeds unless you have enough chemistry equipment and experience to remove the sickly husk. Ingesting that just isnt fun.

You can use the old positive/negative charge switcheroo whilst extracting to get a higher and higher quality of smokeable. I dont have the experience or equipment for that!

I thought the husk was only sickly because of pesticides

No, even wholesale morning glory has a sickliness due to the husk. Best grown your own, then follow some extraction to clean the result. I personally wouldn't recommend it though.

Yeah, from what I've heard it's the commercial products that carry the pesticides. That's why the seeds must be cleaned thoroughly and then reconstituted to gain back the active constituents.