Psychedelics as a tool
Organic psychedelic “drugs” or chemicals producing hallucinations and apparent expansion of consciousness could help us define who we are in the Universe. Under the influence of psychedelics, time becomes distorted and its perception is non-relative to that individual. The “ego” is stripped from the individual and that person is more willing to accept traumatic experiences, flaws in their character, objectivity of who they are and overall mindfulness and awareness of their surroundings. You become more grateful of life, relationships and feel more of an understanding of love.
Are the hallucinations and things you see real? Is the expansion of your consciousness just a by-product of different chemicals being released in your brain to try and combat what your body is given? Psychedelics have been used for recreational fun and or a guide to introspective self-preservation; insight to the greatest of knowledge and wisdom that has been lost throughout the years. For many years they have been used in traditions and labeled as sacred tools.
These incredibly useful weapons for enlightenment have been lied about for many years for copious reasons. In the United States, we have been terribly and systematically misled for many decades.
“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a four story building window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know may be wrong.” – Terence McKenna.
The most common psychedelics that humans use are psilocybin mushrooms, amanita muscaria (which is also a type of psychoactive fungus), LSD, marijuana (which is not psychedelic in terms of hallucinations but it is a psychoactive plant that affects the brain similarly), and dimethyltryptamine in various forms.
In toxicology, LD50 is the amount of a material, given all at once, causes the death of 50% (one half) of a group of test animals. Toxicologists use various kinds of animals but often testing is done with rats and mice.
It is estimated that marijuana’s LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. Essentially that means in order to induce death, one would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as it is contained in one joint. A person would have to theoretically consume almost 1,500 pounds of weed within fifteen minutes to cause death. Currently the LD-50 of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is unknown. Scientists don’t how much LSD you would have to take to induce death.
With psilocybin mushrooms, you have to eat around six to eight pounds of them depending on your body weight to cause death. Amanita muscaria, the North American Mycological Association has stated there were no reliably documented fatalities from eating this mushroom during the 20th century. Although it is extremely rare to die from this mushroom it can happen. One cap of amanita muscaria is an active dose for the average adult. To cause death, it is presumed that you would need to eat fifteen to twenty caps of amanita muscaria, or fifteen to twenty times the normal amount. With dimethyltryptamine (DMT) it depends on what form it is in and what you do with it. You smoke it in a form of a crystal, and in that case you wouldn’t be able to inhale enough to overdose before you go into a catatonic hallucinogenic state. In liquid form, you could over dose intravenously but at this time it is unknown how much you would have to inject to induce death. Many creatures on this planet produce a chemical in the stomach that combats DMT. You would have to mix DMT with something that fights that chemical in your stomach to allow DMT to have an effect on your body; which still, at this time it is unknown how much you would have to drink to cause death. With all of these psychedelics there is close to zero negative side effects, with the only exception being LSD and the negative side effects are very controversial.
LSD also has shown to have therapeutic usefulness. It has been successful in treating some forms of schizophrenia. Another study found notable success in treating terminally-ill cancer patients: two-thirds of the subjects showed positive change in anxiety, emotional tension, psychological isolation, fear of death, and the amount of pain medication needed became smaller and smaller. Since 1963 at the Spring Grove State Hospital, and now at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, over 300 patients have been treated with LSD without a single case of long-term psychological or physical harm directly attributable to the treatment. LSD, DMT and psilocybin mushrooms have been shown to cure alcoholism, smoking cigarettes, amphetamine addiction, chronic headaches, anxiety, PTSD, and depression.
Now that we are done with some house cleaning and getting rid of old beliefs we had, let us move on. It is incredible that these psychedelics for whatever reason have a factor on our conscious state. Obviously, our conscious mind has an impact on our body, and our body has an impact on our conscious state. How is that? If consciousness doesn’t exist in the physical realm, without something for it to exist in how can the physical realm affect it?
Psychedelics are relative to the person taking them. Caffeine when consumed to much could cause panic attacks in certain individuals and if drank too much, some people could die. Just because there is evidence showing the potential positive cognitive effects along with the other various positive aspects these tools can have, does not mean every person should take them. There are numerous factors to consider before diving into the ocean of altered states. These organic tools are just that, tools for your consciousness. They should be treated with due respect. If you mishandle these tools, there can be negative consequences.
DMT and the gateway to the unknown
Dimethyltryptamine is by far the most interesting of the psychedelics. DMT is the most potent psychedelic known to man and it is a natural occurring chemical that your brain produces. It is in the pineal gland in the middle of your brain. Your brain produces it during heavy REM sleep. The human brain also produces in midst of near death. When adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine and other chemicals can’t compensate for what the body is experiencing, the brain then starts producing DMT.
DMT is also is most plants and grass but not exactly the same form compared to what it is in humans. The reason that you can’t eat grass in your yard and start hallucinating is a chemical called monoamine oxidase (MAO). MAO combats the effects of DMT and to activate DMT orally in liquid form you also need a MAO inhibitor.
The periodic altering of consciousness in sleep may even be necessary for the maintenance of normal mental health, since only a few days of sleep deprivation will result in a seepage of hallucinatory phenomena into the waking state. Scientists currently do not know why it is important that our consciousness needs to be altered, but it is without debate that clearly it does, for whatever purpose.
What is it about these altered states of consciousness that allows us to view reality in such a drastic way that it can change our perspective on life forever? Why is it so detrimental to the human body to get certain levels of these psychoactive and psychedelic chemicals; that if not getting them at the right times or increments, the human body/brain starts to break down?
Why is it so important that our mental stability depends on a psychedelic regularly? If we can exist in a “dream world”, but only bring back memories of it, well shouldn’t we be able to permanently live there and not come back to the physical realm? Maybe when you die you permanently unplug from the physical reality and permanently plug into the universal consciousness; until that disembodied awareness finds another type of organic matter that it can exist in, in the physical realm somewhere in the universe.
All life is, is a set of memories essentially. All life has a common variable besides what’s in the physical realm and those would be intangible, like memories. All life has them, even particles to an extent. So, what are memories? Maybe that’s just what the universal consciousness lets us have, to make sense of the physical realm. How could the Universal consciousness try to understand itself more, without memories? How could humans better describe reality if not from memories or from reading about other people’s past lives? The intangibles are more exciting than what is in the physical realm. This would then lead down a road to why we keep certain memories and not others. Which many would say, emotions have a huge factor on memories. Emotions create chaos, but also can inspire beauty and even the creation of beauty through imagination. Emotions are what drive people to create, or search for answers because that’s what those type people get excited about. But is excitement not an emotion within itself?
Emotions to be defined are very tricky. You can approach that definition in the cynical aspect or in the wondrous idea that is imagination itself and say, emotions can change and vary depending on the situation so in turn, can emotions be a learned trait? If they can be a learned trait, then what makes humans interesting? If something so beautiful as emotions can be manipulated and can change, knowing that emotions are what makes humans unique and different than other organisms? Whatever your definition of emotions is, there is conclusive evidence showing that emotions have an impact on memories, and memories have a direct correlation to consciousness and the mental state of mind.
We don’t know what happens after death. We don’t know why our brains do the things they do when we sleep. Perhaps when you go to sleep, you unplug from the physical realm, and plug into the universal consciousness. Without sleep, the mind and body slowly starts to malfunction. Could it be that by not sleeping or unplugging, the brain can’t have a chance to plug into the “mainframe” and download what it needs to for consciousness to survive a little longer in the third dimension? Our brain absolutely needs some form of psychedelics to survive. Perhaps that’s the key. Psychedelics could be the gateway to travel through space-time. And of course not in a way that we could interpret when compared to the physical reality. But consciousness or that disembodied awareness needs us to experience the physical plain. It may have forgotten what pain, or love is like. That awareness might be able to describe such things as pain, and love but just doesn’t know what they are like or what it’s like to feel emotions. Bruce Lee has been famously quoted many times, but no other quote could better describe why awareness does what it does that this, “no amount of dry water swimming can prepare a person for water”.
Conclusion
Could consciousness have evolved like humans? What if consciousness isn’t intelligence per say, what if consciousness is just what allows certain organic matter, that houses “it” to tap into or receive signals from its mainframe. With the evolution of the human brain, homo sapiens start to understand more of their reality than any other creature on Earth. But we didn’t start this way. We evolved and advanced and the technology we create advanced with us. So, consciousness could simply be that antenna that allows us to pick up those signals. Creatures not of our Galaxy might have a more advanced understanding of consciousness and are able to tap into that different dimension it exists in. By tapping into that other dimension they are able to travel through space-time searching for a like “mind/body” to exist in or commutate with. Again, what is “it” that would allow them to tap into that other dimension?
The goal of most meditate states and the ability to be fully present in the moment is to have mind without thought. You have thought so there for you have mind. Can you even have mind without thought? That would be the ultimate question when pondering in the darkness that is consciousness. However you define consciousness, “it” has to derive from somewhere. The most beautiful aspect of life is within us at every moment. It allows us to experience life and without it we would simply be organic matter. Take advantage of that and go experience life! -Z
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