These criteria explain why, in my opinion, tryptamines are so interesting and why I argue that psilocybin mushroom was the primary hallucinogen that was related to the emergence of consciousness during the Archaic period. The tryptamines, including psilocybin, have a striking resemblance to human neurochemistry. The human brain, virtually the entire nervous system, works on 5-hydroxytryptamine, also known as serotonin. DMT, closely related to serotonin, is the main hallucinogenic compound, characteristic of Amazonian shamanism and the most powerful of all hallucinogens for humans, and yet, when it is smoked, it stops in less than 15 minutes. The structural similarity between these two compounds may indicate the deep antiquity of the evolutionary relationship between the metabolism of the human brain and these compounds.

Having discussed the choice, it remains to discuss the methodology. Aldous Huxley called the psychedelic experience “gratuitous mercy.” By this he meant that the psychedelic experience in itself is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal salvation. He may not leave any traces. All the conditions for success may exist, and yet they cannot be reconciled. However, it is impossible to fail if all the conditions for success are present, and attempts are made again and again – perhaps some time factor works here?

The good technique is obvious: sit down, shut up and concentrate. This is the essence of a good technique. These trips should be undertaken on an empty stomach, in silent darkness and in a comfortable, familiar and safe situation. “Installation” and “Setting” – the terms coined by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner in the 1960s have remained excellent key checkpoints. The installation has to do with the internalized feelings, hopes, fears, and expectations of the psychonaut. The setting is about the external situation in which the inner journey will take place – the level of noise, light and the degree of acquaintance for the traveler. Both the installation and the environment should be most favorable and generate feelings of security and trust. External stimuli should be strictly limited – phones are turned off, noisy objects are muffled.Examine the dark with your eyes closed, waiting to see something. This perception is not just an eidetic hallucination (which arises when you press on closed eyelids), although it begins like it. A cozy, quiet darkness is the preferred atmosphere for the shaman to go on a “single flight to the One,” as the neo-Platonic mystic Plotinus called it.

When you try to convey to people with all accuracy what kind of experience, great conceptual and language difficulties arise. Most of those who read my words at some point in their life had something that they would describe as an experience of experience under the influence of a psychoactive substance. But do you know that your experience will certainly be unique and different from the experience of any other? These experiences range from simple tingling in the legs to staying in titanic and alien spheres, where the mind gets lost and the language is taken away. And the presence of the utterly inexpressible, the “totally Other.” Memories fade, splitting and decaying like yesterday’s snow. The opal shine anticipates neon, and the language is self-made, exaggeration becomes impossible. And here it is important to discuss these points.

HOW DOES IT FEEL?

What was the atmosphere of this lost world of Eden? What is this feeling, the absence of which has thrown us into history? The onset of action of the indole hallucinogen is characterized primarily by the activation of somatic, some sensations in the body. Indoles are not narcotic drugs, but stimulants of the central nervous system. The familiar feeling of “fighting or flying” is often characteristic of the first wave of somatic sensations associated with the hallucinogen. It is necessary to discipline the posterior brain and just wait out this turmoil in the animal body.

A psilocybin-type compound, which is active through the mouth, becomes quite noticeable in all of its actions for about an hour and a half; a compound that is smoked — such as DMT — becomes active in less than a minute. Whatever the way injected indole hallucinogens, the full deployment of their action is truly impressive. Bizarre ideas, often quite funny, intuitive intuitions, some almost godlike in their depths, fragments of memories and unformed hallucinations – all this claims its right to attention to them. In a state of hallucinogenic intoxication, creative ability is not something that can be expressed; it is something that can be observed.

The existence of this dimension of identifiable meaning, which seems to have nothing to do with personal past or personal aspirations, seems to convince us that we are confronted either with a certain thinking Other, or with deep mental structures suddenly made visible. And maybe with both. The depth of this state and its potential for positive feedback in the process of personal reorganization have long since made psychedelics an indispensable tool for psychotherapy. In addition, dreams, as well as free associations and hypnotic regression, attracted the serious attention of theorists of the mental process, but they are just a slit in the hidden world of psychodynamics compared with the immense vision that psychedelics provide.

ANSWER ALREADY IS

The situation with which we now have to deal, is not to find the answer, but that the answer is already there. The answer is already found. It turned out that he lies, as it were, on the other side of the fence of social tolerance and legality. We, therefore, are forced to some strange masquerade. Professionals know that psychedelics are the most powerful tool imaginable for studying the mind. And, nevertheless, these people often belong to the professorship, and they should traditionally ignore the fact that the answer is already in our hands. Our situation is not much different from the situation of the XVI century, when the telescope was invented and it shook the approved paradigm of the heavens. The sixties showed that we are not intelligent enough to take psychedelic instruments into our own hands without certain social and intellectual changes.These changes should be made, starting with each of us.

Nature, in all its evolutionary and morphogenetic abundance, offers us a completely compelling model to follow the shamanic cause of resacralization and self-change, which we have to face. The model of the image of the totem animal for the future man is the octopus. The fact is that cephalopods and octopuses, although they seem to be very modest creatures, have improved the specific form of communication, which is both psychedelic and telepathic, an inspiring model for the communication of the person of the future.

The octopus does not communicate with faint mouth sounds, although water is a good medium for acoustic signaling. Octopus, rather, it becomes its own linguistic sense. Octopuses have a huge repertoire of color changes, all sorts of specks, stains and stripes moving along their surface. This repertoire in combination with the soft-bodied physics of a given being allows it to hide and reveal its linguistic intention, its linguistic meaning, simply by quickly folding and unfolding changing parts of the body. The mind and body of the octopus are one, and therefore equally visible; the octopus wears its tongue like a second skin. Octopuses can hardly communicate. Their use of ink sprays for concealment probably indicates that this is the only possible way for them to have something like their own, private thought.The ink bubble can be a kind of corrective fluid for a clean octopus, showing that he made a false statement. Martin Moinighem wrote about the complexity of cephalopod mollusc communication.

Communication and communication systems in cephalopod mollusks are mainly visual. They include the location of pigment cells, posture and movement. Poses and movements can be ritualized or non-ritualized. Changes of color, apparently, are always ritualized. Different drawings, patterns can be connected in many and often complex ways. They can be replaced very quickly. Since they are visual, they are relatively easy to describe and decipher to a human observer. But there are difficulties.

Readable or unreadable, whether it is true or not, but these patterns-folds of cephalopods, like all other animals, encode information. Since this is a message, whether intentional or not, they seem to have not only syntax, but also simple grammar.

Like octopuses, our purpose is to become what we think, so that our thoughts become our body, and our bodies – thoughts. This is the essence of the more perfect Logos, which the encyclopaedist-Hellenistic forester Philo of Judaia foresaw, the Logos, in whom the Goddess abides, not heard, but visible. Hans Jonas explains the idea of ​​Philo of Judea as follows.

A more sophisticated archetypal logos, free from the human duality of the sign and thing, and therefore not associated with forms of speech, would not require the mediation of hearing, but is directly seen by the mind as the truth of things. In other words, the antithesis of vision and hearing, put forward by Philo, lies generally in the realm of “vision,” that is, it is not a real antithesis, but a difference in degree relative to the ideal of the direct intuitive presence of the object. From the point of view of this ideal, “hearing” here, opposed to “vision,” is understood precisely as representing its conventional form, and not as something genuine, different in its essence than vision. Accordingly, the turn from hearing to vision provided here is a transition from knowing the limited to knowing adequately of the same plan.

The call for the revival of Archaic is a battle call for the return of our birthright, however inconvenient it may seem to us. This is a call for understanding that life without psychedelic experience, on which primordial shamanism was based, is life that has become trivial, rejected, enslaved by the “ego” and its fear of dissolving in that mysterious matrix of feelings that represents everything that surrounds us. It is in the revival of the Archaic that we are actually resolving the historical dilemma.

Moreover, today it is clear that new improvements in many areas – including in the border area of ​​consciousness / technology, in pharmacology of various kinds of synthetic means, in data storage, figurative symbolism and methods of searching for information – are accumulating into the potential of creating truly demonic or the angelic image of our culture. Those who are on the demonic side of this process are fully aware of this potential and are rushing forward in their plans to capture technical heights. This position, having appeared in which, they hope to turn almost all into gullible consumers. In this society of brown fascism, no one can escape the factory of “images”.

The shamanic answer, the Archaic answer, the human answer to this situation should be to find the lever of art and put pressure on it to the end. This is one of the primary functions of shamanism, and this function is perfectly synergized by psychedelics. If psychedelics are exopheromones that dissolve the dominant “ego”, then they are also enzymes that synergize the human imagination and empower the tongue. They make us connect and reorganize the contents of the collective mind in an increasingly amazing, beautiful and naturally practiced way.

If we are serious about reviving the Archaic, then we need a new paradigm that would quickly move us forward through this difficult historical moment that makes it harder and more obstructive, as we feel, to the emergence of a more open, more humane, more caring dimension that seeks to be born. Our sense of political duty, the need for transfiguration or the salvation of the collective soul of humanity, our desire to link the end of history with its beginning — all this should prompt us to look at shamanism as a kind of exemplary model. In the present state of the planetary crisis, we cannot fail to take its methods seriously, even those that can shake our divinely prescribed police covenants.

Even before Humphrey Osmond introduced the term “psychedelic”, there was a common phenomenological description of psychedelics; they were called “means of expanding consciousness”. In my opinion, this is a very good description. Take a look at our planetary situation. If the expansion of consciousness does not arise on the horizon of the human future, what will the future be like? In my opinion, the propsychedelic position is most fundamentally threatened by the establishment, because, if it is thoughtfully and deeply thought out, it is an anti-drug position, an anti-addiction position. And do not be mistaken about this: it is a drug case. How will you be anesthetized? Or say otherwise, how conscious will you be? Who will be conscious? Who will be unconscious?

We need a convenient definition of what we mean by “drugs”. A drug is what causes untouchable, obsessive, and habitual behavior. With obsession, behavior is not examined, not viewed, it is simply manifested. And nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of satisfaction. This is the kind of life for which we have to pay at all levels. Be alert, consume and be alert again and consume. The psychedelic choice stands alone, somewhere in a modest corner, and no one ever mentions it, however, it represents the only countercurrent of the tendency to leave people in “constructed” states of consciousness. But not in their own design, but in the design of Madison Avenue, the Pentagon, five hundred Forchun corporations. This is not just a metaphor – this is how it really happens to us.

Looking at Los Angeles from the aircraft, I note every time that it looks like some kind of printed circuit: all these winding roads and dead ends, all with the same small modules installed in them. Since there is a subscription to “Readers Digest” and television, all of these modules are interchangeable parts inside a huge machine. This is the nightmarish reality that Marshall McCluen, Wind Lewis and others foresaw: make the flock out of the public. The public has neither history nor the future; the public lives in a golden moment created by a credit system that inevitably entangles it with a web of illusions that have never been criticized. This is the final consequence of breaking the symbiotic connection with the matrix of the planet, the matrix of Gaia. This is a consequence of the lack of community; it is a legacy of disharmony between the sexes; it is the deadly phase of a long immersion in meaninglessness and a poisoned existential confusion.

The honor of giving us the means of resisting this horror belongs to unsung heroes — botanists and chemists, such as Richard Schultz, Wassons, and Albert Hoffman. Thanks to them, in this most chaotic of centuries, we have received into our weak hands the means that allow us to do something in our predicament. Psychology is smugly silent. Psychologists have been content with the construction of theories of behavior for fifty years, realizing in their hearts that they are potentially a fatal disservice to human dignity, ignoring the possibilities of psychedelics.

Now is the time to hear, take into account and try to clarify opinions on these issues. For a time, there were general attacks on the Bill of Rights on the pretext of the so-called war on drugs. For some reason, the problem of psychoactive substances has become even more frightening for society, more insidious than communism at one time. The quality of the rhetoric emanating from the psychedelic community should be radically improved. If we do not do this, we will lose the possibility of exercising our birthright, and any possibility of exploring the psychedelic dimension will be closed. Ironically, this tragedy can occur as some kind of footnote to the prohibition of synthetic and addictive drugs. It will never be superfluous to say that the issue of psychedelics is a matter of civil rights and civil liberties. This is a questionassociated with the most important of human freedoms — the freedom of religious practice and the private expression of the individual mind.

Once they said that women should not be given the right to vote, otherwise society would perish. And before that, kings could not cede their absolute power: otherwise there will be chaos. And now we are told that it is impossible to legalize psychoactive substances, since otherwise society will collapse. This is absolute nonsense. As we have seen, human history can be described as a series of relationships with plants, established and torn relations. We explored many of the ways that plants, substances, and policies brutally clashed — from the effects of sugar on commerce to the effects of coffee on a modern employee, from British opium pressure on China’s population to CIA use of heroin in the ghetto to cause controversy and discontent.

Our history is a history of relationships with plants. Her lessons can be made conscious, introduced into social policy and used to create a more prosperous, meaningful world, or they can be rejected, as happened with human sexuality, the discussion of which was forbidden until the work of Freud and others brought it to the general review. This analogy is pertinent, since the enhancement of the ability of cognitive experience, possible thanks to plant hallucinogens, is basically as fundamental to the essence of man as sexuality. The question of how soon we will develop into a mature community that can address these topics depends entirely on us.

What most fear those who defend a non-working Luddit solution like “just say no ” is a world in which all traditional social values ​​will dissolve in a clash with individuals and populations obsessed with psychoactive substances and an endless search for self-satisfaction. We should not rule out this too real possibility. But one should reject the idea that such a worrisome, in general opinion, future can be avoided by witch-hunts, a ban on research and the hysterical spread of misinformation and lies.

Since time immemorial, psychoactive substances have been part of the galaxy culture. And only with the advent of technologies capable of purifying and concentrating the active components of plants and herbal preparations, these substances are separated from the common fabric of culture and become a kind of scourge instead.

In a sense, our problem is not a problem of psychoactive substances, but a problem of managing our technology. Are new synthetic substances, one hundred or even a thousand times more likely to cause addiction than heroin or crack, awaiting us in the future? The answer will be an absolute “yes” if we do not realize and do not investigate the inherent human need for chemical dependence, and then we will not find and approve any ways of expressing this need. We discover that human beings are creatures of chemical habits, with the same terrible distrust with which the Victorians discovered that people are creatures of sexual fantasy and obsession. This process of meeting with oneself as a species is a necessary precondition for creating a more humane social and natural order. Important to remember,that the adventure of such a meeting with oneself does not begin with Freud and Jung and does not end with them. The argument diligently developed in this book is that the next step in understanding ourselves can arise only when we take into account our innate and legitimate need to live in an atmosphere rich in mental states caused by our own will. I am confident that we can begin this process by revising our sources of origin. Indeed, I made great efforts to show that in the environment of Archaic, in which self-reflection first arose, we find the keys to the sources of our troubled history.when we take into account our innate and legitimate need to live in an atmosphere rich in mental states caused by our will. I am confident that we can begin this process by revising our sources of origin. Indeed, I made great efforts to show that in the environment of Archaic, in which self-reflection first arose, we find the keys to the sources of our troubled history.when we take into account our innate and legitimate need to live in an atmosphere rich in mental states caused by our will. I am confident that we can begin this process by revising our sources of origin. Indeed, I made great efforts to show that in the environment of Archaic, in which self-reflection first arose, we find the keys to the sources of our troubled history.

WHAT HERE IS NEW

Hallucinogenic indoles, unexplored and prohibited by law, are presented here as agents of evolutionary change. These are biochemical agents, whose final impact is carried out not on the direct experience of the individual, but on the genetic constitution of the species. In the first chapters, attention was paid to the fact that improving visual acuity, improving the ability of reproduction and enhancing the stimulation of the protolinguistic functions of the brain are logical consequences of the inclusion of psilocybin in the food of an ancient person. If it were possible to prove the idea of ​​the emergence of human consciousness in connection with the mediated indoles synergy of neurodevelopment, then our image of ourselves, our attitude to nature, and the current dilemma regarding the consumption of psychoactive substances in society would change.

We cannot solve neither the “drug problem”, nor the problem of the destruction of the environment, nor the problem of stocks of nuclear weapons, until our image of ourselves as a species is again associated with the Earth. This case, in the first place, begins with an analysis of the unique combination of conditions that are necessary for the organization of the animal, in order to make a leap towards conscious self-reflection. When the main meaning of the hallucinogen-mediated symbiosis “man-plant” in the scenario of our origins is understood, we are able to understand our present state of neurosis. Learning the lessons contained in those long-standing and formative events can lay the foundation for making decisions not only about the need to control the consumption and abuse of substances in society, but also about our deep and growing need for a spiritual dimension of life.

Earlier in this blog, DMT was noted as a particularly interesting compound. What can be said about DMT experience and DMT in connection with our spiritual emptiness? Does he offer us any answers? Do the short-term tryptamines provide any analogy to the ecstasy of a partnership society before Eden became just a memory? And if they represent, what can be said about this?

Every time one thing impressed me in many of my breakthroughs into the world of hallucinogenic indoles, which, in general, remains unmentioned: the transformation of the ability to present and the language itself. The experience, exciting the whole being, slipping under the cover of ecstasy DMT, is felt as penetration through some kind of membrane. Mind and “I” literally unfold before our eyes. It feels as if it has been renewed, although it has not changed, as if it were made of gold and simply reforged into a new form in the crucible of its birth. The breathing is normal, the heartbeat is even, the mind is clear and observant. But what kind of world is this? What do feelings perceive?

Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arab labyrinth, a palace, some more than possible Martian treasure, filled with motifs flooding the amazed mind with polysyllabic wordless delight. The color and sensation of the mystery that reveals reality literally permeates the whole experience. There is a feeling of other times, as well as their own childhood, miracle, miracle and miracle again. This is an audience with a stranger-nuncio. In the midst of this experience, obviously, at the end of human history, guard gates, which seem to open under the roaring whirlwind of an inexpressible interstellar void into Eternity.

Eternity, as Heraclitus remarked shrewdly, is a child playing with colored balls. “There are a lot of mini-entities – kids, self-transforming mechanical elves of hyperspace. Maybe these are children who are meant to be human to fathers? The impression of entering the ecology of souls hiding behind the portals of what we naively call death? I do not know. Perhaps they are the synesthetic embodiment of us as the Other or the Other as us? Or maybe elves lost to us with the extinction of the magical light of childhood? Here is a shock, which can hardly be expressed, an epiphany beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the kingdom of what is weirdest of all that we can to assume. Here the secret, alive, unscathed, is still as new to us as it was when our ancestors experienced it fifteen thousand years ago. Tryptamine essences offer the gift of a new language: they sing with pearl voices that are scattered with colored petals and spread in the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts, which, probably, the gods gave to their children. The sensation of emotional connection is awesome and creepy. The revealed sacraments are real and, if one expresses in whole, they will not leave a stone unturned in that small world in which we have become so sick.

This is not some changeable world of UFOs caused by distant peaks; This is not the song of the sirens of the deceased Atlantis, sounding on the grounds of crazed America. DMT is not one of our irrational illusions. I am sure that what we perceive in the presence of DMT is genuine news. This is some kind of neighboring dimension, frightening, transformative, beyond the limits of our imagination and, nevertheless, accessible to ordinary research. We have to send fearless experts – whatever that implies – to research everything they find and make a report about it.

DMT, as mentioned earlier, is found as part of normal human neurometabolism and is the strongest of the naturally occurring indole hallucinogens. The extraordinary ease with which the DMT completely destroys all borders and transfers it to the inconceivable and irresistible dimension of the Other – this is literally one of the wonders of life itself. And the second is followed by this first miracle: the extraordinary ease and simplicity with which the system of enzymes of the human brain is recognized by DMT molecules in synapses. In just a few hundred seconds, these enzymes completely and without any harm deactivate DMT. The fact that normal levels of amines in the brain are restored so quickly after taking the strongest of all hallucinogenic indoles suggests that, perhaps,There was a long-standing joint evolutionary relationship between humans and hallucinogenic tryptamines.

Although psilocybin and psilocin, hallucinogenic indoles active in the fungus Stropharia cubensis related to cattle are not considered directly metabolized in DMT before they become active in the brain, nevertheless their pathway is more related to the neural pathway of DMT activity . And indeed, they can be active in the same synapses as DMT, although with a higher reactivity of the latter. The source of this difference is probably pharmacokinetic, that is, DMT can pass the blood-brain barrier more easily and, therefore, reach the site of activity in a shorter time. The affinity of these two compounds to the site of communication is approximately equal.

As mentioned earlier, the DMT study, especially in humans, was generally inadequate. When DMT was studied, it was administered by injection. This is the preferred procedure with the experimental substance, since you can know the exact dosage. However, in cases with DMT, this approach masked the unusual effect of “time reversal” that occurs when smoking DMT. Experiencing DMT with an intramuscular injection lasts about an hour. The peak of the experience, achieved when smoking, comes somewhere in a minute. In the Amazon, some tribes have a tradition of consuming DMT-containing plants. They consume the sap of Virola trees , related to nutmeg, or the ground and roasted seeds of the huge Anadenanthera peregrina. A commonly used method of activating indole is to inhale powdered plant material through the nose. This procedure is not done by yourself. The consumer has an assistant who blows the powder through a hollow, powder-filled reed, first into one, then into the other nostril. The apparent deliberation of this process leaves no doubt that the shamans of Amazonia learned what modern DMT researchers did not know, namely that the most effective way of consumption is adsorption through the nasal mucosa.

Perhaps you will protest: “But isn’t DMT prohibited by law?”

Yes, today DMT in the USA is on the list No 1. The list No 1 is a list of substances without any indications for medical use at all. Even cocaine does not apply here. Psilocybin and DMT have been added to this list without any scientific evidence providing evidence of the benefits or harms of their use. In the paranoid atmosphere of the late 60s, the mere fact that these substances cause hallucinations was sufficient reason to classify them so restrictive that it discouraged even medical research.

Faced with such a hysterical “I don’t want to know anything”, we would not hurt to recall that at one time the anatomy of corpses was also forbidden by the church and declared sorcery. Modern anatomy was created by medical students visiting the battlefields or stealing corpses from the gallows. For the sake of improving the knowledge of the human body, they ran the risk of arrest and imprisonment. Shouldn’t we be just as bold in trying to push the boundaries of the known and the possible?

The mood of dominion was always rejected by change, as if they felt the possibility of such a change that would once and for all deprive them of their power. In the phenomenon of indole hallucinogens, this presumptive fear has generated abundant fruit – downright fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. To taste of him is to become like gods, and this will obviously mean the decline of the style of dominion. Any revival of the Archaic will hope for this.

The softening of Western rationalism has gone very far, as anyone can easily see by reading some popular modern book on cosmology or quantum physics. Nevertheless, I also want to lightly throw a little heat through introducing the idea of ​​some connection between measurements, which is achieved most reliably and directly by using indole hallucinogens with their long history of human consumption and their joint evolution. Such compounds, obviously, act as regulators of culture change and can be a means of gaining access to the presumption of some very large self-regulating system. Perhaps this is the Supermind of our whole species or some kind of “mind of the planet”, or maybe we were too limited in our search for an inhuman mind, and some completely differentfundamentally different from us, a reasonable view shares with us our stay on Earth.

I offer these ideas in terms of speculative. I do not have solid personal knowledge as to what is happening here. I just think that I have a sufficient understanding of the customs, expectations, criteria of evidence and the “common knowledge” of human beings to be able to note that what happens when DMT is intoxicated is much more distinctive than anything that could be called “intoxication”. Under the influence of DMT, the mind finds itself in a convincingly real, clearly coexisting alien world. Not in the world, concerning our thoughts, hopes, fears, but rather in the world of kids – their joys, dreams, their poetry. Why? I have not the foggiest idea. These are just facts: this is how it happens to us.

Among the main schools of thought of the twentieth century, only Jung’s psychology sought to examine certain phenomena that are so important for shamanism. Alchemy, which Jung studied very thoroughly, was the heir to a long tradition of shamanic and magical methods, as well as more practical chemical procedures, such as metal working and embalming. The literature on alchemy shows that the vortex billowing contents of the alchemical vessel were fertile ground for projecting the contents of the naive pre-scientific mind. Jung insisted that alchemical allegories and emblems were the product of the unconscious and can be analyzed in exactly the same way as dreams.From the point of view of Jung, the discovery of the same motives in the fantastic speculations of the alchemists and in the dreams of his patients was a strong support for his theory of the collective unconscious and the universal general archetypes of the latter.

During his study of alchemy, Jung was confronted with reports of Kabiri – similar to the elves of alchemical children, whose appearance or tangible presence is an integral part of the last stages of the alchemical creation. These alchemical children are like those little helpers who are called upon by a shaman. Jung viewed them as certain autonomous sides of the psyche that temporarily got out of control of the ego. Unfortunately, the explanation that these alchemical geniuses are “autonomous aspects of the psyche” is not an explanation at all. It is like describing an elf as a small non-physical entity of indeterminate origin. Such explanations only postpone the need to get in touch with the deeper nature of the experience itself.

Science was not useful in the case of elusive human contacts with other kinds of mind. She prefers to direct her attention somewhere else, noting that subjective perceptions, although unusual, are not her area. What a pity, because subjective experience is all that any of us have. In any case, the largely subjective nature of the so-called objective universe is now confirmed by the most objective science — physics. In the new physics, the subjective observer is inextricably linked with the observed phenomena. Interesting, but this is a return to the shamanic point of view. The true intellectual legacy of quantum physics may be the new respect and priority that it attaches to subjectivity. Turning us to subjectivity means imparting tremendous new power to the language, since language is that material,from which the subjective world is made.

Thanks to psychedelics, we learn that God is not an idea, God is a lost continent in the mind of man. This continent was reopened during a time of great danger to us and our world. What is it? Coincidence, synchronicity, or cruelly meaningless neighborhood of hope and doom? A few years ago, I turned the work of my life to an understanding of the mystery of the experience caused by tryptamine hallucinogens. In the end, this mystery is not one that can be explained by science. I, of course, understand that a person spreads his obsessive ideas, trying to fill the whole space. But in the critical events accompanying the emergence of cattle breeding and the language of human beings, I found an ancient echo of those moments that I felt and witnessed personally.

Today it is necessary to stand face to face with the desired and found answer. In front of us, a measurement is flickering, so huge that its contours can hardly be accommodated in the focus of the human coordinate system. Our animal existence, our planetary existence ends. In geological time, this end is just in a few moments. The great dying, the great extinction of many species has occurred at least since the climax of the partnership in prehistoric Africa. Our future is in the mind; the only hope for the survival of our weary planet is that we will find ourselves in our mind and make a friend of it who can reunite us with the Earth again, at the same time taking us to the stars. The change, which is more radical in significance than all the former, immediately looms ahead.Shamans preserved the gnosis of the availability of the Other for millennia; today is planetary knowledge. The consequences of this situation are just beginning to manifest.

Naturally, I do not expect my words to be taken seriously. However, these conclusions are based on the experience available to anyone who only takes the time to explore DMT. The experience itself lasts less than fifteen minutes. I do not foresee criticism from people who did not bother to conduct this simple and unconditional experiment. After all, how seriously can critics deal with a problem if they are not inclined to devote a few minutes of their time to experience this phenomenon for themselves?

Deep psychedelic experience does not just offer the possibility of living in the world of sensible people, in harmony with the Earth and with each other. He also promises an excellent adventure, a meeting with something completely unexpected – with some other neighboring world filled with life and beauty. Do not ask where he is; at the moment we can only say – not here, not there. We are still obliged to recognize our own ignorance about the nature of the mind and about exactly what the world has to be and what it is. For several millennia, and even more, our dream was to understand these issues, and we were defeated. Yes, defeat, if we don’t think of another possibility – the possibility of a “completely different”.

Some lost souls scan the heavens in search of a friendly “flying saucer” that will penetrate the earthly sphere and take us to Paradise; others offer to seek salvation at the feet of various rishis, roshi, geisha, and gurus. It would be better for researchers to look into the work of the botanists, anthropologists, and chemists who located, identified and characterized the shamans’ hallucinogens. Thanks to them, we got our hands on a tool to save the souls of men. This is a great tool, but it is a tool that should be used. All our addictions over the centuries — from sugar to cocaine and television — have been a tireless search for something taken from us on Paradise. The answer was found. Search for nothing more. He found.

Using plants of the type described above will help us understand the valuable gift of partnership with plants that was lost at the dawn of time. Many people are eager to get acquainted with the facts concerning their true identity. Plant hallucinogens are clearly directed to this essential identity. Not to know your true identity means to be some kind of insane deluded thing, a golem. And, undoubtedly, this image, painfully Orwellian, is applicable to the mass of human beings, now living in societies of highly developed industrial democracy. Their authenticity lies in the ability to obey and follow the changes in mass style that are transmitted by the media. Engaged in the use of narcotics, absurd communications and the policy of disguised fascism,they are doomed to a poisoned life at a low level of consciousness. Put to sleep by the daily TV program, they are the living dead, lost for all but the act of consumption.

I believe that the failure of our civilization to resolve issues related to the problem of psychoactive substances and habitual destructive behavior is an unlucky legacy for all of us. But if we had sufficiently restructured the image of ourselves and the image of the world, we could make of pharmacology a means of giving us the most ambitious hopes and dreams. Instead, pharmacology has become a devilish maid of rampant rolling toward regulativeness and the destruction of civil liberties.

Most people have a predilection for certain substances and, more importantly, they all have a predilection for certain standards of behavior. Attempting to see the difference between habits and addictions threatens the indissoluble merging of mental and physical energies that shape the behavior of each of us. People who are not involved in the relationship of food stimulation or stimulation of psychoactive substances are rare, and by their adherence to dogma and the intentional narrowing of their horizon, it can be judged that they failed to create some viable alternative to substance involvement.

Here I tried to explore our biological history and our more modern cultural history in search of something that could be missed. My theme was human agreements with plants, created and torn over thousands of years. These relationships shaped every aspect of our identity as self-reflecting beings — our language, our cultural values, our sexual behavior, what we remember and what we forget in our past. Plants are a lost link in search of an understanding of the human mind and its place in nature.