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Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: TransparentTrip7 on August 09, 2012, 07:03 am

Title: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: TransparentTrip7 on August 09, 2012, 07:03 am
Hello,fellow trippers i created this topic for anyone who is interesting in discussing the things that happen while tripping.
The things normally perceived as crazy,or theories,ancient knowledge ect.In this topic discuss anything freely no matter how crazy it sounds.
Please everyone lets keep this a peaceful topic so everyone keep an open mind :).

To start the topic off i would like to share something.
Ok well its a range  of different beliefs.I believe so far that reality is constant not what we normally perceive it as..
Reality isn't solid as we would like to believe.
Also that telepathy is the universal  language as well as mathematics.When tripping you can access information streams.
These information streams can be very enlightening,however its hard to downgrade the information back into written language.
Some of the reasons are its like trying to remember a dream sometimes its very challenging.You cant translate the things you see while tripping sometimes into a description of what you saw.
You see so much you would have to focus on one thing in order to retain a vivid imagery of something in order to draw,or write a worded description very difficult though.

Alright everyone is welcome to share what they would like :).
You can talk about anything from the craziest trip you've had to how time travel works via astral projection ect.
 ;D
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: spasmolytic on August 09, 2012, 07:56 am
As far as trips go,  it's like this LSD = demon cleaner
props to all my fellow kyuss fans, you know what I'm talking about ;)
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: TransparentTrip7 on August 09, 2012, 08:50 am
Kyuss the rock band from Cali. 8)
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: spegrodomous on August 09, 2012, 03:02 pm
during a trip on some of 3jane's old cid i wrote this down...


Context is an explanation of what our senses are telling us.  acid makes me lose my context which means I am using my senses to try and perceive at least a piece of something that I may never understand

psychedelia has a wonderful way of showing how finite everything is, how agnostic we truly are.
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: CaptainTrips on August 09, 2012, 03:11 pm



Context is an explanation of what our senses are telling us.  acid makes me lose my context which means I am using my senses to try and perceive at least a piece of something that I may never understand


That's a damn good quote and I'm glad you wrote it down.
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: spegrodomous on August 09, 2012, 03:22 pm



Context is an explanation of what our senses are telling us.  acid makes me lose my context which means I am using my senses to try and perceive at least a piece of something that I may never understand


That's a damn good quote and I'm glad you wrote it down.


thanks Captain! I really appreciate that you liked it.  I learned a lot from my lsd experiences but i try not to rave about them because all in all, its just some stuff i learned on drugs. but to have somebody else validate is a great feeling :) thank you!

moment of silence for Jer today btw.  Miss him everyday
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: TransparentTrip7 on August 09, 2012, 11:01 pm
Nice quote  :).
Anyone care to share some of the craziest things they have seen while tripping?
Title: The Visual Components of a Psychedelic Experience
Post by: Gary Oak on August 09, 2012, 11:06 pm
I’ve tried to keep this as accurate and well worded as I possibly can but most of these visual aspects are near impossible to explain in English and cannot be done justice with words, especially once we get past low and moderate dosages so feel free to nitpick any tiny point that you disagree with by sending me a message. However, I’ve done my best and being able to put a name to a visual effect has really helped me understand and talk about my trips with others.

The level 1 - 5 system I’ve used here is described in detail here and never goes beyond 4 on this particular list because at level 5 the visual aspects are essentially impossible to describe. The leveling system I’ve used to describe Closed Eye Visuals is a different system entirely and can be found described in detail here. I am using the classic Serotonergic Psychedelic experience as my point of reference here but this guide still applies to the lesser known Phenethylamine family that are becoming increasingly prevalent.

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Tracers/ trails: (level 1 – 4)

Tracers are the simple experience of trails being left behind moving objects such as people walking, birds or cars. Trails are usually very obvious and are similar in appearance to the sort of trails left in long exposure shots. The trails can be either exactly the same colour as the moving object that is producing it or it can be a randomly selected colour of its own. These tracers float in the air for approximately 2 – 3 seconds.

The deepest or most extreme version of this visual effect happens when your entire visual field smudges into a tracer when you simply move your eyes rather than a single specific moving object, this makes it difficult to see unless you keep your eyes still.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to move your hand in front of your face or throw an object.

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Enhancement of colours: (level 1 – 4)

Although this is one of the more basic visual effects, to be understood completely it needs to be experienced. During the onset of a trip almost all people notice that colours start to stand out and seem much more crisp than usual. Reds will seem “Redder”, Greens will seem “Greener” and everything will be much brighter and clearly defined in general.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to be outside in nature.

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Breathing:  (level 2 – 4)

Breathing is a very common place visual that can happen to any surface or object but is usually associated with the walls of a room. This effect makes walls appear to be steadily breathing in and out, expanding and contracting in the same way a persons chest does when they slowly inhale and exhale.

A fairly consistent way to reproduce this visual is to stare at a blank wall and lose focus.

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Flowing Textures / Texture Distorions: (level 3 – 4)

Flowing, shifting, rippling or moving textures on surfaces are a strong visual effect that can happen to virtually anything in a number of different styles. A classic example of this however could be a wood grain pattern flowing like a river in a simple sort of looped animation. Pictures on a poster also commonly appear to be gently rippling and wobbling.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to stare at wood grain and lose focus.

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Shifting Colours: (level 2 – 4)

Quite often the colours of various objects, particularly brightly  coloured out of place objects will become subject to an effect that shifts and changes the colours in a sort of strange fluid motion across the surface of the object. For example Moss on a rock could shift from green, to red, to blue and then back to green again in a very short space of time. This visual effect is not permanent and objects tend to immediately switch back to their original colour if you focus on something else for even a brief moment.

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Enhancement of textures: (level 1 – 4)

This is an interesting visual effect as it does not really change the appearance of textures but rather a persons feeling towards them. During even a mild trip it is common for people to suddenly notice patterns and textures that they may have never previously appreciated or paid any attention to before. For example when looking at a carpet, a pavement or trees bark the complexity and beauty of the texture suddenly becomes obvious, this is because a persons sensory filter has been lowered dramatically giving them the ability to comprehend the entire texture at once, not just the small area that their eye is currently focused on which is the case during sober living. An interesting aspect to this visual is that it often partly stays with people after the trip giving them a new found appreciation for textures.

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Melting: (level 3 – 4)

It is not unusual to see objects and sceneries to be completely or partially melting. This is a common visual and usually non permanent, meaning objects only appears to melt when a person is staring directly at them and immediately unmelt when the person’s eyes focus on something else even for a moment. It is also common for objects to appear to be melting before your eyes despite also never making any actual progress at the same time. This part of the effect needs to be experienced to be understood.

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Transformations and distortions: (level 3 – 4)

This visual effect can vary widely in its intensity and distinctiveness depending on the setting and the dosage. There are an infinite number of ways this visual can manifest itself and can be anything from people turning into reptilians before your very eyes to pet dogs appearing to be much longer than usual. A mild or low level example of this could be a person’s face stretching and distorting into a caricature of themselves and a highly intense example could be the complete transformation of the external world into an incomprehensible anything. This visual is non permanent and is never realistic enough to convince a person that it is actually happening.

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Embedded patterns: (level 2 – 4)

This is yet another visual effect that applies to textures. This visual effect, instead of simply distorting textures or making them more interesting completely replaces them with often fantastical versions of themselves. Quite often the textures on a person’s surroundings suddenly follow a patterned theme such as Aztec fractals that become embedded on anything and everything from the pavement, to the grass and the walls. This effect needs to be experienced to be fully understood.

A consistent way to produce this visual is to stare at a towel or rough surfaces such as tarmac and gravel.

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Synaesthesia: (level 3 – 4)

Synaesthesia is a very interesting aspect of tripping and can be experienced via means other than psychedelics as it is a genuine condition experienced mildly by 1 in 23 people, simply put this phenomena is the mixing and blending of senses. The most common version of this is usually seeing sound and music in a visual form but is not limited to this. People can taste colours, hear smells or any other combination of senses that you could think of.

This visual is hard to consistently produce but listening to music through a set of headphones in darkness or with closed eyes or eating food with closed eyes can occasionally do it.

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Scenery Slicing: (level 3 – 4)

Scenery slicing is a fairly uncommon visual but appears regularly enough and across multiple people to make it worth mentioning. This effect usually happens suddenly and makes the scenery appear as if it has been cut remarkably cleanly into separate slices with a razorblade. These separate slices can be as simple as 3 separate sections or as complex as multiple slices of a moving interlocking spiral that’s been cut into your field of vision.

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Extreme Pareidolia: (level 2 – 4)

Pareidolia is the name for people’s natural ability to recognize faces and significant images in almost any vague or random stimuli. Examples of this include spotting Jesus on a piece of toast or spotting a face in the bark of a tree. During a trip a person’s sense of Pareidolia is increased many times over causing faces and images to be recognizable in almost anything to the point of ridiculousness. For example every single leaf on a tree might suddenly look like a little green face or clouds might appear to be easily recognizable as fantastical objects without any distortions or transformations taking place. Another aspect of this visual often experienced in busy public places is mistaking every other person for somebody you recognize.

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Depth Perception Distortion: (level 3 - 4)

It is very common to experience both extreme and subtle perspective distortions during a psychedelic experience. This is where the depths and layers of the scenery in front of you can become exaggerated, skewed and completely mixed up. A classic example of this that I often experience is the swapping of layers in a scenery. This is where objects in the background come into the foreground and objects in the foreground get pushed into the background. Another example of skewed depth perception is a complete loss of it, when the different sections of a scenery both close up and far away will unify into one flat pattern momentarily.

An almost consistent way to reproduce this visual is by laying down under a tree and looking through the branches at the sky causing the sections of sky in-between the branches to come into the foreground whilst the branches get pushed into the background.

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Closed Eye Visuals: (level 3 – 5)

Closed eye visuals or CEV’s are the most exciting and profound element of a typical moderate dose psychedelic experience as well as one of the most impossible to describe or show to people in any meaningful level of detail that can be understood without having a firsthand experience with them. There are 5 different levels of CEV’s each one increasingly dramatic and incomprehensible.

    Visual Noise – This is the most basic level of CEV’s and can be experienced in a completely sober state. It can be described as the random light and dark red regions that can be seen under the eye lids.
    Light / Dark Flashes – This level is also easily obtainable without psychedelics and usually appears as regions of fleeting dark / light flashes of colour.
    Patterns, Motion and Colour – This is the level where things start to get distinctively psychedelic and complex indescribable shapes and patterns begin to show themselves. These patterns are usually brightly coloured and very fractal like.
    These closed eye visuals generally only manifest themselves when a person is closing their eyes at first but eventually become laid across your field of vision as a flat translucent veil in front of your eyes. 
    Objects and Things – This is a fairly deep state where a persons CEV’s become increasingly complex and begin to manifest themselves not just as shapes but as imagery within the visuals. This imagery is limitless but commonly follows themes of fantastical people, objects and places that appear within the even more complex geometry.
    At this level the closed eye visuals are fully three dimensional and will be sprawled out across the surfaces, walls, objects and furniture of your environment instead of displaying itself as a simple flat veil.
    Overriding Physical Perception – This is the point at which CEV’s have become so intense, vivid and bright that they have blocked out and replaced the external world giving the sensation that you are blind from being able to see so much. This is commonly known as “breaking through” because of the feeling of having entered into an entirely different dimension, to anybody else however the tripper just appears to be unconscious or at least highly incapacitated.
    The visuals themselves eventually become complex enough to follow completely impossible plots, storylines and hallucinations that are so incredibly well defined that they seem realer than anything that could possibly be experienced sober.
    I can usually tell when I’m starting to break through when the visuals are no longer overlaid across objects or across flat surfaces but when the environment I’m in starts to break apart to become the patterns itself. You can see reality flaking away, layer by layer into an infinite sea of closed eye visuals as soon as you begin to focus on any point. This is almost as if everything is becoming everything else.

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Hallucinations: (level 5+)

At higher levels of psychedelic experience amidst the chaos of intense closed eye visuals the imagery begins to become so elaborately complex and realistic that they start to form into full on vivid hallucinations that are limitless in their potential, generally logic defying, unlike any thing previously experienced and sometimes completely untranslatable into English.

Hallucinations only happen at level 5 psychedelic experiences and are commonly described as feelings of being thrust into an expansive void-like alternate dimension consisting of bright, colourful, fast-moving kaleidoscopic environments, dynamic pulsating coloured beams, as well as complex three-dimensional geometric, mathematical and linguistic patterns made of light.

Contact with autonomous entities are very common, these entities generally appear to be the inhabitants of a perceived independent reality who are expectant of and clearly excited about the trippers sudden appearance into their dimension and enjoy interacting with them in various ways.

The behaviour of a typical entity is one of a loving kind intelligence that simply wants to show you as much of their hyper dimensional space and bestow specific pieces of knowledge upon you as quickly as possible before you begin to come down or slip into another hallucination. This is often done by directly manipulating what you can see and view; intentionally propelling trippers in different directions at disorienting speeds, forcing them to view or pass directly through macro and microscopic scale settings, including: planetary systems, galaxies, quasars, natural environments, space habitats, technological utopias, neurons, DNA, mitochondria, trilobites, cephalopods, bryozoa, and artificial self-replicating machines. Once the comedown inevitably begins to happen they are genuinely saddened by your disappearance, often wave goodbye and encourage you to visit more often.

Entities can literally take any form but common subconscious archetypes are definitely present and contact with bodiless super intelligent Humanoids, Aliens, Elves, Giant Spheres, Insectoids, Beings of Light, Plants and Robotic Machines are common.

These creatures and entities are comprised of a non physical closed eye visual based material and communicate with trippers via a combination of telepathy, visual linguistics, mathematics and morphing coloured structures of different textures. This complex visual language is capable of expressing pure meaning in a way that our current system of small mouth noises will never be able to become close to matching.

Lower levels of simple entity contact can be described as a sensed presence of “The Other” that is clearly there but unable to fully manifest itself and communicate with you due to too low of a dosage.

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Miscellaneous, Unique and Rare visual effects: (4 - 5)

Although there are many universally experienced visual components of a psychedelic experience you should not allow this guide to give you preconceived notions for two separate reasons. The first reason is that although I’ve done my best with these descriptions and images they will never come close to the real experience, the real thing is incomprehensible, logic defying and impossible to translate into two dimensional images and words. The unenglishable factor is one of the few things that all psychonauts can universally agree on so keep it in mind.

The second reason is that the psychedelic experience is still a subjective experience and not by any means confined and limited to these visual components as occasionally, just occasionally rare and one time only visual effects seep their way into the trips, these effects can be anything and usually occur at higher doses. Unique visual effects are completely personal to you and something that nobody else on the planet has ever seen before or will ever likely get to experience again, the human mind has not even come remotely close to being fully explored making experiencing the unimaginable much easier than most people think. So remember, do not limit your perception to the components described above, because there is more to the psychedelic experience than words can ever say.

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Title: The Mental Components of a Psychedelic Experience
Post by: Gary Oak on August 09, 2012, 11:10 pm
Enhancement of Mood: (1 - 5)

Most recreational drugs that are known for their euphoric properties are substances that chemically induce and force the human brain into feeling sensations of pleasure regardless of their current circumstances in life or mental instabilities.
This is the complete opposite of what psychedelics do to the mind as although a good trip can leave you feeling overwhelmed with the most intense and blissful happiness of your entire life the emotions are always grounded in reality. This is because the euphoria is not induced happiness but genuine happiness and the result of an enhancement of your current emotional state not something that is being chemically induced regardless of circumstance. It’s in this state that the mentally stable among us finally realize that all of this around us is cause for great celebration and start to become overwhelmed with euphoria and happiness.
But this is not is not what happens to everybody as all emotions including negative ones can be enhanced and magnified many times over and it’s this effect that plays a big role in causing a bad trips among the unprepared.
It’s this raw enhancement means that people with negative, irrational or unstable outlooks on life should tread very carefully when it comes to the psychedelic experience.

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Removal of sensory filter:  (2 – 5)

The sensory filter is in my opinion the most important component of the psychedelic experience as it is the basis component that leads onto all other visual aspects.
I go into my speculation in much more detail into during the third and final section of this article but for now and put simply during normal waking consciousness your brain essentially filters out irrelevant sensory information and brain activity so that the conscious faculties are not completely overloaded with information. Its the removal of this sensory filter that leads to our conscious selves experiencing heightened sensory input and the very structure of the mind in an extremely profound way as closed eye visuals are the brain revealing itself to itself caused by the lowering of our sensory filter.
The increased amount sensory input aspect is most commonly experienced in the form of increased music appreciation or looking at a tree and being able to completely comprehend and understand the position of every single branch across your field of vision all at once rather than simply the tiny area that remains in focus during sober living and is also where the visual effect of increased obviousness of existing textures stems from.
This sensory filter must have evolved as a mechanism to prevent sensory overload as a way of maintaining the ego as it seems that the harder a person is tripping the lower their short term memory is whilst in that state. This continues up until the point where a person is being exposed to so much of their brain that thier sense of self completely dissapears due to the sheer sensory overload.
Not only does this effect create for the visual effects of the psychedelic experience but can also give people complete and utter muscle control over every tiny part of their body. This feels like you have been put back in touch of the animal body and much can be learnt from this effect about what it feels like to be human and to have a physical body.

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Time distortion: (2 – 5)

Time distortion is an effect that stems from sensory overload induced short term memory loss that can vary from anything between barely noticeable to completely overpowering but still generally making the passage of time difficult to keep track of and wildly distorted.
Time Distortion can be felt in three different forms. The first, which I have named Time compression is the experience of time speeding up and passing much quicker than it should and this is an effect that although not unusual is much less common than Time Expansion. Which is unsurprisingly the complete opposite in terms of effects as it is the feeling that time has completely slowed down. These feelings have a wide spectrum of intensities and can vary between the simple effect of much more time seeming to have passed than it actually has until somebody checks the time and snaps back into reality. Sometimes this can even be the complete slowing down of the passage of time, which is known as a moment of eternity.
Time loops and thought loops are the last sub-component of time distortion and stem from states of complete ego loss at extremely high levels of tripping. This happens when a person who is not used to the entailing loss of ego and finds themselves trapped in a loop of thoughts as they forget their original thoughts and slip into thought loops repeatedly over and over again due to the loss in short term memory; this feeling can be avoided by working your way up to the higher states so that you can become used to the profound intensity of the psychedelic experience and not be overwhelmed with confusion. 

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Rapid fire thoughts: (2 – 5)

Rapid fire thoughts are an effect that I particularly enjoy while tripping. This is where your thought processes are sped up drastically and have a greatly increased sense of creativity and profoundness to them. When experiencing this effect it literally feels like one rapid thought after the other in incredibly quick succession and it’s this change in speed that results in massively increased creativity, problem solving abilities but also a mild sense of distractibility. One of the greatest features of this component is that it can partly stay many days or weeks after a good trip and can leave a person in a near permanent state of clear headedness if experienced regularly. 

“I flew through hyperspace this weekend, I’m sure I can handle this deadline at work today!”

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Introspection: (2 - 5)

The introspectiveness of the psychedelic experience is probably its one of its most famous qualities and in my opinion the most obvious real world application to tripping balls.
The use of psychedelics as a tool for therapy, the rehabilitation of drug addicts and coming to terms with our inner demons and emotional baggage that we have all built up throughout our lives is something that it does better than anything else.
This is something that all of us need and it’s by far the ability to rationally think about and dissect my internal problems that has benefited me and all of the people around me more than any other aspect of the psychedelic experience. This also the single biggest contributor to a “bad trip” that many people people encounter during their trips as certain people suddenly comes to the overwhelming realization that they have a lot more personal problems to deal with than they originally thought. Whether or not a person is willing to overcome these struggles is the what determines whether people will react positively or negatively to psychedelic drugs.

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Removal of cultural filter: (3 - 5)

To me this is by far the most profound cognitive effect that the psychedelic experience has to offer as it is a permanent and life changing perception switch that occurs to any human mind after just a few good trips and is easily permanently grounded into a persons perception of the world. The cultural filter is an extreme bias that we look through in our everyday lives when evaluating the world around us and affects our ability to judge something for what it really is enormously. It’s this filter that forces us to look at our lives and reality not as a human being but as a false version of our true selves be it materialistic white middle class male with European Christian heritage, a Muslim housewife or an aboriginal tribesman in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. It’s said that we don’t look at things as they are but as we are and the reason this filter exists within us all is because we are determined, shaped and held back by the culture that raises us in greater ways than most people feel comfortable admitting. Especially those that pride themselves on their individuality and think that each brightly coloured streak of died hair on their head gives them an ever more unique and profound outlook on life.
As far as I can tell this cultural filter is instilled so deeply within our own psyches that we cannot possibly get rid of it by normal means such as simply analyzing our own thought processes and decisions but must resort to much more drastic measures such as an intense psychedelic chemical cleansing of the mind. It’s this effect of the psychedelic experience that can cause an unconscious selfish idiot to enter a trip and come out six hours later a halfway decent human being.

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Increased Distractibility: (1 - 5)

As higher brain functions such as creativity and cognition are increased by any drug, neurological sacrifices have to be temporarily made for compensation. With psychedelics this comes not in the form of a comedown, hangover or profound stupidity but in the form of an increasingly large inability to comprehend anything outside of the present moment that grows proportionally with dosage.
This feeling is quite a familiar one to any Psychonaut as trying to maintain concentration during a trip can be incredibly difficult due to the sometimes overwhelming sensory input and complex visual effects that keep you permanently stuck in the present moment. At very high doses this increases up until the moment where it is impossible to comprehend anything that happened in the past or anything that might happen in the future as the present moment is so overwhelming these things seem distant, irrelevant and trivial. This increased distractibility at its logical limit becomes a crucial contributing factor to ego death as an overload of sensory input inevitably leads to complete detachment from not only anything but the present moment but from your knowledge, ideas, memories and your sense of self. 

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Egodeath:  (5++++)

Ego death is one of the most intense experiences a human being can go through and is the highest level of psychedelic experience along side Hallucinations and Entity contact. It is more common than most people know and exists in very different forms even outside of psychedelics and can be reached through sensory deprivation tanks, meditation or simply being asleep / unconscious as any loss of self can technically be characterized as Ego death but here I am only going to talk about the state of Ego death that can be induced by psychedelics.
A state of psychedelic induced ego death is reached when a tripper has finally taken such a large dosage that their sensory filter is at 0% and is therefore allowing every single tiny bit of brain function and sensory input to reach the conscious faculties regardless of whether or not it is relevant in an extremely visual and felt form. This includes not just the sensation of being able to comprehend the input of every single nerve ending across your entire body all at once but also the sensation of experiencing all concepts, constructs and current activity stored within the brain in a single instant giving an extremely profound feeling that you are experiencing the entire universe all at once forcing you to feel completely one with all of existence and this is often interpreted as a perceived loss of boundaries between your body and the rest of the universe.
Egodeath is triggered by the experience of a concept and the completely all enveloping runaway thought processes that ensue because of them. For example if you were to hear somebody say the word “internet” a runaway thought process would immediately begin as you experience all concepts attached to your idea of “the internet” and all concepts attached to those. This spreads outwards infinitely and quickly encompasses everything in such a powerful and overwhelming way that you’re ego is immediately destroyed due to sensory overload reducing your short term memory to zero but keeping your long term memory intact. Once this is over in 3 – 4 seconds however your ego begins to quickly restack and reform itself as you are placed back into the room, This state of egodeath is constant if experienced in an environment that does not have changing external input such as a silent dark room but in places that are ever changing such as social situations the state only stays for very short but regularly repeated period of time as once a person is restacked another trigger is usually experienced instantaneously putting trippers into rapid fire bursts of not having any concept of the real world but completely at one with the universe.
The entire human mind typically looks and feels like an infinite sea of all enveloping fractals, concepts and non Euclidean geometry and considered to be so profound by anyone that experiences it in a positive setting reports that it feels as if their entire life has been building up to this moment and that they are finally “getting off the train”.

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Title: The Visual and Mental Components of a Dissociative Trip
Post by: Gary Oak on August 09, 2012, 11:14 pm
The Visual and Mental Components of a Dissociative Trip

Dissociatives are a subset of hallucinogens which give a trip that is vastly different from a psychedelic trip, characterised by bizarre feelings of neutral detachment and dream like states this class of drugs is a close relative to psychedelics but still remains a completely different experience.

Although I would never try to argue that Dissociatives are better or worse than psychedelics it’s safe to say that they are generally worse for your health and much more simplistic in terms of the different mental and visual components attributed to them since the effects can be split into just 2 mental components and 3 visual components. However, the hallucinations and effects of these compounds should not be underestimated and allow you to go just as deep into the impossible as any psychedelic. Although I do not find them to be quite as insightful and introspective as a psychedelic experience they have helped me solve numerous internal conflicts and continue to do so.

Personally most of my experience with Dissociatives comes from MXE and DXM, two substances that I would highly recommend. Since some people simply prefer Dissociatives to Psychedelics I suggest that if you are only familiar with one or the other that you make sure to leave no unexplored territory within your mind and find out which trip suits you best.

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Detachment:

All of the visual and mental effects attributed to Dissociatives stem from its ability to completely or partially block out signals to the conscious mind from other parts of the brain. Most Dissociatives do this by blocking what are known as NMDA receptors. These receptors are located at the end of dendrites on a neuron cell. The dendrites send messages to other neurons through these, but when a drug that blocks the NMDA activity is taken, they are partially or entirely blocked, causing a state of dissociation in the user as the subconscious brain begins to fill in these sensory gaps with entirely imagined hallucinations and dreamlike states.

At lower states of disassociation this essentially feels like an obvious but still difficult to pinpoint feeling of detachment from the body, this is often described as:

    Feeling as though your body is autonomous despite still being under your control.
    Feeling generally separate from the external world.
    Feeling as though life is a film or a video that is playing in front of your eyes.
    Feeling as though you are looking through somebody else’s eyes.
    Feelings of impaired balance, hearing, depth perception and touch.
    Blurred and Double Vision.
    Increased music appreciation.
    Out of body experiences.

However at higher states of disassociation these effects increase until the user becomes completely incapable of walking or functioning in any meaningful way as they are completely detached from their own bodies causing them to slip into the famous dissociative hole. It’s generally here where the best stuff happens.

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Profound Shifts in Perspective:

Another very common mental component of a classic dissociative trip is one of a profound shift in perspective; this generally consists of drastic changes in the physical size attributed to a person’s body, body parts, objects and the room around them.

Feelings of suddenly having an impossibly giant or tiny body are very common and can be quite an incredible experience. This feeling is known by the scientific literature as “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” and can also be more specifically attributed to the room around you or specific body parts, for example feelings of having a huge head or tiny limbs are quite common. This specific mental component has limitless potential in terms of size and the feeling of being simultaneously huge and tiny or having a body that is larger than the entire universe is not unheard of.

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Closed Eye Visuals:

The closed eye visuals experienced during a dissociative state are perhaps the only common aspect that psychedelics and Dissociatives share, however they do still have many key differences such as the fact that dissociative visuals are much darker and less colourful with an actual sense of physical size and distance in front of your face that psychedelics do not offer.

Whilst LSD and Mushrooms merely display the visuals on a flat veil in front of your face with out any sense of physicality, Dissociatives take you directly into the centre of them in a way that is much more hands on than psychedelics.

Dissociative visuals seem much more unchanging, solid and realistic than psychedelic visuals but they are not quite as detailed or complex. The closed eye visuals generated by MXE are often comprised of many tiny interlocking woven lines and DXM or Ketamine visuals are more like very solid versions of typical psychedelic visuals but with an awesome sense of size and space attributed to them.

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Spaces

The spaces that Dissociatives typically pull you into are commonly referred to as “holes” and are a unique and fascinating aspect of this category of drugs. During a high dose trip it is very common to be pulled into a dark empty space with a huge monolithic shape comprised of closed eye visuals floating above, below or in front of you as it gradually zooms, rotates or pans into focus and is unveiled before your eyes at a very slow pace.
These spaces typically last 30 seconds to a minute before the person slips back into reality or into another hallucination. Common shapes and spaces include, giant blocks that span miles across, flying through caves and caverns made of closed eye visuals, giant black teardrops or rotating wheels and virtually any geometric shape possible.

These spaces feel very much like a real physical space when experienced and commonly appear to made out of hard materials such as smooth stone and metal which are not necessarily pleasing to look at but definitely fascinating.
Because these spaces are so impossibly huge great distance often has to be covered by means of flying through them when transitioning between these spaces, this travelling often feels as if you are floating silently on an invisible rail through a vast and empty black void on your way to your next destination. Other times the spaces are transitioned between by an elaborate unfolding and reshaping process that happens before your very eyes.

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Scenarios

Scenarios are only possible during very high dose trips and are particularly uncommon on DXM. These Scenarios are an intensely realistic component of a Dissociative experience that are often difficult to remember even mere seconds after experiencing them. These scenarios are completely spontaneous and can consist of almost anything but generally follow along the lines of watching autonomous people and entities that are usually going about their daily lives all whilst oblivious to the fact that you are watching. Dissociative trippers also commonly experience visiting landscapes, imagined environments and reliving obscure memories from distant parts of their life.

These hallucinations are generally similar to watching a film play out in front of your eyes and much more convincing than anything found during a psychedelic breakthrough but usually impossible to interact with. They are often downright neutral and ordinary or mundane situations.
The solidity and detachment from these scenarios is what separates them in my opinion from any entity contact or hallucinations experienced on drugs such as Mushrooms or LSD.

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Title: The physical, visual and mental components of a Delirious trip
Post by: Gary Oak on August 09, 2012, 11:17 pm
Deliriants are the third and final subset of hallucinogens for me to categorize and are even further removed from the classic psychedelic trip than a dissociative experience.
Deliriants are generally considered by everybody who has tried them to be a horrible experience that should not be recommended to anybody. There is zero enlightenment or insight to be gained from a deliriant, just a wide spectrum of neutral to horrifying hallucinations and a body high that consists of intense dysphoria.
These drugs work by their ability to block the chemical Acetylcholine which has been known to prevent people from dreaming as they wake up. It’s this effect that produces incredibly realistic hallucinations that are completely indistinguishable from reality which are generally negative and where all of the visual and mental effects stem from.
I am talking about the effects of DPH, Datura and DMH here and the people who enjoy these drugs are not nonexistent but there are very few of them, this is an extremely unpleasant experience and should be viewed merely as a thing of interest, not a viable alternative to the psychedelic experience which many uneducated people make the mistake of assuming.

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Dysphoria:

One of the first things a person generally notices whilst gradually coming up on a deliriants is how absolutely terrible and miserable they feel.
There is not a single deliriant that does not have multiple negative side effects that will leave you feeling sometimes unbearably terrible, they do however seem to die down at very high doses but only because you are so delirious and distracted by the intensely realistic hallucinations that you forget about how shitty you are feeling. These feelings are commonly experienced as:

    Sensitivity to sunlight.
    Loss of coordination.
    Dry mouth (sometimes to the point where it becomes impossible to swallow).
    Abnormal heart beat.
    Temporary Erectile Dysfunction (your penis will be smaller than you’ve ever seen it).
    Dizziness.
    Drowsiness.
    Muscle cramps.
    Nausea, violent vomiting (at higher doses).
    Having to urinate every 15 minutes.
    Feeling like there is cement in your urethra when you do try to urinate.
    Loss of fine motor skills.

It’s these sensations that render deliriants completely useless as a recreational drug and it’s all these dysphoric bad vibes that help contribute to making sure your hallucinations are very unpleasant.

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Delirium:

Delirium is the mental state that this class of hallucinogens puts you in and it not exactly a pleasant state of being either. A high dose delirious trip is usually accompanied by:

    Mild to Extreme panic.
    Depression.
    Partial to complete loss of ability to speak.
    Extreme confusion and disorientation.
    Agitation and Nervousness.
    Complete or partial loss of ability to reason.
    Memory loss
    Feelings of impending doom.
    Feelings of regular doom.

Although all of these effects are quite pronounced and have a large influence on the trip itself, from personal experience it’s the loss of ability to reason that is one of the most important aspects of delirium and as it forces you to accept without question any hallucination that the trip can throw at you in exactly the same way that we often accept the bizarre and nonsensical plot lines to our dreams until the moment after it’s over.

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Hallucinations:

The hallucinations experienced during a delirious trip are by far its most fascinating and overpowering quality. These hallucinations are completely different from any visionary experience or entity contact you can experience on a psychedelic or dissociative.
There is not any extremely complex non Euclidean geometry, fractals, interdimensional travel and entity contact to be found here and although the hallucinations can be anything there are still many hallucinations that are commonly experienced by most people that try these substances, these hallucinations are generally but by any means not limited to:

    Spiders everywhere, often pouring out of everything.
    Insects, often fantastical and crawling over everything in the room.
    Shadow people.
    Voices and imagined sounds.
    Pet Dogs and Cats that you do not own.
    Your Mother, often upset with you for taking drugs.
    Human beings that are usually behaving completely normally.
    Drinking imaginary cups of water and smoking phantom cigarettes.
    Ripples and strange moving textures in certain objects.
    Smoke and distortion in the air.
    Floating inanimate objects like mobile phones that appear out of nowhere, only to disappear after your hand goes directly through the object while trying to grab hold of it.
    Every day conversations with friends, family members and fictional people that aren’t really there.
    Literally anything your imagination can come up with.


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Dreamlike states:

During a delirious trip it is not uncommon to experience sudden flashes of short realistic dream like states. These short breakthroughs into delirium happen frequently and are usually mundane and everyday events such as getting dressed to go to work only to suddenly realize half way through that none of it ever happened and you’re actually lying down in bed. During high dose trips these dreamlike states become hallucinations within hallucinations as people commonly find themselves snapping out of them and thinking “well it’s a good job I’m out of that now!” only to find a couple of minutes later they never even made it back into reality and simply transitioned into a different scenario, this can continue for hours during very high dose trips and contributes enormously to making it even more difficult to determine what is real and what isn’t during a trip like this.

There really isn’t much to be said about this sort of trip, it’s sad that there is no such thing as an enjoyable deliriant since they are just as limitless as any psychedelic at high doses but in an inherently unpleasant way. I tried them just so I could give an accurate description but to be honest it was exactly what I was expecting and I could have written this guide without a single truly delirious trip to my name as indirect experiences on MDMA, Mirtazapine and random states of hypnogogia had already taught me much about how hallucinations and dream like states work without the memory loss.

Nobody is going to stop you from trying this but if you’re completely set on it at least wait until you have had a large amount of experience being out of your mind on psychedelic and dissociative substances first.

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Title: Sensory Filter Theory
Post by: Gary Oak on August 09, 2012, 11:27 pm
My understanding of this topic has recently increased so greatly since I have started deliberately reading up on psychology and neuroscience in general, and as a result of this, this will be broken down into two separate articles. For both, I will try my hardest to supply as much solid evidence for as I possibly can, but if you know more about these things than me and want to contribute ideas of your own or debate mine please do so. Any help with this would be great as my knowledge of neuroscience barely extends beyond what Wikipedia has managed to teach me over the past few weeks, making it something that is trivial in comparison to genuine scientists.

For a long time I and others have suspected that during sober living, a large part of what our brain does is filter out the mass of sensory data and self thought into a highly streamlined package. This package is what the subconscious brain has deemed important and relevant to pass along for our conscious faculties. The underlying mechanism behind this must have evolved, because if it did not we would be immediately and constantly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of raw sensory input and our inability to process it all, causing us to be completely incapable of functioning. It’s because of this that we have evolved a brain which is able to filter out irrelevant information, using what I have named the Sensory Filter.

It seems to me that all visual and mental components of the psychedelic experience are generated by this one very specific mental component of the psychedelic experience, the partial or complete removal of the sensory filter.
The effects of this are commonly felt in quite a direct way, even at low level psychedelic experiences, in a way that anybody who has ever tripped should be quite familiar with. These low level effects are the result of the partial removal of somebody’s sensory filter, which seem to be universally felt as:

    Being able to comprehend your entire visual field, including your peripheral vision. For example; the sensation of staring at a tree and comprehending the exact position of all of its branches in your visual field all at once, instead of just the simple few that are in focus.
    Being able to comprehend every layer of complex sounds, and the precise position and direction from which they are coming from in your surroundings. This results in greatly increased music appreciation.
    Being able to feel every nerve ending all over your entire body, whilst simultaneously having increased muscle control and bodily awareness.

The above effects are generated are all generated by a lack of filtering when it comes to external sensory information but this sensory filter does not just block out irrelevant external sensory input from being experienced. It also filters out irrelevant brain activity from the conscious faculties and it’s through this that the higher levels of psychedelic visuals are generated.

This irrelevant brain activity includes many things such as the organization and firing of every neuron, every memory, every stored concept and every last structure of the mind, until something such as a mind altering drug forces it to stop. In simple terms, this means that once the sensory filter is shut down, we suddenly become exposed to the very fabric of our mind. This is due to the brain being chemically changed in a way that causes it to begin to reveal itself to itself.

To describe in depth how this lowering of our sensory filter results in the psychedelic experience, I will first break the visual effects of tripping into three separate categories, and explain in simple terms how I think they work (using my personal experience and research as a basis). After this I will explain the neuroscience behind it all, whilst trying my best to cite studies and articles as evidence. Before I begin, please remember however to keep in mind throughout this article that I am a teenager who has taken a whole bunch of drugs and not a neuroscientist of any sort. This means that although I have tried my best to keep this as scientifically accurate as possible I cannot promise anything and if anybody out there wants to team up and help me write a better thesis I would be all for it.

The first of these three separate visual effects that I am going to explain are Open/Closed eye visuals, which can be described as the sensation of a persons visual field being partially or completely encompassed by intensely fast-moving, kaleidoscopic and indescribably complex geometric patterns, shapes, fractals, structures and colour. These visuals somehow have a deep sense of profoundness and importance attributed to them and feel like perfect visual representations of your current mind state, and the vibes of your current surroundings.

It’s because of this, among other things, that I have been led to believe that Visuals are the experience of your lowered sensory filter allowing you to be exposed to the current neurological structure, organization and activity of the brain. This starts at lower levels of tripping, as geometric patterns that increase in intensity, until they eventually encompass and overwhelm your entire visual field. As the amount of neurological structure that is experienced increases proportionally with dosage, the sensory filter is eventually decreased to 0%, leading to a person being exposed to the organization of their entire mind all at once. This feels like you have suddenly become everything in the universe as the boundaries in your mind are completely broken down, and is described as profound and infinite in size. As this is happening, the vast data stream of neurological structure and geometric shapes that are experienced begin to cause the ego to go through complete sensory overload.

Since this sensory overload increases proportionally with dosage it can be thought of as a set of scales. As Visuals go up, the ego goes down, and vice versa. Because of this, once the sensory filter hits 0% and a person starts to feel one with the universe, the ego becomes completely eradicated. This results in a state in which you are conscious, but your short term memory has been destroyed, creating a state that can be very confusing and often negative to the unprepared and the unstable.

This idea is mostly based on in-depth sceptical discussions with friends and the fac that all of my personal experiences pointing towards the idea that Closed Eye Visuals feel as if they are perfect representations of the mind because they are the literal spilling over of our neuroligcal structure into the visual cortex due to a dampened sensory filter. This does also however have a scientific basis that I will go into later.

The second visual effect that I am going to explain is Distortions. This category of visual effects is a very common one and does not behave anything like Closed Eye Visuals. Instead of geometric shapes, these visuals are most commonly manifested as objects and scenery in your visual field acting as if they are melting, bending, changing colour and various other distorting effects. These increase in intensity when stared at, but immediately reset once you double take.

In my opinion, these are generated by your sensory filter, allowing the conscious facilities to be visually exposed to your immediate short term memory. This creates a recursive loop that continuously builds up. As you experience this, you literally see your short term memory and then immediately your memory of your short term memory and so on continuously. This builds up a visual feedback loop of increasing inaccuracy, which must be based on some sort of recursive visual looping system within the brain. This looping system sends sensory input from the optic nerve into the processing faculties of our subconscious brain and straight back into the optic nerve as a loop. This happens because our dampened sensory filter allows us to be exposed to our sensory processing faculties and working memory causing it to continuously go around and around, allowing the distortions to build up and up, until the loop is broken by new visual input (when a person looks away or double takes).

It’s because of this that distortions increase when stared at, but reset when looked away from. Out of focus eyes allow the loop to continue undisturbed, but new input immediately breaks it. This is just like a visual form of the increasingly loud feedback noise that you get looping through speaker systems when a microphone is placed near them.

I think the fractal effects found within visuals are closely related to this recursive visual looping. Fractals are generated by recursive formulas, such as x=x^2. Therefore, it would make sense that the fractals you see within the visuals are simply the looping effect being played out onto visuals, instead of your external environment. These fractals are created because your brain’s recursive looping is reinterpreting the same stimuli multiple times, causing the geometry to flower out into these fractals that all psychonauts are familiar with.

Finally, the third visual effect that I am going to explain is the experience of Imagery and Hallucinations. These states begin as imagery within the visuals, which can be described as pictures of scenes, objects, people, place or anything you could possibly imagine. On many psychedelics, such as; LSA, Ayahuasca and Syrian Rue, these are manifested as exact visual versions of whatever you are currently thinking about that all come about when you slip into a mildly trance-like state. As these states of imagery become increasingly elaborate (proportional to dosage), they eventually become fully fledged 3D hallucinations. These could be described as induced mystical states, contact with autonomous entities, imagined landscapes and situations that seem so unlike anything previously experienced that they are in all probability untranslatable into English. It’s not uncommon for people to report that these sorts of hallucinations feel infinitely more realistic than anything a person has previously experienced in real life.

For multiple reasons, it seems to me that these hallucinations are caused when high states of sensory filter suppression triggers dreaming in fully conscious trippers. My reasoning for this is three fold; the first is pretty simply that psychedelic hallucinations look and feel exactly like extremely vivid dreams. This is even to the point where it is not uncommon for people to recognize places from dreams they have had during intense Ayahuasca trips. Along the same lines, the feelings of amnesia commonly felt after strong DMT trips are identical to that extremely familiar feeling of not being able to remember a vivid dream immediately after you have woken up.

My second line of evidence to support this is that the imagery seen within closed eye visuals (that eventually leads onto hallucinations) feel exactly like Hypnagogia. Hypnagogia is the state between being awake and falling asleep where many people experience mild hallucinations, imagery and a fluid association of ideas. In fact, hypnagogia is considered to be characterized and based on a mental function, known as “auto-symbolism”, which are a person’s thoughts and ideas being made to manifest in their minds eye. This happens continuously when experienced, and can be either a vague and hazy manifestation, or completely clear and distinct ones depending on the persons dosage. Either way, this is exactly what states of hypnagogia are commonly described to be like. These two in my opinion feel identical, therefore making Imagery simply a psychedelic induced state of hypnagogia. These later lead onto full-on dreams, once they eventually become powerful enough as you finally fall asleep. This makes perfect sense, as Imagery leads onto Hallucinations in exactly the same way as Hypnagogia leads onto dreams.

All of this is happening along side the effect of a conscious person’s exposure to the neurological structure of their mind, and therefore visuals is what must cause the hallucinations and autonomous entities to commonly be made of what appears to be an impossible closed eye visual based material.

In my opinion, this happens because the loss of sensory filter allows the conscious faculties to be exposed to what are known as the brains Engrams.
Quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engram_%28neuropsychology%29
Engrams are essentially the format that memories, ideas, images and concepts are thought to be stored in and are described as a means by which memory traces are stored as biophysical or biochemical changes in the brain (and other neural tissue) in response to external stimuli. It’s these physical circuits within the brain that are what we are exposed to when we hallucinate on a hallucinogen and when we dream.

I’m pretty sure that this has a genuine neurological basis, as the leading theory in the generation of dreams ties perfectly into the sensory filter. The leading theory can be found described in detail, here and here, but put simply, it is believed that once a person falls asleep, the level of activation in the conscious part of the brain descends to a very low level, as the inputs from the sensory are basically disconnected. This triggers what scientists have called the “continual-activation” mechanism, to generate a data stream from the memory stores to flow through the conscious part of the brain. It’s suggested that this pulse-like brain activation is the inducer of each dream. It’s proposed that, with the involvement of the brain associative thinking system, dreaming is, thereafter, self-maintained with the dreamer’s own thinking until the next pulse of memory insertion. This explains why dreams have both characteristics of continuity (within a dream) and sudden changes (between two dreams).

The supposed “continual activation” mechanism is, in my opinion, a loss of sensory filter. This is caused by the complete loss of ego that occurs to the brain as it falls asleep allowing your conscious faculties to exposed to a random selection of the engrams stored within your brain. This loss of ego happens because the activity in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex is lowered to a near halt during sleep.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medial_prefrontal_cortex

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Title: Speculation on how the Psychedelic experience is generated; Part II
Post by: Gary Oak on August 09, 2012, 11:27 pm
The function of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex when awake has been implicated to be planning complex cognitive behaviour, personality expression, decision-making and moderating social behaviour. The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals. All of these are the essential components of the ego and it is this cortex that is said to in charge of our Exectutive functions.
Quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions

Executive functions are a psychological umbrella term for some of the essential components of the ego. These components are:

    planning
    working memory
    attention
    problem solving
    verbal reasoning
    inhibition
    mental flexibility
    multi-tasking
    initiation and monitoring of actions

The medial prefrontal cortex is presumed by scientists to manage these executive functions via a high level gating system or filtering mechanism, that enhances goal-directed activations and inhibits irrelevant activations. This filtering mechanism enables executive control at various levels of processing, including selecting, maintaining, updating, rerouting activations and emotional regulation.

Simply put this is the physical location of the sensory filter and it is completely tied in with our ego in a single cortex at the very front of our brains. It’s this unity of these two systems that causes ego and psychedelic experience to act as a set of scales as when the ego is suppressed, so is the sensory filter and vice versa. This means that as activity in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex goes down so must the level of the psychedelic experience go proportionally up to compensate.

It’s the similarities between this dampening of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex found during both sleep and the psychedelic experience that is what leads me to believe that both dreaming and hallucinations are caused by a suppressed sensory filter. This allows our conscious mind to become exposed to a completely random mixture of concepts and events stored within the long term memory of the brain. This means that states of dreaming, states of meditation and states of psychedelic hallucination are the essentially the same thing, caused by different methods of simultaneously suppressing both a person’s ego and their sensory filter.

This has led me to a conclusion that is now greatly supported in a recent study by British scientists.
Quote
http://blisstree.com/feel/psychiatry/psychedelic-mushrooms-reduce-brain-activity-study-says-117/
This was a study that tested patients under the influence of psilocybin during a brain scan, and managed to determine that psychedelics do not increase brain activity, but actually reduce it. They were shown to do this by binding to the serotonin receptors within the Medial Prefrontal Cortex and the Posterior Cingulate Cortex, and greatly reducing their activity.
Quote
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22219283
The Posterior Cingulate Cortex is also related to ego and has been shown to serve the function of dealing with internally directed thought, for example, memory recollection with an active role in the control of cognition. This is done through signalling an environmental change and the immediate need to alter behaviour.

Psilocybin cuts activity in both of these nodes, destroys their filtering abilities along with their connection to other brain areas, allowing the senses to run free. It’s this dampening of the ego and our sensory filter that psychedelics have now been shown to cause, which allows information to flow freely across the brain and the senses to run wild.

Psychedelics have now been proven to cause a decrease in brain activity in hub areas that deal with the self and moving information. This results in a) the subconscious mind taking over and b) the sensory filter being lowered.

However, there are still two more component beyond the visual components of a psychedelic experience that still needs to be categorized. These need to be tied in to the sensory filter, so that we can have the full picture when it comes to understanding how they work.

These is much rarer than anything found during the visual side of tripping, but still common enough to be worthy of mention. This is what is known as an Audio Hallucination. Audio Hallucinations are uncommon but happen occasionally and are more likely to occur on substances such as Ayahuasca, DMT, Syrian Rue and any 2C* compound. I have broken these noises down into two distinct categories that both tie into the sensory filter.

The first of these two I have named as “Audio Effects”, and they come in many forms. They are commonly described as hearing noises such as; reverb, tones, and general sound effects, that seem to follow thought patterns and processes.

Examples of this include hearing the very mechanics of your brain on Ayahuasca or DMT, in a way that can either sound like a soft purring or multiple tones and phasers in a completely rhythm-less tune. On DMT this can sound like a rocket launch as you begin to take off or as rhythm-less and unaggressive soft-toned dubstep, but are essentially limitless in their possibilities.

After personal experience, I have come to the conclusion that Audio Effects are essentially the heard equivalent of visuals and work by means of a lowered sensory filter, allowing neurological structure to pour over into a person’s audio cortex as opposed to their visual cortex.

The Second of these two components is a genuine Audio Hallucination. These can be described as hearing voices, music or any sound that is genuinely not there. The most common version of this seems to be hearing music that has been played throughout the day, within the sounds of your surroundings, even after it has stopped. For example listening to ambient music all day and then stopping can often cause a person to hear said ambient music in the sounds of the wind, the cars and any noise that may be around them.

This is, in my opinion, because Audio Hallucinations are not the heard equivalent of Visuals, but are in fact the heard equivalent of Imagery and Hallucinations. This must mean that they are the result of a person’s lowered sensory filter, granting them access to heard concepts within their long term memory, as opposed to ones that are seen. This puts forward another supporting line of evidence towards the idea of long term memory access causing imagery and hallucinations.

The more I have thought about the sensory filter, the more I have come to the conclusion that it is without a doubt the most important component of a psychedelic experience. It seems to me that it is the “base component” that leads to all others. This idea, or ideas similar to it, seem to have been on the tips of everybody’s tongue since the 1954, when Aldous Huxley first wrote about a similar idea in his book the doors of perception which he called the “Mind at Large”.

Many people (including myself) have come to similar conclusions across reddit and various forums over the internet, before the recent Psilocybin study, that provided some concrete evidence to base our musings on.

Although it’s important to note that even though none of these people ever defined their ideas beyond a few sentences and some vague metaphors, this still shows that one of the most important tools that we have when it comes to making sense of and mapping out the psychedelic experience is first hand experience and rational thought.

This may be mostly based on personal experience but I’d like to think that based on my extremely basic understanding of how the human brain works this does seem to be how the visual components of a psychedelic experience are generated and I challenge you to debate me at any point.

To express my ideas on how this works simply I have created the chart below. The concepts on it show what I’m trying to express and each part depends on the component to its left and leads on to the components to its immediate right.
Quote
http://i.imgur.com/kCcwQ.png

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This is all taken from the blog Disregard Everything I say, which can be located below.
Quote
http://www.disregardeverythingisay.com/
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: spasmolytic on August 10, 2012, 02:13 am
Ho-Lee Shit Gaz, I just spent about 15-20min reading & trying to make sure I understood your posts, and It's obvious you are riding the same train of thought as myself. I know that is just a perspective but it really sums up how alot of true psychonauts see things. +1 to you every 72hrs just for this post alone as long as I'm on silkroad. I couldn't have said it better myself, so thanks for the info. I don't think I've experienced permanent ego death, but I def have temporarily, if that makes sense, maybe ego death isn't the right word, whatever it is, it has only made me a better person though, I can only hope more people get to experience it at some point in their lives.
+1 to everyone on this thread, we need more people from this line of thought IMO.
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: Zulu on August 10, 2012, 02:59 am
you sir, are a legend
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: l1llykins on August 10, 2012, 04:17 am
Great read, must tag for later.
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: CaptainTrips on August 10, 2012, 05:40 pm
So this thread inspired me to go through some of my old trip reports that I wrote for myself and kept in a journal. Here are some things I randomly wrote down while tripping:

"Within this moment and without a doubt, the arrivals left before the ending began" - 10/4/98

"Why is the problem always the solution? It's like diving head-first into a tail-spin" - 10/4/98

"All the things you forgot to tell yourself to forget have come back to haunt you; someone taught the hands of time how to juggle." - ???

"In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday. In just one yesterday, tomorrow is today. Here comes the first time again." - 8/21/00

"Divide this moment into quarters and buy yourself some time - can't you see that your seeing-eye dog is blind?" - 2/12/07

"Time is like a washing machine. Drown in this." - ???

"The Quantum Mechanic left his tools at home. Sink back into the earth for awhile." - ???

Only while I'm tripping am I poetic  :P
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: TheAbsurd on August 10, 2012, 05:49 pm
I love tripping and writing about "infinity". Next time I trip I'll make a stop in this thread. You'll love it.  ;D
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: Trollface on August 10, 2012, 05:52 pm
there can be squibnodes in the preffles if the sneffles are all scuzzed
Title: Re: *~~~~~~THE TRIPPING LOUNGE~~~~~~~*
Post by: IckerS on August 12, 2012, 04:37 pm
I always get into a good place listening to Alan Watts when tripping... I could listen to him for hours... Yesterday I was tripping and enjoying this snippet, which is just beautiful in all ways:

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

I should really get me a lil book that's just meant for scribbling when off my face though... I usually can't recall... and then you question whether it's profound or just a deepity, something that mimics profundity but is actually just wordplay.

I was trying to tune my guitar by ear a couple of weeks ago, while high on five hits, and found that it was impossible... I was tuning one string and whenever I felt like I was getting close to a proper tuning I would find that there were one or two strings that just didn't harmonise as they should... I suddenly thought to myself, "life is like tuning a guitar", and proceeded to fall over laughing... You know the kind where you struggle for air and just can't shake it for a minute or two.

This is a lovely thread btw, and I'll have to bookmark Oak's posts for perusal at some point in the future. I'm always keen to hear what people think acid implies about our neurological systems.