Mescaline

This paper investigates the relationship between psychoactive substances and so-called paranormal phenomena falling within the study of parapsychology. It is primarily concerned with extrasensory perception (ESP)—telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance—as well as out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs). Psychokinesis (PK), aura vision, encounter experiences, and sleep paralysis only make a very limited contribution to this review as they are seldom related to psychoactive drugs within the parapsychological literature. The paper borrows widely, but by no means exhaustively, from parapsychology as well as transpersonal studies, anthropology, ethnobotany, phytochemistry, psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and neurobiology, particularly neurochemistry. It is organized into neurochemical models of paranormal experience (section 1), field reports of intentional and spontaneous phenomena incorporating anthropological, historical and clinical cases, and personal accounts (section 2), surveys of paranormal belief and experience (section 3), experimental research (section 4), and a methodological critique of the experimental research with recommendations for further work (section 5).

Rationale  Mescaline is a nonselective serotonin receptor agonist. It has relatively delayed onset of action and prolonged duration. Mescaline attenuates various behavioral parameters in rats; however, no information is available about its pharmacokinetics in rats and its relation to the behavioral changes produced by the drug. Objectives  The present study evaluates the spontaneous locomotor activity and sensorimotor gating in relation to mescaline

Finire dentro un vortice e farsene risucchiare, ci sembra una disgrazia, come inciampare su un sasso o ricevere una tegola in testa. Invece è un evento molto quotidiano, non facciamo che incontrare vortici, anche noi siamo vortici. Il vortice allaccia momentaneamente l'uno all'altro flussi che fino a quel momento si ignoravano. Dentro un vortice i flussi si rincorrono, si stringono, si sciolgono. La teoria della complessità ha scoperto nel vortice uno dei comportamenti fondamentali della materia fisica ma il vortice è una struttura energetica che riconosciamo anche nella società e nella vita dello spirito. Per studiare l'articolazione vorticosa dell'esperienza diventa utile ripercorrere con un nuovo sguardo alcune tappe filosofiche, letterarie e artistiche: il binomio volumen-rivoluzione di Sade, la sensazione in Merleau-Ponty, la visione mescalinica di Henri Michaux, gli ideogrammi poetici di Ezra Pound, il cinema zenoniano dei fratelli Safdie. Una corrente fatta di mulinelli attraversa i corpi e le idee, le azioni e le esitazioni, gli slanci e le ricadute, è capace di formare e distruggere mondi, stringere e sciogliere i nodi di cui è fatta l'esperienza, ogni esperienza.

Poster presentation: first conference of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology, December 5th-7th 2018, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) had taken the classic hallucinogen mescaline at least twice. His first experience was in February 1935, when he was injected with the drug by psychiatrist and former classmate Daniel Lagache (1903-1972), in Paris, and at a later, unknown date in the Pyrenees (de Beauvoir 208-213, Gerassi 193). Sartre was also a heavy user of amphetamines from around 1945 or 1946 until at least 1970, ostensibly to give him the energy to write his philosophical works. He began with orthedrine and continued at least until 1970 with Corydrane, a combination of aspirin and amphetamine (Cohen-Solal pp.373-376, Gerassi 21). 

A number of scholars have suggested that Sartre’s drug use influenced his thought, which raises largely unaddressed practical and theoretical issues. Sartre himself had been encouraged to experiment with drugs by Tania Zazoulich (who recommended that drugs would make him an authentic writer, Sartre War Diaries p.61), and there are public health implications to the uncritical acceptance of influencers who may inspire high-risk behaviours. There is also an emerging view within academic philosophy that mind-altering substances may provide insightful experiences (Letheby), a perspective with conceptual correlations with the anti-psychiatry movement, which Sartre had influenced via R. D. Laing (1927-1989). Such views call for robust critique. This project also raises the question of the demarcation criteria between philosophy and mysticism.

Mara’akame Paritema (Don Santos) (17th July, 2013) - Huichol cosmology: A mara'akame shares Wirraritari cosmovision and mythology. The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness Salon, The Institute of Ecotechnics, October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London. (Host and compère)

The origins of the Wirraritari or Huichol people are uncertain: are they an Aztec tribe or were they independent of the pre-Hispanic Aztec empire? In any case it is know that they resisted the Spanish throughout the conquest of Mexico and still remain independent. The Wirraritari cosmovision is full of myths, gods, and legends, and this cosmovision is embodied and experienced directly during the practice of their many ceremonies, which take place throughout the year. In Wirraritari society the Mara’akames are medicine-men and leaders. There are different types of Mara’akame; those who simply sing and communicate with the spirits, those who do treatments with energy, extracting disease and materialising it as it is sucked out by the mouth, and those who sing and heal as Mara’akame Santos does. Mara’akame Santos is going to share some of the Wirraritari myths of Creation, the origins of the people and their cosmovision. He will also share a sacred ceremonial song.

This is an article in two parts. The first part discusses current research in psychoactive preparations of ergot in various religious systems with a particular emphasis on Persian, Greek, Jewish and Islamic sources. Certain poems, hadith, and scriptural writings suggest an entheogenic heritage to various ancient sects that exerted and received philosophical and ritual influences over large distances and over time. Particularly, some esoteric Shia and Sufi writings are highly suggestive of a "celestial botany" that employed psychoactive plants for initiatory and ritual purposes. The second part will address current research methods that render ergot alkaloids nontoxic and entheogenic, a most crucial part of the discussion in the absence of a modern bioassay. This is essential, as without a chemical reality to support that such a preparation of entheogenic ergot is possible, all ergot theories concerning mystery traditions would remain largely speculative.

Master’s Thesis for the Western Esotericism programme at the University of Amsterdam which investigates the role of peyote in the Magick of Aleister Crowley and in the development of Thelema.

The content of this thesis supersedes the content of 'Aleister Crowley's magical use of Anhalonium Lewinii' a.k.a. 'The complexities of Aleister Crowley’s magical relationship with anhalonium lewinii'.

The moral enhancement (or bioenhancement) debate seems stuck in a dilemma. On the one hand, the more radical proposals, while certainly novel and interesting, seem unlikely to be feasible in practice, or if technically feasible then most likely imprudent. But on the other hand, the more “sensible” proposals – sensible in the sense of being both practically achievable and more plausibly ethically justifiable – can be rather hard to distinguish from both “traditional” forms of moral enhancement, such as non-drug-mediated social or moral education, and non-moral forms of bioenhancement, such as “smart drug” style cognitive enhancement. In this essay, I argue that bioethicists have paid insufficient attention to an alternative form of moral bioenhancement—or at least a likely candidate—that falls somewhere between these two extremes, namely the (appropriately qualified) use of certain psychedelic drugs.

NOTE: This paper was PRELIMINARY RESEARCH for my M.A. Thesis, 'The Cactus and the Beast', which investigates the role of peyote in the life and work of Aleister Crowley.

As such, it contains a number of minor factual errors which have since been corrected in 'The Cactus and the Beast', which examines a much wider range of evidence and analyses Crowley's relationship with peyote in considerably more detail.

In particular, 'The Cactus and the Beast' contains an argument that peyote was a crucial contributing factor in the development of Thelema, which this shorter paper merely hints at but does not investigate deeply.

Therefore the content of this shorter and more limited paper should NOT be taken as definitive and should instead be seen as a (somewhat flawed) introduction to the topic.

ABSTRACT: A short paper outlining Aleister Crowley's use of the Parke-Davis extract of peyote for magical purposes from 1907 to 1918. Written for the 'Occult Trajectories' module of the Masters in Western Esotericism at the University of Amsterdam (2014-2015).

‘A 1920s Harvard Psychedelic Circle with Mormon Connections’, concerns the use of Peyote by students and tutors at Harvard in the 1920s, amongst who were individuals who went on to be important composers, poets and writers, including a William Blake scholar who reported on the similarity of Blake’s art to Peyote visions and Virgil Thomson who scored music for a Gertrude Stein opera. The original source of their Peyote was Frederick Madison Smith (1874 –1946), the third Prophet-President of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and grandson of Joseph Smith founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, otherwise known as the Mormons. Frederick M Smith had participated in the Peyote rite several times with Native Americans and did not believe that Peyote was, technically, a drug, but a natural substance, an ancient means to tap into one’s inner powers and was ‘neither injurious nor habit-forming’.

"Michel Weber et Ronny Desmet (sous la direction de), Chromatikon V. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, 2009. (334 p. ; 978-2-87463-191-7 ; 27 € ; http://www.i6doc.com/fr/livre/?GCOI=28001100138060 ; http://www.i6doc.com/en/livre/?GCOI=28001100138060)
Table
Ronny Desmet, Foreword
I. Séminaires de recherche — Research Seminars
Jean-Pascal Alcantara, Le Principe de raison suffisante revisité :
Frédéric Bisson, Entre le cristal et le brouillard. Rythme et Vie à partir de Whitehead
Jean-Marie Breuvart, A. N. Whitehead ou l’éducation par excellence
Jean Douchement, Whitehead et l’éducation
Jean-Claude Dumoncel, Où est le centre de gravité du système de Whitehead ?
Guillaume Durand, Whitehead et Alexander
Thomas Mueller, La méthode d’abstraction extensive en physique
Xavier Verley, Whitehead et Leibniz, II
II. Etudes critiques — Critical Studies
Vincent Berne, Légalité de la nature et mondes possibles, II
Frédéric Bisson, Le swing cosmique. Whitehead à la mescaline
Susana de Castro, Today’s Task of Philosophy
D. S. Clarke, Process Philosophy and Naturalism
Arran Gare, Barbarity, Civilization and Decadence
David Skrbina, Technological Anarchism: Reconsidering the Unabomber
Robert J. Valenza, Meaning and Process
Xavier Verley, Schèmes et catégories chez Whitehead
III. Comptes rendus — Critical Reviews
Ronny Desmet, Pierfrancesco Basile, Whitehead and the Metaphysics of Causation
Jean-Claude Dumoncel, Les Mutations de Raymond Ruyer
Timothy E. Eastman, Researching with Whitehead: System and Adventure
Sergio Franzese, Francesca Bordogna, William James at the Boundaries
Marie-Pierre Najman, William James lu par D. Lapoujade et St. Madelrieux
IV. Informations réticulaires — Reticular News
Frédéric Bisson, L’atermoiement illimité. Pour une politique du procès
Bernard Legros, Pourquoi et comment en sommes-nous arrivés là ?
Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal, The Dual-Aspect-Dual-Mode Framework for Consciousness
Philippe Vaillant, L’expérience territoriale éclairée par Whitehead
Séminaires — Seminars
Publications
Abréviations — Abbreviations
Table des matières — Table of Content"

Luke, D. (2019). Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed.). London: Aeon Books.

Otherworlds: A psychonautic scientific trip to the weirdest outposts of the psychedelic terrain, inhaling anything and everything relevant from psychology, psychiatry, parapsychology, anthropology, neuroscience, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, biochemistry, religious studies, cultural history, shamanism and the occult along the way.

Staring the strange straight in the third eye this eclectic collection of otherworldly entheogenic research delivers a comprehensive and yet ragtaglledy scientific exploration of synaesthesia, extra-dimensional percepts, inter-species communication, eco-consciousness, mediumship, possession, entity encounters, near-death and out-of-body experiences, psi, alien abduction and lycanthropy.

Essentially, its everything you ever wanted to know about weird psychedelic experiences, but were too afraid to ask…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Otherworlds-Psychedelics-Exceptional-Human-Experience/dp/1916068960/

“Emphasizing parapsychological aspects of the psychedelic experience, Luke’s new book fills in a fascinating and previously neglected lacuna in the burgeoning field of human studies with these compounds. ” – Rick Strassman, PhD

“A psychedelic Indiana Jones. ” – Matt Colborn, PhD

“David Luke’s delightful one-liner about his book is that it’s ‘about weird people in weird places taking weird substances doing weird things and, importantly, having weird experiences’ . . . On reflection, it’s much more profound than that . . . So weird reader, forge ahead without fear. ” – Dean Radin, PhD

“In his fascinating book David plunges into this controversial topic and gives the backstory, the front story, and possible ways forward to bring paranormal and psychedelic research together, and further our understanding of both. ” – Dennis J. McKenna, PhD

“A remarkable collection and a necessary one. This body of research illuminates aspects of psychedelic experiences usually obscured or denied in the medical and clinical research and sensationalized in the popular press. ” – James Fadiman, PhD

“A real Dr Gonzo. ” – Will Self

Otherworlds:
Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword – Dr Dean Radin
- Blasting Open the Doors of Perception

Preface
- Exceptional Psychedelic Experience
- Otherworld Cartographies
- A Strange Journey on a Crooked Path


SECTION 1: Explorations of Exceptional Entheogen Experiences

1: Notes on Getting Cactus Lodged in Your Reducing Valve: San Pedro and Psychic Abilities
- Cactus of the Four Winds
- Plant Allies and Plant Alkaloids
- Artificial Paradises or Natural Chemical Utopias?
- Cleansing the Doors of (Extrasensory) Perception
- Putting the Psi Back into Psychedelics
- Uncorking the Genie's Bottle
- Putting the Cork Back in the Bottle

2. Psychedelic Possession: The Growing Incorporation of Incorporation into Ayahuasca Use
- The Growing Incorporation of Incorporation in Ayahuasca Use
- The Prepossessing Power of Possession
- Psychedelic Possession Outside of Umbandaime and Barquinha
- Any Body for Anybody: Shape Sharing or Shape Shifting?
- Psychedelic Possession Outside of Shamanism, and Inside Ordinary People
- So Why is Umbandaime on the Rise?
- Shamanic… or Individualistic, Pluralistic, Consumerist and Technologized?
- Synthesis and Analysis
- Postscript: Flying High with Goose and Crow

3. The Induction of Synaesthesia with Chemical Agents: A Systematic Review
(with Devin Terhune)
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Postscript: A Placebo-Controlled LSD-induced Synaesthesia Experiment

4. Rock Art or Rorschach: Is There More to Entoptics Than Meets the Eye?
- Entoptics as Hallucinations and Projections: Both, Either, or Neither?
- Multidimensional Form Constants
- The Extra Dimensions of Cyberdelia
- Turning a Blind Eye to Entoptic Phenomena
- Omni-directional Perception
- Paranormal Visual Perception
- Conclusions: Cleansing the Doors of Misperception
- Postscript: Hurling Algebra at the Hard Problem of Consciousness to Obscure Absurd Infinite Regress

5. Discarnate Entities and Dimethyltryptamine (DMT): Psychopharmacology, Phenomenology and Ontology
- History of DMT Biochemistry
- The Speculated Psychopharmacology of DMT, its Related Compounds and the Pineal Gland
- Neurochemical Action of DMT
- Phenomenology of the DMT Experience
- Mental Imagery
- DMT and Veridical Visions
- Phenomenological Cartography of the DMT World
- Discarnate Entities
- Ontology of DMT Beings

6. Disembodied Eyes Revisited: An Investigation into the Ontology of Entheogenic Entity Encounters
- A Brief Glance at the Truly Forbidden
- Snake Eyes
- Sentient Entities
- Postscript: More Fishy Than the Greenwich Pie n Eel Shop

7. Psychedelics and Species Connectedness
- Turning Topiary
- Ecodelia
- Shamanism, Animism and Animaphany
- Interspecies Communication


SECTION 2: Do Psychedelics Like Psilocybin Really Cause Psi?

8. Psychoactive Substances and Paranormal Phenomena Review

9. Psychedelic/Neurochemical Models of Paranormal Experience
- Brain as Filter
- β-Carbolines, Tryptamines and Psi
- DMT, Near-Death and Other Exceptional Experiences
- Ketamine and NDEs
- Dopamine and Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences
- Overview of Psychedelic/Neurochemical Models of Paranormal Experience

10. Field Reports of Psychedelic Paranormal Phenomena
- Anthropological and Historical Reports
- Personal Views and Experiences
- Clinical Reports
- Evaluation of Field Reports

11. Surveys of Psychedelic Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences
- Surveys of Belief in the Paranormal
- Surveys of Paranormal Experiences
- Surveys and Out-of-body Experiences
- Summary of Survey Research

12. Experimental Psychedelic ESP Research
- Forced Choice Designs
- Free Response Psychometry (Object Reading) Experiments
- Other Free Response Clairvoyance Experiments
- Free Response Telepathy Experiments
- Summary of Experimental Research

13. Methodological Critique of Experimental ESP Research

14. General Summary and Conclusions on Psychedelic Parapsychological Research

Afterword: Pulling Magicians out of a Rabbit Hole

References

Index

The past decade has seen many exciting new developments in neurobiology.  Three particularly paradigm-rattling revelations reviewed in this report include; first, the elucidations of 'functional receptivity,' which expand multi-fold the elegant complexity of receptor function by showing that, not one, but rather, myriad unique cascades of intracellular signals leading to discrete profiles of gene activation can result from multiple receptor conformations, as opposed to merely an active or inactive state.  Second: epigenetic and state-dependent neuroplasticity which suggests monumental therapeutic potential and challenges the status quos of biological reductionism and pharmaceutical industry.  And last: receptor heteromerization wherein metabotropic receptors belonging to separate families form complexes engaging in functional, allosteric co-modulation and neurotransmitter signal integration, humbling the current level of neurological comprehension while presenting the potential for vastly improved pharmacological interventions.  The author makes use of psychedelics as a vector connecting these exciting areas noting how they have played, and will continue to play, an indispensable role in their exploration.

There has been a welcome emphasis in the last decade on the importance of mysticism in the work of Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) from several scholars, including Dana Sawyer, Jeffrey Kripal and K.S. Gill. Less attention has been paid to Huxley's interest in the paranormal and his contacts with the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). While Huxley did not join the SPR until 1956, he closely followed its Journal and Proceedings, and wrote a number of essays on the subject of psychical research. I examine his treatment of spiritualism in the play The World of Light (1931) and in the novel Time Must Have a Stop (1944). In his experiments with mescaline and LSD, Huxley also drew on key thinkers from psychical research, namely Henri Bergson, C.D. Broad and William James. In this article, I examine Huxley's links with the SPR and the role of psychical research in his work.

Diagnosis plays a central, primary role in the therapeutic process across cultures. In this article, the authors examine the role of diagnosis in two Navajo religious healing traditions, the Traditional Navajo religion and the Native American Church (NAC), and examine a case study of a diagnostic encounter between an NAC diagnostician and a Traditional patient. The authors assert that, for Navajos, diagnosis is not merely a prescriptive rite that passively initiates the therapeutic process (as it has been seen in the Navajo literature) but can itself constitute a cure. Claims made about the similarity between Western psychotherapy and religious healing both by scholars and by the healer and patient in this case study are investigated. The authors conclude that such an analogy must be seen against the backdrop of Navajo beliefs about thought, speech, and health. Viewing diagnosis as a "talking cure" and an example of Good's concept of "narrativizing" illness (things it shares with Western psychotherapy) suggests why the analogy is appealing for Navajos themselves.

Spontaneous combustion occurs when an object self-ignites. The cause may be chemical, as when lithium oxidises explosively in water, or biological, as when a haystack catches fire due to heat generated from bacterial fermentation. There is no scientific evidence that the human body can self-ignite. However, spontaneous human combustion (SHC) as an alleged cause of death has a long and controversial history. If true, the mechanism of ignition is mysterious and challenges what we know about the human body.....

The case of Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith is complex and rife with controversy. Any time the interests of the State are pitted against the interests and freedoms of the individual there is always an expectation of backlash from the losing side. This case exemplifies the clash between societal needs and individual rights. The State has a duty to prevent possible harm and provide for the general welfare of the public, while safeguarding the rights of minorities from the tyranny of the majority. This becomes increasingly difficult in a society that contains a multitude of political, religious, and intellectual persuasions. This difficulty is compounded when the parties involved have an intricate historical and political relationship with the State. The distinctive and multifaceted historical relationship between the Native American Peoples and the United States Government presents unique constitutional and legal questions in determining what constitutes a proper balance between the rights of the citizens and the powers of the State. Furthermore, in determining the extent of religious protections afforded by the First Amendment, this case illustrates that the line between religious belief and religious exercise may not be as obvious or clearly defined as many would suppose.

Consciousness-expanding psychoactive substances have been used for thousands of years in ritualistic applications by many cultures to enhance and assist healing, such as known in Siberian, South-American, and African Shamanism. After three decades of worldwide prohibition, in the last few years, clinical treatments with entheogenic substances have again become possible within strictly controlled scientiific studies, including the application of LSD and psilocybin with terminal-ill cancer patients, and of MDMA with individuals with posttraumatic-stress-disorder , and ibogaine and ayahuasca for individuals with drug addiction.
In this lecture, a transpersonal psychotherapeutic approach, integrating interventions with different psychotropic substances will be presented. Non-ordinary spiritual/mystical and/or overwhelming experiences cannot be reached with ordinary states of consciousness. Methods such as breathwork, drumming/shamanic journeying, or journeying with psychoactive inducing altered states of consciousness might support the healing work and integration of such experiences. Examples of  authentic cases will be provided along with evidence from research findings. The possibilities and limits of a transpersonal psychotherapy with psychotropic substances will be discussed, and the importance of a safe setting will be outlined. Further space will be given for the sharing of personal experiences.