ATDDTA (6) 182.12-another W.A.S.T.E.D. message

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

           Bekah:
           182: 12   "Nate...kept wasting Agency money 
           rattling off one telegram after another."

           The telegram is a less esoteric method of 
           communication than oysters or other methods 
           in AtD but Nate is a less esoteric animal.

           The  telegram cost an average of 30 cents 
           per message in 1900 and $9.95 for 250 
           words today.  Thirty cents in 1900 is about $7.01 
           today.    $9.95 today would be about .43 in 1900.   
           It's gone up a bit even accounting for inflation 
           and of course assuming the messages 
           were of approximately equal length.

           (and now I can't find where I found that or
            what I started from)

I've got it, let's post the entire paragraph and see where (in my cyclomite 
induced haze) we're headed.

           Back in Chicago, Nate, in his own paper homeland again, 
           kept wasting Agency money rattling off one telegram 
           after another. Figuring nothing had changed, regional 
           office on the job, all serene. But now there might as well 
           be hired roughnecks with wire-cutters up on every pole 
           in the thousand miles between them, for all Nate was 
           ever going to find out from Lew anymore.

Note "Wasted", note how the message is obviously somehow being corrupted, 
clearly alternate routes of communication will ultimately be required in order 
for Lew to "Get The Message" and here comes:

           It was about then that what Lew came to 
           regard as his Shameful Habit began.

Cyclomite!

           ". . . .Being more or less cyclopropane plus dynamite, " 
           grinned the Doc, mischievously it seemed to Lew, "no 
           reason we shouldn't call it 'Cyclomite'. . . .

Which, I shall posit, in the realm of AtD contitutes yet another form of weird 
communication. The wide, weird world of Hullicinogenics, a theme to be persued 
with a great deal of vigour in AtD, make an explosive apperance here. A theme 
or meme in the novel that often is used as a mode of communication with forces 
unseen. "Mindblowing" is the ovbious metaphor, but what comes in when this sort 
of "Illumination", these---shall we be so bold as to call them visions?---enter 
the psyche?

           Terence McKenna (1946-2000) has been studying 
           the ontological foundations of Shamanism and the 
           Ethnopharmacology of spiritual transformation for 
           the past quarter century. An innovative theoretician 
           and spellbinding orator, Terence has emerged as 
           a powerful voice for the psychedelic movement and 
           the emergent societal tendency he calls The Archaic 
           Revival. Poetically dispensing enlightened social 
           criticism and new theories of the fractal dynamics of 
           time, Terence deobfuscates many aspects of the 
           visionary lexicon, and then some. As Artist Alex Grey 
           suggests, "In the twilight of human history, McKenna's 
           prescription for salvation is just so crazy it might work."

           "Hallucinatory states can be induced by a variety of 
           hallucinogens and diassociative anesthetics, and 
           by experiences like fasting and other ordeals. But 
           what makes the tryptamine family of compounds 
           especially interesting is the intensity of the 
           hallucinations and the concentration of activity in 
           the visual cortex. There is an immense vividness 
           to these interior landscapes, as if information were 
           being presented three-dimensionally and deployed 
           fourth-dimensionally, coded as light and as evolving 
           surfaces. When one confronts these dimensions 
           one becomes part of a dynamic relationship relating 
           to the experience while trying to decode what it is 
           saying. This phenomenon is not new - people have 
           been talking to gods and demons for far more of 
           human history than they have not."

http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm

I find DMT particularly interesting, but also think (as apparently does the 
author) that hallucinatory states (in general) open up our consciousness to 
other types of vision, that certain messages come through that are blocked by 
the construct of consensus reality, and that we're designed to access these 
messages.

           During a long walk together along the central 
           California coastal range one day, he said firmly, 
           "At the very least, we must enlarge the discussion
            about psychedelics." It is in response to his 
           request that I include highly speculative ideas 
           and my own personal motivations for performing 
           this research. This approach will satisfy no-one 
           in every respect. There is intense friction between 
           what we know intellectually or even intuitively, 
           and what we experience with the aid of DMT. As 
           one of our volunteers exclaimed after his first 
           high dose session, "Wow! I never expected that!" 
           Or, as Dogen, a thirteenth century Japanese 
           Buddhist teacher said, "We must always be 
           disturbed by the truth." Enthusiasts of the 
           psychedelic drug culture may dislike the 
           conclusion that DMT has no beneficial effects 
           in and of itself; rather, the context in which 
           people take them is at least as important. 
           Proponents of drug control may condemn 
           what they read as encouragement to take 
           psychedelic drugs and a glorification of the 
           DMT experience. Practitioners and 
           spokespersons of traditional religions may 
           reject the suggestion that spiritual states 
           can be accessed, and mystical information 
           gained, through drugs. Those who have 
           undergone "alien abduction," and their 
           advocates, may interpret as a challenge to 
           the "reality" of their experiences my 
           suggestion that DMT is intimately involved 
           in these events. Opponents and supporters 
           of abortion rights may find fault with my 
           proposal that pineal DMT release at 49 days 
           after conception marks the entrance of the 
           spirit into the fetus.

http://www.rickstrassman.com/

What Rick Strassman is talking about is the notion (to begin with) that we have 
a spirit, that DMT functions as a mediator (or, if you will a step-up transformer) 
between the worlds. Anyway, there's plenty more psychedelics and weird 
communications to come. For those interested in persuing psychedelic themes on 
their own, here's some spell-checked, edited and vaguely coherent resources to 
peruse:

http://tinyurl.com/37fxed

http://www.hofmann.org/science/index.html

http://www.holotropic.com/

http://www.freespiritsa.co.za/?q=node/369

http://psychedelics.com/