feeding the psychedelic database

[rich]

one of the things I respect the Navajo and such is for their peyote
rituals. You have to respect a culture that encourages looking beyond
itself.  Personally, I was a bit freaked by psychedelics and I knew
intuitively that it wasnt for me (talking mostly mescaline here) though I
dont regret taking it.

I wonder if Pynchon's drug use has declined, he's become a bit more harsh
on the counter-culture for losing its way, thus more focused and clear in
later books on not getting lost via paranoia's labyrinths but more explicit
about power and its abuses

rich

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 8:21 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Agreed, but it seems like there is a need for some guidance, as in
> cultures that have incorporated these substances as tools of
> transformation.
>
> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 6:41 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I wholeheartedly concur.
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Coming on, like a big wave, the mind and emotions suddenly drawn up into
>>> intense motion, the body strains in that strange stillness where incoming
>>> waters and outgoing waters raise a huge wild  form within that must, a
>>> swirl of energy that has to,  simply must break apart, take  its inevitable
>>> direction and move toward some now unimaginable shore.
>>>
>>>  1969 riding in Roger Ashodian's econoline with Benjy Burenstein headed
>>> to the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, first LSD trip,  first happy, then
>>> too happy, frighteningly happy, then Benjy starts shooting sparking  purple
>>> light out of his eyes which is clearly the most amazing trick ever
>>> performed and funny that he has kept this hidden talent to himself.  We
>>> come after a long crazy night to a sea of people swarming at the edge of a
>>> larger sea of people. I jump crazily off the roof of the van and dive in,
>>> soon impossibly lost from my friends. 2 days later, Sunday morning, I have
>>> parted company with a young woman and gone to stand in line for a
>>> portapotty. I  have an urge to turn around and so does Benjy at the same
>>> moment and we are face to face in a crowd of half a million.
>>>
>>> That same Sunday  night a smaller dose. I meet a woman next to where we
>>> are watching Country Joe.  Later that evening I ask her if I can wrap my
>>> blanket  around both of us and hold her and be warm in the chill air while
>>> we listen. She agrees and as the evening unfolds, my arms around her I am
>>> calmly, deeply happy just to be there drenched in music with someone to
>>> hold. I realize that love is not what I thought, not something you find, or
>>> get, or win or extort or seduce. That it must and can come from me. That I
>>> can love, and that this truth has entered my soul is what stuns.
>>> Everything I have ever learned is contained in that moment of amazement.
>>>
>>>
>>> I am on the downside of a mescaline trip with a friendly, crazy guy I
>>> just met named Forest and we are headed for the Sierras and a place where
>>> the Stanislaus River carves a huge hole through part of a mountain side.  I
>>> begin to use similes to be able to say and think satisfying sentences,
>>> Before that moment this would have been limited to attempts at  fiction for
>>> school or to cliches. I begin to perceive in a revelation that will
>>> continue to unfold for years the metaphoric nature of language and the
>>> freedom that comes with using it playfully, of pondering its structures,
>>> its origins, its limits, versatility, nuance.I feel like flipper, doing
>>> double flips in a sea of words.  The world has been permanently changed,
>>> come more alive,  more ephemeral, more luminous, the language of the
>>> universe, once dense and impenetrable seems to glance warmly,at times lean
>>> close and kiss like an eager lover.
>>>
>>> Many trips. the face of the Buddah composed of stars, feeling in my own
>>> blood the poisons we emit on an industrial scale,  a california condor
>>> sunning himself in the morning light over the southern sierras, telepathy
>>> for weeks, possessed by Pan, pink light over jade mountains, filling the
>>> streets of SanFrancisco to say no to Vietnam, learning to play flutes and
>>> whistles.  And finally a couple years later a sense that the medicine has
>>> done what it can.
>>>
>>> 30 years pass with only coffee and the occasional sip of communion wine.
>>> Post education, post theology, I come to realize that my art, my sense of
>>> the divine, my relationship with language, my marriage have all been hugely
>>> shaped by etheogens.  I have realized that certain inner transformations
>>> take many years to unfold, and that the role of something that has been
>>> labeled dangerous, and unreal has been almost entirely enriching for me. I
>>> am thankful for these substances and for anything that leads humans to the
>>> terrifying and  transforming power of love.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  I believe making such substances illegal even for research was damaging
>>> to  science, medicine, psychology, law enforcement, and possibly even human
>>> evolution.  As far as I can see this has nothing to do with limiting  self
>>> destructive addiction but an attempt to limit the range of experience,
>>> exploration, and healing practices available to the human family. These are
>>> very different from addictive drugs. For many people once is enough whether
>>> it is a time of positive transformation of just freaky oddness or terror.
>>> But there is a kid of natural limit to using them lightly.  It also really
>>> creeps me out that all countries have criminalized what is clearly a
>>> practice dating from the earliest human records.  -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> www.innergroovemusic.com
>
>
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