People say, “Don’t you think you ought to be able to do it by yourself?” And I love this question because the answer is: You can’t do it by yourself. That’s the entire message of the last 10,000 years of human history. The self is insufficient. The ego will not suffice…you must humble yourself to the point where you admit that you can’t do it unless you have help from someone whose idea of home is a cow flop.Terence McKenna
If you haven’t seen it yet (and I am sure you have heard of it…!)
Please check out the new Invisible College PDF Magazine! Free, or if you feel so inclined; by donation!
The Site was having problems yesterday due to disc corruption problems at Bluehost, and the fact that my dedicated IP address, was down AGAIN…
Never the less, ’tis a Wizard of a Day here in Portland… Getting ready for the weekend etc.
Big changes for Rowan this last week, details later. Crossing that bridge into the adult world at a rapid clip.
Off to see friends, sell books and generally start on the next edition, dealing with Indesign etc…
Congratulations to Clark and his wife on 39 years of marriage!
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Links
Koan: Mokusen’s Hand
Dimethyltryptamine Experience Description
Four From The Tao Te Ching
Wizard of Oz illustrations for some odd reason….
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The Links:
Weird Gravity in Canada Blamed on Hefty Glaciers
Tunnel open again at Silbury hill
OxyContin’s Deception Costs Firm $634M
Armless, One-Legged Driver Leads Chase
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Mokusen’s Hand
Mokusen Hiki was living in a temple in the province of Tamba. One of his adherents complained of the stinginess of his wife.
Mokusen visited the adherent’s wife and showed her his clenched fist before her face.
“What do you mean by that?” asked the surprised woman.
“Suppose my fist were always like that. What would you call it?” he asked.
“Deformed,” replied the woman.
Then he opened his hand flat in her face and asked: “Suppose it were always like that. What then?”
“Another kind of deformity,” said the wife.
“If you understand that much,” finished Mokusen, “you are a good wife.” Then he left.
After his visit, this wife helped her husband to distribute as well as to save.
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Dimethyltryptamine Experience Description
(from the old Disembodied Eye Site….)
Well, I finally got around to trying this stuff out. The first attempt was supposed to be about 30 mg, but problems with my smoking technique (the heat chased the liquid D up the stem of the glass pipe, where it sat-while I, unaware of this predicament, torched the hell out of the bowl to little effect). I took three hits-my guess is that I got about 15 mg total. It was very difficult for me to inhale (almost as soon as it hit my lungs it made me want to cough… but it wasn’t hard holding it in when I could get it in).
Now, I’ve trained my lungs to hold in large amounts of smoke for REALLY long periods of time (I amaze my friends and small animals). Due to the fact that I have heard that D effects start in about 30 to 60 seconds, I figured that I should only hold my hits in about 10 to 15 seconds each. I found it a bit hard to be calm/calculating while dealing with vaporizing the D and trying to make sure that it didn’t all go up in smoke out of the top of the bowl. Nevertheless, I got three small hits in.
The effects at this dosage seemed very similar to 5-MeO-DMT, except more colorful. Distinct tryptamine geometric visuals, a flattening and shifting of the visual plane. Most of the time I had my eyes closed. It was a pleasant experience, but I wasn’t transported to hyperspace. The effects lasted about ten minutes. I was (again) amazed at how quickly it wore off. I now am definitely sure that I didn’t get a big enough dose on my past two 5-MeO-DMT experiments as well. I determined that I didn’t get enough this time, after seeing what remained in the stem of the pipe.
A couple of hours later I decided to have another go at it. This second time I’m pretty sure that I got about 30 mg. The first hit went fine. The second hit (pretty big) I started to cough out, but I caught my cough and only about 1/4 of the smoke got out. My eyes started watering badly. For those unfamiliar with D, yes… it does smell/taste like burning plastic. It was REALLY hard on my throat. I held this hit in pretty long, but the physical reaction (cough/scratchy throat/watering eyes), and the onset of effects caused me to hand the pipe and lighter to my wife. Almost immediately after I did this, I motioned her to give them back to me. Fuck it… I was going to make damn sure that I had as much of the D in me as I could force in. I took a third hit-again torched the bowl in my impatience (causing a little bit of D to run up the stem… but remember, I still had the extra D that wasn’t used the time before in the pipe-I had liquified it and allowed it to drip back into the bowl). I closed my eyes and lay back.
Welcome to the FUN HOUSE. Let me say that this was unlike anything that I have ever experienced on psychedelics. I was transported to a completely different place. It is very hard for me to explain what it was like, but I’ll try. I can say that everything that I have read about this experience is true, but only as an analogy. It is hard for me to even think about D as a psychedelic or entheogen. It seemed like it is more like a window to a different dimension.
What didn’t happen. I didn’t really see the “chrysanthemum.” I didn’t hear the “ripping of cellophane/membrane buzz sound.” I didn’t “see” elves (but believe me they were there!). I now think that McKenna’s word “tykes” is more appropriate (but the romantic in me likes the “elves” concept).
What did happen. It took me a while to really figure out what was going on, and what I was viewing. Actually, I still haven’t really figured it out. The best (inadequate) way that I can explain it is that I was viewing a series of rapidly changing bright green hallways. They were like square tubing with variegated medium green and lighter brighter florescent green stripes. They seemed to be about five feet square, and while at first it seemed like I was just viewing them, shifting in front of me, it later seemed like I was actually traveling down them at a really rapid rate. The feeling was similar to being a pin-ball in a pin-ball machine, or being washed down a drain through pipes at a really fast rate, with lots of twists and turns.
And then I remembered the thoughts “pay attention” and “look for the elves.” Another reason that it reminded me of a pinball machine was the sounds. HIgh speed bouncing spring noises. Then I realized that this was the elves talking. They were like excited children who had inhaled helium. I didn’t see them, but boy did I hear them. They were bouncing off the walls. They were saying “C’m here, C’m here” over and over again. Behind me, to my side, in front of me. When I focused on looking at where the voice was coming from, my vision shifted to a different green tunnel. The voices were frantic, happy, silly. At one point I felt like one of them had hit me in the chest-knocking me flat, and then happily bounced out of me again.
Then, something really weird happened. In the lower left hand corner of my vision an object appeared. THhole time I was looking at it I kept thinking “What the fuck am I looking at?” My inadequate description: It looked like a flower, sort of. It was a white/cream color. It was shaped like a clam shell-hinged like two hands placed together at the wrists. Where the fingers would be, were thin white tendrils or filaments that looked like the plumes of ostrich feathers. At first it was a closed clam shell, but as I stared at it, it opened up.
Inside were very tiny creatures. I can’t decide if they were living or mechanical, but they moved like slow insects. Visually, they looked a lot like ants, except that the three sections weren’t connected (and I think perhaps there were only two sections per bug). They were very brightly colored-blue and red… sort of like a hard enamel paint-job. They were moving in the manner of ants, except much slower. And, they were moving in space (they weren’t necessarily walking on the flower). They were sort of circling the center of the “flower” which seemed to be an antenna, or some kind of robotic stamen. The movement made me think of an assembly line, or the inner workings of a mechanical watch. The creatures reminded me a lot of the tiny human figures in some of Salvador Dali’s paintings. Hell, the whole experience reminded me of a Dali painting.
Even as I made this connection, some of them looked more human. These creatures now seemed to be flowing into a tiny tube, each of them equidistant-inside the tube, slowly moving in a blue oily liquid. At this point what I was looking at seemed very tiny, and sort of started to fade. I opened my eyes, and my room was pulsing with the strange tryptamine visual distortions (but I could tell that it was my room). I closed my eyes again, and the vision was fading fast-now everything was a dark, subdued purple. I could hear the faint voices of the elves, bouncing around still… still saying “C’m here, C’m here,” although it felt/seemed like they were saying goodbye. I opened my eyes to some mild visual distortion. 15 minutes had past. The doorbell rang-my wife and I had ordered Chinese food. My wife has been sick, so I had to go to the door and deal with the mundane details of paying the delivery guy and getting the food.
When I described what had happened to my wife, she said she wished she had been video-taping me, due to the totally insane looks that I had on my face (ah, damn… a documentary moment lost). The thing is, I was trying to convince h
er that I had been to/seen a totally different dimension/world than this one. How do you convince someone who hasn’t been there? My overall impression of this D dimension/vision was that it was very futuristic… it reminded me of computer animation. Indeed, the whole experience seems like it could be replicated through computer animation (although you would lose the feeling of astonishment, the feeling of it being REAL, and the feeling of having been there).
Needless to say, this was very exciting for me, and has consumed much of my thoughts for the past two days (did the D on the 19th). Mainly, I am just astonished. I keep thinking “What the hell was I looking at?” Certainly, this D dimension is stranger than my mind could create-well maybe not stranger, but it certainly doesn’t remind me of anything that I would think of on my own.
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Four From The Tao Te Ching….
10. Harmony
Embracing the Way, you become embraced;
Breathing gently, you become newborn;
Clearing your mind, you become clear;
Nurturing your children, you become impartial;
Opening your heart, you become accepted;
Accepting the world, you embrace the Way.
Bearing and nurturing,
Creating but not owning,
Giving without demanding,
This is harmony.
—
11. Tools
Thirty spokes meet at a nave;
Because of the hole we may use the wheel.
Clay is moulded into a vessel;
Because of the hollow we may use the cup.
Walls are built around a hearth;
Because of the doors we may use the house.
Thus tools come from what exists,
But use from what does not.
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12. Substance
Too much colour blinds the eye,
Too much music deafens the ear,
Too much taste dulls the palate,
Too much play maddens the mind,
Too much desire tears the heart.
In this manner the sage cares for people:
He provides for the belly, not for the senses;
He ignores abstraction and holds fast to substance.
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13. Self
Both praise and blame cause concern,
For they bring people hope and fear.
The object of hope and fear is the self –
For, without self, to whom may fortune and disaster occur?
Therefore,
Who distinguishes himself from the world may be given the world,
But who regards himself as the world may accept the world.
