4 ms·
20th Century, but here's a great article on Benny Shanon, perhaps the foremost researcher on DMT: https://www.waggish.org/2011/benny-shanon-the-antipodes-of-th
by optimalsolver 3y ago
20th Century, but here's a great article on Benny Shanon, perhaps the foremost researcher on DMT:
https://www.waggish.org/2011/benny-shanon-the-antipodes-of-the-mind https://www.waggish.org/2011/benny-shanon-the-antipodes-of-t...
One of the reports of his own experiences with the substance was as follows:
>Another pattern of interpreting-as is one I shall characterize as seeing the particular as generic, or rather, seeing the generic in the particular. I have experienced this on a number of occasions. The first, which for me was very striking, occurred during the daytime. It was in a village and I, intoxicated, was sitting on a small verandah overlooking the meadows. A farmer (a real one) was passing by, and I saw The Farmer, the universal prototype of all farmers. Again, as in the previous example, the standard perception and the non-ordinary one are related. After all, I saw The Farmer, not The Fisherman or The King. Yet, while normally I would have seen just a farmer, this time I saw The Farmer. While semantically linked, experientially these two perceptions are totally different. I have heard accounts of the very same phenomenon from my informants.
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I've never taken DMT, but I'm curious if people who have can report similar experiences of effectively seeing Platonic forms (or at least, believing they have).
- lonetripper 3y agoI have seen "The Warrior" while looking at myself through a mirror on shrooms I may have seen "The Garden of Eden" while sitting on a bench in a park on shrooms And for what it's worth, I have seen a Tetrahedron on DMT with my eyes closed (and it was the calmest Tetrahedron I've ever experienced)
- droopyEyelids 3y agoYes and this isnt just DMT but probably a feature of all psychedelic drugs
- sammalloy 3y agoYou don’t need to take any DMT (or any other substance for that matter) to explore and experience this subject. The interesting thing about Shanon is how he collected data about Amazonian archetypes unique to ayahuasca. Jeremy Narby and a few others followed up on this, but it is considered the very definition of fringe science and isn’t well understood. Shanon, Narby, and McKenna were convinced that there was informational content within the drug that is passed on from the ingestion of the substance to the user, akin to Neo uploading Kung Fu directly into his brain. Sadly, however, nobody has ever been able to substantiate this claim or support it with the most basic kind of evidence. But there is something to be said about culture and language and the Platonic forms that are communicated through writing. The domain of art, psychology, philosophy, mythology, religion, comparative literature, and theatre is chock full of it, and has enough material to keep you busy for five separate lifetimes. Archetypes, metaphors, symbols, and images in these disciplines are all different aspects of these so-called Platonic forms. In the theatrical arts in particular, there is a very strange body of literature surrounding the French troubadours that you may want to start with. The lore suggests that they were using poetry, music, and themes about love to spread these kinds of archetypes.
- n4r9 3y agoThis type of thing is relatively common in psychedelic trips, I believe. I've read for example about someone making love to his girlfriend while high, and it felt like he was making love to the essence of womanhood. My guess is that psychedelics brings to the surface abstractions that we normally take for granted.
- sammalloy 3y agoThat’s correct, but each substance itself also has a similar, corresponding description or form. The "essence of womanhood" is often associated with the correct dosage of Salvia, for example, with people actually hearing the voice of a woman (or goddess as it is often described). Mushrooms are often associated with the form of the teacher, while LSD seems to have a highly technological or computing form associated with it. Some people will disagree, with McKenna associating mushrooms with aliens and science fiction, but that might have more to do with his heroic dosages.
- sebmellen 3y agoI’ve always felt LSD is highly “electric”, whereas psilocybin feels almost aggressively “analog”.
- n4r9 3y agoThe interesting question in my mind is how much of that has a neurochemical basis (e.g. psilocybin especially activates brain pathways associated with learning) vs being down to priming (e.g. hearing somewhere that mushrooms will show/teach me something).
- bryanrasmussen 3y agoI've had quite a lot of this an ur-type experiences on LSD at high dosages.
- dekhn 3y agoThe worst part is when you come down and you still see the ur-form for everything for extended periods of time. Kind of like being Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces. In fact Campbell even went to a Grateful Dead show and hung out with the artists. He is exactly correct that a Dead show (now Phish shows) are Dionysian. One has to wonder if he partook: What he saw reminded him of the Dionysian festivals, palpable proof of his theory that the ancient myths and rituals he studied still echoed today. “This is more than music,” he told his audience. “It turns something on in here [the heart]. And what it turns on is life energy. This is Dionysus talking through these kids.” Campbell's understanding of Dionysus was far deeper and more nuanced than the popular caricature of the happy, wine-soaked god, but his point was not to rehabilitate that older understanding. “It doesn't matter what the name of the god is, or whether it's a rock group or a clergy,” he concluded. “It's somehow hitting that chord of realization of the unity of God in you all.”
- pazimzadeh 3y agoI've definitely had something like this happen. It's interesting because psychedelics also dissolve boundaries in many ways, so it's surprising that people don't have more Ship of Theseus-type thoughts.