/lit/ - Literature

>>19356156
>sell 400 wooden processors

>>19356156
Just read the first half of True Hallucinations, borrowed it and Food of the Gods from a friend. Just finished the chapter where Dennis writes a schizo theory on sound vibrations and I honestly don't know if I got filtered or if it made 0 sense or maybe I'm just tired. I'm interested in their experiences with entities and especially their mutually experienced hallucinations and how they can interpret it at a Jungian level but some of it is extremely esoteric. Thinking of checking out The Invisible Landscape as well. What does /lit/ think of Terrence anyway?

Terence is best when he's not talking about drugs

>>19357219

True Hallucinations is one of my favorite books

Terrence and co basically went on one of the most amazing journeys a person could go on

>studying in uni, being an average beatnik etc
>hear rumors about a mythical drug in the amazon that can give you telepathy
>scour libraries and authors for info, virtually nothing about it but a few scant papers
>get your band of friends together to go hunt it down
>fly out to the amazon and start out on a multi-day journey to a place you know nothing about
>along the way eat some hallucinogenic mushrooms and have insane visions
>get caught up in the shroomy thought loops and begin to think youve unraveled mysteries of the universe
>being a person with rational leanings, start working on an experiment that you think will literally manifect your mind into the physical realm
>all this insanity culminates in a fucking insane ritual out in the middle of nowhere
>nothing happens, you go back home and write a guide to growing mushrooms that eventually leads to a psychedelic renaissance

>all this happens with your best friend - your brother

what a fucking adventure!

>>19357251
The adventure itself is unbelievably fascinating. Tomorrow morning I'm going to get a coffee and finish the book and then probably start food of the gods. I just wasn't sure if the ideas Dennis wrote in his journal about the electron spin resonance of psilocybin molecules creating some kind of auditory hallucination effect were akin to what they developed later on but even Terrence hardly understood what he was saying.

>>19356156
you cant just put that as the post you have to make a statement or ask a question or something

>>19357345

be sure to read brotherhood of the screaming abyss too. it's basically true hallucinations, but from dennis' perspective...sheds a very different light on everything that happened

>>19357342
>dont use powerful tools which allow you to deconstruct and observe the foundations of your epistemology....instead believe these fables passed down by illiterate peasants for centuries. thats where the real truth lies!
but basedface tho, amirite

>>19357376

Is Eden and Entheogens poster here?

>>19357225
>Terence is best when he's not talking about drugs
Of all the boomer psychonaut coombrains, he has a field-Carl Jung air about him when grounded by anthropological topics, per his academic focus.

Where do I find them?

Millennials: McKenna, Crowley, Lilly, Jung

Zoomers: Evola, Guenon, Spengler

I guess it is cyclical. Hippie culture became mainstream so Gen X had to become edgy nihilistic conservatives. Then Millennials had to be different from Gen X and picked up shit from their Boomer parents. Then GWB made liberalism mainstream and so Zoom Zooms had to switch to edgier, vaugely racists (and thus transgressive) versions of what Millennials had been reading 10 years ago.

Can we somehow get the next generation (Generation Alpha, right?) to read level headed centrists? Solon as their historical hero. Durant instead of Spengler, Fukayama for BAP, Aristotlean continent man for the ephemeral heights of Platonism? Only way the world gets saved.

>>19357219
Read some Terrence before doing Salvia. I saw Kerberos in heaven made of Galaxies. A three headed lion monster made of spirals and fractal depth. I think I saw the Demiurge, bros. It took me several "thousand" years of infinite expansion of my inside out nervous system beyond my horizon to Indian mathematical temple forms to see empty space expanding and then orbiting all orbits orbiting all orbits.
Coming down it was only five minutes of me staring. Became a huwhite hellenic hindu then.

>>19358900
Fuck your stodgy soccer mom tier authors. Reject Stead Embrace Schizo

>>19358900
>level headed centrists
Yeah everyone, the world needs fixing and my solution is just be vaguely nice to people and have no strong convictions or beliefs in anyone or anything

>>19358861
Where they want to be found. Likely within.
Consider that human chromosomes differ from all other mammals...
We've been created.

>>19359100
>if you don't hew to radical beliefs and reduce everything to a simplistic model that fits your ideology you have no passion and just care about getting on with others
No.

And in many ways, the ideologies of folks like Fukayama is far more than that of radicals, because the ideology is malleable and seeks to interact with the world pragmatically, as it actually is. Far Left and Far Right ideologies, can't interact with the world with the same level of drive and passion because they constantly run into contradictions so you have to retreat from the world to save the ideology. Radicalism denoted less passion for policy. It substitutes pure emotion for engagement.

>>19358919
I had a psychotic episode last year after doing 1P-LSD too frequently with a person I shouldn't have been taking it with so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do psychedelics again

>>19358900
Unlikely. People have can be almost infinitely conspiratorial when it comes to a big, overarching, organized evil, but can't fathom that the ideology they believe in might be being used pragmatically for the gain of their leaders.

Thus, people can believe that all the world's governments, from Iran to Russia, to North Korea, to Europe, all faked a COVID hoax to hurt Trump, but the idea that Based Tucker might not actually believe his own ideology, and mostly uses it as a means of mobilizing the masses for personal gain, seems impossible. The man might be from the elite, might never have worked a real job, and might benefit from the neoliberal system, but he speaks the ideology so he must be righterous. They don't get that most political leaders merely talk the talk, or that true believers tend to actually be terrible leaders because there is, in fact, no evil super elite who can be defeated once and for all, leading to endless prosperity.

You would think history would have taught people this, because there have been plenty of revolutions where the elite are put to the sword, and yet things only get worse, but it's like a strange sort.of collective amnesia grips the ideaologist.

>>19357376
>getting high is deconstructing epistemology

>>19357219
terrance is one part genuine insight, one part pure malarkey, and one part hippie bullshit. if you've got two brain cells to rub together and a grain of salt it's pretty easy to get to his good material and ignore the bad

>>19360215
What would you call Timewave Zero in that regard? (I have only read mention of it)

>>19359100
Yes, infact. If everyone followed less ideology and resort to compassion more often the world would be much better than any ideology can make it.
As >>19359284
Points out, it is hard to take things on a case by case basis. Much easier to build a structure as an ideology and refer to it.

>>19356156
why are you posting Frank Hassle on lit?

>>19360854
?

FBI asset.

>>19357376
Wow your drug use sure has provided you with such deep insight to just dismiss religion so casually!

>>19356156
Self-dribbling jeweled basketballs.

>>19357342
So, these "aliens" McKenna encountered while tripping -- were they really demons?

>not everything in hyperspace is friendly. Most of you are already aware of this; there are many reports out there of encounters with blatantly malevolent beings. But the most prevalent variety of "evil" (to use a grossly reductionist but convenient cliche) out there is the non-obvious kind, things masquerading as something much different than their true nature. In fact, I would venture to guess that most of the forms of intelligence found in hyperspace, even if not overtly malicious, are not anything like what they pretend to be, do not have your best interests in mind, and are absolutely not trustworthy. I firmly believe that the many varieties of malevolence that can be found out there go far beyond the territory of a mere "bad trip," and are distinctly different from the negative experiences one can have that come from a reflection of one's own thoughts, emotions, and environment (i.e., improper set and setting).

>The discrepancy between how these entities present themselves and what they really are is the point that I really want to emphasize the most. Perhaps all of these things happened to me because I was naively trusting and inexperienced, but I think that even the most experienced psychonaut may not be immune. If you think that you have a clear sense of what is malicious and what isn't, and that nothing out there can deceive you, then they will absolutely use that overconfidence to manipulate you.
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=62070

"Just received the original print of personalized anti-machine elf artwork done by our friend @ToeFucker! Thank you so much brother, and God bless! I can’t wait to frame this and make my wife sigh every time we have company. "

>>19361279
LIBERATE TU TEMET EX INFERIS

>>19357219
>>19357219
Basically here's what I surmise about Terence after having consumed pretty much every single existent audio file of his workshops.

1) He was an incredibly talented cultural commentator with his finger on the pulse of humanity. He was not necessarily the GREATEST at this endeavor, but he did dare to speculate on the future of humanity and of the "trajectory" of human history in ways that would open up many individuals to new lines of thought.
2) His "experiment" in True Hallucinations is pure nonsense and I'm quite sure the experience of "alien contact" he describes was simply a brief psychotic episode catalyzed by the use of a very powerful drug in a far away land removed from civilization. This belief that he had genuinely performed a supernatural act (which he rationalizes as the intelligence to whom he spoke actually having existed in the mushroom the whole time) was a belief that followed him for the rest of his life and poisoned his intellectual output. His brother Dennis talks about how near the end of his life he began to have real doubts and regrets about this particular belief and its impact on his life's work.
3) He was very intelligent, extremely well read (seriously. he read a lot of fucking books.), and had an undeniable oratory power to entertain and provoke thought, but by the same virtue had the ability to say things which evaded real logical rigor or scrutiny because by the end of whatever it was he wanted to say the crowd was often too stupefied to hold him accountable. Basically, you are right to conclude that True Hallucinations and Food of the Gods don't "make sense." They don't.

>>19361256
Chad King?

>>19357219
McKenna was a weaker book author and a stronger small group lecturer. Check out his talks on the Psychedelic Salon podcast. Much better than his books.

>>19361696
>His "experiment" in True Hallucinations is pure nonsense and I'm quite sure the experience of "alien contact" he describes was simply a brief psychotic episode catalyzed by the use of a very powerful drug in a far away land removed from civilization. This belief that he had genuinely performed a supernatural act (which he rationalizes as the intelligence to whom he spoke actually having existed in the mushroom the whole time) was a belief that followed him for the rest of his life and poisoned his intellectual output. His brother Dennis talks about how near the end of his life he began to have real doubts and regrets about this particular belief and its impact on his life's work.
This. I never realized how much McKenna's work borders on psychotic delusion. I'm somewhat annoyed at the fact that I've never heard this kind of stuff in his lectures on YouTube because before reading TH I genuinely thought that Terrence was someone who took tremendous amounts of psychedelics and never became psychotic or detached from grounded reason and as such served as a testament of the idea that "psychedelics are not dangerous like the government tells you". They are clearly more dangerous than McKenna lets on in his talks but since he decided that his brothers psychotic breakdown was some kind of miracle he doesn't categorize losing yourself completely for longer than a week as something to be cautious of.

>>19361696
In sum, like James Joyce and Martin Scorcese, he should've been a priest.

>>19361782
That being said I just bought the Invisible Landscape today and I'm hoping he will talk more about psychedelic visuals and explain some of the themes and symbols (gnomes, elves, the mushroom's voice and personality) but I'm also prepared to read about his I Ching and Timewave Zero theories.
Also, I've read some Jung but I've never touched his alchemical stuff. Should I read into that before starting the Invisible Landscape or is that not necessary?

>>19361868
Nah, not necessary.

>>19358900
>Zoomers reading Evola
Uhh you mean like %0.0005 of the population on one specific site on the internet known for contrarian behaviour?

>>19356156
Some hobo broke into his house and attacked his wife last year

>>19357376
>powerful tools which allow you to deconstruct and observe the foundations of your epistemology
Oh, yes - screaming at the person in your passenger seat all night because the car looks like it's 30 feet wide. What powerful tools.
Psychoactives are for pseuds what astrology is to 40-something, single, white suburban women.

>>19359100
Yes, that's the objectively, transcendentally correct answer. Nothing anyone has produced has ever worked better, and nothing ever will. Literally just be nice to each other and stop believing in ego-myths so strongly, and the world will be A-okay.

>>19362516
> Being nice abolished slavery

>>19362507
A Car is a powerful tool for the individual who knows how to use it.
In the wrong hands it is a 100 mph death machine however.

Etc etc

Psychedelics gave me the possibility to change my perspective in a way that should be possible without having to take mentally de-stabilising drugs

The problem is there's no function in society that will take a person who thinks the world is entirely material and allow them to realize in a visceral way that it isn't, modern society appears completely void of metaphysics and the push for psychedelics is probably indicative of our psyches need for it (metaphysics). I don't think psychedelics are the proper solution for this, at least on a cultural level

>>19363025
I don’t think everybody taking psychedelics would solve all the worlds problems true.
But I also think if they were legalized, it would be a better world to a certain extent.

>>19360250
compelling in as much as things really started going off the rails in 2012 but not as realistic as virilio's "big accident" when the real and virtual worlds switch places

>>19363044
legalizing psychedelics is an endorsement on the governments part. The only way this would really happen if their use was confined to mental-health clinics, meaning people will have to shuttled through the medical system to try them, and when they do who's to say this experience is conducive actually making a better person in the long run? The positive psychedelic after effect can and will wear off unless there are cultural systems in place to prevent that IMO

basically what im trying to say is modern culture conditions people to take on a machinistic, material, atheistic & sociopathic view of the world which cannot be corrected by a large portion of the population taking psychedelics (im pretty sure we ran this experiment in the 70s)

>>19363118
I don't disagree, but I think that simply speaks volumes on the nature of the culture of modern society and it's inhibitory nature on the potential of man; as opposed to a disparagement of psychedelics.

>>19363132
I have a lot more reasons to disparage psychedelics on an individual level than to praise them, the only problem is they are good for something. Every time you trip you're really risking everything, as in you really can lose your mind on psychedelics be it temporarily or permanently, and what do you actually gain from them? In my experience "trips" are next to useless, they are just too much for the human brain to derive anything from, the only thing I got out of them is a switch from an atheistic perspective to a more theistic one, which is invaluable to me but it's why I think they're a heavy handed solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place

Microdosing is another thing, if only we knew the long-term effects of microdoses on the brain, because I think if they have a place in peoples lives it'll be at the level of pre-hallucinary doses

if its still up on youtube, his lecture to the jung society is amazing. highly recommend

>>19363212
I'm not gonna pretend I've always used them responsibly, 5 hits of liquid in a public setting sent me out of control and got the cops called + an ambulance ride to the hospital for surfing on the hood of a cop car amongst other things.

That being said, other times I did reasonable amounts in a good setting had an invaluable effect on my mental health. From hating life and attempting suicide, to appreciating the beauty of the small things.

Not to mention a more recent (2+ years) mescaline experience that spurred me to return to college instead of wageslaving at a job I hated.

Obviously irresponsible use of them can lead to shitty situations, but the same can be said for alcohol which is perfectly legal (not to mention easily possible to OD on).

Personally, I think the freedom of the individual should not be restricted as long to the extent it does not negatively impact others.

If we collectively as a society agree that those negative features brought on by communal alcohol use are acceptable in exchange for the freedom of it's use, than the same should also be true for the freedom of personal psychedelic use, but I digress.

>>19357376
>deconstruct and observe the foundations of your epistemology

>>19357376
>foundations of your epistemology.
So did you realize that you have no foundation but Christ, the Word of God? If not then clearly your machine elf demon worship is not working.

>>19357251
>what a fucking adventure!

>>19362516
>Yes, that's the objectively, transcendentally correct answer
but also remember no transcendental truth exists, it's all made up! get in the nintendo box!

>>19363246
>>19363255
>>19363258
Funny posts!

>>19356156
>Machine Elves
>le psychedelics
This was debunked by Fr. Seraphim Rose.

>>19361279
Yes.

>>19358919
>Read some Terrence before doing Salvia. I saw Kerberos in heaven made of Galaxies. A three headed lion monster made of spirals and fractal depth. I think I saw the Demiurge, bros. It took me several "thousand" years of infinite expansion of my inside out nervous system beyond my horizon to Indian mathematical temple forms to see empty space expanding and then orbiting all orbits orbiting all orbits.
You saw a demon, anon. It is very clear. Real spiritual experience is unlike what you saw, it leads to tears from seeing your own sinfulness. Read Isaiah 6 for example, bugmen have even called it a "psychedelic vision".

>In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

>So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts.”

>>19357342
Based. Psychedelics are demonic. It has only evil fruit like insanity or fornication.

>>19363250
Based. The psychedelic user has no grounding for his belief. Only relativism and subjectivity. All experience is valid and only he is the judge of it.

>>19357345
>The adventure itself is unbelievably fascinating. Tomorrow morning I'm going to get a coffee and finish the book and then probably start food of the gods. I just wasn't sure if the ideas Dennis wrote in his journal about the electron spin resonance of psilocybin molecules creating some kind of auditory hallucination effect were akin to what they developed later on but even Terrence hardly understood what he was saying.

Yeah, now I understand why imaginations are a result of the fall and you should not indulge in them.

>>19363212
Couldn't agree more. I had the same end result. I cannot maintain an atheistic view anymore one year after I took a 'heroic' dose of shrooms. But during that year after the trip I had for the first time panic attacks, random tremblings, developed mild heart palpitations, had to go to therapy, and had generally bad thoughts (derealization, solipsism). I think advertising high dosage use without professional supervision, like McKenna and other gurus did, is highly irresponsible. Not to speak of guys like Leary whos actions basically held back research of psychedelics by decades. A lot of unnecessary damage is being done. There is too much posturing, mystification, idealization around psychedelics. Not to mention the people who treat it as something that the knowledge of gives them somekind of superiority.

>>19356156
>>19363295
Psychedelics are bad.
Instead, focus on your health. Take premium krill oil, vitamin D+K2, and etc. Health is important for understand true spirituality.

>>19363279
kek the image

>>19361267
i dismissed religion long before trying psychedelics...like a normal, rational adult

>>19362507
>t. never actually used a psychdelic

>>19363396
lel

>>19363250
cringe

I am not that well read in this topic but I found an article that some anons may find interesting: https://bigthink.com/the-present/dmt-beings/

>>19358900
exactly man we need state-mandated authors that promote level-headed and rational ideology. I hope we maintain the status quo and like um how we vibe with each other

>>19361279
thanks for posting the link anon, very interesting thread.

>>19363345
Magic mushrooms twice a year for peak mental health!

>>19364494
cringe

mushrooms are disappointing, because ultimately the beauty of the trip is a reflection of the beauty of your mind.

if you are creative, and have a deep appreciation for art, you can have a trip where you see wonderful and amazing and transcendent imagery.

your mind will be like a never ending museum, and you will be amazed at the endless artwork that seems to be created instantly and out of nowhere by your own brain.

like reading a book made of your own mind, if yours is beautiful enough, you could close your eyes to unending pages of eternally shifting new stories and patterns, that fade, dissemble, and reassemble themselves in intuitive and yet surprising ways.

and if you are dull, and boring, you are faced with a tangible portrait of your own nothingness. you will see bodies and eyes falling down and endless black pit, with darkness everywhere, and a confusing hounding sensation that something is wrong; but through your own stupidity and ineptness, you will be unable to shake what that feeling is. you will feel you have been changed in a way you can't understand, like somehow something was robbed from you, something deeply personal, and yet something you never had in the first place. then you come back to a reality, whereas before you had the faint glimpse of a hope of a delusion that there could be more, you now realize, you are too short for reality and too stupid for dreams. and you are left with the flat-soda question of, where else is left for you then?

>>19364572
It can help clear out some cobwebs by letting you view things from a more egoless perspective for a bit

>>19364572
ah yes, you took some shrooms and now you flaunt your "creativity" and "beauty". If only those empty, boring, stupid ones knew!
Surely this will last!

>>19357219
>is extremely esoteric
stupid and esoteric are not the same thing

>>19364702
i meant i took them and i didn't see anything people said you would see, just bodies falling down a hole and it made me realize i'm boring and pretty dumb relatively speaking, but i realize i didn't really convey that well in my post.

>>19365010
That's why you need a good trip setter, even if you're boring, just fixating on a book or something that is interesting to you can at least be fun

>>19365010
apologies then. With shrooms I had it go both ways. A bad trip can happen anytime, it's a dice roll, really. And one of the "revelations" during those bad trips for me was how ordinary I am. Don't be hard on yourself because what you wrote can actually prove to be handy

>>19365042
>>19365017
yeah. i dont know. shits all fucked up and its weird interacting with what i guess is your subconscious. i don't know if its ever possible to really understand the patterns and shapes of your own subconscious but i guess its interesting to try. it just certainly is disturbing when its not what you pretend to be.

and i guess you are right in that its not useless. i'll try being around other people and see if it makes a difference, i was with someone but they were asleep so it was pretty much just me, and it was pretty much just like five hours of things like images of corpses bouncing as they fell down what i guess was a well or something. and just a lot of faces and eyes where the flesh kept falling off and corpses.

>>19364892
I don't believe either of the McKenna's are stupid but I struggle to understand how they were deriving their ideas (other than psychedelic revelations/voices telling them things and them going along to see what happens). I said esoteric mainly because I'm not versed in cellular biology and the terms they were using which clearly meant something I couldn't understand whether or not it was pure fantasy.

>>19363250
>no foundation but Christ
Two people have a moral question and they come up with two different answers for it. They both say they received these answers through revelations from God. How do you resolve that disagreement and figure out who's right and who's wrong?

The Invisible Landscape just came in the mail. Reading chapter 2:
>For our purposes, abnormal behavior can be defined as behavior differing from the accepted cultural standard as a result of an inner conflict or crisis in the life of the individual, regardless of the standard of normative behavior in the society in which the life-crisis occurs.
Am I retarded or does this read as
>abnormal behavior is behavior that deviates from cultural standards, regardless of cultural standards
??? Maybe he in the first half he means behavior that deviates from the individual's personal cultural standard, not the socially established one, but the way it's written I can't tell.

>>19365677
>how they were deriving their ideas

keep in mind they were operating in a pre-information/internet age, on the tail end of the hippy generation. there was virtually no data available on the plants they were seeking and the experiences they were chasing (ayahuasca) were borderline legendary at best.

dude took mushrooms and saw his thoughts manifest in front of him in a physical, liquid form...hard to fault him for getting excited about that, even if we look in retrospect and just think "dude wtf you were just tripping"

>>19367751
I don't fault him for getting excited about it at all, I've done plenty of psychedelics myself and its those things I'm most interested in except I was hoping for an analysis of the experience itself and how he engaged with it and less about what he thought it implied toward the structure of reality. I'm interested in his time theory and other stuff he has to say metaphysically but what I really hoped for going in was a deeper study of the psychedelic realms and the possibilities within the experience. In his lectures he talks plenty about elves, gnomes and aliens and their personalities so I thought his books would expand on that but so far they haven't. I'm totally open to him referring to other dimensions and treating psychedelic entities as though they are actually autonomous beings but most of the ideas he proposes just go way too far and even if he did have some big wonders (and to his credit he seemed like he always knew he could be totally wrong) it would be great if he also wrote about what one can expect to encounter in psychedelic dimensions or document his own trips and discuss their themes and the entities he encountered.

>>19361868
Read Jung if you want to read Jung. You don't need it to follow Terence, unless you have that interest in Jungian psychology.
>>19361782
Ironically, his brother was a "real scientist," and supported him in his endeavors all his life. He must have believed a little too himself, or at least been subject to the moods and charms of Terence.
>>19364572
Stop talking nonsense.

>>19357225


DRUGS ARE ALL HE HAD; HIS TIMEWAVE ZERO THEORY WAS ERRONEOUS; MARIJUANA KILLED HIM.

>>19358900
this post reeks of resentment

>>19360271
this isn't compassionate it's straight up tyrannical to dismiss new ways to look at things. also, there are no revolutionaries on the streets dying: it isnt the 1930s

>>19357225
He was a midwit with not even a half rate mind.

god why are crossposting pedo tripfags so annoying and retarded?

>>19360271
The idea that compassion should always be the default or would be "better" is itself an ideology about how people behave.

Terrence is one of a tiny handful of interesting and relevant philosophers the 2nd half of the 20th century produced. He is best appreciated and understood by the two tail ends of the bell curve

>>19362410
this, zoomers are on tik tak and snapchatter. ive never even met anyone who has heard of evola

Just finished the chapter of invisible landscape where they propose a holographic theory of mind. I didn't expect to be this interested. Does anybody know how holographic mind theory holds today?

>>19369925
If you truly want to know, go a-looking in libraries.