Terence did have a committed relationship with the mushroom,even stating(probably not serious) that the mushroom is a intergalactic species who traveled across space(since the spores can survive in extreme temperature) to inhabit our planet,and spread their message through psychedelic experiences 
What do you call this? beautiful lunacy maybe 
Lol, more specifically, those were some very specific mushrooms in South America, that come from a network covering an enormous area, ingested on an seven day trip, and the mushroom entity told McKenna that our experience results from our tasting their "sexual appendage."
The Mushroom Life theory, separately, is actually pretty interesting for the reasons mentioned.
Continuing the derailment... Graham Hancock also wrote a book about DMT and shamanistic trips in which he and others interacted with 'other' entities. It is called Supernatural and definitely skews the perspective to fit his own agenda, but was an interesting read.
I actually have that one,but haven`t read it yet.Altered states and the use of psychedelic plants in different cultures is a interesting subject indeed.That you can change how you perceive reality through what you eat,fascinates me immensely.
Royce your comment makes me think of the movie Inception a little:
If a certain state altering drug/food was a daily staple in your diet, from birth especially, then you would come to see the absence of the affect and illusion, and think the affects of it reality.
Honestly, to your brain, everything is a drug; or at least, that's proven an effective analogy. But I know at some point I'm going to get into this in james' Soylent thread.
If a certain state altering drug/food was a daily staple in your diet, from birth especially, then you would come to see the absence of the affect and illusion, and think the affects of it reality.
I would think so yes Mckennas theory about psychedelic plants and its effect on the evolution of consciousness,creativity and abstract thinking does make sense to some people I guess.I don`t have enough knowledge on the subject,so I remain undecided on the issue.He mainly states that at some point in history we started to include mushrooms in our diet,where small doses increases hearing,eyesight and you are constantly horny These factors are important when you live in hunter-gatherer society.Hearing to detect danger more easily,eyesight to hit your target more often,and being horny leads to more procreation,which then stimulates growth in number.What stimulated these primitive people to suddenly become creative beings(cave arts and so on) is an interesting issue.Mckenna obviously thinks that the psychedelic mushroom stimulated this evolution on our conscioussness
It's actually not a bad hypothesis. I liked his 'paranormal' attempt at serious academic work - A for Effort. Again, like the Sheldrake thread, I think it's a more an issue of employment then status rather than refutation or even consideration.
DMT Machine Elves 
?
I'm interested in the similarities between 'trips.'
Sorry, off topic, just wanted to respond.
No reason to stay on topic, I think this is the kind of thread that benefits from digression.
I recall Sam Harris of all people talking about the similarities between the trips of different users taking DMT.
I've not really found a good source of evidence that shows this occurring. And how would you even devise a good way to test something like that?
You need cumulative evidence from as many cross-contextual analyses as possible. A matrix of interdisciplinary context.
eta:
@Royce:
Are they hallucinating while in these states,or are they actually experiencing another reality/dimension? I sure don`t have a fucking clue what is going on here
Bought that book for my kindle by the way 
I tend to lean toward the pragmatic, agnostic view - that people have the right to explore their own consciousness via drugs and that there does seem to be therapeutic benefits to ingestion of certain drugs.
A friend of mine is working on a cancer anxiety study where they give shrooms to terminally ill cancer patients. Apparently tripping on mushrooms reduces the fear of death. There's also evidence that LSD can be incredibly therapeutic, and some doctors are using ibogaine to treat heroin addiction. The latter figures prominently for the first part of Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head.
And , heh, I'm debating buying the book. Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts is a good title...and if nothing else it seems like it'd be a good horror read...
Lol. Pinchbeck.
I support the above endeavors.
Yeah,I have encountered similar examples of positive effects among certain psychedelics.Too bad they are illegal though,makes research on this subject far more difficult.Those LSD experiments in the sixties were very sucessfull against anxiety,depression etc.Are there research done today on this subject? I though the research stopped because of the illegality of the substances.
The envelope is being pushed again in many regions of the planet, Royce. There is a plethora of different substance research available from the late 20th century and now at the start of the 21st.
Obviously, there are positive and negative criticisms and the social pressures remain in flux.
