Here from Northeast US

[Friend2All]

I have a 20 year off-and-on interest in entheogens -- along with a VERY keen, 50 year practice of various meditation endeavors. I have no experience yet with 5, although I possess some synthetic. My immediate interest is freebase/salt conversions and storage issues. I look forward to being a constructive contributor and member.

[Rising Spirit]

Greetings and salutations, Friend2All.  Welcome to the Hive.  Can you share a little bit more about your meditative practices?  I too, have had a keen interest in sitting and moving meditation.  My path began in 1974 with Seon Buddhist meditation (Korean Zen) but I found TM more practical for my teenage sensibilities.  It isn't the easiest route, embracing the shimmering emptiness of the Void, when post adolescence is stirring one's restless mind.  I found that mantra repetition and pranayama offered some structure and guidance, much needed during my turbulent youth.


When I was introduced to cannabis and later on, LSD-25...  my training in meditation took deeper root.  As I first experienced Kundalini activation, way back in 1978, I was drawn to Kriya Yoga, as taught by Swami Paramahamsa Yogananda.  Autobiography of A Yogi opened new doors for me and answered a great many questions that had been developing within my neophytic mind.  I joined the Self Realization Fellowship and took the lessons.  I personally find religious organizations rather stiffling and so, as the years turned into decades, I moved from one lineage to another.  None of them, however, offered the direct experience that psychedelics did.  That said, training the breathe and learning to access higher fields of cognition are invaluable for the intrepid psychonaut. So in my own case, the two paths are most symbiotic.  Please share something about your meditation practices and how entheogens have influenced your understanding and your spiritual growth.  Namaskar. 

[Friend2All]

Great to hear from you Rising Spirit! We likely have had similar trajectories on these issues: I first learned TM in 1972.


My practice is a "no-practice" in the sense that "I" attempt only to see ever more clearly that in actual experience there is "not two" (i.e., not a subject and object; not a "me" and everything else). It's a tough game, lol. I have had 3 very distinctive "kensho" experiences in this (one of which was in 1973, after doing TM for about a year). I'd like to see if 5 can help me push the envelope a bit -- even though I know through direct experience that there is no "me" and there's nothing to "push."


Among contemporary people discussing these issues I've found several who note initial help from Jean Reno to have substantial things to say: Rupert Spira, Francis Lucille, and Stefan Bodian are some. Like you, I'm very wary and resistant toward "teachers" and formal structures of training. No one can do this for us, and depending on some "all knowing" other person to say exactly what you need to hear exactly when you need it seems..."over wishful." And so I've struggled on. I also once had a knock-your-socks-off experience simply by reading some work by Douglas Harding.


I also have some ambivalence regarding experiences from others regarding entheogens. Many have clearly seen what's to be seen over and over again -- yet most I've heard from seem to have ended up being "tourists" rather than "Buddhas." Apparently, just seeing it is not enough. I'm hoping that I've laid a groundwork over fifty years such that "seeing it" will be a broader experience than it has seemed to be for others using enthoegens...


Finally, there is the issue of safety and purity of product: no small issue. I'd like to learn more about direct synthesis on one's own. Supposedly, there is a new method which produces a succinyl salt which generates a 99+% yield of the salt, with relatively straightforward and easy to acquire precursors. I'm always on the lookout for any information in that vein.


Best wishes to you Rising Spirit!

[Rising Spirit]

Great to hear from you Rising Spirit! We likely have had similar trajectories on these issues: I first learned TM in 1972.

I  believe that it was 1974 when I picked up the Maharishi's book, The Science of Being and Art of Living.  Yes, that summer.  I had been training in Korean martial arts and meditation was a requirement.  My difficulty with Seon Buddhist sitting meditation, had been my underdeveloped capacity to hold singles-pointed attention upon an insubstantial, undifferentiated void.  Go figure.  Quite the ironic quest, eh?  Picture my 15 year old mind churning with adolescent fervour, determined to think about non-thought.  To conceptualize about something beyond concept.  Emptiness was an opposite mirror for me in those days.  I certainly didn't grok it at all nor identify with no-self as my epicentrical core identity.  It was like a mysterious shadow and I sought the light.

Naturally, I was caught up in dualistic notions and grasped for a methodology to occuoy my jumpy focus, I sought a more engaging practice of meditation.  Granted, years later I would delight in the mystery of Zazen but I needed a tangible system and TM was so valuable to me then.  Money mongerers?  Ultimately, it was through my early, ego shattering  experiences with LSD-25, mushrooms and mescaline, that the fruit of deep meditation was fully activated within me and my journey accelerated beyond navigating through layers and layers of contemplative paradigmns, spinning through out the labyrinth of my mind.

My first half dozen or so (technically, absent of any sense of separate self) Samadhi experiences, predated my knowledge of astral projection, breathlessness, mystical rapture, kundalini or even the chakras.  The following decades I meandered from Kriya Yoga, to Surat Shabd Yoga, to Suffism, to Natuve American shamanism, and eventually to Zen & Taoism.  At some point there was no longer any separation between the road and the destination.. All paths lead to the Source centered deep within this eternal moment.  How has your meditation practice evolved over these many decades?  What is the form or lineage of your current path?   

My practice is a "no-practice" in the sense that "I" attempt only to see ever more clearly that in actual experience there is "not two" (i.e., not a subject and object; not a "me" and everything else). It's a tough game, lol. I have had 3 very distinctive "kensho" experiences in this (one of which was in 1973, after doing TM for about a year). I'd like to see if 5 can help me push the envelope a bit -- even though I know through direct experience that there is no "me" and there's nothing to "push."

I too feel spiritually drawn towards the pathless path, the methodless method...  the way of no-way.  From my perspective, as a relative neophyte with the 5 molecule, nothing can nor ever could prepare the pilgrim for the immense degree of ego-erasure and sudden dissipation of any subject/object dichotomy.  That said, what you are conveying clearly shows quite an aptitude for being able to shift your perception to greater, far subtler fields of consciousness, to have cultivated a silence within and attained a lovely un-attainment within the clarity of a deep, steady focus.   Perfect tools to surrender oneslf into the blinding white brilliance of sheerest oblivion.  5-MeO-DMT is a wholly non dual epiphany had by no one.  Ergo, it is def a paradox and then some!  Or rather, perhaps the epiphany only registers in the post eclipsing phase, upon re-entry into sober mortal duality?  I believe that such is the case in regards to the voyage .   

I also have some ambivalence regarding experiences from others regarding entheogens. Many have clearly seen what's to be seen over and over again -- yet most I've heard from seem to have ended up being "tourists" rather than "Buddhas." Apparently, just seeing it is not enough. I'm hoping that I've laid a groundwork over fifty years such that "seeing it" will be a broader experience than it has seemed to be for others using enthoegens.... 

Fair enough.  My encounters are limited to an even dozen journeys and while my credo has always been, "less is more" I may embark further, I may not.  As long as I am invited by the sacrament, my heart is honestly still eager for the communion.  Could you share with us which entheogens you have experienced and how they impacted your sadhana?  Namaskar, my dear soul reflection.