Experience in the Face of Impermanence.

This powerful clip from Blade Runner begs the question, does human experience really mean much in the face of impermanence?

If all the universe will one day be sucked into a black hole will even the grand achievements in humanity's future amount to anything in the mind of eternity?

All we really have is the power of infinity within the present moment.  Experience shared between peoples, even if it doesn't last, holds something tangible that exists in stark contrast to the endless emptiness of time.

Big Ol' Page on Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin

Alexander Shulgin creator of thousands of psychedelic compounds which he compiled in his opuses, PiKHal and TikHAL, is an interesting man to say the least.  He also rediscovered MDMA and popularized its use for psychotherapy leading to it later becoming a popular club drug.  He was truly a visionary and an evolutionary agent for our species.

                                                           young Shulgin in the lab

I have personally tried a few of his novel psychedelic compounds and they are unbelievable to say the least.  It is amazing to think that a man created these substances on purpose. My personal favorites...

4-ACO-DMT
-Similar to psilocybin mushrooms with alot of personal insight and pure absurd fun.  Has a 3 hour peak compared to mushrooms' almost instantaneous peak.  Visuals reminiscent of DMT.

2-CE
-UNBELIEVABLY visual.  The sky was a morphing visualizer, my posters came off the walls and conversed with me, I could see individual bugs upon all the individual blades of grass in my lawn, with eyes closed felt like I was riding a train through alien beings' living rooms, they were not pleased.  Also with eyes closed felt like I was experiencing periods of evolution from the past.(becoming a slug, gorilla, etc.)  Has to be experienced to be understood, changed my life.

Here are some collections of interviews with Sasha Shulgin and sometimes, his wife Anne, on a range of topics.

Shulgin 1995 in LA Times on Psychedelics, Government Interference and his life

Vice Magazine visits Aging Shulgin's House, listens to him Rant

Shulgin, YouTube, "Why I Discover Psychedelic Substances"

and my personal favorite...

Terence McKenna and Sasha Shulgin walk and Converse

MMMMM.....new psychedelics

The Final Frontier

During the 1950's and 60's Outer Space was being heralded as the final frontier for man to conquer.

We had emerged out of the trees and onto the grasslands.

We had left the grasslands of Africa for lands unknown.

We had built sea-sailing vessels to cross the great oceans.

And we had mastered aeronautics and created airplanes, blimps, and helicopters.

The next logical step was outside of our planet's atmosphere and into the great black abyss.

Baby steps were made, we landed on the moon and sent out hundreds of probes.

But, unlike all other arenas of human technology, space exploration did not have an explosive acceleration, but rather, withered and came to a virtual halt.  Why was this?

Some say it was lack of competition with the Russians, or, impossibly large budgets.  My bet was that the engineers and scientists along with the upper echelons of American government realized that Space travel had little to offer present day man.  The ships and programs were prohibitively expensive and the programs themselves seemed to produce little of scientific or material value.  A combination of these drawbacks caused man to withdraw his full effort from space.  Technology and resources went towards communications(The Internet, TV, music) and to an ever more powerful military technologies.  Leaving man without an [obvious] frontier.

The hidden frontier is within our own minds.  The same hyperspatial reality that was plumbed by Shamans, medicine men, and mystics throughout history.  It can be accessed with meditation, yoga, breathing, and any number of hallucinogenic substances.  Isn't it strange that the very government that was so for Space Travel is against this other alien frontier?
     In Space Travel they saw possible material gain and strategic military advantages.  The only treasures that one can plunder from the interior of the mind are new ideas or modes of being.  These are of no interest to those who hold our material lives in check.  This is why they have begun an inquisition and repression of the exploration of this new interior frontier.

Good luck psychonauts.

Personal Time vs. Social Time

If time is classified as thought moving through space then when all thought stops so does time.  The world's technology proceeds in an effort to quicken the pace at which people can think.  We don't have any notion of what this acceleration of thinking is leading us towards except more thinking.  I believe once technology is integrated into life fully enough to become enmeshed in the experience then we will begin to live outside of time.  Living outside of time lends a sort of simultaneity to all one's actions as every action can be seen to really be occurring in the ever existing present.  When time relates to the individual and their relationship with reality rather than the individual's relationship with human society we will have an enlightened society of individualists rather than a mindless cattle herd.

Humanity's Teen Angst

The greatest is within the smallest.
-Lao Tzu
Mankind's history seems to mirror the personal development of one single man.  When we were hunter gatherers we existed with vast potentiality and a love for all that surrounded us in nature.  The heavily engrained ego self-images of man we call religion and philosophy still paled in comparison to the vast raw spiritual experience man found himself taking part in.  In these early years man was close to his mother(the earth) and tried his best to act in accordance with her wishes.  As time went on man began to feel that he was more important than the earth he sprang from and cities, agriculture, and organized religion arrived to place man in a state of  circuitous self-reference that excluded his relationship with nature and the earth.  Much like the young child who has just learned how to speak and believes he knows everything.  Recently, just like a rebellious teen gravitates to beer and cigarettes humans have begun to poison their collective body, the earth, in an effort to reach some unforeseen future.  We have even made a prodigal journey to the moon believing that our mission was to leave the earth.  Like a teen who leaves home only to sadly trod back in the door days later.  More and more, we are feeling that all these self-driven strivings for dominance and independence from the natural matrix are ill-begotten.  Humans are beginning to see that our destiny originates from the past as much as it echoes from the future.  We cannot escape our origins, we must rather, build a new foundation upon what we always were with what we have learned in the millennia of civilization.

Why change the outside when you can change yourself?

    In today's world of rapidly expanding industrial infrastructure it has become hard to discern what all this progress really accomplishes for humanity as a whole.  People often say technology helps us live easier and more fulfilling lives, but, evidence exists that gives credence to the idea that the technological demiurge actually mitigates our ability to live rewarding lives.  Obesity and technological addiction represent only two of the facets of modernity that seem anything but progressive.  People have given up their inherent rights to enjoy their bodies alongside their minds when they become sedentary obese consumers.  Much of the technology that we believe extends our human capabilities actually makes us into machines where our only self-directed activities have become pushing buttons or other input devices upon the computers we love so deeply.  Along with these negative externalities we place upon ourselves there also exists the obvious stress technology and industry places upon the environment.
    Modern agricultural man has always tried to adapt the environment to his own devices when all other humans have adapted their culture and mind to the environment they found themselves in.  Humans have adapted to different ecosystems and niches across the globe throughout our long history.  Humans live full lives in the Arctic Tundra, the Amazonian Rainforest, and the Arizona desert, among many other places. Why do westerners and their capital system demand that a given area be adapted to suit the needs of their monolithic culture?
   I personally believe that this method of attempting to control the environment will continue to wane in the years to come.  Environmental awareness and global activism represent just two aspects of this rising trend.  Now what will the system of environmental degradation give way to?  A 1960's like return to nature and abandonment of technology? No, I believe that the object of our transformative technology will cease being the outside environment and will begin focusing upon our own physical vessels, our bodies.  Why adapt the outside world to our minds and bodily tastes when we can use man's inherent mental adaptability coupled with our new found technology to transform ourselves so we may fit into any ecological niche, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, that we wish.  Nanotechnology, genetics, computer brains, all these frontier technologies would allow man to adapt his self to any role he saw fit.  As technology advances we may even become so amorphous that we are able to change both our thought patterns and body structures at will.
  An example application of this idea would be to create photosynthetic men that require only sunlight and water rather than solid animal food.  This would quickly solve our population and hunger problem.  Let us hope that man realizes the futility in attempting to control the chaos outside him and begins to turn his need for adaptation inward, upon himself.