GENIUS FORUMS

Dan Rowden wrote: I never bring myself in through the back door; it's plain rude. Such a craving can never become stronger than the logical mind that perceives the nature of the craving.

My answer is that in the button scenario the Buddha is doomed, unless he changes houses. If he is held captive in a buttton house he has no chance.

The reason is as follows, the Buddha through his addiction for one year has created a mental pattern with a strong craving for the drug. When the drug is withdrawn, this craving will occur periodically with great force and seize his mind, in such circumstances the Buddha's observation/logical machinery can do pretty little except to observe this craving and try to weaken it. Now if the Buddha has to go to someplace to score, then he has enough time to let the logical mind gain the upper hand and not go all the way and perhaps return halfway. But if scoring is too easy (like the button) then the craving will get the upper hand for a sufficiently long time to keep the logical mind in abeyance, and get a hit.

This also shows why a lot of enlightened people have trouble with sex, why they cannot give it up even if they decide to.

I think you need to read some Ouspensky to answer trick questions like this.

I think you need to get a clue as to what it means to be enlightened.

maestro wrote:I think you need to read some Ouspensky to answer trick questions like this.

I've been reading with interest your exchanges with Carl G in particular about Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. I have to say that prior to my drug experiences I was heavily into both O. and G. I had read everything I could get my hands on by these two. I do believe that the personal growth this reading fostered within me enabled me in part to get by my addiction to crack cocaine on my own. Gurdjieff especially speaks of breaking routines, the cyclic patterns of behavior that can take over your life. Our human mechanism is so efficient that it makes routine behavior subconscious, such as driving a car. Your reactions are automatic - you do not consider each steadying little turn of the wheel consciously. If you did, you could not drive. It's things like accident scenes that are dangerous when you see them, because they bring those simple motor skills into consciousness as if you were first learning them.

But routine movements start to encroach on your conscious "space." They start to take over, just as unused limbs begin to ossify as you get older. Gurdjieff's teaching involved a lot of physical as well as mental exercises. The physical exercises are not to learn a new skill, but rather to break free of the "skills" with which ordinary living begins to bind you. Remember that the "/" in "mind/body" is not really there. These physical movements Gurdjieff taught were designed to shake the rust off body AND mind.

This, by the way, is ancient teaching. The specific movements may be different, but the idea is the same as Hatha Yoga. Stretch and expand.

You can easily recall the motor skills you are shoving aside when you need them. You are simply keeping yourself nimble enough to keep learning new ones. In a sense you are making room. You do not forget how to play the piano if you take up the violin, so to speak.

O. and G. are about organizing your life and putting it at your own command. You take the many "I's" and make them answerable to a central I. This is another level of consciousness. First, you have to recognize all the I's and see what they have been up to!

maestro wrote:My answer is that in the button scenario the Buddha is doomed, unless he changes houses. If he is held captive in a buttton house he has no chance.

The reason is as follows, the Buddha through his addiction for one year has created a mental pattern with a strong craving for the drug. When the drug is withdrawn, this craving will occur periodically with great force and seize his mind, in such circumstances the Buddha's observation/logical machinery can do pretty little except to observe this craving and try to weaken it. Now if the Buddha has to go to someplace to score, then he has enough time to let the logical mind gain the upper hand and not go all the way and perhaps return halfway. But if scoring is too easy (like the button) then the craving will get the upper hand for a sufficiently long time to keep the logical mind in abeyance, and get a hit.

This also shows why a lot of enlightened people have trouble with sex, why they cannot give it up even if they decide to.

I think you need to read some Ouspensky to answer trick questions like this.

Whatever one does is chosen for the experience. When one is objectively aware of what they are choosing, they have all the power they need to make what they'd view as a beneficial choice. It matters not how easy any choice may appear to be; whatever is beneficial at the time will be chosen. There will be no upper hand for cravings to seize, as all motivation will come from one source.

Kevin Solway wrote:I think that one of the most non-addictive but dangerous drugs is psychadelic mushrooms. Such mushrooms are non-addictive because they are not very pleasurable, and probably don't contain a highly addictive chemical like nicotine, but they are so extremely mind-altering that the mind may never come back from the altering. The rewiring may be permanent.

There's no such thing as "permanent."

Mushrooms are dangerous if you are not ready to take them. I am rather strongly against recreational use of psychedelics. I've known people who trip for the fun of it. These are the types of people that are not very interesting to me. It would be surprising if they were interesting to anybody. They probably were every bit as uninteresting before they began to experiment with drugs.

I'll agree that mushrooms are dangerous. So is piloting a jetliner if you don't know what you are doing. I'm not about to tell someone who is seriously seeking more and deeper understanding of reality that psychedelics should be avoided, though. Fear can be your friend before you take a psychedelic. When you have no more use for this friend, then you are ready. If you are afraid of psychedelics, it is for a reason. If you are not, then you are either ready or you are stupid. If you are stupid, if you are frivolous, then you deserve the consequences.

Kevin Solway wrote:
I think that one of the most non-addictive but dangerous drugs is psychadelic mushrooms. Such mushrooms are non-addictive because they are not very pleasurable, and probably don't contain a highly addictive chemical like nicotine, but they are so extremely mind-altering that the mind may never come back from the altering. The rewiring may be permanent.

Depends entirely on the dose.

The trouble is, you can't really tell how much you've had until you've ingested them. The psychedelic element in each mushroom can vary widely (at least with Gold Tops and Blue Meanies, as we call them here). Unless you ingest them bit by bit slowly over time, it becomes a lottery.

I once had a third of a cup of mushroom tea, thinking it would be a small enough dose to be a mild trip. Never again .....

-

David Quinn wrote:The trouble is, you can't really tell how much you've had until you've ingested them. The psychedelic element in each mushroom can vary widely (at least with Gold Tops and Blue Meanies, as we call them here). Unless you ingest them bit by bit slowly over time, it becomes a lottery.

I once had a third of a cup of mushroom tea, thinking it would be a small enough dose to be a mild trip. Never again .....

-

Don't know what Gold Tops are, but Blue Meanies sound like psilocybin of some sort. There are a lot of reliable field guides out there if you know where the little buggers are growing and you are the intrepid sort. The Audubon Society guides are the best. My own experience has been trusting people more knowledgable than I am to procure them. I've grown P. Cubensis with modest success, but you can put a lot of effort and money into it and it can go bad pretty easily unless you can provide the little darlings with a stable, ultra-sanitary environment. I have had enough problems providing myself with a stable environment, the sanitariness of which is debatable, so this is not something to which I have dedicated my life.

Did you make the tea yourself, David? You really cannot go too far wrong if you use a guide and pay attention to dosages and if you are familiar with the strain you are using. You can eyeball Cubensis, but a scale doesn't hurt.

One way to preserve psilocybin species is to get a gallon jug, cram them in fresh, and pour honey all over them up to the top of the jug and seal it tight. I have never done it, but I have seen the results after storing in the dark for a couple of years. Honey is a natural preservative. You end up with blue honey chock full of the good stuff that you can drizzle into your daintree tea and say good morning to God.

As a side note, I live near Kennet Square, PA, the mushroom capital of America. It's no wonder I am an amateur mycologist.

Hey broken you did not answer my question about nicotine and alcohol.

Kevin Solway wrote:I think that one of the most non-addictive but dangerous drugs is psychadelic mushrooms. Such mushrooms are non-addictive because they are not very pleasurable, and probably don't contain a highly addictive chemical like nicotine, but they are so extremely mind-altering that the mind may never come back from the altering. The rewiring may be permanent.

Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder

maestro wrote:To broken:
Also I know people who have quit smoking cold turkey and some who only drink on the weekends. So how did you put these two in the same category as Crack or Smack?

Thanks for reminding me, maestro.

Yes, it is possible to quit smoking cold turkey. The fact is, 99% of people who do so successfully have failed at it at least once before. The availability of cigarettes, the fact that so many other people smoke and you can get dosed by second-hand smoke, the non-criminal status of tobacco - these things all contribute to the extreme difficulty one has in quitting. Purely on a physical addiction scale, it would really be a good deal less so than coke or smack, IMO. Besides, cigarettes are not really pleasurable the first time out. There are over 1,000 additives to the average cigarette, including gunpowder. The body recognizes these as toxins much more readily than it does a clean rock of crack. So it takes a little effort for a new tobacco smoker to get addicted, which peer pressure goes a long way towards alleviating.

Remember, the rush is key. Someone addicted to the needle rush will generally not accept snorting heroin as a substitute. Or so I've been told, as I have never "put a spike into my vein." I have snorted heroin and have not gotten addicted. I liked it far too much, but the rush was not there. That is a hard lesson I learned, since I had also snorted a line or two here and there of cocaine without feeling compelled to immediately do it again. I can see people being "social" cocaine users. I cannot see people being social heroin snorters, though, because the experience is just so much better (in line with your thoughts about pleasure.) I was not prepared for the rush of inhaling cocaine. Also, I was not prepared to be able to spend just $10 for a couple big, clean rocks. What the distribution system would do is get a batch out on the street of high-quality rock, then lesser quality a week or so later. When that ran out, other dealers would swoop into the area with all bogus shit like ivory soap or moth ball chunks. They had a way of using sleight of hand to open a vial and "chip" off a flake to let you taste. Typically, this was a quality flake lodged and hidden under a thumbnail. I have to admit that even when I caught on, I was so desparate to score that I would buy it so as not to argue with three or four black guys out somewhere where the buses don't run till dawn. I would even sometimes convince myself there was a chance I wasn't getting beat. But after getting beat a number of times, I would often then go looking for another turf, where maybe a rival outfit was just unrolling the good shit. You could generally find this turf with some legwork. A good method was to let a whore strike up a conversation with you. I couldn't afford nor did I want the whore for sex, but if you just told her what you did need, she would know where to go and even take you there if you let her do a bowl with you (they all had little pipes.) They were often very sweet and might offer a BJ for a few cigarettes, which I would give them without the BJ. (The BJs were not very appealing. Somehow, broken teeth just look sharper.)

As to alcohol, I do not think it is nearly as addictive as even cigarettes. Some 90% of recovering alcoholics can resume social drinking after a few years - or even months - of abstention.

But when that ice breaks, it breaks. For me, I went through a lot of unemployed time with a lot of bad personal things occurring, and I just slipped into abuse. I was addicted to the point of getting DTs when I dried out. This was about 6 years ago. I even went through epileptic-like seizures on withdrawal.

It is a fact that alcohol is the only addictive substance from which withdrawal can kill you. I did 17 days in detox and rehab for the alcohol. After a few relapses, the tools I acquired there have helped me stay sober for over three years. It'll be four this summer.

But I used to make my own beer! It was very good, and lots of fun to do. Maybe someday when the healthy fear I have of alcohol ebbs away...

A couple of years ago, I experimented with a very powerful shamanic plant. It is by far the most intense, mind-altering, experience of my life. I woke up the next day and found myself in a hospital, strapped to the bed. I have yet to recover 100%.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/datura/datura.shtml

Don't try it!!!

brokenhead wrote: This, by the way, is ancient teaching. The specific movements may be different, but the idea is the same as Hatha Yoga. Stretch and expand.

Yes the movement center idea of Gurdjieff puts Hatha Yoga in clear context. I always had some doubts about how it fit in the whole enlightenment business.

brokenhead wrote: O. and G. are about organizing your life and putting it at your own command. You take the many "I's" and make them answerable to a central I. This is another level of consciousness. First, you have to recognize all the I's and see what they have been up to!

I think I have located O and G at a particularly opportune time, whilst I have a very precise power of internal observation fully functioning. The most interesting part of their work is the description of mental workings, which I can so easily verify and appreciate. However they may be troublesome for somebody fresh on the path, as they emphasize the absolute need for a school, and that one cannot break habits through own efforts (which I can see is not true). Plus there is a lot of nonsense mixed with the good stuff which might confuse a newbie or cause him to dismiss them as frauds.

I hear allusion to nonsense by some on this forum, and yet I do not know to what this refers. Must be to those ideas which do not fit the Eastern concept of Enlightenment, or strike the Western mind as unbelievable. I run into closed-minded prejudice all day long in the real world. What a drag to see so much of it here as well. But, to each his own. Carry on with the dry logic. It's so... practical.

For example Carl the idea that moon feeds on life on earth seems to so far fetched that it is nonsense for all practical purposes. Further the idea that knowledge is like material and can only accumulate in a few hands is also pretty unbelievable.

I do not think that humans are unconscious because the moon wants them to be, it is just our animal inheritance. Consciousness is a skill which requires work and effort to develop, and does not come naturally to humans, it is not due to the moon's malice. Further knowledge increases when shared, as the scientific pursuits and the web easily demonstrate.

brokenhead wrote:

If he was going to throw his life away on a drug, he at least could have picked heroin.

This is the key point - people aren’t throwing their lives away on drugs, they’re using them to create a life for themselves. The drug/s (whatever it may be: love, cigarettes, music, etc) forms the boundaries which give a person their existence. The drug is who they are.

maestro wrote:For example Carl the idea that moon feeds on life on earth seems to so far fetched that it is nonsense for all practical purposes. Further the idea that knowledge is like material and can only accumulate in a few hands is also pretty unbelievable.

To you.

I do not think that humans are unconscious because the moon wants them to be, it is just our animal inheritance. Consciousness is a skill which requires work and effort to develop, and does not come naturally to humans, it is not due to the moon's malice. Further knowledge increases when shared, as the scientific pursuits and the web easily demonstrate.

Thanks for your opinion.

And some interesting possibilities come to mind

Gurdjieff intentionally mixed stuff and nonsense to keep the seeker on his toes and goad him to apply the touchstone of verification and not accept everything.

These ideas were common currency in the circles from which he got his knowledge. In the same way as our ideas of atoms and electrons are, all of us take them as truth but (almost) no one has verfied those firsthand.

The world is full of liars and tricksters. They’re the mums and dads, the husbands and wives, the priests and gurus, the scientists and the religious. They constantly lie and trick themselves into believing that they’re living moral lives. And their lies are so numerous, they believe them to be 'truths'.

Gurdjieff adding more "stuff and nonsense" into people's lives is totally immoral.

maestro wrote: Gurdjieff intentionally mixed stuff and nonsense to keep the seeker on his toes and goad him to apply the touchstone of verification and not accept everything.

Everybody knows that the moon is an intense feminine symbol and also links to the world of emotions since ages. As shamans explore and breath the 'dreamworld' of the subconsciousness their symbols are reality just as a scientific concept of the moon is. As most people will never walk on the moon you'd have to admit that what something means to you, how it connects the dots inside of you, is more important than what science tells you it can or cannot do to you potentially.

Maestro wrote:I do not think that humans are unconscious because the moon wants them to be, it is just our animal inheritance.

How well do you know either of them, moon or animal inheritance? Just hearsay mostly or a glimpse in the night sky?

It all boils down to everyone confirming and going by the syntax of his mother tongue.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Everybody knows that the moon is an intense feminine symbol and also links to the world of emotions since ages. As shamans explore and breath the 'dreamworld' of the subconsciousness their symbols are reality just as a scientific concept of the moon is. As most people will never walk on the moon you'd have to admit that what something means to you, how it connects the dots inside of you, is more important than what science tells you it can or cannot do to you potentially.

Science has an advantage over feeling based shamanism, in that its views and opinions have to pass the test of coherence. That is they must correspond to something based on reality, or stand up to scrutiny.

We are talking here about getting accurate maps of the world. I am all for flights of fancy and myth and imagination, but they must be kept in their proper place.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: How well do you know either of them, moon or animal inheritance? Just hearsay mostly or a glimpse in the night sky?

Man is fundamentally an animal. Moon is a fascinating and breathtaking object in the night sky, which can fire intensely joyous and mystical states, especially on a balmy night. Does not seem to be very malicious to me.


Edit: I forgot to add the punchline. You are right I know pretty little about most things, but I am actively exploring, and in the future if I am able to observe the malicious effects of the moon myself, I would know where I can get more information from. When I say nonsense, I mean from where I am currently standing, they sound highly unlikely.

PeterL wrote:A couple of years ago, I experimented with a very powerful shamanic plant. It is by far the most intense, mind-altering, experience of my life. I woke up the next day and found myself in a hospital, strapped to the bed. I have yet to recover 100%.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/datura/datura.shtml

Don't try it!!!

Good advice! But in my case, too late. I grew Datura in my house once. When I had enough of it, I made a weak tea from it. The psychtropic effects were mild, due to the dosage, I presumed. But what I didn't like was that it blurred my visision to the point of my being effectively blind. That lasted several days and I was not sure my sight would return. It did - I was 20/15 at the time, so I was immensely relieved.

Datura and other plants in the nightshade family are to be approached with caution, if at all. Deadly Nightshade and Henbane are two examples, as I believe Belladonna is as well. Tomatoes are actually in this family!! Most of the plants have a distinct flower: they are all deeply funnel-shaped and are pretty pastel (violet, yellow) in color.

Datura and Mandrake (along with Henbane) were main ingredients in the "witches' brew" used in pagan healing and spell-casting rites in first-millenium and beyond Europe.

It is worth noting that Datura would rarely be used alone. The witches' brew consisted of a mixture of psychoactive plants as well as other ingredients, the precise combination a secret but strictly adhered to. Perhaps they would agree with you, PeterL. Their recipes were no doubt based on experience. Perhaps they would never use a "brew" that they themselves had not carefully prepared.

Sue Hindmarsh wrote:The world is full of liars and tricksters. They’re the mums and dads, the husbands and wives, the priests and gurus, the scientists and the religious. They constantly lie and trick themselves into believing that they’re living moral lives. And their lies are so numerous, they believe them to be 'truths'.

Gurdjieff adding more "stuff and nonsense" into people's lives is totally immoral.

My guess is you haven't read much Gurdjieff, Sue, and that you also haven't read that much about him and his organizations.

His goal was to get people to recognize and reject "stuff and nonsense." There was a great deal of dry humour and wit in his lectures and writings.

If you knew anything about Gurdjieff's school, you would know his chief goal was to get his students to verify things for themselves, to think. A good many of his pupils were well-to-do women who had a lot of free time, disposable cash, and not a useful thought in their bourgeois heads. Transcripts of his lectures are full of his calling these people stupid and weak, telling them to shut up and stop asking foolish questions, and all sorts of other delightful things. He made no secret of saying he needed them for their money so he could keep his teaching movement going.

There was a reason behind everything he said, whether Sue Hinmarsh gets it or not.

Hey broken where are these transcripts available. Is there any book you know.