Author: Steve Beale

Vital Zine #5 featuring observations from my studies and recent happenings in the space

The next stage of human consciousness is calling. Are we brave enough to answer?

Dr David Luke is the most intrepid researcher of the psychedelic renaissance – ‘the real new psychonaut’. Straight out of London but living “on the edge… of Sussex” his inspirational investigations include DMT space exploration, the psychedelic divine feminine, biophilia (tree hugging) and psionic powers – often conducted “in the field”.

David Luke dropped out of lecturing to study shamanism, and returned to Britain with consciousness expanded. Since he’s been at the vanguard of the psychedelic renaissance, consistently leading by example. Senior lecturer at all the best universities, co-founder of Breaking Convention, and director of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics which sounds incredible, he is a global figure in the transpersonal psychology movement. And he spoke to Vital students about it.

In the Zine this week:

Approach: Transpersonal psychology is back and this time it’s real

Therapy: The Psychedelic Divine Feminine

Space: Field Research

Medical: DMT Vs Death

Integral: Alchemy for the People

Plus! Graph/Visual Aid of the Week and second hand books

Transpersonal psychology is back and this time it’s real

In the 1980s transpersonal psychology staple and Way of the Psychonaut author Stanislav Grof found himself inventing holotropic breathwork out of necessity after LSD faded from grace.

Reflecting courageously on the flaws of transpersonal psychology, where science meets the super-normal, he nonetheless pointed out that the approach showed enormous potential for a range of treatment resistant diseases. And that it could be applied to other fields: like ecology, business, social work, maybe even medicine itself again someday.

“The psychology of transformative experience” is how Dr Luke describes ‘transpersonal psychology’. Back in polite conversation thanks to Iain McGilchrist’s philosophy blockbuster The Matter with Things it’s the shrinks’ most progressive field, big in the 60s at Esalen and back with a vengeance thanks to everyone from ecologists to talk therapy refuseniks and engineers of the zero-point field, to pharma giants and governments with nationalised healthcare and their eyes on psychedelics’ potential to cure disease and reboot productivity. 

“The only revolution that can work… is the inner transformation of every human being”

The transpersonal are “moments that evolve your current ego identity… by stepping outside normal consciousness to connection with a wider other,” explains Dr Luke. You’re in the realm of the transpersonal when you’re feeling warm and clear after meditating or making it to church: plus when acknowledging childhood trauma, or during a full revelatory, inner-visual spiritual experience… or being abducted by aliens, having a spontaneous DMT exprience, astral projecting, arguably dreaming and so on.

The discipline is “ethnogenic, cognicentric and pragmacentric” meaning entirely inclusive and accepting of other modes of consciousness. It evolved throughout the 20th century from William James’ ‘radical empiricism’ – scientific testing for the mysterious and hitherto unknown – to include Burke’s ‘cosmic consciousness’, Jung and Maslow’s pining for the mystic, and ‘post religious’ belief systems like Ken Wilbur’s integral.

You still have to do the graft though. “The only revolution that can work… is the inner transformation of every human being,” said Grof, and transpersonal psychology includes a faith in humanity’s ability to evolve not only physically but mentally, spiritually… and psionically. 

“The mycelium is the message” grins Dr Luke, “other societies have sanctioned altered states, while ours refuses their existence.”

Don’t confuse transpersonal psychology with quantuum psychology.

Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine

Dr Luke’s diverse body of work includes goddess energy. And not just the kind that cooks.

He co-edited of Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine: Creativity, Ecstasy, and Healing. To co-editor Maria Papaspyrou the psychdelic feminine represents self-expression, spontaneity, intuition, inclination towards change, mindfulness, connection, and acceptance. It isn’t gender-specific but archetypal: “the feminine is an elemental pattern we all carry within ourselves, whether we are men or women,” says Papaspyrou.

She cites Gareth Hill, a Jungian analyst who divided the feminine into ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ aspects. Static “serves the impersonal goals of life on Earth, species preservation and survival.” The dynamic “receives her wisdom by engaging with direct experience, and is receptive to knowledge that belongs to the deep inner worlds”.

“The realms beyond that space belong to the feminine, and there we meet what is beyond words”

It is the dynamic in particular that we deny at our disservice and peril: “The dynamic feminine represents spaces that can be fascinating and ecstatic as well as terrifying and disorienting, that as a society we have learned to resist.” This is represented in myth by tantric goddess Kali who tramples men that gaze ecstatically up at her as a result, as she finally frees from the constraints of ego. We’ve all been there chaps.

The feminine is psychedelic in that it encompasses concepts like cosmic union, timelessness, rebirth, and ego death. “The realms beyond that space belong to the feminine, and there we meet what is beyond words and immediate perception,” says Papaspyrou. Never mind that many sectors of the psychedelic renaissance are, or will, be served by women from social work to psychotherapy and luxury tourism.

Out in the Field

“What can the medical sector learn from the psychedelic subcultre? Everything.”

“It’s citizen science at its finest – but tragically illegal,” further replied Dr. Luke to my question.

‘Field research’ is his term for the surveys and private research projects he’s conducted on the fringes of everyday reality.

“I’ve invented ‘psychograms’ to represent all sorts of altered states. I have about four art-stroke-science virtual reality projects on the go right now rangng from inducing synaesthesic meditation to interplanetary inter-connectedness and the tarot,” says Dr Luke, “It’s the inverse – you alter your perception to change your brain, rather than alter your brain to change your perception. We have things like that at the festivals, they supposedly replicate the effects psychedelics… at least on paper according to the tests. I slightly don’t believe it, but there is massive potential.”

While keen to stress that “psychedelics are not a panacea” like all authentic experts, extensive surveys conducted by Dr Luke and his team “show that they can be good for all kinds of things actually, from autism to Parkinson’s.”

“This is the intersection of science, and genuine transcendence of time/space to bring back information”

In the suburban living rooms of Britain something stirs. “We go round to people’s houses, it’s much more pleasant for the subjects. We did some experiments with precognitive individuals, and put shared experiences declared by ayahuasca users under the microscope: two people, experienced users who didn’t know each other, weren’t allowed to talk beforehand, attempted to join each other in the experience, and were interviewed separately afterwards. I haven’t fully evaluated the data as indepenent judges are interpeting the reports and images. But just eyeballing the material, I thought it was a long shot but… it looks like we’re going to get something quite significant. Albert Hoffman saw the doctor coming with an obsidian knife and feathered headdress. He knew where the provenance; his colleagues in Basle had similar visions, but no idea of any connection to Mexico or the Inca.”

This is the intersection of science, “and genuine transcendence of time and space to bring back information,” declares Dr Luke, “I’ve been looking into creative problem solving with scientists in DMT, bridging the gap betwen shamanism and science. It speaks to the very nature of reality, the meeting point between worldviews. And nobody’s asking these questions. They’re asking ‘What does it do in the brain?’ questions. And they’re getting ‘What it does in the brain’ kind of answers. They don’t engage with the glaring ontological questions about the nature of reality.”

He believes the obvious experts to turn to, like many actually do, are the DMT explorers of the Amazon. “Collectively as a culture they have thousands of years of expertise They were the original keeps of the wisdom and the substances. They haven’t been invited to the table at these multi billion dollar conferences.”

DMT Vs Death

Is DMT space the afterlife, and do we go there when we die… to be an entity?

According to a recent paper by proper brainbox Dr Christopher Timmerman, DMT replicates the near death experience (NDE).

Judging by his own enthusiastic research “the truth is “going to be more complex,” says Dr Luke, who has studied more than one shamanistic tradition first hand in detail. “There are features of the DMT experience you don’t get with NDE. Intense geometric patterns and colours for example, which are fundamental. Encounters with deceased relatives, and premonition [predicting the future] are less common in DMT. But 4-5% of people who take DMT have a ‘deceased encounter’ – but no ‘life review’ or ‘tunnel’. Then there are the encounters with little people that have been around for a long time. Graham Hancock made a direct comparison to modern-day alien abduction experiences. Although traditionally they were associated with the world of the dead. There’s many layers – the two not the same, I would say. They may be related. DMT may be ‘released’ at death. It may be created in the pineal gland. But we don’t have enough hard evidence.”

There are many other hypotheses: “I have colleagues who believe DMT entities are ‘intro-ceptive.’ You’re encountering your own micro-biome, mitochondria or other internal structures. Interesting theory, but it doesn’t account for the 25 -foot tall preying mantises.”

DMT is prevalent at much higher levels in the human body than previously believed. Maybe to the same extent as serotonin, to which it is increasingly compared

So should we, like our mate says, avoid taking DMT in case it uses up all our death high, and our eventual moment momet of union with cosmic whole is, like, a dud? According to hardcore research where scientsists monitored the brain activity in rats while they died, DMT is produced at six times the normal level at the moment of extermination. But other chemicals, including serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine are blasted at many more times the normal levels.

“There’s very good reasons to think DMT is produced in the human pineal gland,” says Dr Luke, “but it could be made in the body.” In 2019 a heavyweight paper from the DMT Quest organisation concluded DMT is prevalent at much higher levels in the human body than previously believed; even to the same extent as serotonin, to which it is increasingly compared. The pineal gland is tiny, points out Dr Luke, and said expirements on rats were also conducted on another set of rats who’d had their pineal glands removed. DMT was still produced at large quantities upon death.

While we’re asking questions like ‘are entities real?’ in the pub, more ambitious brains are looking into the relationship between the pineal gland, DMT and autism (upon which Dr Luke has conducted surveys suggesting “extremely promsing data”) while dudes like Andrew Gilmore and Anton Bilton are talking about setitng up a DMT hyperspace station for extended exploration and communion.

Alchemy for the People

Stanislav Grof said “It would be nice to see people be able to go for hikes, or go swimming.” Albert Hoffman insisted LSD was experienced in the wild.

“I used to go surfing, I’m a big fan of watersports on psychedelics,” giggles Dr Luke, “A lot of the outdoor-wilderness extreme sports have gone hand in hand with psychedelic culture.” James Oroc was the Burning Man face and 5-MEO author better known to extreme sports fans as paraglider ‘Kiwi’ Johnston, who passed away doing what he loved in 2020.

“Ecologists in Europe have druids involved, which is my fault,”

Morphic resonance – relating to the consciousness of others, said to be a skill of shipibo ayahuasca healers – is strong in ceremonial groups. “Will I ever be able to conuct forest therapy with a hundred, maybe ten thousand people?” dreamed aloud one Vital student in the Q&A. “Ecologists in Europe have druids involved, which is my fault,” was all Dr Luke could unfortunately offer, with acceptance on that scale being so far away.

Although what with MDMA apparently being a psychedelic now, we’ve been in ceremony outdoors, admittedly with the drumming updated, for a while now. Here’s to James Oroc and all the rave ancestors.

Kool-Aid Corner

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph/visual aid of the Week

Comparison of entopic phenomena with the cave art of the San, the Coso and of Upper Paleolithic Europe

After Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1988

From: Visionary: The Mysterious Origins of Human Consciousness (The Definitive Edition of Supernatural) (2022) by Graham Hancock

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only

This week: The Secret of the Yamas by that John McAfee

Before he invented anti-virus software and became a tech billionaire John McAfee was a meditation teacher. He wrote this book, considered a classic amongst aficionados.

Eventually there was the whole thing in Belize. The abyss claims another: “Arrakis has seen men like you come, and go.” Non-duality is not necessarily peaceful. The anima works in notoriously, poetically mysterious ways.

Next issue: Contemporary Philosophy of Psychedelics

This blog is not affiliated to Vital beyond my study on the course. The content shouldn’t be taken as representative as it’s a personal reflection and includes my own lived experience of the sector too.

Psychedelic drugs are prohibited in the UK, other countries and most US states. I do not condone their use nor am I evangelising for, or recommending them to you. There are more qualified people you can turn to in the Resources section but if you are considering psychedelic treatments the best person to speak to is probably your own therapist, counsellor, or doctor.

Issue #4: My weekly unofficial Vital Student Zine features observations from the course and beyond

Dr Bill Richards is a staple of the modern-day mystery school researching psychedelics. He’s worked alongside Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Walter Pahnke and more. Now installed at the John Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, he passed trade secrets on to Vital students.

Week four lecturer Dr Bill Richards volunteered for LSD testing as a restless theology student in post-WW2 Germany. He began working alongside Hanscarl Leuner, the German psychologist who invented Guided Affective Imagery (a perverse form of which was used in the brainwashing sequence of A Clockwork Orange), plus added both art and group therapy to LSD tests. Richards went on to become the most prolific psychedelic researcher of all time, working alongside Walter Pahnke, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, and now Roland Griffiths: he was last out of Spring Grove in 1977, first into the fledgling John Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in 1999, and is still working today. His book Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences is out now.

Thumbnail image: Jane Graverol, ‘L’École de la Vanité’

In the Zine this week, arranged in the synaesthesic schema used for Vital’s cirriculum:

Approach: Wisdom of the Human Mind

Therapy: Healing Power of Laughter

Space: Cosmic Midwifery

Medical: LSD – Did it Ever Go Away?

Integral: The Wrong Mysteries

Plus! Graph/Visual Aid of the Week and second hand books

The Wisdom of the Human Mind

“I’ve learned to trust how wise the mind is, and how it brings things up the right way, at the right time,” says Dr Richards on the unpredictability of psychedelic experience.

Richards believes his methodist upbringing “saved” him from melting down when left alone in a 1963 testing chamber. His spiritual voyage was considered an intriguing anomaly at the time; other test subjects had indeed mimicked insanity when given LSD in an empty room with zero preparation for what may come.

Richards only ever enjoyed one more trip on that level, his fifth, after he and Walter Pahnke devised ‘set and setting’, venturing into nature for the first time.

Richards certainly relishes the mystical aspect now considered key to significant psychedelic healing. Though he advises that “it’s not a dud if it’s not transcendental,” and what arises from the experience is “what needs to.”

Revelation can occur with eyes closed or open, when installed firmly on the couch wearing headphones or roaming through the wilderness… and whether the experience transcendent, farcial, wild, philosophical, relaxing or downright awful.

“This is the growing edge of spiritual development… we must condone knowledge”

The attitude best to prepare the voyager with is one of “courage, adventure, desire for development, and abandonment of personna,” says Richards.

In The Psychology of Money Morgan Housel points out that we all invest money with different reasons, tastes, and circumstances. Then we worry that we’re not doing what the other dude who’s supposedly doing it totally right is doing.

To some, guiding individuals towards their own neo-shamanic state is glib at best and dangerously foolhardy at worst. But the most experienced western psychedelic therapist of the past sixty years says, “This is the growing edge of spiritual development. The Western World has brought many positive innovations to the experience, and we must condone knowledge.”

Healing Power of Laughter

It’s okay to have a chuckle, or a cry, ‘in ceremony’. We could all probably do with one.

“Some patients have an intuitive understanding of the transcendent. Some just giggle,” says Dr Richards.

“For many of us intellectualisation is our primary form of armouring,” continues the seasoned psychedelic therapist, “tell participants to appreciate their thinking minds, but let themselves go out and play. See your patient going through states of wisdom, vulnerability…” and be prepared for pranksterism. The voyager might not be feeling especially mystic today, and that’s their prerogative. “A playful experience may actually be what’s needed,” says Richards. The god of laughter deserves reverence also.

“We are primarily dealing with human consciousness… a meaningful proces unfolding from within”

Reverence is appropriate to tradition, but welcome to the aeon where do what we wilt, not least out of necessity. Fortune favours the brave: the two-guide format, for example, began because researchers couldn’t hold their subject’s hand and change the record on the turntable at the same time. There’s an anecdote that might get you some laughs in over-intellectualising psychedelic circles.

Cosmic Midwifery

Guides are “like midwives, they create a container” to encourage the voyager’s “own choreography of the experience.”

The guide offers presence, but don’t require reporting. “At a very high dose, we are beyond words anyway,” advises Dr Richards.

Voyagers should be prepped to “dive into the pupil of the monster” lest one pounce from the shadows of their psyche. Challenging experiences are actually quite unusual (only 40% of users say they’ve had one) but “we all have our cross to bear – our trauma” reminds Richards.

“We are primarily dealing with human consciousness,” says Dr Richards, “a meaningful proces unfolding from within.” He says objects, personal or otherwise can be offered to the voyager who appears inquisitive.

“At a very high dose, we are beyond words anyway.”

Guides practising in legally permitted conditions from my study group say music is a fine changer of mood, especially with those who may have difficulty expressing their mystical sides. These “external routes to mystical consciousness” as Richards dubs them, like the classic rose bud or family photo used by silver age guides, can ‘make the energy dance’ like Alfred North Whitehead suggested. Suddenly everything is important, but somehow irrelevant, and both are absolutely fine. Unless they’re not.

“Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity,” wrote Whitehead in Process and Reality: An Essay on Cosmology, “[it] may not neglect the multifariousness of the world — the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.“ Quite.

Everything you need to know about this season’s essential LSD revival trend

The psychedelic renaissance wrote LSD off as impractical, fuddy-duddy, and just so, like long as to be downright subversive. But Sandoz-25 is back in style and the ouroboros eats its tail again.

“To my mind, LSD is the best, the purest” declared Beckley Foundation’s Lady Amanda Fielding at the 2022 Psych Summit held at London’s National Gallery.

After all only the bohemian elite would have the time, right? And time is money more than ever before (usual disclaimers re: existence and/or nature of time). One shudders to think that LSD is the new jetset drug of choice. Beckley are actually conducting the first serious test into microdosing with LSD. The old fave has also found favour with the restless rabble. MindMed’s stage two tests for ADHD are underway at 20µg of LSD per week, hot on the heels of its success with LSD for anxiety. MindMed’s base of Switzerland is the home of LSD after all.

Meanwhile, Milanese glamour power house Dolce & Gabbana offers the tripwear of choice for sartorial psychonauts in its spring/summer 2022 menswear collection. See you at the sample sale.

The Wrong Mysteries

What is a mystery school? Are we in one now? Should we be? And what are we doing there?

The ‘Mystery School’ is a heartfelt trope amongst some psychedelic users. It evokes not only the acceptance that us ‘remarkable’ former children of ‘unremarkable parents’ (er, Miller 1996) crave, but also a comforting sense of relevance – that we, and not the suits, are actually directing things from behind the scenes. After all, the ‘Illuminati’ pyramid-with-an-eye-on-it which appears on dollar bills was pinched off Martin Luther by the esoteric protestants under England’s Queen Elizabeth the First, hence its shadowy undertones. Cliquiness is unchracteristically intrinsic to psychedelic experience: from the in-crowds at Euleusis and the Platonic Academy through to Esalen and the 21st century Tyringham Initiative, to the “it’s only us tripping” bond between pre-acceptance users and the current impulse to put a gatekeeper on ‘shamanism’.

Students are undertaking ‘Diversity, Inclusion and Cultural Competence Tutoring’ as part of Vital. In the interests of silence being violence, I don’t feel it’s inappropriate for me to experience shame – the actually uncomfortable, ‘only way out is through’ kind – having enjoyed many benefits of multicultural society, let alone colonialism, with none of the drawbacks the people of colour around me faced (you don’t have to agree with that). And if it helps the Vital student body feel safer with, and closer to, each other then it’s a monster I’ll enthusiastically “dive into the pupil of” as Dr Richards puts it. So far this actually seems like it has worked. Which is fantasic.

“For many of us, intellectualisation is our primary form of armouring”

I do try, in my white way, to engage friends in this conversation. They’ll certainly speak about their racial experience in the UK, and sometimes painfully in that deadpan way that makes the aside so much more shocking. But their tales are personal, because it’s a personal conversation. These valuable monologues end with “you know me, Steve, I’m not going to give you the narrative” which is exactly the sort of thing I’d bloody say. Squirming on my part has been met at least once by satisfied laughter and V-signs. This fragile white man will not be given closure via his intellectualised debate, and is sobered instead by the serene sort of first hand testimony that the righteous deliver so gracefully.

Vital brought in next-gen ‘Diversity, Inclusion and Cultural Competence Tutoring’. The lead facilitator was novellist and psychologist Ayize Jama-Everett. He wrote The Entropy of Bones an existential martial arts novel, so had me at that. If you’re reading this Ayize we can nerd out on all this any time here’s my email. Jama-Everett was keen to distance the programme from what we know as ‘diversity training’. His team’s approach is founded in work around differing, unsaid aproaches amongst multicultural communities, which is actually necessary and courageous work.

Obviously there are differences in the American conversation – nobody in US race training mentions the excesses of the Raj, for example. Very few British people of colour descended from slaves; instead they emigrated to post-war Britain, brimming with optimism, to find a war-ravaged, poverty-stricken, tired and grey country that offered little welcome and sometimes outright hostility.

I actually do think that Western society is ‘institutionally racist’ (again you don’t have to agree) and was a bit embarrassed to find out that the approach wasn’t widely accepted. On the flip, I also think that the cultural cometence movement would benefit from communicating using less academic language. Dancing, playing sport and making love together I believe is the best way to begin healing the divides. But even spending meaningful, intimate time together is unlikely to confront the most difficult aspects of the matter. So I commend Jama-Everett for taking it on while admitting the drawbacks of the process, and gladly reward his bravery by taking part in the process despite it involving a challenging process for myself.

Now. Nicholas Spiers, a British expert on western interaction with indigeneous Amazonian peoples also headed up a lecture alongside talismanic thought leader Bia Labate. During a thorough truth-bombing about facile Western framing of Mazatec beliefs he pointed out that Marina Sabina, the shaman banker and mushroom pioneer Gordon Wasson brought to international recognition with his landlmark Life mag feature in the 1960s, had her house burned down by her neighbours for attracting too much police attention to the tradition. She died isolated and poor. Today her image is abused to market tourist traps. Hardly part of any mystery school, or renaissance.

Read more and donate to Bia Labte’s Charcuna charity, intellectualise with Charcuna’s Psychedelic Justice: Toward a Diverse and Equitable Psychedelic Culture or rock this ‘Decolonise Your Mind’ T-shirt at your next gentrified neighbourhood BBQ.

Kool-Aid Corner

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph/visual aid of the Week

The first patent for MDMA

Merck, Germany, 1912

From: The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Modern Western Subcultures by
Scott R Hutson (Anthropological Quarterly, January 2000)

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only

This week: Strange Ecstasies edited by Michael Parry

Stories of space narcotics by major authors collected by druid of derring-do Michael Parry (d. 2014) , including The New Accelerator by H G Wells, Subjectivity by Norman Spinrad and What to Do Until the Analyst Comes by Frederik Pohl.

Plus a superb cover naturally.

If you like this sort of thing and haven’t read The Employees, a 2020 Booker Prize nominee by Danish author Olga Ravn, a ‘disconcertingly quotidian space opera’ (The Guardian), do so at light speed.

I can’t look at books like this without being hauntd by a sci fi short story about a co-ed college on a space station where the boys get these pets called teasels. I couldn’t find any reference to it online which was chilling in itself.

Next issue: London’s Dr David Luke talks transpersonal psychology and much more

This blog is not affiliated to Vital beyond my study on the course. The content shouldn’t be taken as representative as it’s a personal reflection and includes my own lived experience of the sector too.

Psychedelic drugs are prohibited in the UK, other countries and most US states. I do not condone their use, neither am I evangelising for, or recommending them to you. There are more qualified people you can turn to in the Resources section but if you are considering psychedelic treatments the best person to speak to is probably your own therapist, counsellor, or doctor.

Observations from my study on Vital and recent happenings in the space

Consciousness expansion: from cave painting, to the pyramids, and the first Psych Symposium at London’s National Gallery. How far have we got?

In week three Vital students heard from Dr Lenny Gibson, a clinical psychologist, philosopher and breathwork pioneer with ‘50 years of experience working with non-ordinary states of consciousness’ who nonetheless fitted in a storied career and founded transpersonal psychology non-profit Dreamshadow.

Gibson’s winsome and poingnant presentation elegantly examined western attitudes towards conscious thinking. His key point was that the world beyond words is no less valid – more so, even – than what we can describe. Psychedelics connect us with our intuition: as represented by the ancient gods Cerrunos and Baal, the greek god Dionysus (Bacchus to the romans) and, yes, Jesus of Arimathea who ‘turns the water into wine’. The first art, storytelling and culture derived from rites around this divine archetype.

Gibson references philosopher du jour Iain McGhilchrist, and I’ll pull out this particular quote from the Matter with Things author:

“As soon as you start saying anything about this realm, you falsify it. There are certain things that simply are resistant to normal language, normal exposition. But don’t for that reason not exist.”

But he began with a comparison to the Baka tribes whose genetics diverged 70,000 years ago. They describe their ceremonial group singing as “so beautiful the self melts away” just like both psychedelics and the ‘ecstatic’ techniques the rest of us have taken just as long to work out using science instead.

In the Zine this week, arranged in the synaesthesic schema used for Vital’s cirriculum:

Approach: Move any mountain with neo shamanism

Therapy: ‘Celebrating the mysteries’ is the new euphemism of choice

Space: Can you hold your own?

Medical: The Microdose Age

Integral: Learning to fly

Plus! Graph of the Week and second hand books

Move Any Mountain with Neo Shamanism

The ‘S-Word’ is getting laden.

No surprise, when you consider that the criteria for shaman-hood range, depending on your understanding, from genetic lineage, grave dedication, and fighting spirits to cure treatment resistant diseases all the way to a dubious certificate, some bongos and an Instagram account. 

‘Neo shamanism’ to Gibson is humankind’s recent ability to be his own wise counsel and medicine woman. The synthesis of LSD, a colourless tasteless substance able to inspire psychedelic states in minuscule amounts, he believes has democratised the role.

Poetically, this most scientific of revelations has inspired a rebirth of personal spirituality and philosophic examination. Scholars will point out that it’s the first time in 500 years, a la Joe Tafur’s Legend of the Eagle and the Condor, that science and religion have conjoined, whether in the form of transpersonal psychologist Stanislav Grof or the discoveries of quantum physics.

“For once, and for everyone, the truth was not still a mystery. Love called to all.”

Mystical healing may be associated with the Shipibo curanderos but they don’t use the word shaman themselves. In many communities associated with ‘shamanism’ the healer role itself is rare, considered apart, and special. Scientific medical training is not uncommon amongst indegeneous mystical healers.

Personally I understand exactly why usage is revered and not to be bandied about, certainly in an “I can cure you by battling with entities” manner. Gibson’s own understanding is that the neo shaman is a contemporary voyager into the new frontiers of the ‘Psyche,’ itself the name for the Greek goddess of wisdom and the soul. Obvious candidates for 20th Century LSD neo-shamanhood might be Grof, Aldous Huxley, Amanda Fielding or Jimi Hendrix. And Timothy Leary, who was scolded by RD Laing for democratising LSD… But if LSD had remained the preserve of the elite, Hendrix might never have wrote in his personal poetry after Woodstock in 1969, “For once, and for everyone, the truth was not still a mystery. Love called to all.”

Mankind’s destiny calls, and we are all ordained to answer.

‘Celebrating the mysteries’ is the new euphemism of choice

Accessibility is a hot topic in ‘the space’ right now.

At the inaugural Psych Symposium in London’s National Gallery earlier this May 2022, itself undeniably elitist at £400 for a basic one-day ticket and £1,000 for full access and the drinkies, MAPS spokesperson Natalie Lyla Ginsberg told suits that “PTSD is most common in the marginalised communities who cannot currently access these treatments.” Author Zoe Cormier eviscerated corpos with lines like, “So if it’s okay for somebody dying of bowel cancer to grow their own mushrooms, why is it not okay for normal folks?” (Answer: ‘because dosages’, to a lack of any audible groans). 

The Greeks famously all tripped together at the Eleusinian Mysteries, an invite-only annual bash held at the festival of Demeter for the best part of two thousand years. It’s heavily referenced in Shakespeare’s esoteric play The Tempest. Supposedly ‘The Mysteries’ was reserved only for the ‘invisible college’ wyrd and wonderful types, but high society were in on things too: “The beautful people following the interesting people, and the rich people follow the beautiful people” as a wise lady once told me. Indeed, the use of psychedelics was only proven recently when a gruelling, decades-long investigation into the local availability of psychedelic ergot was trumped by legal records prosecuting a notorious socialite for ‘celebrating the mysteries’ at dinner parties back home in Athens (he got exiled to Sparta, by the way). Current podcast staple Brian Muraresku will tell you all about psychedelic use by the early Christians. And has been recently in great interviews like this around his book The Immortality Key.

The ancient greeks believed “Life can only be experienced in a truly terrifying, but transformational, encounter with death.”

Ritually, the Greeks supped from elaborate kylix cups (above). Medieval witches got rampant on datura, best taken internally via the mucus membrane, by inserting it vaginally – ‘riding the broomstick’. In 2022 ketamine bumps are delivered in £5,000 inhalers, and while no one is sticking DMT up their bum just yet, the common folk are hunted and persecuted by the agents of mediocrity still.

Can you hold your own?

Westerners are sorely lacking in psychedelic ritual. 

The Imperial College testing rooms are the most British thing I’ve ever seen, with a blanket thrown over the studio kitchen in the corner, a drape with some trees on and a lamp stuck behind it, plus some spiritual tat.

It does look surprisingly cosy nonetheless, especially with Dr Ros beaming angelically from her seat in the corner. But you almost certainly have to dream the Albion way to appreciate its understated succour. Bar the open heartedness oozing from the ever-radiant Dr Ros, being served the Mysteries by the priestesses of Demeter it is not. Neither is donning a blindfold plus headphones, and boasting a grin like the one that betrays the fact you don’t normally fly business class, an experience surely at all comparable to the jungle ayahuasca one.

12-step style integration and ceremony – my bad, ‘celebrating the mysteries’ – circles were mentioned as future possibilities by Psych delegates in a huddle with Imperial College trials participants Iain Roullier and Leonie Schneider, unsung heroes of the UK space who also spoke onstage with Dr Ros repping their PsyPan set-up. In the meantime there is… an app.

“The substance is only 51% of the process”

‘Holding space’ doesn’t seem to have been much of an issue during contemporary scientific tests and education regarding bad trips-stroke-challenging, purgatorial experiences may take the edge off them so to speak. Admittedly a guide, let alone a skilled psychotherapist or shaman, may be good for a bad trip too. Because surely MindMed’s ‘off switch’ jab is cheating*.

An old pal has just reminded me that our sitter was a table leg with an acid house smiley face drawn on it which we kept in the back of the van. The Wild Hunt rides.

*Take the off switch if they offer it or at least don’t say I told you not to

The Microdose Age

“Microdosing is a step forward for humankind.”

Beckley Psytech’s Lady Amanda Fielding (for it is she) declared so at Psych Symposium. If psychedelics can be for the everyman, can they be for every day?

While it’s less spectacular than ‘spiritual doses’, DMT, or ayahuasca, and an ongoing science to say the least, microdosing’s arguably taken a stronger foothold in popular culture than the next-level psychedelics. Users report similar effects to integrated major experiences, like enthusiasm, geniality, consideration and walking in the woods while listening to Jon Hopkins. Famously though microdosing – which Beckley are researching throughly – is one of the few contemporary psychedelic phenomena to fail the placebo test. Small doses are being tested on some conditions: MindMed are on stage two for 20µg of LSD twice a week, while sticking someone in a room and giving them a proper tab (200µg) did okay for GAD . The likes of New Health Club are poised to bring acid to the workplace (at last). Lenny Gibson’s observation was that ‘psyche’ also means ‘breath’, and Stanislav Grof’s holotropic breathwork could be the only option – and also a better one – for many.

Professor David Nutt pointed out in his Psych presentation that it’s the ‘wellbeing’ scores that are really impressive in psychedelic therapy’s efficacy results. But according to a neuroscientist I spoke to outside when the fire alarm went off, “there are no criteria for developing drugs for ‘wellbeing’ like there might be for mental health conditions already treated pharmacologically. So everybody’s trying to make drugs, which is ruinously expensive as it is, without knowing precisely what to aim at, certainly in terms of approval.” The Mushroom Nation is at once already here, and still so far away.

NB Psychedelics are prohibited in most places even if labelled ‘cacao’ and sent in gaudy packaging. You can still get busted for them like this guy.

Learning to fly

“The substance is only 51% of the treatment” said Imperial College Psilodep 2 trial clinical lead scientist Dr Rosalind Watts at Psych Sumposium.

It was vehemently echoed by the PsyPan patient support group alongside her on stage at London’s National Gallery. Blasting off into hyperspace is not entirely the point either reminded week four Vital lecturer Dr Lenny Gibson, who evoked Stanislav Grof:

“The ecstasy of a noumenal moment, a psychedelic intoxication, is not enough for mysticism. Such a moment comes to nothing if it does not become part of a process of lived expression and expressed thinking.”

Less than a week previously Dr Ros launched her Acer Integration project at the Earth Centre in Hackney. It’d take a heart of stone not to give the team at Acer credit and I, for one, liked the singing in the round. The mystic is sorely lacking in European research as Dr David Luke points out, and metropolitan Londoners, their dopamine receptors worn down to ichorous stubs, are polarised in their spiritual awakening or total lack thereof. I suspect it might be better for many if we stick to burning massive effigies and people just ‘get it’ on either a collective unconscious level or whatever.

Meanwhile the stock images of millennials in the blindfold and headphones are beginning to look sinister, I reckon. Once again I find myself drawn to the intriguingly complex MAPS PTSD therapy programme, where the mystical concepts so potent for healing trauma must be dealt with ever so sensitively, because the soldiers have been driven far further from God than even my neighbours in this modern-day Babylon (I like London really; non-dual thinking).

“Be kind to the guy at the grocery store. Make new friends. Put the art pedal to the floor.”

While veterans and the treatment-resistant depressed crave healing – and should go to the front of the queue – the rest of us scrabble for meaning, humanity, or merely playfulness. Nonplussed yet fascinated by doxa, Plato’s term for shallow concerns, we struggle to ‘participate in eternal totality’ as Spinoza urged. Raves, ‘sex positivity’ and Burning Man-type festivals are our attempts to break through. And ‘meaning making experiences’ may indeed prompt a breakthrough or two, but that will only be the start of a long and confusing journey for some.

Others, like us BJJ bores and Dragon’s Den/Shark Tank wannabees, ponder our lack of the right kind of trauma, that sweet spot sought by Neitsche, Jung, and others who rarely left their desks.

The greeks did put down their books. Even Plato excelled at wrestling, competing at the Pytheon (like The Championship in English football) and Isthmian games. Both of which featured culture and sport combined incidentally. Immortality Key writer Brian Muraresku says in this great Lex Fridman interview that the greeks were also fond of saying, “Life can only be experienced in a truly terrifying, but transformational, encounter with death.” He quotes Huxley on mass radical self-transcendence and deeper understanding. Plus Alan Watts on authority being threatened by mass outbreaks of mysticism. 

Myth, or ontonolgy if you like, in the West and far beyond teaches that less thought is better than more. Lenny Gibson’s lifestyle advice: “Be kind to the guy at the grocery store. Make new friends. Put the art pedal to the floor.”

Kool-Aid Corner

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

Ego-dissolution scores of test subjects

On DMT

Placebo

From: DMT Models the Near-Death Experience, Christopher Timmermann, Leor Roseman, Luke Williams, David Erritzoe, Charlotte Martial, Héléna Cassol, Steven Laureys, David Nutt and Robin Carhart-Harris (Frontiers in Psychology, August 2018)

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only

This week: Listen, Little Man! by Wilhelm Reich with illustrations by William Steig

What flirtation with western neo shamanism would be complete without a reminder that the boy who points out the emperor has no clothes is actually banished to the wilderness? It’s only in the modern version he becomes king. Other innovator-pranksters like Reich, and Plato’s favourite Socrates, end up dead.

Reich never intended for this 1945 manifesto to be published. This 1977 version features incredible illustrations by William Steig, who’d go on to write Shrek. Reichian bodywork is part of helotropic breathing and bioenergetics is taught in schools.

It’s more relevant than ever for detoxifying western armouring, but undoubtedly too much like hard work for most. Homemade orgone accumulators at the ready for a pssible comeback nonetheless. Buy my teacher’s new book on Reichian Character Structure to get going, it’s brilliant.

Next issue: John Hopkins’ Dr Bill Richards talks 60 years of LSD

This blog is not directly affiliated to Vital beyond my study on the course. The content shouldn’t be taken as representative as it’s a personal reflection and includes my own lived experience of the sector too.

Psychedelic drugs are prohibited in the UK, other countries and most US states. I do not condone their use nor am I evangelising for, or recommending them to you. There are more qualified people you can turn to in the Resources section but if you are considering psychedelic treatments the best person to speak to is probably your own therapist, counsellor, or doctor.