A Book Review of Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna

Ben over at Dreaming Life. org wrote a great book review on Terence McKenna’s book “Food of the Gods”. Since he did a great job I did see the need to write another whole review about the book, but instead send a link over his way. Here is a little bit about what he has to say:

The Food of the Gods, by Terence McKenna, is the story of humanities relationship with different plants and how these relationships effect and reflect our cultural values.

By the last page, the book has taken a somewhat discontinuous step into a different territory, with McKenna penning a manifesto of sorts on the integration of psychoactives into our current culture. He calls our culture the Dominator culture, and sees the use of consciousness-expanding plants as part of the Archaic Revival, a reference to the return of a  pre-monotheistic, integrated, “whole” way of living that we as a species once had with our environment and each other.

Read more at Bens blog dreaminglife.org

Food of the Gods

I have started to read the book Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna and it really has been an enjoyable and enlightening read.  I have only gotten through about 1/3 of the book, but he does a good job in explaining the evolution of mankind and how it may have come about with the help of entheogens. I have read a lot of other works on the subject of religion and the use of psychoactive substances in order to understand the evolution or religion, but I have always wondered where they got their source of ideas. It seems that McKenna may have been that source.

Terence McKenna is a well educated and well traveled man, and you can see this in his writings. He could be described as an anthropologist even though he only had a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and Conservation. The one great thing is that McKenna is that in his writings he doesnt come off as an aggressive person. He shows a way that’s possible and kind of lets you decide. He intrigues you with interesting stories and situations and lets you find your way. I have heard a few of hes recorded speeches, but never really liked the guy because of how people seemed to follow him (cult style) but I do enjoy his writing and agree that this is one possible explanation into our relationship of plants.

The Antipodes of the Mind

Over the last semester of college I had a great opportunity to read one of the most in-depth books about Ayahuasca that has been published. Benny Shanon is considered an expert on the subject of Ayahuasca as he has partaken in many different types of rituals that included over 250 accounts and placed them all into the book, The Antipodes of the Mind. That’s impressive in any situation. He also composed the many different culture experiences of those who partook in the experiences as well, including over 2500 accounts and categorized them in a more scientific manner.

Though the book was intensively focused on the uses of Ayahuasca, for the average reader the book was not as entertaining as I would have thought. It did however contain a lot of information about the uses of Ayahuasca and what individuals may and have experienced while intoxicated. The book does meet its mission in the aspect that it does provide a scientific statistical way of displaying the data of what types of experiences a person could have.

If you are interested in understanding more about Ayahuasca use, but do not want to read a inspirational personal account of the experience The Antipodes of the Mind is the book for you. I highly suggest it for those who are more experienced readers in the area of Ayahuasca and other types of psychoactive substances.

Super Lucid

In the last few weeks I have been working with meditative techniques through Buddhist practice to come up with better ways of becoming “super lucid” or obtaining the stage of what some consider OBE. The Buddhist call these stage of sleep one of the Extra-bodily States called “dream body” and have been practicing in order to obtain perfection of this state. At any rate I have had tremendous success.

Meditation as stated before seems to be really about paying attention. The type of meditation that I use is paying attention to my breath out. During my lucid stage where I start to feel the strong vibrations that come from being aware and obtaining my dream body, the first thing I notice is my breathing changes. I tend to focus on this as a key point to knowing that I am able to “jump out” of my body.

Its not to say that everyone should look into meditation for obtaining lucidity in their dreams, but R also reports that he would also have the same effects when he would practice the meditation. I will continue to explore this rout as I try to learn better skills in obtaining release.

In the last few weeks I have also started to read two great books. One book is called “The Antipodes of The Mind” where the writer Dr. Benny Shanon talks about his uses of Ayahuasca and conducts the first ever psychological study of the drink. So far it has been a great book. The other book is called “Failed God” written by John A. Rush Ph.D and his also turning out to be a great book. Failed God is about the history of human religious experiences and how ultimately religion has turned from an experiences to a society based control modified for its best results. Both books have become a great addition to my collection of powerful books and I hope to write more about them in the future as I explore each one. During thanksgiving break I will be writing up a post about “The Antipodes of The Mind” in hopes to explore some of the areas that the writer touched on as well as my own ideas.

Chocolate to Morphine

From Chocolate to Morphine is a great book about drugs. Its not just about a specific drug but entails just about every common drug that you could think of. It not only tells you about the drugs and what they can do, but talks about the proper use of the drugs as well as education for those who would want to use them or currently use them and want to continue using. The book doesn’t promote drug use nor does it take any side at all, only giving the facts and letting the reader decide how they want to conduct themselves.

I personally love this book because it does exactly what our education system should be doing with our education about the drug use, giving the truth rather than producing lies that help no one. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has used drugs, wants to use drugs, or has family that have drug problems. This book helps us to remember that coffee and chocolate are also strong stimulants and have potential for abuse.

Schools and Supernatural

Well next Monday is the big day and school will once again be in session for me. This time on the agenda is a nice class on the psychology of the brain where I intend to research more into the understanding of why drugs affect our minds in the ways they do. I find entheogens specifically to be a very fascinating topic as there is tons of information on them and still (even though underground) loads of individuals that self experiment with them. I hope to continue to share this information with all my readers and we learn together in the coming year of education.

I have recently continued reading a book called “Supernatural” that I put down due to its long drawn out information on cave art and its influence by entheogens. After a friend informed me of its great content later in the book I decided to take a look. Sure enough about three pages past where I left off the book gets really interesting. The author goes into his experimentation with the entheogen Ayahuasca and how information may be locked into our DNA while being only accessible by those who are experiment with Psychedelics. No matter how bazaar this may sound, the author does display some great points into the area. Once I get done with the book I will make sure to review some of this information and post in into the blog.

Tryptamine Palace

I just finished a book I have been reading for the last two weeks. Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad is what I consider one of the greatest books into the understanding the world and its powerful entheogens. It really gave me some personal incite into understanding reality and looking at things a little differently when it comes to what I think I understand and really what might be happening.

If I was to sum up the book in as few words as possible I would tell those who have never read Tryptamine Palaces that its an open minded concept of the world from an explorer of the mind. James Oroc (the writer) puts his experinces of the psychedelic compound 5-MeO-DMT in clear and understandable English, giving his words meaning through references into religious and philosophical teachings that clearly relate to the experience he describes. He gives the evidence that entheogens have been used throughout history blatantly showing their usefulness in the past. He also shows their real world application as the more we learn about the metaphysics of our universe the more they seem like a psychedelic trip.

One key point that I found interesting in the book is James’s use of the word light in his experiences and how his descriptions very closely relate to other religious experiences of light. This use of the word light in the sense that light is “God” is not only limited to 5-MeO-DMT and has been referenced many times before from others who have used different types of compounds as well as mediation. It would bring me to conclude that something in our body is creating a psychedelic experience that points in the direction of a god like being either from taking psychedelics or producing them naturally.

Over all, I highly suggest anyone read the book Trypatmine Palace if you are interested in understanding more of how psychedelics work and the possible reasons behind the experience.

Night Terror Reseach

I recently stumbled onto a post on one of my favorite forums “The Night Terror Research Center.” Here an interesting individual posted about their understanding of what causes NT’s. After reading their post, I had a few remarks of my own about the views of fear being a definate cause for the experincinces of NT. I would not dissagree that fear is involved in the experince, but I tend to believe that fear is not the cause, more a result. Here is what was talked about:

I am a psychotherapist, and I too suffer from severe night terrors.  I am currently working on a dissertation for my doctorate in clinical psycholgy, and I am coming accross some information that may help some people out there with questions about possible theoretical reasons for them.  This next exerpt is from John Bowlby, the founder of Attachment theory.

…seperation from an attachmetn figure (in life) is found to be one of a class of situations of which is likely to elicit fear reactions but have no intrinstic nor real danger behind these reactions.  These situations comprise amongst others darkness, sudden large changes of stimulii level including loud noises, sudden movement, strange people, and strange things.  Evidence shows that many species are alarmed by similar situations, and that this is true of human adults and children.  Furthermore fear is likely to be elicited when two or more of these stimuli are present simultaneusly, for example hearing a loud noise when alone in the dark.   The explanation as to why individuals should so regularly respond to fear to these situations is because even thought these situtions are not dangerous in themselves, each carries with it an [i]increase risk[/i] of danger.  Noise, strangeness, isolation, and for many species, darkness, are all conditions statistacallly associated with an increased risk of danger.  Noise may be a warning of a natural disaster, like fire, floods, or landslides.  To a young animal, a predator is strange, it moves, and it often strikes at night, and it is more likely to do so when the potential victim is alone.  Because to behave so promotes survival and breeding success, the theory runs, the offspring of species that have survived, including man, have been genetically predisposed and biased to have developed an increased response to the properties of noise, strangeness, sudden approach, and darkness by avoiding action or running away-they behave in fact as if danger were actually present.  In a comparable way they respond to isolation by seeking company (hence getting appropriate attachment and bonding). Fear responses elicited by such naturally occuring clues to danger are part of a mans basic behavioural equipment.

Fear seems to be a common explanation for the experience of NT type hallucinations however many people do not experience fear prior to experiencing the hallucinations. From current research into the causes for such behavior its more likely that NT’s are a result of complication in the process of modulation or demodulation of the brain. This fear that many people experience could be explained by the hyperactive amygdala during the modulation into REM sleep. Yes I know NT’s dont happen during REM sleep, however during the first complete phase of sleep the sleep phases do go through the process of 1-5 (in that order) and after jump from 2-5 making it possible for the NT to fall into a REM like cycle. Determining if the individual is pushing into REM while experiencing a NT is practically impossible. With that, most NT’s happen in the first few instances of sleep.   The real problem behind NT’s is that the majority of sleep disorder doctors don’t know how to treat the problem let alone properly diagnose the disorders. You commonly have individuals that experience the old hag syndrome expressing that they have NT’s when they are completely different events and occur in different phases of sleep. We need more doctors keeping up on the current research into NT or even the last 30 years of research and break the trend of bad medical practice. We need to stop looking to Freud for the answers and start paying attention to individuals like Dr. Hobson and his activation synthesis theory.

Nightmares: The Science and Solution of Those Frightening Visions during Sleep (Brain, Behavior, and Evolution) Nightmares: The Science and Solution of Those Frightening Visions during Sleep

Searching for a new book to read, I stumbled upon a review by a M. E. Tappan on amazon.com that I thought was very informative about this book.  Apparently in the book the writer talks about the possible conflict between the subconscious and the conscious causing what we know as the sleep paralysis and Nightmare effects. This is a theory that R and I worked on for a while but never perused as we were trying to learn more about the experience itself before we made more hypotheses about the disorder.

Here is what M. E. Tappan had to say abou tthe book:

The author of this book concludes that a nightmare is: a horrific or disturbing vision of a physiological processes, a meaningless occurrence (in any practical sense of emotional or self understanding), a gender magnet for the opposite sex (at least to our pre-modern ancestors), a schizoid event, a lethal threat to the weak heart, a non-metaphorical construct, a story-line for the ancient shaman, and a real downer.

The author theorizes that nightmares persist in human experience as a vestige of ancestral human pre-history when natural selection gave the advantage to those who gained social prominence, prestige and respect by compellingly reporting their night-time dream struggles and battles. The effect of reporting these nightmarish dreams in the culture of our “pre modern” ancestors, McNamara states, not only acted to elevate social status, but served to funnel these creative individuals (those with a frequent history of nightmares) into spiritual (shamanic) and healing “professions.” According to the author, the prestige gained increased the likelihood of survival and “positive selection” within tribal communities. McNamara also theorizes that the stories of nightmares themselves, if believed, could have led to increased vigilance and thus improved chances of survival in a hostile world.

McNamara contends that the figure of a dreamed “supernatural monster” or demon who wants to possess or take over the dreamer’s sense of self is central to the understanding of nightmares. Because the dreamer knows nothing about the inner psychic workings of his or her own created nightmare-demon (other than that it intends to do harm), and because McNamara believes that the knowing mind of the nightmare sufferer cannot generate an unknown construct, he reasons that the nightmarish image must come from some other place independent from the dreamer’s will or traditional view of a single mind. That other place, he postulates, is from the human genome itself and represents the struggle between two opposing physiological forces to attain homeostasis or balance. The conflicted forces in the case of nightmares, McNamara reasons, are opposing sleep-state inhibitory and excitatory processes that control the movement in and out of REM sleep.

We are thus, according to McNamara, of more than one mind; a mind of maternal origin moving us out of REM sleep, and another of paternal origin moving us into REM sleep. He likens this dual-mind or multi-mind concept especially to dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. And McNamara reports research that describes models of the “…self as comprised of at least two major and distinct subpersonalities or agents with distinct interests that compete for control over the individual’s attentional resources and decision-making capacities.” McNamara sees this theory of “self” as model for the nightmare: a visual representation of the forces of biology battling for the mind of the dreamer.

Though it could be argued that McNamara views the nightmare (especially those dealing with demonic possession) as a metaphor for biological competition within the human organism (the struggle of one physiological process over another for example), he does not view nightmares as metaphorical. “Unlike dreams,” McNamara writes, “nightmares are not particularly metaphorical.” Metaphors provide ways that abstract concepts can be understood by likening them to understood concrete terms. But McNamara states that the abstract is not being confronted in nightmares, “Instead,” he writes, “the nightmare deals with primal emotional energies and unadorned and terrifying imagery.”

According to McNamara, nightmares are not only terrifying, but dangerous. He cites his own research indicating that the biology of nightmares, or the dreams occurring during REM dreaming, have negative and even injurious effects on health. McNamara cites other studies too for example, showing a correlation between the time of cardiac arrest and the late morning hours coincident with the final REM period of sleep when nightmares are likely to occur. Of course, heart failure occurs often too during strenuous exercise and sex. And few scientists devote books as warning to their dangers.

Left unexplored in the book are more positive and historical views of nightmares representing a rich history of social and scientific inquiry. We may, for example, see ourselves as comprised of many different parts, or many different manifestations, without questioning whether we are insane or suffer from multiple personality disorder. We may entertain a more complete image of a “self” that does not pathologize behavioral changes (for better or worse) that occur with the influence of time, experience, history and the forces that impact our life.

Dreams (of the benign or frightening sort) have held a particularly important function in world cultures as an always emerging form of knowing. They have been seen as indicative of human reality… if not waking reality, than at least the unconscious reality that underpins our conscious awareness.

We are emotional creatures, even whimsical, willing and able to change as conditions warrant or dictate. Push us into a corner and we can become murderous. Sexism, racism, ageism and classism can make us killers of spirit. Mistaken beliefs can thwart our most authentic selves. Unless we recognize that we can do harm to ourselves and others through our own personal influence and actions, and that the proclivity to do harm does not simply reside in others but resides in us, we will be dumb and blind to the forces that terrorize us in our sleeping visions. If we externalize these frightening visions, we may also miss the symbolic representation of the ruthless spirit we need in ourselves to successfully expunge any life-long beliefs that keep us from mental health and wholeness.

There is danger in dismissing the rich tapestry of information available in our nigh-time dream journeys. The long-time dream analyst Jeremy Taylor says it best. Paying attention to threat, he states, whether that threat shows up in dreams or in waking life, is a survival issue. The nightmare tells us to wake up! Pay attention! Whatever is given symbolic shape in a dream is important to look at. There is always something elegant and meaningful in the nightmare. My own experience in shamanic cultures makes me certain that shamans understood this. Their compass is the psyche, not simply their own, but the psyche of the community of which they belong. They are masters of deriving meaning from the natural world, especially those aspects hidden from the unintuitive. Community members go to the shaman not to be dazzled by the shaman’s dream, but to explore their own. And to ultimately face what is feared.

To take the path of dreams, we must take their images seriously, sojourn with them (at a distance if we must), suffer them and travel more deeply into their reality.

The End of the Terror

I just finished the book “The Terror That Comes in the Night” and must say that it was a very good read. I wanted to post something from in the book that I found important to the sleep paralysis community. These are the conclusions of the study done by David J. Hufford and are posted at the end of his book.

• The phenomena associated with what I have been calling the Old Hag constitute an experience with a complex and stable pattern, which is recognizable and is distinct from other experiences.

• This experience is found in a variety of cultural settings.
• The pattern of the experience and its distribution appear independent of the presence of explicit cultural models.
  The experience itself has played a significant, though no exclusive, role in the development of numerous traditions of supernatural assault.
• Cultural factors heavily determine the ways in which the experience is described (or withheld) and interpreted.
  The distribution of traditions about the experience, such as those involving the Old Hag or Eskimo augumangia, has frequently been confounded with the distribution of the experience itself.
• The frequency with which the experience occurs is surprisingly high, with those who have had at least one recognizable attack representing 15 percent or more of the general population.
• The state in which this experience occurs is probably best described as sleep paralysis with a particular kind of hypnagogic hallucination.
• Although there may be some connection between the etiology of this experience and narcolepsy, and although certain illnesses could be confused with the experience, the Old Hag experience itself does not indicate the presence of any serious pathology.
• The contents of this experience cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of current knowledge.

After reading his book and the evidence that was presented, I must also agree with Hufford in his explanation for the event. It is truly unknown why people experience the things they do. Its however impossible to say that these experiences are religious based as those who experience it seldom refer the experience to be anything based on their religion. Many people that experience it have little or no knowledge of the Old Hag, and most the time report being confused about the whole thing. One important aspect that is talked about much in the book, is the activation of movement seems to end the event. Maybe this is some type of trigger in the brain releasing it from its accidental sleep paralysis. Either way, there needs to be a lot more research done on the subject as even today there are really no good hypothesis of why this is happening to good normal individuals (15 percent of the population)

I hope all of you who are interested in night terrors, sleep paralysis, or the Old Hag, take some time out of your day and read this book, as it will give you a larger understanding of the world we live in. Maybe now that I am done reading it, I can sleep better.