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Example of Salvia Trip Report in which someone believes they are an inanimate object?

Z

Zilpe

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
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Just to be clear I'm looking for an erowid report or a report stored somewhere that I can actually cite in an essay. I've seen lot's of form posts about this but I want to actually reference one or more experience reports that describe such effects.

I've been looking through the erowid vaults but trip reports with this specific phenomenon are weirdly hard to find so I thought I'd ask around online to see if there are any memorable ones that people can point to.
 
^Well that's rather... 👻...

We are in need of research, @pupnik, please have mercy! The evil laughter is tripping me out here, it's the shit that keeps us alive man.. =D
 
pupnik said:

Erowid Experience Vaults: Salvia divinorum Reports in category: First Times

A list of experiences with Salvia divinorum in category First Times
erowid.org
you have to do the research
you love doing research
do more research

hahahah!
Click to expand...
That's the conclusion I've come to. It's just surprisingly hard to find written accounts of a specific phenomenon by going through trip reports one-by-one. I figured salvia trip reports would be littered with examples but so far I haven't turned up any on erowid even though when I asked reddit I got plenty of people saying they had experienced it.
 
That's funny, I was just listening to a podcast the other day where someone mentioned how salvia allows one to experience "object consciousness", ie, what it's like to be an inanimate object or a shade of green. I'd never heard it explicitly phrased like that before but it made perfect sense to me, and while it's been a while since I tripped on salvia, one experience in particular stands out where I thought I was a building with a lift moving up and down for a while. I did have a brief look through erowid but didn't see any immediately, I hope you find some though! Out of curiously where did you yourself get the idea about salvia being an inducer of this "object consciousness", from personal experience, or did you also come across this idea elsewhere?
 
Well from the countless trip reports that include it. I'm trying to tie it together with similar phenomenon such as believing you are dead (psych/diss) and the bizarre experience of feeling that objects in your room are living (ambien). I've written a short little article making the case that all three phenomenon can at least partially be explained as a dissolution of our learned ontological categoriztion scheme. The process that in everyday life identifies a tree as inanimate and a squirrel as animate. My personal experience with ambien convinced me that the belief your lamp is alive (a common experience on ambien) isn't such much an error in the categorization of living vs non-living but rather a complete obliteration of the cognitive categorization schemes which distinguishes living from non-living. This leaves you in a state in which you can logically remember that a lamp isn't alive but it doesn't stop it from *feeling* alive. I argue that a similar mechanism facilitates experiences such as "I have died" or "I am a lightbult". It seems absurd that one could just hold a belief so obviously contradictory to their whole mental framework. When people first hear reports of these experiences it seems unfathomable because the belief obviously contradicts all sorts of every day knowledge. The mistake here, I think, is that the assume that the way we divide objects into groups based on sets of properties remains unchanged and that the belief that you've become a lamp or that a lamp is a living being is simply placing lamp in the wrong category of objects, from inanimate non-thinking things to animated thinking things.

It's hard to understand how someone could make such an error while retaining the rest of their mental categorization scheme which is why I think these experiences are so striking, they seem unimaginable because of the sheer cognitive dissonance that would be required. However,
if the way you divide and categorize things based on their properties is completely shifted then there is no reason to believe that a tire can't be conscious because the system of categories that you have built up over your entire life (dogs, chickens, and cows are all animals, animals posses some degree of agency and can be unpredictable etc etc.) is either weakened substantially or vanishes entirely meaning that kinds of objects are can no longer be divided by these properties. In our everyday life we have a mental inventory of the kinds of objects that posses agency and kinds of objects that do not, agency is used as a fundamental attribute to divide the things around us into groups of kinds of objects. What I argue is that many intense drug experience obliterate our sober categorization schemes meaning that objects which we would normally group together now have no attributes to distinguish them. I don't believe the lamp is alive so much that the the division of objects into living and non-living things no longer makes sense to me.

It's a fairly provisional piece but I've done some research into developmental psychology, ontology, cognitive science, and anthropology and tried to use academic sources from these fields to investigate the evidence for the development of ontological categorization schemes (ie what kinds of things are there and what properties doe they have). In particular how the way we group objects changes from infancy to adulthood. The emphasis is on the notions of agency and capacity for mental representations as important attributes for fundamental kinds as these are the concepts that lose their meaning in the phenomenon I'm exploring. I also touch on some evidence that categorisation schemes can change based on context, culture, and age. From there I give an interpretation of the three phenomenon described above as different instances involving a dissolution of ontological categories. Ambien effects the cognitive system that sorts objects into agents and non-agents (some interesting parallels with animism here). Salvia and High-Dose dissociatives have the capability to make you identify with a non-thinking thing, in order to do this you must first believe that the inanimate object is capable of conscious experience, again this may be the failure of our everyday categorization scheme that separates conscious things from non-conscious things. When these categorical boundaries become fuzzy then a little ego dissolution could easily make you identify with something that, in our everyday experience we know (believe?) does not posses the necessary attributes to experience anything. It's not that you forget that this one object isn't alive but that the alive/non-alive distinction ceases to mean anything.

I've written a whole draft that I'm thinking of submitting to psychedelic press but I may just post the full thing here if it doesn't get accepted. It's a provisional hypothesis based mostly on my own experiences as well as recurring motifs I hear in trip reports. I did a decent amount of research in cognitive science, ontology, developmental psychology, and a bit of anthropology in order to have some grounding of the ideas. There is a substantial amount of literature on the development of categorisation schemes in infants with a fairly rigorous debate regarding how infants progress from a primarily perceptual representation capacity to a primarily cognitive one in which the organisation of things according to kind and the defining attributes of that kind. This seems like a topic you could really dig into but I'm not a psychologist or cognitive scientist so I just wanted to have enough information in order to speculate on the cognitive origin of certain psychedelic phenomenon.

Anyways, I'll try to get the full article out somewhere as I think it provides an interesting hypothesis for some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying some truly bizarre mental experiences. I want to be clear though that the article is almost entirely speculation, there are too many questions such as how does a subconscious categorization scheme translate to phenomenology. Empirical evidence is hard to gather in these cases but honestly what makes more sense, that someone just forgets that wheels are non-thinking objects and therefore they are open to believing they are a tire, or, that your subconscious sorting of objects in the world no longer distinguishes thinking and non-thinking objects meaning that all objects are equally alive and not-alive and thus any experience you're having at the moment could equally be the experience of a gas station sign. If these experiences were the result of a simple mistake (oh wait I forgot that lamps don't experience thoughts) then the cognitive dissonance would be overwhelming. You are dead but still thinking, lamps are talking to you despite having no nervous system, and sometimes you're a factory part. None of these experiences would be possible without first the breaking down of the ontological categories that separate non-living objects from living objects and agents from non-agents. Although my argument is mostly speculative, to me it provides a plausible account of these phenomenon (and potentially a range of psychedelic phenomenon)

Sorry for the long post, hopefully the idea I'm trying to convey makes sense. The actual draft is much more structured and includes a much more in-depth analysis of the idea of cognitive categorization schemes with special emphasis on how they change as infants get older. Although unclear how it all fits together I think I make a decent case that the categorization schemes we develop play a vital role in our mental experience and from there it is not surprising that various psychoactivies may alter or even obliterate these schemes.

Also any feedback or criticism on this idea would be most welcome. I think I develop a fairly solid argument in the article but I'm sure someone with more expertise could pick it apart.

Edit: Edited for Clarify
 
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There's an actual scientific term for this which you are describing, but I can't quite remember what it is.. :/
 
I don't know ANYONE who has tried salvia and not become an inanimate object at some point. It's the most common effect along with odd gravity shifts.
 
the theory is built too quickly and I fear it uses conceptual constructs that involve more rational engagement than is possible while under the influence.
categorization is largely dismantled as is discrimination of what is me and what is not me...
anything that can be sensed is me regardless of how it is sensed.
i.e. if it is in mind it is me.
This is not like believing that you have become a lamp. instead you are also the lamp that is an image in your mind, and you can sense how it feels because the mind can project sense markers that are normally proprioceptive into the synesthesiac experience that includes the image of lamp.
note: while being the lamp, one is fascinated or shocked but not defensive as a lamp, One feels generally disrupted but not only as a lamp. the lamp perception has become merged into the moment of experiencing and experiencing is you.
Zilpe said:
The mistake here, I think, is that the assume that the way we divide objects into groups based on sets of properties remains unchanged and that the belief that you've become a lamp or that a lamp is a living being is simply placing lamp in the wrong category of objects, from inanimate non-thinking things to animated thinking things.
Click to expand...
I believe that categorization is disabled at this point, the rush and resonance (resulting from slowed fading of several moments of sensation and mental contents overlapping) of mental contents is flooding out perception (memory recall) which extends from mere recognition through naming and later on categorization - categorization is not the first edge of perception.
Zilpe said:
...It's hard to understand how someone could make such an error while retaining the rest of their mental categorization scheme which is why I think these experiences are so striking, they seem unimaginable because of the sheer cognitive dissonance that would be required. However, if the way you divide and categorize things based on their properties is completely shifted then there is no reason to believe that a tire can't be conscious because the system of categories that you have built up over your entire life (dogs, chickens, and cows are all animals, animals posses some degree of agency and can be unpredictable etc etc.) is either weakened substantially or vanishes entirely meaning that kinds of objects are can no longer be divided by these properties. In our everyday life we have a mental inventory of the kinds of objects that posses agency and kinds of objects that do not, agency is used as a fundamental attribute to divide the things around us into groups of kinds of objects. What I argue is that many intense drug experience obliterate our sober categorization schemes meaning that objects which we would normally group together now have no attributes to distinguish them. I don't believe the lamp is alive so much that the division of objects into living and non-living things no longer makes sense to me.
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Click to expand...
yes those categories are largely unavailable (but not obliterated) yet it is much more general effect: all associative cognition is reduced while sensory overlap and chaotic resonance fills the brain.
Zilpe said:
Salvia and High-Dose dissociatives have the capability to make you identify with a non-thinking thing, in order to do this you must first believe that the inanimate object is capable of conscious experience, again this may be the failure of our everyday categorization scheme that separates conscious things from non-conscious things. When these categorical boundaries become fuzzy then a little ego dissolution could easily make you identify with something that, in our everyday experience we know (believe?) does not posses the necessary attributes to experience anything. It's not that you forget that this one object isn't alive but that the alive/non-alive distinction ceases to mean anything.

...
Click to expand...

in order to do this, you do not need to believe anything at all. it is basic, and just because it is basic your reflex is to attribute it to death. I think that is a wrong approach, and you need a more basic understanding of brain and mind to formulate a cohesive theory here.
 
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