Mr. Tambourine Man
Bluelighter
Morning Glory seeds (300), Experienced, "Morning Glory Insights in the Blue Mosque"
Note: I know this is really long so feel free to skip around. Any comments would be appreciated, thanks for reading.
On a visit to Istanbul, while touring the city, I decided that, since I’d never get the opportunity again, I would attempt a psychedelic experience in one of the larger mosques. After having visited a many, I decided that I wanted to spend my time in the Blue Mosque, as it was both the most beautiful and impressively designed IMO. I had been interested in the general idea of taking a psychedelic in a place with spiritual or religious significance, and was curious to see how the atmosphere of such a location would affect my experience. I decided to take approximately 300 morning glory seeds, as it was a psychedelic with which I am very comfortable. I planned my experience for a Thursday when I had no obligations, and started consuming the seeds at around 10:30, chewing them to a fine pulp, to make sure the absorption would be fully effective. I also took two anti-nausea tablets (Trimethobenzamide) beforehand, and waited for the nausea and restlessness phase to elapse. It took over two hours for psychological effects to manifest, and only then as a slight dizziness, which was a little disappointing. At that point I took the tram to the mosque, in the hopes that effects would increase
Once on board the tram, I noticed the side effects, particularly the leg cramps, were stronger than I had originally anticipated. I also was suffering from a severe body load and a rising feeling of mental cloudiness, which caused me to get off at the wrong stop. Once I realized this, I tried to drag myself to the mosque with many stops, as the body load was so strong that I felt like an old man. I stopped in a restaurant for about half an hour, and felt alternately very restless and incredibly fatigued, as well as nauseated, leading to a distinctly uncomfortable state. However, I brought a muscle relaxant specifically for this, as these symptoms might have been caused by the antihistamines, and took it in the restaurant. Within about ten minutes, I felt much calmer, and was also aware of the faintest visual anomalies and psychedelic tendrils creeping up on me. I climbed a tall hill to get to the mosque, as the rising sense of calm and tryptamine euphoria increased. When I reached the mosque, I was overcome by the square, and, prior to entering the actual mosque, I went into a nearby shrine. While sitting in the shrine, and being absorbed in the delicate interior designs, I tried to contemplate the nature of religion and veneration, and its purpose for believers. Being essentially an atheist, I was a bit unsure how to approach the whole question, and kept getting hung up in analogies of religion as an equivalent of a tribe, a family, or a gang, whose colors or shared genetic identity was signified in the creeds beliefs, rituals, and language. It seemed as though a religion was, in essence, an attempt at an all around cultural construct wherein all things were dictated, to form a functioning whole. This would be the germ of a much longer train of thought later during the trip, although I was unaware of this at the time. Finally, I walked around to the Blue Mosque, and, after entering the visitors section, I sat with my back against one of the four massive marble pillars, and stared at the ceiling, oblivious to all else.
As I stared at the dome of the mosque, and the beautiful, incredibly ornate decorated tiles which gave the Mosque its name, I was overcome by a sense of the beauty and majesty of such a place. The morning glories were definitely in full effect, and the tiled patterns moved and flowed, the calligraphy twisted, and the overall effect was both magical and incredibly powerful. When I tried to focus on religion, however, and the behavior of the faithful gathered on the other side of the building, I found I could not focus on the individuals, but rather on the overall theology and its physical manifestation in the building. As I was peaking, I felt that the individuals shrank in importance to the level of single cells, essential as an organized mass, but relatively unimportant in a case by case evaluation. This triggered in me a recurring theme which has been at the heart of most of my powerful morning glory experiences, to think in terms of biological systems to explain what I was thinking about. As I stared upwards, trying to understand religion, the great dome in center of the mosque began to pulse, compressing slightly, and then expanding slightly. As I watched, this motion became more regular, and more pronounced. I realized that this Mosque was one of the many “hearts” of the crude, multi-cellular species known as the Islamic religion. The pounding heart of the mosque drew in believers, imbued them with faith (as a lung would with oxygen), and released them into the larger community, ideally to work for the furthering of their spiritual aims.
The analogy seemed so perfect to me, that I felt that this must be the fate of humanity, to organize into cohesive religious units, as single cells found the ability to agree to merge into multi-cellular organisms. However, I soon realized a flaw in this argument; religious institutions are notoriously unstable structures, a thousand ideologies branch off from a single root, mutating much faster than standard life, and too quickly to form the large, complex units which would be analogous to the single celled organisms of today. This thought caused me to think as hard as possible about the future of human society, within the paradigm of biology. I came to the conclusion that, while almost all religions initially tried to structure all or some aspects of a society based on their teachings, they were effectively unable to maintain that degree of control, and, if they were fortunate enough to maintain a cohesive sense of identity, were roughly analogous to the complexity of the early “hives” of multi-cellular organisms which lacked cellular diversification for the performance of unique tasks, such as coral. It then occurred to me that there was no logical reason that humans, as an entity very analogous to the cell, could not, at some point in the future, form an entity in which consciousness was shared, and all movement and behavior correlated. It occurred to me that the experience I was having, one of inexpressible beauty and majesty, would not be possible if it were not for the complete cooperation trillions of cells, neurons, blood cells, and muscle tissue, all of which was essential to creating something beyond the range of experience of any living cell. This led me to ask myself whether such a union of evolutionarily-attuned altruistic humans (perhaps aided by some form of neural technology) would not create a collective which would, itself, rise to new levels of consciousness such as we could not grasp. I found this idea of potential development of the future to be not only obvious, but inescapable, an inevitable consequence of prolonged energy input forming progressively more complex emergent phenomena. I believe my reading material of the past month, which was largely biology textbooks and Michio Kaku, went a long way towards determining the subject matter of my musings, which took on a grand and awe inspiring scale during the peak of this experience.
While this progression of thoughts took place, I was in a state of contemplative awe. Eventually, however, as was my experience with psilocybin mushrooms, I began to lose myself in the looping biological analogies, forgetting where the beginning and end of the comparison lay. This felt like an extremely cognizant and mystical state; despite being somewhat confused as to the specifics of my thoughts, I felt as though I was in a higher state in which I had access to vast quantities of knowledge. I could, briefly, see all of human history clearly up to this point, as series of agonizingly slow movements to forge a unity from individual humans into a collective, first as a tribe with a unique culture, then a tribal amalgam as an empire; amalgams of empires through trade, and finally collectives of trading nations into super-national associations, which have only recently emerged. I could also see what seemed to be the only logical progression, which I described above; namely humanity as the components of a larger super consciousness, in complete cooperation for a larger shared purpose, an ideal which opposes the biological imperative of individual fitness.
I felt as though I were in a beatific state, and there was a period of anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour which I cannot clearly remember. However, as I slowly came out of it, and the intensity diminished slightly, I was left with the unshakeable feeling that I had briefly merged with mass-consciousness I had conceived of in the last hours (upon later reading, I found that the Hindu concept of Paramatman most closely resembled what I had in mind during this experience, and described it fairly well, albeit in a more spiritual context). After feeling as though I was coming down slightly, sometime around T: 4:00, I left the Mosque, and walked back towards a tram station. Everything had a faint rainbow tinge, and my steps felt light and gentle, and my state of mind tranquil. However, my focus was significantly impaired, and rather than getting on a tram, I began to wander aimlessly through the alleys of the Sultanahmed district, and finally across the bridge to my hotel, which took me at least an hour. While walking, I continued to elaborate on the biological metaphor. I also felt mildly annoyed at having been separated from what seemed like a completely spiritually fulfilled, almost omniscient viewpoint after such a brief taste of the massive complexity that I saw as the future. It took over a week to convince myself that the ideas I had had may not have been as realistic as I had thought, but I still cannot ignore it completely.
After returning home, I still felt some effects of the seeds, such as rainbow tinged environments and CEVs, although the floral carpets weren’t intertwining themselves before my eyes, as they had been in the mosque. I went to the top of my Hotel, which provided an amazing view of Istanbul and the Marmara as Galata Tower, and sat watching and listening to the city, feeling peaceful, and at one with the city and all its inhabitants. The skyline was edged with the light psychedelic watercolors, and the contours of buildings seemed to dance slightly in the bright afternoon sun. Finally, I heard the Call to Prayer, which seemed to fill the skyline with energy. The entire city seemed to swell and deepen, as each mosque began chanting at slightly different intervals from every corner of the city, from across the water, and in all directions. I felt as though I could almost see the belief and even prayers, as a certain glow to the skyline, which, when I focused on it, appeared to be releasing tiny luminescent points, like blue-sky sprites, which darted into the sky. Several hours later, when I was mostly at baseline, I was still unable to integrate the events of the day, but felt quite positive and contemplative for the rest of the evening.
Note: I know this is really long so feel free to skip around. Any comments would be appreciated, thanks for reading.
On a visit to Istanbul, while touring the city, I decided that, since I’d never get the opportunity again, I would attempt a psychedelic experience in one of the larger mosques. After having visited a many, I decided that I wanted to spend my time in the Blue Mosque, as it was both the most beautiful and impressively designed IMO. I had been interested in the general idea of taking a psychedelic in a place with spiritual or religious significance, and was curious to see how the atmosphere of such a location would affect my experience. I decided to take approximately 300 morning glory seeds, as it was a psychedelic with which I am very comfortable. I planned my experience for a Thursday when I had no obligations, and started consuming the seeds at around 10:30, chewing them to a fine pulp, to make sure the absorption would be fully effective. I also took two anti-nausea tablets (Trimethobenzamide) beforehand, and waited for the nausea and restlessness phase to elapse. It took over two hours for psychological effects to manifest, and only then as a slight dizziness, which was a little disappointing. At that point I took the tram to the mosque, in the hopes that effects would increase
Once on board the tram, I noticed the side effects, particularly the leg cramps, were stronger than I had originally anticipated. I also was suffering from a severe body load and a rising feeling of mental cloudiness, which caused me to get off at the wrong stop. Once I realized this, I tried to drag myself to the mosque with many stops, as the body load was so strong that I felt like an old man. I stopped in a restaurant for about half an hour, and felt alternately very restless and incredibly fatigued, as well as nauseated, leading to a distinctly uncomfortable state. However, I brought a muscle relaxant specifically for this, as these symptoms might have been caused by the antihistamines, and took it in the restaurant. Within about ten minutes, I felt much calmer, and was also aware of the faintest visual anomalies and psychedelic tendrils creeping up on me. I climbed a tall hill to get to the mosque, as the rising sense of calm and tryptamine euphoria increased. When I reached the mosque, I was overcome by the square, and, prior to entering the actual mosque, I went into a nearby shrine. While sitting in the shrine, and being absorbed in the delicate interior designs, I tried to contemplate the nature of religion and veneration, and its purpose for believers. Being essentially an atheist, I was a bit unsure how to approach the whole question, and kept getting hung up in analogies of religion as an equivalent of a tribe, a family, or a gang, whose colors or shared genetic identity was signified in the creeds beliefs, rituals, and language. It seemed as though a religion was, in essence, an attempt at an all around cultural construct wherein all things were dictated, to form a functioning whole. This would be the germ of a much longer train of thought later during the trip, although I was unaware of this at the time. Finally, I walked around to the Blue Mosque, and, after entering the visitors section, I sat with my back against one of the four massive marble pillars, and stared at the ceiling, oblivious to all else.
As I stared at the dome of the mosque, and the beautiful, incredibly ornate decorated tiles which gave the Mosque its name, I was overcome by a sense of the beauty and majesty of such a place. The morning glories were definitely in full effect, and the tiled patterns moved and flowed, the calligraphy twisted, and the overall effect was both magical and incredibly powerful. When I tried to focus on religion, however, and the behavior of the faithful gathered on the other side of the building, I found I could not focus on the individuals, but rather on the overall theology and its physical manifestation in the building. As I was peaking, I felt that the individuals shrank in importance to the level of single cells, essential as an organized mass, but relatively unimportant in a case by case evaluation. This triggered in me a recurring theme which has been at the heart of most of my powerful morning glory experiences, to think in terms of biological systems to explain what I was thinking about. As I stared upwards, trying to understand religion, the great dome in center of the mosque began to pulse, compressing slightly, and then expanding slightly. As I watched, this motion became more regular, and more pronounced. I realized that this Mosque was one of the many “hearts” of the crude, multi-cellular species known as the Islamic religion. The pounding heart of the mosque drew in believers, imbued them with faith (as a lung would with oxygen), and released them into the larger community, ideally to work for the furthering of their spiritual aims.
The analogy seemed so perfect to me, that I felt that this must be the fate of humanity, to organize into cohesive religious units, as single cells found the ability to agree to merge into multi-cellular organisms. However, I soon realized a flaw in this argument; religious institutions are notoriously unstable structures, a thousand ideologies branch off from a single root, mutating much faster than standard life, and too quickly to form the large, complex units which would be analogous to the single celled organisms of today. This thought caused me to think as hard as possible about the future of human society, within the paradigm of biology. I came to the conclusion that, while almost all religions initially tried to structure all or some aspects of a society based on their teachings, they were effectively unable to maintain that degree of control, and, if they were fortunate enough to maintain a cohesive sense of identity, were roughly analogous to the complexity of the early “hives” of multi-cellular organisms which lacked cellular diversification for the performance of unique tasks, such as coral. It then occurred to me that there was no logical reason that humans, as an entity very analogous to the cell, could not, at some point in the future, form an entity in which consciousness was shared, and all movement and behavior correlated. It occurred to me that the experience I was having, one of inexpressible beauty and majesty, would not be possible if it were not for the complete cooperation trillions of cells, neurons, blood cells, and muscle tissue, all of which was essential to creating something beyond the range of experience of any living cell. This led me to ask myself whether such a union of evolutionarily-attuned altruistic humans (perhaps aided by some form of neural technology) would not create a collective which would, itself, rise to new levels of consciousness such as we could not grasp. I found this idea of potential development of the future to be not only obvious, but inescapable, an inevitable consequence of prolonged energy input forming progressively more complex emergent phenomena. I believe my reading material of the past month, which was largely biology textbooks and Michio Kaku, went a long way towards determining the subject matter of my musings, which took on a grand and awe inspiring scale during the peak of this experience.
While this progression of thoughts took place, I was in a state of contemplative awe. Eventually, however, as was my experience with psilocybin mushrooms, I began to lose myself in the looping biological analogies, forgetting where the beginning and end of the comparison lay. This felt like an extremely cognizant and mystical state; despite being somewhat confused as to the specifics of my thoughts, I felt as though I was in a higher state in which I had access to vast quantities of knowledge. I could, briefly, see all of human history clearly up to this point, as series of agonizingly slow movements to forge a unity from individual humans into a collective, first as a tribe with a unique culture, then a tribal amalgam as an empire; amalgams of empires through trade, and finally collectives of trading nations into super-national associations, which have only recently emerged. I could also see what seemed to be the only logical progression, which I described above; namely humanity as the components of a larger super consciousness, in complete cooperation for a larger shared purpose, an ideal which opposes the biological imperative of individual fitness.
I felt as though I were in a beatific state, and there was a period of anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour which I cannot clearly remember. However, as I slowly came out of it, and the intensity diminished slightly, I was left with the unshakeable feeling that I had briefly merged with mass-consciousness I had conceived of in the last hours (upon later reading, I found that the Hindu concept of Paramatman most closely resembled what I had in mind during this experience, and described it fairly well, albeit in a more spiritual context). After feeling as though I was coming down slightly, sometime around T: 4:00, I left the Mosque, and walked back towards a tram station. Everything had a faint rainbow tinge, and my steps felt light and gentle, and my state of mind tranquil. However, my focus was significantly impaired, and rather than getting on a tram, I began to wander aimlessly through the alleys of the Sultanahmed district, and finally across the bridge to my hotel, which took me at least an hour. While walking, I continued to elaborate on the biological metaphor. I also felt mildly annoyed at having been separated from what seemed like a completely spiritually fulfilled, almost omniscient viewpoint after such a brief taste of the massive complexity that I saw as the future. It took over a week to convince myself that the ideas I had had may not have been as realistic as I had thought, but I still cannot ignore it completely.
After returning home, I still felt some effects of the seeds, such as rainbow tinged environments and CEVs, although the floral carpets weren’t intertwining themselves before my eyes, as they had been in the mosque. I went to the top of my Hotel, which provided an amazing view of Istanbul and the Marmara as Galata Tower, and sat watching and listening to the city, feeling peaceful, and at one with the city and all its inhabitants. The skyline was edged with the light psychedelic watercolors, and the contours of buildings seemed to dance slightly in the bright afternoon sun. Finally, I heard the Call to Prayer, which seemed to fill the skyline with energy. The entire city seemed to swell and deepen, as each mosque began chanting at slightly different intervals from every corner of the city, from across the water, and in all directions. I felt as though I could almost see the belief and even prayers, as a certain glow to the skyline, which, when I focused on it, appeared to be releasing tiny luminescent points, like blue-sky sprites, which darted into the sky. Several hours later, when I was mostly at baseline, I was still unable to integrate the events of the day, but felt quite positive and contemplative for the rest of the evening.
