Rue, Cacti, 2C-E, 4-AcO-DMT, DMT (IM) - Exp. - A New Alloy Blooms in the Crucible

[psood0nym]

I ate no foods containing tyramine; nothing but vitamins, pretzels, and tortilla chips all day.

The concept of the sublime is intriguing. It seems to me that this is the only reasonable option when faced with such a traumatic situation ... anything else would cause even more struggle. The last things I want to experience on the brink of death would be sadness (for loss of interpersonal love) or fear of judgement (from the perspective of a believer in a personal God).

Insightful observation. I hope I can react so rationally in the time preceding my actual death, though given the content of your next paragraph I don't know if we're using the same sense of the term "sublime"...

Finding sublimity seems to be the goal of a spiritual path. I imagine that a non-attached, yet genuinely concerned attitude is the best possible frame from which to experience the world. Psychedelics have helped me become less attached to things outside myself, leaving more options as to what degree outside events impact my mental state ... this has helped me become less self-conscious. There's a long way to go, however, to reach the sublime state of a buddhist monk. I don't envision myself ever being able to sacrafice every desire in favor a sublime state.

I don't mean "sublime" in terms of a monk's spiritual contentment, or as in "how was my walk through the garden?-- it was sublime." I mean the Kantian sublime: "that, the mere ability to think which shows a faculty of the mind surpassing every standard of sense", a state of overwhelming fear and awe, but where no real danger is present--a tremulous and overwhelming kind of transcendent beauty. I never even hoped to encounter such feelings at the point in the trip when I decided to think of them. It was the mere fact that such experiences exist at all that gave me some solace. Though it was a matter of obligation to these states as the greatest events in my life, not self-consolation, which supplied the real reason for devoting what I thought might be my last moments to them, even if I would not feel them again.

I don't think I could sacrifice desire for a state of ascetic spiritual contentment either. I'm more partial to Nietzschean viewpoints on the matter in that I don't believe there's any point in spending life essentially seeking death (though I greatly respect these people's self-discipline). I'm merely trying to expand my mind as much as possible by openly experiencing as much as possible--including some things that are dark, shallow, and hedonistic--while maintaining self-control and self-knowledge, and without harming others.

 

[Dondante]

Gotcha, thanks for clearing that up. I understood what you meant, but I guess I shouldn't have equated the two meanings of the word. Are they really different meanings or just different degrees of the sublime? I'm still not sure I understand the relationship. I found this interesting analysis of the Kantian sublime by Schopenhauer:

... the feeling of the beautiful is pleasure in simply seeing a benign object. The feeling of the sublime, however, is pleasure in seeing an overpowering or vast malignant object, one that could destroy the observer.

Feeling of Beauty - Light is reflected off a flower. (Pleasure from a mere perception of an object that cannot hurt observer).

Weakest Feeling of Sublime - Light reflected off stones. (Pleasure from beholding objects that pose no threat, yet themselves are devoid of life).

Weaker Feeling of Sublime - Endless desert with no movement. (Pleasure from seeing objects that could not sustain the life of the observer).

Sublime - Turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from perceiving objects that threaten to hurt or destroy observer).

Full Feeling of Sublime - Overpowering turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from beholding very violent, destructive objects).

Fullest Feeling of Sublime - Immensity of Universe's extent or duration. (Pleasure from knowledge of observer's nothingness and oneness with Nature).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy)

I think I experienced the full feeling of the sublime in my recent DPT trip. Fearfulness and pleasure is indeed an odd phenomenon to experience.

 

[swilow]

^^^Thats an interesting read, I've never used the word sublime in such a context....

 

[dbailey11]

That was an incredibly articulate account of your experience. You write really well I have to say. But what seems apparent to me is that maybe you knew you were going to have a violent reaction and did it intentionally. There are easier ways to transcendent states of being you know.

 

[psood0nym]

Gotcha, thanks for clearing that up. I understood what you meant, but I guess I shouldn't have equated the two meanings of the word. Are they really different meanings or just different degrees of the sublime? I'm still not sure I understand the relationship.

There are different forms of the sublime, but each of them, be they artistic, spiritual, intellectual, or otherwise, is to a degree of transcendental greatness.

I experienced all three of the senses of it named above during my first P. Torch/mimohuasca trip, which I described as: "a deific scream of evermore quickly unfurling reams of eidetic art, projected directly into my mind from the luminous visions of mad seraphic geniuses" and later as "this place, that before the great experience this one hoped to model was my conception of heaven: a heterodox hell of endlessly accelerating beauty and creative substance so great and unrelenting I cannot will myself from it, and thus can never escape it; but in whose fugacious beholding is inspired a tremulous, soul-buckling gratitude and staggering awe". I hope that everyone can see these different senses of the sublime at work in these descriptions, as well as the sense that it is always on the edge of fantastic destruction. That I take it to be free and transcendent is why it is Kantian.

^^^Thats an interesting read, I've never used the word sublime in such a context....

You'll rarely hear it used this way outside of texts on aesthetics and on critical theory, but it's been around since Longinus. My intention was to communicate this sense of it in the descriptions I gave preceding my actual use of the term. Aesthetics is one of the most fascinating subjects I've encountered and serves as a great, and rare, "right brain" workout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longinus_%28literature%29#The_Sublime

That was an incredibly articulate account of your experience. You write really well I have to say. But what seems apparent to me is that maybe you knew you were going to have a violent reaction and did it intentionally. There are easier ways to transcendent states of being you know.

Thank you, that's very courteous of you to say. I appreciate it.

What makes it apparent to you that I knew I would have a violent reaction? As I said, I entertained the idea that a subconscious aspect of myself did in fact know what would happen, but I wouldn't call that intentional on my part. I used 25mg of DMT first to see what my reaction would be beforehand. When 8 minutes had past--and I knew from previous experiences that I should be just about peaking--yet I was only experiencing it mildly is when I decided to finish the full 50mg. Why the onset profile was so different is anyone's guess, but my intention was to have a mostly blissful experience, not a destructive one. If you see a counter-interpretation within the text please share it.

It is interesting that you should bring up other ways of achieving transcendent states. While this trip's persistent discomfort kept me rooted in physical reality, it was nevertheless an extremely important one for me. Its critical characteristics were mortal fear and the realizations that issued from that fear; it would not and could not have been the same experience without these. Rather it would have just been complete misery with no redeeming qualities. So while in the past I have been fortunate enough to experience the transcendent states you speak of without any negative influences, and continue to seek them in this way, for this particular trip and its unique lessons I believe that the negative influences were not just valuable as general agents of humility and psychological confrontation as they often are, but were integral to the very structure of the experience and foundational to its ensuing profundity.

 

[dbailey11]

What makes it apparent to you that I knew I would have a violent reaction? As I said, I entertained the idea that a subconscious aspect of myself did in fact know what would happen, but I wouldn't call that intentional on my part. I used 25mg of DMT first to see what my reaction would be beforehand. When 8 minutes had past--and I knew from previous experiences that I should be just about peaking--yet I was only experiencing it mildly is when I decided to finish the full 50mg. Why the onset profile was so different is anyone's guess, but my intention was to have a mostly blissful experience, not a destructive one. If you see a counter-interpretation within the text please share it.

It is interesting that you should bring up other ways of achieving transcendent states. While this trip's persistent discomfort kept me rooted in physical reality, it was nevertheless an extremely important one for me. Its critical characteristics were mortal fear and the realizations that issued from that fear; it would not and could not have been the same experience without these. Rather it would have just been complete misery with no redeeming qualities. So while in the past I have been fortunate enough to experience the transcendent states you speak of without any negative influences, and continue to seek them in this way, for this particular trip and its unique lessons I believe that the negative influences were not just valuable as general agents of humility and psychological confrontation as they often are, but were integral to the very structure of the experience and foundational to its ensuing profundity.

I don't know, I just got the sense that you were reaching for that Ultimate, and you were going to get it come Hell or high water. Maybe it's just the number of chemicals that you mixed together that made me think that. But if you felt that fear and difficulty was valuable, then it was. Keep on keepin' on man.

 

[IGNVS]

bumped, this is one of the best trip reports ive ever read.

"quiet quakes whose bottomless faults I know now to open through my core. These most elevated moments require no justification; they are free and transcendent, and I choose them."

those words are fucking epic