Consciousness Cafe - Entheogens and Psychedelic Cultural Transmissions

If EEGs become available at prices that individuals can afford, easily
built and adapted by hobbyists, it could create an explosion in new mind
machine technologies. Mind machines whose light and sound programs respond
to detailed brainwave analysis. New ways of recording sessions with
psychedelics (reminiscent of Dr. Leary's experiments with the Experiential
Typewriter). New ways of guiding and directing psychedelic and meditative
experiences. Ways of researching paranormal abilities without expensive
research labs. Means of invoking group states of consciousness by guiding a
group of people to similar brainwave patterns simultaneously. Ways of
sharing EEGs over the Internet, or trying planet-wide consciousness shifts
by synchronization of brainwaves using the Internet to share EEG data
realtime. New means of triggering lucid dreaming. This is very exciting stuff.

>----- Forwarded message from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org -----
>
>From: brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org
>Date: 26 Jul 2004 04:26:03 -0000
>To: slashdotnews@hyperreal.org
>Subject: The Internet Meets the Neural Net
>User-Agent: SlashdotNewsScooper/0.0.3
>
>Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/25/2250200
>Posted by: michael, on 2004-07-26 04:06:00
>Topic: 191, 12 comments
>
> from the where-can-i-find-out-how-to-inject-signals-into-my-head dept.
> [1]orangesquid writes "[2]OpenEEG is a system for getting data [3]from
> your brain to your computer. Recently, work was resumed on [4]scEEG, a
> soundcard-based system which may one day make home EEG systems very
> cheap (they currently cost a few hundred US$ to put together; there
> are, though, some potential [5]cheaper alternatives).

>References
>
> 1. http://osATudelDOTedu/
> 2. http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/
> 3. http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=47&t=864
> 4. http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/hw/sceeg.html
> 5.
> http://www.betterhumans.com/Resources/Encyclopedia/article.aspx?articleID=2003-03-02-2
>
>----- End forwarded message -----

Last night was my favorite Wednesday night 2004
Summerdance yet.

Most of you seemed to have missed Montreal-based
Turkish DJ Arkin Allen. The inclement weather
apparently scared many people away, but as the evening
progressed people continued to trickle in.
Unfortunately by the time the crowd really gelled,
Arkin Allen was done with his set and house DJ Miles
Maeda had showed up.

Arkin Allen's set was a mix between hard techno and
tribal percussive beats, with a world fusion
foundation. I loved it and wished he could have played
all night. Perhaps I was in a minority as a Chicagoan.
I hope he had been prepared for the small crowd, as
this DJ spins at raves in Europe to crowds of
thousands. If you're interested his fully electronic
project has released one CD, "Fusion Monster." I think
it's great Middle Eastern electronica. (increasingly
my own tastes are tending toward Arab and Indian
electronic dance and psytrance, artists like Yahel and
Bhangra Knights).

Besides working the turntable, Arkin Allen is a
skilled ney player. The ney is a kind of flute which
deliver a sound more in the bass tones. He also
pratices bendir, frame drum, zarp and udu drum. His
other downtempo project Mercan Dede and the Secret
Tribe will be playing tonight (Thursday Jul22) at
Summerdance. That will be a more traditional Turkish
Sufi sound but still not entirely acoustic. We own all
the Mercan Dede (pronounced mer-shan dayd) CDs, and
happily will be there to listen tonight.


Miles Maeda played a great set and by 8:30 the kind of
crowd I have seen at other Wednesday Summerdance
events had showed up. A number of Cafe folk were there
by then as well. I really like Miles Maeda but wished
that Arkin Allen had kept playing. Sometimes,
Chicago's provincial limitations become very clear . .
. But it could be worse. I could be living in Indianapolis.



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This isn't local news, but it's just too interesting
to not pass along.

> ----- Forwarded message from Justin Sanchez
> -----
>
> From: "Justin Sanchez"
> Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 07:26:59 -0400
> To: ,
>
> Subject: POSTDOCTORAL AND GRADUATE ASSISTANT
> POSITIONS: BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACES
> X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
> Reply-To: "Justin Sanchez"
>
> POSTDOCTORAL AND GRADUATE ASSISTANT POSITIONS:
> BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACES
>
>
>
> Positions are available in the Computational
> NeuroEngineering Laboratory at
> the University of Florida for individuals with
> experience in adaptive
> systems, analysis of multidimensional biomedical
> time-series, and
> neuroscience. This person will interact with
> electrical and computer
> engineers, neurosurgeons, and biomedical scientists
> working on brain-machine
> interfaces. This position requires knowledge
> time/frequency/model based
> analysis approaches, programming in Matlab or C,
> functional neuroanatomy,
> and experimental design. The position is available
> starting August 1, 2004.
> If interested, please send via email a CV, a summary
> of skills and
> experience, and the names of three references to:
>
>
>
> Jose C. Principe, Ph.D.
>
>
>
> principe@cnel.ufl.edu
>
>
>
> Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering,
> BellSouth Professor and
> Director Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory
>
>
>
> EB 451, Bldg #33
>
> University of Florida
>
> Gainesville, FL 32611
>
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----




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// posted by ustaath @ 7/09/2004 11:04:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

http://www.dreamessentials.com/eye_masks/html/a_intro_masks.html

This is an excellent site for choosing a sleep mask/
eye shade.

I regard eye shades to be one of the key tools for
effective meditation and other consciousness work. The
masks now available can be extremely comfortable and
allow you to be in total darkness even in a completely
sunlit environment.

Foam earplugs are also very comfortable and allow you
with the eye shades a degree of sensory deprivation
that can come close to floatation tanks.



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http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996092

Note that when they say the speed of light may have changed "recently",
they mean as recent as 2 billion years ago . . .

>DREAM DRUG OR DEMON BREW?
>New Scientist vol 182 issue 2453 - 26 June 2004, page 42
>By Lisa Melton
>http://www.newscientist.com/inprint/index.jsp?id=20040626
>A mind-altering substance used in shamanistic rituals may hold clues to
>dreaming and a natural way of alleviating depression but could also trigger
>schizophrenic hallucinations. Lisa Melton investigates
>IN THE brightly lit chapel, the ceremony is due to begin. Dennis McKenna
>lines up with 500 others to sip the sacrament. It takes 45 minutes before it
>hits him. Then, eyes closed, he finds himself hovering above the Amazon
>basin, aware of the massive forests and the meandering rivers beneath. A
>giant vine winds up towards him and he hurtles down it, shrinking as he goes
>until the leaves themselves seem the size of trees. Shrinking further, he
>finds himself surrounded by a new forest made up of molecules engaged in
>photosynthesis. McKenna, an ethnobotanist from the University of Minnesota
>in Minneapolis, is high on ayahuasca.
>Ayahuasca is not the latest party drug but a foul-tasting plant concoction
>Amazonian people have been downing for centuries. It is the stuff of
>legends, credited with sending people on the most incredible trips. Today
>this bitter tea, also known as hoasca, has become the sacramental ritual of
>two modern religions in Brazil; one of them, the Unio do Vegetal (UDV)
>church, has invited McKenna, an expert on psychoactive plants, and other
>research teams, to scrutinise this sacred brew.
>Their fascination with ayahuasca stems from a little-known mind-altering
>compound called dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a substance the sacred tea
>contains by the bucketload. When it comes to psychedelic compounds, DMT is
>in a league of its own, as the only hallucinogen our body produces
>naturally.
>Scientists have found DMT pretty much everywhere they've looked in animals,
>plants and fungi. But despite its ubiquity, DMT's role remains a mystery.
>Some believe it fuels vivid dreams, mystical revelations and religious
>exaltation, as well as playing a part in memory. The more sinister
>possibility is that over-producing DMT could tip a person over the edge into
>insanity, inducing the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia. McKenna and his
>colleagues hope the tripping churchgoers could help them find the answers.
>DMT doesn't hang around long enough for people to study it easily. It acts
>rapidly and is broken down swiftly by the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO).
>Normally if you eat or drink it, DMT doesn't stand a chance of getting into
>the brain as MAO in the gut breaks it down.
>Cocktail effect
>Shamans, McKenna discovered, overcame this problem by carefully combining
>plants in the ayahuasca brew. One is the Psychotria viridis bush, which is
>packed with DMT. The other is the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which contains
>harmine, one of the most effective MAO inhibitors. By inactivating MAO with
>the vine bark, DMT can be absorbed from the gut and crosses the blood-brain
>barrier to trigger a psychedelic response.
>It turns out that harmine-like compounds are also ubiquitous in our bodies.
>This led some researchers to suggest that maybe our bodies regulate the
>levels of DMT in the same way as in the tea, sometimes boosting its activity
>by knocking out MAO so it can fulfil some sort of physiological role.
>Pharmacologist Jordi Riba from the University of Barcelona, Spain, has been
>trying to work out what that physiological role might be, using brain scans
>to study its effect on brain activity. His preliminary results are
>tantalising, showing areas lighting up that are related to memory. Riba
>believes DMT may be involved in retrieving facts and experiences. "When you
>give people ayahuasca, they re-experience memories that are there already.
>It's like pressing a random access button to your stored memories," he says.
>Jace Callaway from the University of Kuopio in Finland has another idea. He
>suggests that endogenous DMT and harmine-like substances may play a role in
>generating dream imagery. "We experience psychedelic states on a regular
>basis while dreaming," he says.
>But while its natural role is still uncertain, a more unnatural role is
>coming to the fore. The effects produced by psychedelic drugs are strikingly
>similar to the symptoms of psychosis. In the 1950s, these similarities led
>to the suggestion that psychoactive compounds like DMT were the cause of
>schizophrenia.
>According to the theory, an enzymatic disturbance in the body could lead to
>overproduction of hallucinogenic compounds. And if MAO activity is low, as
>suspected in people with schizophrenia, the compounds would linger and the
>hallucinations they trigger seep into everyday existence.
>But researchers had always failed to detect consistent differences in DMT
>levels between patients and controls. "I spent my youth collecting and
>analysing gallons of urine from people with schizophrenia," recalls Robin
>Murray from the Institute of Psychiatry in London. "The endogenous DMT
>hypothesis of schizophrenia was never disproved but was just overtaken by
>the dopamine theory, which was more immediately plausible."
>But the theory is enjoying something of a comeback. Alicia Pomilio, an
>organic chemist, and Jorge Ciprian-Ollivier, a psychiatrist, at the
>University of Buenos Aires in Argentina realised that the church
>congregation members could help them to look for the signature of DMT in the
>urine using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. Once they knew what to
>look for, they were able to detect traces in the urine of patients with
>active schizophrenia but not in controls. It is not clear whether people
>with schizophrenia are producing too much DMT, or too little MAO the result
>would be the same. But the discovery is exciting in that it paves the way to
>finding new drugs to treat schizophrenia.
>But if DMT might be the cause of one medical problem, it could be the cure
>for others. McKenna has found that DMT exerts its effect by attaching mainly
>to one particular type of serotonin uptake site called 5-HT2A, as do other
>psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin and mescaline. Serotonin is a
>mood-altering neurotransmitter, also known to influence sleep, appetite,
>aggression and love. The newest class of antidepressant drugs, including
>Prozac, are thought to work by blocking the uptake of serotonin into nerve
>cells. Callaway's recent studies suggest that ayahuasca might have some of
>the effects of antidepressant drugs nature's very own Prozac.
>He measured serotonin levels in rats after giving them ayahuasca and says
>the levels of the neurotransmitter "go through the roof". After drinking
>hoasca tea users report a feel-good effect that can last for days. Callaway
>found that hoasca drinkers had a greater than normal density of serotonin
>uptake sites on their blood platelets, where they are easier to measure than
>in the brain. People seem to respond, he says, by creating more receptors.
>When they are not getting a buzz from the tea, the additional receptors
>hunger for more serotonin, pushing the body to produce more.
>But does the brain bump up its number of serotonin uptake sites too? Using a
>brain imaging technique that labels serotonin receptors, Callaway has now
>tested one person, and found signs of a similar upregulation in a
>serotonin-rich region of the brain. Of course, this observation needs
>following up, but it's an encouraging sign. "It's a true tonic effect," says
>Callaway. The sacred tea "apparently does what antidepressants fail to do.
>It could lead to long-term plastic changes in the brain without having to
>pop a pill every day."
>Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles,
>School of Medicine, reckons that this sustained effect on mood makes
>ayahuasca a good candidate for treating addictions as well as alleviating
>depression. People with serious alcohol problems and mood disorders were
>transformed by the church. All religions boast life-changing stories, but
>Grob believes the tea itself is important. There is already one centre in
>Peru testing ayahuasca in clinical trials for drug abuse.
>But the researchers are proceeding cautiously. Many people have been taking
>the hallucinogen within the supportive setting of the UDV for 30 years with
>seemingly no adverse side effects. But it is not always so. "If the tea is
>not properly prepared, or in the hands of an individual without the
>appropriate support, the consequences can be negative," says Grob. Even in
>the highly controlled lab setting it can trigger twitching, vomiting and
>diarrhoea. Useful if you are an Amazonian hunter wanting to rid your gut of
>parasites, perhaps, but not exactly convenient if you are wearing your best
>party gear.