The Black Hole

For the Psychadelic Festival I am very stoked to build this structure my group conceived, it's going to be a trance inducing room made to exhaust your attention span until you give up in thinking of nothing. It's going to be 10x20ft and all black with black lights, glow paint, glow sticks, speakers, a projection, and a window to the stars. I hope people are really able to engage with it and enjoy it.

I want it to invoke this vibe, skip to 11:30

Sweat Lodge

The Sweat Lodge experience, was definitely an experience. Before I talk about the Sweat Lodge I just want to say I was sooo inspired but the set up of the Ojai Foundation. It was so beautiful surrounded by greener and perched on a hill the view was serene. The communal areas and little structures just made me think about how I want to live, that is, simply in a sustainable environment where I can kick it with friends amongst the beauty of nature.

Okay back to the Sweat Lodge, so that morning I awoke after a nightmare in which I dreamt that I had done the sweat lodge but didn't remember a thing about it. I approached a table of fresh fruits and veggies where Cameron was munching away and he asked "How did you like it?" I was dumfounded because I could not recollect any memory of the experience. Crazy right, but I actually do remember my waking experience in the sweat lodge and I'll tell you all about it.

It was very ritual oriented with some pseudo-Native American ceremonies, which were cool but actually felt kind of like attending church except, it actually made sense. Giving thanks to nature and reflecting on what you want for yourself and others. Be selected our rocks and made a wish for ourselves and then selected some wood to burn away something. My wish for my self, to envision my passion in life more clearly. The burn, the close mindedness of our world leaders.

Inside the womb as Paul referred to it the sweating commenced. We went through 4 levels of rocks all with different degrees of sweat and activity. Level 1 I wanted the heat ore intense, by Level 3 I was sweating like no other, this was my favorite level because of the intensity and everyone through concepts, ideologies, and bad habits into the void. You think you know how you feel and think about things but verbally expressing them really drives your stance on things home and into your memory.

Overall it was an awesome experience and a definite bonding experience. I did feel a sort of lightness coming out of the lodge perhaps it was because I stopped living in the past and future and was just taking in the present. We ate delicious food we cooked the night prior and all slept like babies that night.

Allosphere

The concept of the allosphere is really awesome. Reading the pamphlet before I got in totally hyped me up for it. However, it was somewhat of a let down. Don't get me wrong, I love visualizers especially with music and sounds, but the Allosphere felt kind of like an amusement park exhibition that people go to when the lines are too long for the rides. Conceptually though pretty cool. As a researcher I would totally use this to revisualize the way in which I understood the nature of things. Rather than chemicals being a hexagon surrounded by letters. the Allosphere allow for a new representation of the sciences.

Isolation Tank's Space-Time Continuum

After experiencing the isolation tank, I must say that the experience was not what I expected. With the majority of the senses deprived I thought I would experience a rush of ideas, image and revelations from my construction of the outside world. I envisioned having the type of projections that John C. Lily spoke of in, “Use of Projection –Display Techniques in Deep Self-analysis with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.” I thought my mind would make up for the absence of the tangible world through elaborate depictions of reality. It made sense, that as my senses were dulled by the nothingness that my mind would try to make up for the world that was not present. However, maybe I needed some LSD and some dolphins to get the level of craziness that Lilly wrote about because instead of falling into some vivid hallucinatory state, I felt extremely relaxed and mindless.

My experience was more like the sensory deprivation described in Scott Daly’s, “The Ganzfeld as a Canvas for Neurophysiology.” Daly describes sensory deprivation as putting the body’s receptors in a “resting state and send no information up the pathways to the high centers of the brain” (172). I quickly was able to adjust to the odd environment of the isolation tank despite my desire for the water to be warmer and the air to feel fresher. Once I was comfortable in the tank I found my self intentionally grasping for visions or thought, but I would them hard to complete as a wave of tranquility swept my mind away from the world beyond the tank. I easily slipped between conscious and unconscious stated unable to complete a thought or form a memory. According to Daly, during sensory deprivation, “There is no perceptual event, other than the awareness of darkness” (172). This easily sums up my experience in the isolation tank as my mind was only aware of the darkness and I easily forgot about the outside world, unsuccessful of even try to fathom it. It felt like a deep meditation with great success. The objective of meditation is to clear the mind. This is often difficult even when sitting cross-legged in a silent room, however it seems like the complete lack of acoustic distance and lack of light (which would normally activate the rods of even closed eyes) inside the isolation tank contributed to its immediate effect of relaxation on me.

Inside the tank I eventually fell under a very deep state of unconsciousness, perhaps even sleep and when I awoke I panicked. I’m not quite sure why I panicked upon my awake, perhaps it was the thought that I had been in there for a lifetime, or maybe the fear that there was no more oxygen in the tank. Whatever the case I was taken by an overwhelming feeling that I had to get out. It felt like I couldn’t have been in the tank for longer than an hour, but to my surprise I had actually been in there for two hours. The mind-altering state experienced in the isolation tank was very similar to that experienced during the sound bath in the Integratron. These two similar experiences must be a result of the activated alpha waves in the brain, caused by such environments of sensory deprivation or particular sensory activation. During the sound bath it felt as through there was only one thing to focus on, the sound. During the isolation tank, the only thing my mind began to focus on was the darkness.

My experience in the isolation tank was far different from my experience during the Ganzfeld Field. During the Ganzfeld, my brain was extremely activated as I saw a series of images among the red fog. The white noise helped to focus on my projections and actually enhanced my visions. In the isolation take the silence did the opposite as well as the darkness that disabled any projections my mind attempted to create.

Nevertheless, the isolation tank was a trippy experience in which I lost complete sense of time and even space. Part of my panic was the fact that I had forgotten where I was and when the opening of my eyes brought no light, I became desperately hungry for stimuli. The isolation tank left me more appreciative of my surroundings and my ability to make sense of them and after I got out the world around me seemed a lot more fruitful for observation.

Ganzfeld

This was a cool narrative short I found about the Ganzfeld Field. I really enjoyed it. The representation of Ganzfeld projections is beautiful. My personal experience was not as vivid, but I definitle saw a lot my brain was going crazy with the projections. I saw almost too much, but I did get some pretty strong recurring images such as birds, flowers, and triangles. Some of my visualizations were full on scenes in which I travelled through space. For instance I went into a triangular crack and found a flower and another time I flew into a mouth and headed straight for the little punching bag thing. It was a trip.

After reading Scott Daly's article "The Ganzfeld as a Canvas for Neurophysically Based Artworks" I am super inspired to try something up this ally, imagine your using ping pong balls and your imagination to create an art piece with the aid of a performer, sounds a bit shamanic. Anyways I plan wearing ping pong balls on my eyes and just hanging out under a tree, pronto!

Cybernetics & Psychedelic

In contemplating the relationship between cybernetics and the psychedelic experience, there seems to be little interrelatedness. The psychedelic experience as subjective and random as it may be does not fit well with the cybernetics philosophy of redundancy and stability. However, when looking through the Marshall McLuhan perspective of electromagnetic technology as having the power to retribalize and unify mankind, the subjective psychedelic experience and the resulting revelations gain the ability to become ubiquitous among a society where technology is the extension of mankind’s senses.

According to Gerald Heard in “Can This Drug Enlarge Man’s Mind?,” he explains to the psychedelic experience of LSD through the Greek mythology metaphor of the “The Gate of Ivory” in which the incomprehensible concepts that belong to “higher registers” of the human mind subside (14). Heard believes, when channeled through the proper means, the psychedelic experience can produce new original discoveries. Although these discoveries may seem initially farfetched, they can become the added variable that can produce optimal performance in a cybernetic cycle. In “Cybernetics and the Sacred,” Ryan Paul defines cybernetics as systems that process “differences in such a manner as to be self-corrective either toward maximizing particular variables or finding homeostatic optima” (133). Therefore, cybernetics provides a framework in which “different” elements can be added or subtracted in a cycle to produce regenerative rhythms for an optimal life. Consequently, if new ideas have the ability to affect our lives for the better, than the “different” ideas resulting from a psychedelic experience can potentially be added to our construction of life for the greater good.

This integration of new ideas into our consciousness and cybernetic cycle becomes inherent in modern society that relies on electromagnetic technology. According to Marshall McLuhan, electromagnetic technology is “total and inclusive…an external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness” (57). As a result, McLuhan believes the totality of electromagnetic technology is unifying mankind as he/she seeks to express and take in ideas through a unified system of communication.

Therefore, if unity is being established through communication systems that are cybernetic, than there is a potential for the psychedelic experience to be shared among a vast audience. Whereas the psychedelic experience was once suppressed by subjectivity, mankind’s unity in electronic information system may allow ideas conceived from the “Gate of Ivory” to become integrated into our lives as “differences” introduced into a cybernetic cycle.

Sacrificial Cyborg and Communal Soul

The Electric Daisy Carnival draws around 130,000 people to it making it the largest electronic dance music festival outside of Europe.

Interestingly I have examined some of the characteristics of "Post-Intustrial Cyborgs" described by Hillegonda C. Rietveld in participants at raves, including myself.

Trance Inducing Music

This song takes me through multiple dimensions while representing the synapses being fired in my brain. I like the disentegration of the piano into a digital void in this song, giving it many textures. The song very easily invokes a trance on me whenever I listen to it.

The Sacred, The Divine, The Different

In “The Politics of Ecstasy,” Timothy Leary expresses his belief that psychedelics are the next progression in human development due to the fact that they allow the expansion of mankind’s consciousness. Leary believes that faith should be invested in the visionary that provides a philosophy or idea beyond the conception of the vast majority, in particular, established institutional structures.

Furthermore, Leary also believes that the suppression of psychedelics is ingrained in Puritanical American culture and despite many studies that prove their healing and pleasurable qualities, they have been condemned because of their ability to induce a religious experience outside of religious institutions.

In particular, Leary is trusting of radical ideas that have the ability to shape the future. His analogy of the automobile’s conception is very relevant in that represents an idea that was developed even though the infrastructure to make it work was not yet conceivable. With belief that LSD and other psychedelics have the ability to unlock the human mind to develop new ideas and break from cyclical historical failures, Leary defends psychedelics by recalling their benefits. However, Leary believes a great divide continues to exist between skeptics so long as they remain inexperienced. In reference to George Bataille’s, “The Festival, Or Transgression of Prohibition,” the psychedelic experience can be viewed as “sacred” among “profane life” and having more value. This value results from psychedelics having new possibilities defined against the “profane life” which in contrast is limited. Hence, the “profane life” attempts to prohibit the “sacred” or betters stated, divine. Therefore, psychedelics have gained divinity in American culture and is thus condemned for its disruptive nature to the status quo.

Walter Benjamin's "Hashish in Marseilles"

This is by far one of the funniest readings I have ever been assigned. Walter Benjamin, the theorist who coined the term "Aura" and wrote the amazing Theses On the Philosophy of History, details his experience on hashish in the most scholarly of ways. I think the funniest part about this essay is reading Benjamin vividly articulate his munchies.

"To my lionish hunger, it would not have seemed inappropriate to satisfy itself on a lion. Moreover, I had tacitly decided that as soon as i had finished at Basso's (it was about half past ten) I would go elsewhere and dine a second time."

Nevertheless, Benjamin explains how on this altered state he is able to analyze things on a new level. He concludes with the following:

"I would like to believe that hashish persuades Nature to permit us--for less egoistic purposes--that squandering of our own existence that we know in love."

I interpret this as Benjamin stating that hashish enables a person to get lost in the moment in a liberating, transcendental manner similar to the experience of being in love.

The Seashell & The Clergyman

Although it might not abide by the ontology of Surrealist films or fit Germaine Dulac's theory of "pure cinema," this film is definitely dreamlike and treads the zone between reality and unreality tapping into some Freudian concepts of suppressed thoughts and memories. I especially like the scene at 1:35, priceless!

Desert Desolation

Let’s go up there. Yes, let us. For the sun will be gone in an hour. We’ll climb this natural monstrosity of rocks layered upon rocks, hiding its meaning ever so deep. It’s breezy, grab a jacket, keep the blood flowing to the extremities to keep moving and more so for the brain to maintain focus. That looks steep, we’ll take this way, snap a photo we must remember that we were here and not only capture the awe inspiring, but the awe itself, empathetic in nature, the wolf pack of has grown closer. KOOKOO!?!………..KAAKAA, my brother you are still here with me. Call and response type of situation, yet the caller has no more or less significance, yet communal concern. These rocks are sharp, my hands will be raw, yet the top will be so rewarding. Glad that these shoes are a rubber extension of my feet as they grip ever so well to every enticing rock. Pan here, zoom there, the camera is the cyborgian extension of my memory. Film the legs, watch the body work its way up, we must document our struggle to illuminate our glory. Can I make this? I got it, distribute my weight evenly. 127 hours, I saw that movie, this looks a similar situation I got the camera, you got the water, who’s got the knife. Keep moving. KOOKOO…………… Where is he? KOOKOO…………….KAAKAA. We’re almost there. Bodies become outlined in gold as hair blows in the wind as shivers are prevented by the shelter of our new home of rocks. Breathing heavily, out of breath already? The air is perfect though, move on let my heart beat faster with admiration. We are high, this is beautiful! That is the rock, that is the spot. Proceed. Is it possible? We’ll try. We must go down to come up. KOOKOO…Oh there he is. Lets go there instead, we can’t make it. We are kings of the desert. Sit, chill relax, the respiratory system is calm now, give it some hazy love. We are literally high and mentally lifted. Feel that golden sun our faces and lay back. Calmness grounds me to the earth and these rocks are further solidarity. The sky is enchanted with Technicolor clouds, a phoenix. A catching mitt, a space ship. You beautiful source of light, changing color to match our emotions. Can you stay there and we will continue to stare. Panoramic, wide vast, my eyes usurp my other senses. You must go, I know. I’ll stare at you till I’m blind. Fruits of our labor in this dry desert. Goodbye sun, sinking behind the horizon, that is West, it does not matter. Get down before night falls and we fall. I have forgotten what flat ground feels like as I stumble down the rocks disoriented from a 180-degree flat plane. We really put ourselves on a challenge here guys. Boulder cradle…but please don’t cradle us to our deaths. The ground is grounding reorient and proceed. Both feet on the same plane, lets the brain explain what is reality of our memories of motor skills. Saddle up, we’re on the road again.

Integratron

I can't believe I almost wasn't able to make this trip! For the longest time I have tried to make it out to Joshua Tree and I'm glad this class field trip brought me their and to the Integratron. The little bit I read about the Integratron left me intrigued. Supposedly a man by the name of George van Tassel was contacted by aliens from Venus who gave him the blueprint for the Integratron and told him to build it to harvest human energy and send it back to Venus. Sounds crazy right, in addition to the unique architecture of the Integratron, the inside allows for incredible reverberation of sound.

Climbing up into the Integratron was like climbing into a rural spaceship. Constructed out of beautiful solid pieces of wood, I was pleased to find a floor mattress awaiting me as we embarked on a "Sound Bath." As we all laid down and relaxed, a woman who had at her disposal several large quartz bowls proceeded to play them like instruments. The poly-aural quality of the trance inducing quartz came at me from all different directions. More a minute it felt as though a large balloon of sound was being squeezed in one ear and pushed out the other, after this feeling I fell into a deep trance and lost consciousness.



I woke up feeling like I had just lost track of time. I was in a daze, but extremely relaxed. As I looked around it seemed as though everyone else was coming to consciousness around the same time. It was very refreshing.

Enter The Void

By far one of the craziest films I've ever seen. It has all the aspects of a film that I would like, a great soundtrack, scored by Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, innovative cinematography by Benoit Debie, and a dark drama about young adults which takes place in Tokyo. The film is written and directed by Gasper Noe who also made Irreversible. Well equipped with special fx, the film does a good job of conveying the drug trips experienced by the characters and immersing the spectator in them as well. This film was definitive of trippy, with disorienting colors and camera movements designed to emulate psychedelic experiences. The film challenges the viewers to try to grasp reality, much like they would if they were on drugs. Enter The Void can definitely be viewed as "psychonautic" media as it is capable of inducing analysis of the viewers' own psyche.

Week 1 Readings

1. Programming: the concept of planning out a psychedelic trip to achieve a desired goal. Ralph Metzner and Timothy Leary believe LSD trips can be used as an aid for diagnosis, therapy, intellectual understanding, aesthetic appreciation, interpersonal communication, and self-understanding.

2. Yantra: Used in Hindu and Buddhist tradition to aid and outline the focal points of consciousness. Embodies concept of guiding a trip through the use of visual images that carries significance.

3. Mantra: The use of sound to center consciousness and transcend normal conceptions. Although the literal meaning of the sound may carry significance, mantras are primarily concerned with the vibrations in the sound.

Prompts:

-How might a Mahayana Monk react to the psychedelic effects of LSD?

-Of the six reasons for programming in the Metzner and Leary article, which would you choose and how would you go about programming (music, images, activities, etc.)?

Sound Voyage

Dipping Into the Realm of Soundscapes As I lied on the ground and closed my eyes I immediately prepared myself for a state of deep meditation. However this takes time and I had to get rid of my basic analytical process of the situation. The sounds being played sounded familiar, having been familiar with i-Dosers, I quickly realized that these were binaural1 sounds. Sad that I was not hearing them in actual headphones, I quickly let these impeding thoughts go along with the rest of my concerns. I pictured myself in the classroom and proceeded to eliminate everything in my memory. As the sounds throbbed, I threw tables, chairs, and even people in to the abyss of a darkness that I sought to surround myself by. It was then that I was able to start meditating.

The music help facilitate this meditation2 and I began to see things. I saw a reddish purple creature of many tentacles flowing from the top of my vision. I then questioned why am I seeing this creature and that is when the realization about hallucinations seen on psychedelics came to me. It became clear to me that when I let my imagination run free there may be many different creatures and shapes that flow through my thoughts, that I simply choose not to add to my memory since they do not make “logical” sense. Which leads me to believe that under the influence of psychedelics3, the brain begins to see thing in a less bias manner allowing such never seen things or never realized thoughts come to fruition and allowed into the memory. This realization was complete and the sound voyage then took me to the top of a windy mountain where a ceremony was being led. However, my creative vision did not form any faces of people during the ceremony, I felt an outsider as if peering from behind a bush. Jimi Hendrix brought me back to analyzing all of the sounds, since his music felt abrupt in comparison to the other things played during the beginning. With Pink Floyd following I soon realized a trend in trippy music that was quintessential of psychedelic trips of the past. The techno in the end sealed the deal and I found my ears chasing after the rollercoaster ride of synthesizer keys and knobs. When it was all over the silence was the most exciting as my anticipation grew while I wondered it the voyage had ended.

1. Binaural-"pertaining to both ears," 1861, from L. bini "twofold, two apiece" (used especially of matched things) + aural. In ref. to electronic recordings, from 1933.
2. Meditated-Early 13c., "discourse on a subject," from L. meditationem (nom. meditatio), from meditatus, pp. of meditari "to meditate, to think over, consider," frequentative form from PIE base *med- "to measure, limit, consider, advise" (cf. Gk. medesthai "think about," medon "ruler," L. modus "measure, manner," modestus "moderate," modernus "modern," mederi "to heal," medicus "physician," Skt. midiur "I judge, estimate," Welsh meddwl "mind, thinking," Goth. miton, O.E. metan "to measure"). Meaning "act of meditating, continuous calm thought upon some subject" is from late 14c.
3. Psychedelic-1956, of drugs, suggested by H. Osmond in a letter to Aldous Huxley and used by Osmond in a scientific paper published the next year; from Gk. psykhe- "mind" (see psyche) + deloun "make visible, reveal," from delos "visible, clear." Psychedelia is from 1967.