Duncan Crow
Experiences vary with the individual and setting as well as with dose and route of administration. It lasts less than 30 minutes but time is irrelevant; it may seem like hours. Mild doses reduce extraneous mental activity and calm the mind; many people find that low doses are quite valuable as an aid to meditation and introspection. Mild doses also increase sensual awareness and can have aphrodisiac effects. A moderate dose produces a gentle expansion of consciousness that is useful for inner-journeying and self-exploration; this can also have an extraordinary memory enhancing effect that can provide access to incredibly detailed memories stretching back into early childhood (clearly this has therapeutic potential). At still higher doses, one remains conscious but completely enters an inner realm and briefly loses all contact with one's surroundings. 
Chontal medicine men of Mexico use the herb to obtain divinatory messages during dreaming, whenever it is desired to know the cause of an illness or the location of a distant or lost person. Reportedly, the answer to the question comes in a dream. Dream Herb allows them to experience lucid dreaming; the ability to control and remember their dreams with less effort. Believing in visions seen in dreams, the Chontals assert that Zacatechichi clarifies the senses. Auditory hallucinations are also fairly common, which prompted them, believing they were hearing the voice of God, to refer to the plant as Thle-pelakano or 'leaf of god' in Chontal. 
In fact, many herbs are said to readily bring back memories. They work by stimulating old pathways in the brain. Any signal to the brain passes through brain stem and/or mid brain structures - from these it is sent to the cortex as a series of pulses with decreasing energy called tetany. Each signal ends up being around 20 decreasing energy bursts. Tetany is naturally used to fix the memory across the brain, so that things that occur together can be unified into memories of events that happened in the same moment. Recalled memories are stimulated by re-energising the old pattern that has significant correspondence with part of the stimulating pattern. (associative thought)| For eons, most of the world's cultures have utilized a variety of herbs and mushrooms to facilitate a divine connection. Western societies have trivialized this approach, but it raises a interesting question even in our own culture, Can psychoactive sacramentals - entheogens - have a place in contemporary religious practices as they did in ancient times? We know they were used by early Christians, who held mushroom rituals before Roman intervention. Search 'manna mushroom' on the Internet and you'll find that local author James Dure and many other ethnobotanists point out that MANNA is the psychoactive in the bible that was even kept in the Ark of the Covenant, the most holy of holies. We know that Emperor Constantine eliminated most Christian practices and eviscerated the bible to further his own goals. To answer the question above, The Chicago Theological Seminary and the Council on Spiritual Practices recently collaborated on an international conference and released a book of essays by the participants, Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion. Rev. George Cairns for example finds common ground between Gospel-based prayer and the sacramental use of entheogens: through both practices we can experience the understanding of our divine connection with each other and all Creation. The answer coming from the experts is mainly, yes. Can the careful use of entheogens really aid in spiritual development? Many who have experienced it first-hand would answer in the affirmative. In a famous psilocybe experiment in 1962, of nine divinity students given the placebo, five (55.5 percent) were still in the ministry 25 years later; of the ten given the manna, eight (80 percent) were still in the ministry. The researcher remarked, All of the psilocybin subjects…but none of the controls, still considered their original experience to have had genuinely mystical elements and to have made a uniquely valuable contribution to their spiritual life. The positive changes… had persisted over time and had deepened in some cases. |
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