Myth so far as we know. And unfortunately it's a very commonly repeated myth.

But rest assured rue is definitely psychedelic at high doses in calm darkness.

" But rest assured rue is definitely psychedelic at high doses in calm darkness. "

Thanks . What are high doses ? I slowly worked up from 3 gramms to 20 gramms on different ocasions in silence and darkness and nothing happened except a little aprehension .

The biggest confirmed dose that i could find in google was 125 gramms . It was given to an iranian man by his mother to try to help him with his opiate adiction The report came from the doctors in a hospital . There was no mention of hallucinations . That search was about 6 - 8 years ago and i cant find it in google anymore . I posted it on Psychonaut at the time .

Elf machines was simply a poetic term Terence used to try and place a label on these strange entities encountered within the tryptamine trance. He also used the term "self-dribbling jeweled basketballs" such terms are little more than a fumbling attempt to describe the indescribable. Perhaps for some people they may show up as snow white and the 7 dwarves, it's very subjective, some people never encounter any kind of beings at all. I wouldn't get too hung up on the labels people use to describe these seemingly autonomous entities.

Now getting into what is "real" and what "science says" is tricky territory to tread into, especially in a place filled with so many researchers and practicing scientists. Our theories are really only the models that best fit the data at the current time and have stood up to thorough experimentation and repetition. This is the rub, any theory put forth based upon applying the scientific method is falsifiable by definition. Some new breakthrough can come along tomorrow and completely destroy our model of the physical universe as we know it. Have you seen this stuff about researchers testing whether or not we may be occupying a holographic simulation? Or this stuff about Dr. Hawking speculating the Hadron Collider could wipe out the physical universe? What does that have to say about "reality" as we currently understand it? It just goes to show how tenuous our understanding is and that it's a bit arrogant to be so self-assured about exactly what is "real" based on incomplete data.

The idea of spirits is also an interesting one. We have abandoned such an idea for the most part in modern medicine. However if you go to the Amazon the curandero has no problem telling you your illness is caused by spirits, often times his cure of dispelling the spirits actually heals the patient as well. What's to be said about that? Placebo effect? Mind over matter? Well doesn't that bespeak something happening outside our mechanistic biological viewpoint? Maybe there is more to this idea of spirit(s)/other worlds/alternate dimensions/multi-verses than our current instruments can detect, X-rays were hocus-pocus just a hundred years ago.

Our entire subjective experience of the world around us is a drug induced hallucination. We just call these endogenous drugs neurotransmitters. DMT is one of them, among many, what does that say about the "reality" of our experiences? The things we imagine/visualize are just as real to the brain as our actual experiences, what does that say about "reality"? Considering all we really can know is what we can come to a consensus about, you and I are just about as real as we can agree on, what does that say about thousands of reports of entity contact in the DMT trance?

Are elf-machines/entities/gods/myths real? To the brain, yes they are. No research, theory, experiment, publication, expert, etc... can invalidate your first hand experience. To the jungle shamans spirits are very real, to the scientists in the laboratory statistical analysis is very real. Neither is right, it's all simply consensus.

Do you have somthing to back up this claim except anecdotal reports?

Or could it be that calm darkness can be psychedelic by itself? Floating tanks come to mind here.

From the Tikal entry on harmine:

Regarding the `reality` of the dmt experience, good post by dreamer. And also very relevant: A pragmatic approach: What is "real", and when is it actually useful to ask this?
The Improbability of Hyperspace
The Improbability of Hyperspace Part II

About rue, it´s most definitely visionary in higher doses, and so is caapi (or pure harmalas). Caapi by itself is most likely the original ayahuasca, and was and is still being used by different cultures like the Shuar and the Napo Runa as such without admixtures. The thing is it´s not like when taken with DMT, the visions are more dreamy and less clear and geometrical. Nevertheless some people enjoy it. I`ve taken it as such a few times but I preffer a lower dose and some DMT in it. Things can get quite uncomfortable at high doses, though there is no indication it is toxic in such high doses, as long as you dont go to unreasonable amounts (in which case any substance is toxic). A couple of related links:

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=52213
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=20306

@ Machine elves and reality

Science doesnt claim to know everything . Its a way of looking at and understanding things . Its testable , repeatable and it fits together . There are gaps between the things we know and it isnt infallable ...... nor are scientists . BUT its better than esoterics at explaining things and putting pieces of puzzles together in a way that the small picture and the big picture fit .

Its not about proveing that things are not true . The absolute proof that something is not possible is only " possible " when this universe has ended . A lot of the things that science acepts as truths are not absolute they are a nearing as much as possible and then probabilitys . BUT just because i cant prove that a pig cant fly ...... because i cant prove that there is not a mechanism that we havent found that would allow it to fly even though its got crappy aerodynamics ........ it cant fly even if its thrown out of a window . The truth that it cant fly is as near to a truth as we can get and in our reality that truth works = its fairly safe to say its true .

= In between what we know and can prove within what we call reality there are asumptions that we trust and that trust hasnt been shown to be missguided in most cases .


People around the world and over many years believe in the tooth fairy = There must be a tooth fairy .

I and other people have met the tooth fairy on a trip = The tooth fairy exists .

Children put teeth under their pillows and get cash for them = The tooth fairy must exist .

You cant prove that the tooth fairy doesnt exist = The tooth fairy might exist .

People that claim that the tooth fairy exists and tell other people that it exists and dont acept rational explanations are said by doctors to be mentaly confused / ill . Does that not aply in machine elf cases ? If not why not ?


When i first started smokeing 5 Meo DMT in the early 70s i had an experience where i was someone else liveing another life somewhere else . I remembered who i realy was and where i was and what i had done ........ for the first few years ....... after many years all i could remember was that i had forgotten something that i had wanted to remember ...... then i died ...... and came back to me sitting at that table with my friends . When i was there it was as real as real BUT i know that it wasnt real it was a trip .

Then we have total denial . A lot of people make the mistake of identifying themselves with what they think that they know and when a person tells them or shows them that what they think they know is false they feel personaly attacked ........ then they feel that they have to defend it = themselves = not a good situation for that person to understand that they are being very subjective and that their " truth " is a personal truth and not a universaly valid truth .


Modern medicine mostly works " shamanism " mostly doesnt work . " Shamanism " helps some people with some minor physical problems and psychelogical / psychosomatic problems ...... through faith healing and herbal remedys plus basic first aid . Medicine does that and more . ........ more often and more reliably . Thats why the most people go to doctors and not to pantomime shows .




The original myth is that some people who have taken a drug and have had a trip ...... but not everyone ......... claim that the drug works as a key for them ...... but not everyone ...... to another realy existant universe where there are real existant machine elves that comunicate with them . They bring no novel knowledge back and cant prove anything they say . They then resist all attempts at a rational discussion and deny the whole of science .

Science doesnt know that universe or the elves and can see no way of proveing ...... to the person that is haveing the fantasy that his fantasy is a fantasy .......... but has no poblem proveing it to people that dont believe that their fantasys are not fantasys and that their trips are real .


Personaly i think its realy sad when people have other peoples trips .


@ Harmala

If i remeber right J.Ott tested Harmala alkaloids and said that they werent hallucinogenic at the doses he took .

I cant stop laughing.

I dont see the point in debating the likely hood of machine elves being real. Nor debating about how science works as your point as to why they are not.

They seem very real, we have no way of measuring their existence, assuming that they are/are not real is redundant. Unless your not looking at it from a scientifically minded pov. Either way it has its own thread and thats where that discussion should go.

Myths that i heard through out the years:

Psilocybin mushrooms are poisonous and thats why you trip (false)

Mushrooms cause brain damage

Psychedelics can cause you to be permafried

Selling lsd equals man slaughter per hit

The strychnine stuff i heard a lot

Thanks GOD for what you said.








Omg ! Probabilities i say this ^ is = -1

...huh?

What other evidence would there be besides experiential reports that rue, caapi, and harmalas are psychedelic at high doses?

If you've ever tried it then you'd know the idea that it's just darkness is laughable. The darkness just deepens it. And Tihkal is not the end all be all in regards to the effects of the substances within it, not to mention Shulgin, bless his soul, wasn't a fan of harmalas in the first place... so it's not surprising he didn't really connect with their psychedelic effects.

Your skepticism is unwarranted- just try it and see for yourself. After some practice you can reliably enter OBEs and other bizarre experiences with harmalas alone. I've had orbs pull me right out and into visionary worlds while in their trance, and many other things that I can barely even begin to explain. Most people just never take them in those amounts and think they're just there to activate DMT. But many of us here have and there isn't even a debate on the subject at this point. Many just aren't aware of this fact.

Harmalas can be very psychedelic...In a very unique way, but psychedelic nonetheless.

I am sorry to keep on flogging a dead machine elf but i have seen entities/machine elves or whatever people want to call them on numerous occasions and i do not think that it is anything to do with Terrence Mckenna. Although i do agree that there is a certain amount of hyper-suggestability involved in psychedelic experiences.

I do not think that it is a myth that people see entities but i believe that the idea that they come from some dimension beyond our ken will prove to be a myth (i could be wrong, i often am).
A few months ago i tried an experiment to see whether the DMT experience was related to exterior interactions. I weighed out 2 portions of 23mg to vape one hour apart from each other. I vaped one portion just lying on my bed like normal and the second while wearing an aluminium foil hat/shield on my head. The results proved inconclusive as no entity contact was made on either occasion.

The only observation that i can make from my experiments is that if science can neither prove one way or another that machine elves exist then we cannot put them on the psychedelic myth list.

Many of us are comfortable with the idea that the entities are manifestations of things going on in our own heads, but that nonetheless there is some reality to them as they are an expression of some real aspect of ourselves, and that it requires release from our usual 3D limitations to be able to see our inner selves expressed as such. As a rationalist I see no reason to invoke external dimensions for this purpose- I don't personally subscribe to that idea that "it's just too complex and weird, there's no way I could have imagined this" line, since I believe our imaginations are capable of far more than we suspect. Under the influence of DMT our capability to visualize seems to be freed of our normal limitations. But I don't think we are visualizing mere phantasms, but instead are seeing projections of our minds at that moment. And our minds, to my knowledge, are as real as any other aspect of our personhood. Visions, simply put, don't come from nowhere.

My first time trying DMT was shortly after listening to the TMK description. And I saw entities... But they were in no way what he had described, not in appearance or action. Like everything else about the DMT experience, they were surprising and novel.

This is a bit of a pet peeve for me.

Science is not some all knowing entity that casts final judgement on truth and provides proof of anything, see my post about falsifiable models above. This whole attitude of "sciences says", "science can or can't prove", "science knows or doesn't know" is nonsense and shows a fundamental lack of understanding about the scientific method and the process of conducting formalized research. There is no such thing as assurance within the scientific disciplines.

If you have evidence for something, cite the source and give credit to the hard working researcher(s) who published that information. They are not "science", they are men and women performing experiments and testing theories, trying their best against human fallibility to interpret the results in as objective of a manner as possible.

Straw man arguments not withstanding, I'd like to see some evidence that shamanism "mostly doesn't work".

In keeping with practicing what I preach, here are several studies suggesting there is indeed some efficacy to shamanic healing:

http://ajph.aphapublicat.../10.2105/AJPH.92.10.1576

http://jmp.oxfordjournal...g/content/18/2/107.short

http://www.alternative-t...at/web_pdfs/vuckovic.pdf

http://www.ijdp.org/arti...%2900100-1/abstract?cc=y

http://www.sciencedirect...le/pii/S1550830710001801

http://www.tandfonline.c...bs/10.1300/J020V14N01_06

http://link.springer.com...ticle/10.1007/BF00118886



It's rather difficult to find studies regarding the psychedelic effects of harmalas on their own, but here are a few I was able to come up with:

http://journals.psychiat...le.aspx?articleid=146404

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5615550 (This one is a bit hard to get hold of so I've atttached it below for your convenience. )

http://www.sciencedirect...cle/pii/0306987788900643 (psycho-activity of harmalas is mentioned offhand, cites this publication by Shulgin that I unfortunately am not able to find a digital copy of:
Profiles of psychedelic drugs. 4. Harmaline. Shulgin, A. T. 1977. J. Psychedelic Drugs 9: 79-80.)

http://www.lycaeum.org/diseyes/fresh/yageexpr.htm

Dreamer, thank you for posting this. I fully agree, though I do find myself occasionally falling into the "[x] is inherently [true/false] because science says so" mindset. Thank you for the friendly reminder.

" Shamanism " doesnt cure cancer , polio , smallpox , ebola ,brain tumors , broken bones and co . ........ it works for some psychelogical problems ...... sometimes ...... in some people . Shamanism is faith healing plus herbs and basic first aid . People go to someone that they believe in and give that person their trust . Then they are not responsible anymore and the shaman can get passed that persons mental blocks . The blocks that stop them from healing themselves .

IF its more than that what is it ?

The first 7 links you posted are all about psychology .

On the one side you understand what i say in your way and then you try to disqualify your definition / undestanding of that ...... useing science .....

Just because someone is allowed to call themselves a scientist ...... and has a degree ...... it doesnt mean he is automaticly right . Just because something has the word study on it doesnt mean that it realy is a scientific study or that it makes sense .

Ezamples ....... a man in holland tried to get a degee by stateing ..... basicly ...... that MDMA makes one warm and alcohol makes one cold so it would be better to drink alcohol when one takes MDMA ........ OR ....... a study that claimed to show that MDMA was dangerous ....... but the " scientists " didnt use MDMA they used methamphetamine that was given in massive doses . And mice / rats are not people .

The answer is diferentiation .


@ Harmals

The " studys " are from 1957 ...... and the 60s from C.Naranjo . Before a person trys to use what Naranjo said as evidence i think that they should do some background reseach about the reliability of what he said in his works ..... and how it was recieved by the psychedelic scientific comunity .

Did you read what J.Ott said about the effects of " Harmala " after experimenting with it ? About Ursymbols ?

Have you or anyone else here besides me tryed it ? If yes ...... in what doses and what happened and how did that compare to a good dose of proven hallucinogens like DMT / LSD / THC / Mescalin ?

The only thing i noticed when tying it was the same effect that i get when i test a blotter with nothing on it = Psychelogical effects and physical effects that come from uncertainty and imagination .

IF P.Harmala is hallucinogenic ...... in what doses ?

Next urban legend .

Fly agaric is called that because it kills flys .

The truth is that some flys love it . It contains a taste enhancer . To see that go picking mushooms and see wich one is the one that regularly has the most magots in it ...... and look at older fly agaric that look like the filament in a gas lamp because its been riddled by maggots and colapses when you touch them .

OR a person could try the fly agaric in milk kills flys experiment and report back what does and doesnt happen . I tied it several times and it didnt kill any flys . It apeared to attract some . The ones that did eat from it then flew off and sat around still for a while and then flew away .


Another thing ...... can anyone point me at confirmed reports that someone had drunk piss after eating fly agaric and collecting the piss ? I have only found one report and that was on erowid and it was obviously a fantasy story .

i was told that it was called that because it attracted flies and put them to sleep, allowing you to dump the sleeping flies outside without harming them. (using that same soak in sugar and milk that you mentioned)

but really i have never tried it as it is just a waste of an amanita.

i would rather cook it up like a portabello than feed it to flies

I don't understand why we need to keep debating the obvious fact that harmalas can be psychedelic

Many of us have taken high doses dozens of times and described very psychedelic experiences with them here, and in other threads/chat, extensively. It doesn't matter to me if Ott or Shulgin or anyone that we put more stake in hasn't probed this area much. As I said, it doesn't manifest as readily as these tryptamines and is far different than classical psychedelics in their effects. In many ways it is also a learned thing to enter the most interesting states (as with anything, but especially here- not to mention the nausea that will be present at these doses scares people off..but i already explained all this..). It also goes best in combination with other techniques/substances, like weed, tryptamines, melatonin, darkness meditation, etc, obviously. But on it's own it is still extremely powerful in high doses.

Just because you didn't get effects doesn't mean it isn't ever psychedelic for anyone. What kinMany just don't take it at high doses. And even when some do, many are resistant to entering the trances that it can provide in order to have OBEs and other very bizarre states. The dosage varies for everyone. After working with it for years and learning the ropes with it, plus having a peculiar diet, my sensitivity has changed a lot and I need very small amounts for it to manifest. Most need 3 or 4 grams of rue or more. 200+ mg harmalas or even much more, or 100g+ caapi. These are very very general numbers. It varies a lot for everyone and some need way more than this.

If all you had was "Psychelogical effects and physical effects that come from uncertainty and imagination", rest assured that you only had a very very mild dose at best.

That said, as I've explained, people do seem to be pretty resistant to the effects of harmalas at first, by degrees, at times.

About harmalas : i took 300mg + 300mg 1h30 after (harmalas extracted from rue) and if it wasn't psychedelic in the same way as others molecules, i was definitly in an other state of mind though strong nausea and huge tracers didn't make it easy.


I don't know if it's a myth or not : does sugar (saccharose) consumption during the trip make mescaline less strong ?

@GOD

I most assuredly don't deny the efficacy of modern medicine, we've collectively learned a lot over the generations and can achieve amazing things with our current level of medical technology. We are in agreement on this point.

Your complete and total dismissal of traditional healing techniques in every culture around the globe dating back into pre-history is completely unfounded. There is good peer reviewed research in this area, there are also thousands upon thousands of reports of the healing of ailments modern medicine has been unable to treat. To wave off tens of thousands of years of collective human knowledge is a rather presumptuous position to take.

You originally spoke of science using words like "proven facts", which I most assuredly do not agree with. However you later changed your position to acknowledge that the pursuit of scientific research is fallible and our current theories are not the end all be all of truth. It appears we are now in agreement on this point, no need to argue it any further.

I would appreciate it if you would provide references for the claims you make. You mention several studies and researchers in this thread, yet have provided not a single link or citation. A part of the attitude statement of this forum is Quality of Information, basically stating you need to provide evidence for your claims.

You also make some bold and rather specious assumptions that your experience is somehow more valid than that of others. This is a strong bias that makes edification difficult.

There are thousands of members on this forum that have worked extensively with Harmala alkaloids, as well as Peganum harmala seeds and the Banisteriopsis lianas. Quite a few of us have been working with these medicines for many years. It might be helpful if you delineate your exact definition of "hallucinogenic", perhaps that could help clear up the misunderstanding. There is no question that these compounds are visionary in larger doses.

It's a bit of a misnomer to equate DMT/LSD/THC/Mescaline considering all these compounds have very unique effects making them hard to compare to one another. So too do the harmalas have their unique presentation, making such simplistic side by side comparisons difficult.

Dosage can vary quite a bit, but in analyzing the data present from the reports on this forum, a very generalized pattern has emerged. For most people 1-2 grams Peganum harmala seeds is enough for light psychoactive effects and threshold MAO inhibition. 2-3 grams is an average solid dose and generally the range used to orally activate DMT. 3-4 grams is the level where people can begin to coax out a visionary experience when laying down and relaxing in the dark. 4-5 grams is typically considered a strong dose which the majority of people report being a bit much, these doses can be extremely visionary causing the user to slip into profound dreamlike states, however they are also routinely reported to be rather uncomfortable. This is an average dose range, individual sensitivity and metabolism differs considerably and some people may need significantly more or significantly less than others to achieve the same effects; as always, ymmv.

Please define "high dose".



I read reports of people describing a psychedelic experiences they got from smoking banana peals. Does this make them a psychedelic?




So...we agree that darkness meditation alone can give a visionary experience?



What does powerful mean? Is the experience still powerfull in daylight? If not, I'd like to say that it isn't powerful.

Do we agree that psychedlic substances cause hallucinations no matter if there's light or darkness if the dose is high enough?



GOD said

Would you consider 20 gramms a mild dose?

Can we please define the difference between visionary and psychedelic/hallucinogenic?