"There are stories of yogis/yoginis in India, for instance, who have tried psychedelic herbs and had no effect because they had already achieved a constant activation and flow of the pineal gland's energy due to long-term meditation practices."

Someone posted that in a salvia thread on the student forums for my school..I have heard this before but I just dont believe it..I think it' some old myth.

Seems counter intuitive to me..the more I meditate and practive yoga etc the more sensitive I become to psychedelics..not the other way around. What do you guys think?

I have noticed that my tolerance for all drugs is very high- I believe this is a consequence of my drug use. My mind is 'used' to the experience so it seems less novel and is effectively diminished in strength.

I remember hearing about Richard Alpert travelling in India and the Himalayas turning on various holy men with LSD. I remember one of them stating it just gave him a headache, and another saying it was good, but not as good as meditation...

Then he came across a guy who who gave 300mics to, but the guy requested more, so he got a dose of 900mics. Alpert was expecting him to start whooping like a banshee and flailing himself around but he appeared exactly the same as he did, pre dosing...exchanging smiles with the odd twinkle in his eye. Thus Alpert considered he was in that state all of the time, so this experience encouraged him to convert to Hinduisin, and change his name to Ram Dass (servant of God). From then on in his life it became his mission to 'be high' as oppose to 'get high'.

However, as interesting as this is, I agree with you, in that yogi's being immune to psychedelics must be a myth, and if anything they would be more sensitive than not.

I don't buy that at all

Maybe they're just really good at staying cool

I found this today and thought it might apply:

Negative drug-drug interactions have sometimes been misdiagnosed as an acute drug overdose, occasionally leading to the assumption of suicide. [4]

Additionally, recent psychological research indicates that "overdose" may be, in many cases, a misnomer. Most deaths attributed to heroin overdose, for example, are not technically due to "overdose"of heroin they have taken many times before. There is compelling evidence that taking heroin in a new or different environment than usual may lead to overdose. In the terms of Pavlovian conditioning, the environment where the addict usually takes the drug (for example, if he always injects in the same room with the same people) serves as the conditioned stimulus, while the drug effect of heroin serves as the unconditioned stimulus.

The body tends to try to maintain homeostasis, so it creates a compensatory response to counteract the effects of the drug. In the case of heroin, which decreases pain sensitivity and slows breathing, the body's compensatory response would be to increase pain sensitivity and speed up breathing. As the environment (CS) and drug effect (US) are paired over and over, the environment alone becomes sufficient to evoke the body's compensatory response to heroin. This compensatory response, triggered by the environmental cues alone, is the conditioned response.

As Pavlov's dogs learned to salivate at the ring of a bell because the bell was often paired with food, a heroin user's body creates a chemical, opposing response to heroin when the proper environmental cues are present. For this reason, the heroin abuser becomes able to take larger and larger doses of the drug, because his body creates a stronger and stronger compensatory response to its effects. "Overdose" often (more than half the time) occurs when the heroin abuser injects in a new environment.

In this case, the environmental cues are not present, so the body does not produce the compensatory response required to make the usual large dose of heroin tolerable. The result is often death.[5]

i dont believe it either..
i just dont see meditation EVER taking you where a husaca analog can

As I became more "attuned" it would take smaller and smaller amounts for me to trip.

This myth bugs me.
It defies science, and chemistry.
If you read some of the books "yogis" write...some of them are INSANE. some of these people have some seriously fucked up psychological complexes.
First off, they blatantly lie about how magical they are (they call these Siddhis)...if any of you are aware of swami muktananda you know what I am talking about.
The whole concept of worshipping the guru disgusts me.......
IMO, if you wanna look at it that way, the guru is HYPERSPACE....not a human mirror.
Anyone claiming to not be affected by LSD//DMT because they are already in such a state is a LIAR...

Have them sit with me. I would be more than happy to document such experiments.



People want to believe they can reach these states without the keys because they have misconceptions about entheogens to begin with....and they probably have NO experience with the divine because SO MANY people I see and talked to have been so thoroughly BRAINWASHED by this strange society we were born into...

I do believe ALTERED states of consciousness are more than possible without entheogens because I am an avid inducer of sleep paralysis and physicless modes of consciousness completely sober.

YOGA means UNION!

Entheogens have taught me to flow with the rhythm of all of this...my body tells me exactly what it needs all the time. The more I know, the more I can know. I navigate the body [blooms the soul] with such fluid precision thanks to divine hypersensitive states that have tremendously accelerated my capacity of understanding in the moment, where all [you've ever known] is obtainable instantly.
Fractal branches of consciousness harmonic with the geometry of space/time...sprouting new ideas and howling it all out. Rising like a snake. Twitching like lightning. I'm not sticking my tongue out at you...but I am. Clap hands...

I knew a guy who believed that LSD didn't work for him. If he took acid he always sayd that he was still sober. Yet, when i asked him if he saw those red and green colors, he sayd he did.
Somehow he 'hallucinated' that he was sober, i think.

Yes this is how I feel..I used to be really into buddhism and eastern type of things but that whole guru stuff and the way alot of western buddhists act sort of turned me off of it and I found shamanism to be a more evenly balanced ideology in my life..since working with spice I feel a connection to tibetan buddhism though..but I am most interested in pre-buddhist tibetan shamanism(bon po)..

I dont have much sympathy for followers of a guru. Anything worth knowing I seem to have learned through direct experience.

It reminds me of this guy I used to know when I first got into entheogens..his sister was a yog teacher and though she knew everything becasue she had beendoing it for 5 years..she thought she had entheogens all summed up perfectly after her 1 experience with ecstacy..they told me I was doing it the easy way(ha!) by eating mushrooms and that she can do it with yoga.

I dont think there is much of a correlation between meditation and psychedelics..they certainly complement each other..but neither is a substitute for the other. Dark room retreats I think can get one close..but still not exactly the same and it takes days of sitting in some dark room or cave.

Those tibbetan buddhists have pipes with 5 bowls. Main one is for cannabis, the others are for potentiation. They smoke datura, which they counter with oleander (another poison) they also smoke opium in the pipe...and something else...I totally forget.
I was once reading about all of this on tribe.net somewhere...Ryan I think was his name...fascinating stuff. I know nothing more than this about them, but it makes sense and I wish I knew more !

^yeah thats why tibetan buddhism interests me..it is basically an offshoot of tibetan shamanism..I think that all of the buddhist iconography is basically a reminant of psychedelic experiences..Nepal as well has lots of these shamans..

There is a good video by christian raetch on this stuff..I will post a link when I find it.

looking forward to it...gracias

lol exactly

I cannot imagine someone drinking a couple of glasses of propper ayahuasca and not displaying any effect

hmm...what about liquid pcp?

could they still keep cool?
my guess is perhaps, if they attain strong dissociation on the norm.

and as far as the monk claiming it gave him a headache...LSD is supposed to suppress headaches.
maybe he meant post-experience

It makes sense that, perhaps, with a super-intense meditation practice, one COULD be more accustomed to entheogenic landscapes.

What about the Kogis?

In any case, while I like the idea of "be high" vs. "get high," I am nowhere near enlightened... but a regular practice of Ayahuasca has enriched my yoga practice significantly. If anything, having my awareness of breath reprogrammed with Aya helps me reach deeper states in yoga.

Maybe if someone spent a lifetime doing yoga... out on a mountain... drinking pure water, breathing pure air... I can see where some commonalities between states mesh.

I don't think I know any practicioners of yoga who have been fourth-dimensionally dismembered by mechanical mantis entities, though. Maybe I just don't do enough yoga? What if I put all the time I put into my entheogenic practices into yoga instead? I have no idea!!

As for gurus, the ego is a slippery little thing, loves to talk and assume titles. I would trust those who boast less...

What if they darkroom and meditate?!

What about HRM who water fasted for 411 days, practices sungazing, and has a GINORMOUS FREAKING PINEAL GLAND!? (8x11 cm, almost 3x a "normal" calcified gland size)

I don't know anything, but DMT fascinates me to no end.

i like you!