Has anyone ever been given or otherwise somehow obtained information, wisdom, techniques, or abilities that proved useful in your life?

Examples include sudden healings/healing ability, psychic powers/gifts, nutrition advice, insights, information, answers you were seeking, other Shamanistic talents, etc.

As far as insights and information goes, that's an every trip occurance for me. I always have some sort of crazy new idea or way of looking at things after a strong trip.

Special abilities are another story and it's something I've thought about in depth. There have been only a few times I've noticed some type of extrasensory perception, but it was so subtle and fleeting that I could always count it as coincedental or a product of a hallucination, but I'll share them in the hopes maybe others have noticed a similar thing in their own voyages.

The first time I experienced anything supernatural was some type of psychokinesis, but this could very much be attributed to my senses being all jacked up from tripping so hard. Anyways, I was watching Heroes the tv series on my laptop and I've always loved the character Sylar. For those unfamiliar with the show, Sylar is a super powered serial killer who uses telekinesis as one of his primary abilities. Well I had this strange idea as I was watching the show in a deep trance state that I should be able to access similar abilities myself while on psychedelics (at this time in my explorations, I would take large doses of mushrooms and see if I could manifest my own thoughts, this was a series of pseudo experiments I was working on a year or so back). Don't ask me why I thought this, but that was my intuition at the time 'you can do that too ya know'. So, in a heavy trance state I held my hand out towards my open bedroom door and pushed with my entire mind willing the door to move. I kid you not the door actually closed! However, when I went to recount this seemingly miraculous event later, my mind sorta kept telling me that my latent telekinetic abilities were a product of my hallucinating mind and since there was no one around to confirm what had happened, and due to a lack of any other sort of empirical evidence that this actually happened, I've always wrote this off as a false memory.

The only other sort of paranormal ability I've manifested would be telepathy, and this one I take more stock in since others report similar things especially while on ayahuasca. I had this one experience where I was tripping with a few friends by a lake around a fire. As we were all peaking, my mind recalled that some people experienced telepathy while tripping in groups so it occured to me to try this out for myself and see if there was any merit to these claims. I was sitting close to the fire and thought I would try to send my friend who was sitting next to me a message with my mind. The extent of the message was simply 'Hey M, can you hear my thoughts?'. My friend M turned to another person in the group and giggling wildly (he was really, really gone at the time) exclaimed 'Guys... does anyone else feel like someone is reading your mind?' to which was met with laughter by the rest of the group, however to me it was a sign that communicating via mind speak could be possible on psychedelics, even though I apparently didn't do it right (M didn't recieve my message as I intended it, although he got the impression that someone was in his head which was sort of a success imo).

The only other time I experienced a form of telepathy was extremely random and in a different setting entirely. On my most profound spiritual trip, the trip that to this day I claim changed my entire life, I had a telepathic exchange with an entity from hyperspace while I was still in my bedroom. My girlfriend and I were in my room both coming down off a really large dose and in this specific trip I had been told that everything is a part of me and that my physical body is just a toy. As I'm having this mental conversation with this entity, I look at my girlfriend who was doing yoga on the floor and I asked the being 'what about her? is she just a part of me as well?'. The entity responded with 'yes. what you love in her is what you love in yourself. her body is just a vessel... it's the same as yours.' No sooner do I get this telepathic message that my girlfriend sits up from the floor and looks at me and asks 'what's a vessel?' I shit you not this was within seconds of hearing this in my mind! Very stunned, I asked her why she would ask me that and she responded by saying 'I dunno, I just had this thought that my body is just a vessel... but I don't know what the word vessel means!' to which we both had a good laugh.

To me, it definately seems that developing certain paranormal abilities might be possible through psychedelics but in all my experiments where I was actually trying to manifest these abilities, these three events are the only times I've ever had them show up which leads me to believe I'm doing it wrong somehow. I imagine a shaman who is well-traveled in hyperspace might be able to bring back with him the supernatural abilities they tend to be known for. This seems possible to me, although I would have no idea how one would do it.

This subject is very intriguing, yet I think it's possible.

I'm currently in the middle of reading "The teachings of Don Juan" by Carlos Castaneda, a book which I think I've heard Terrence McKenna refer, and the author speaks about "diableros", which, I quote: "It refers to an evil person who practises black sorcery and is capable of transforming himself into an animal - a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature.". The diableros were some kind of "bad shamans". In the book there's also a reference (can't find it right now) to the notion of a shaman being able to enter a trance state in his home, while using a pet to travel to his enemy and do what ever they need to do, whether it's just spying or dropping poison in their food.

Yes, this might sound a little weird, and I haven't gotten very far with the book (just read about 40 pages) so as to form an idea about the whole thing, how did it work (it it even says something about that), etc., but I mean, it might pe a possibility, why not, right? I'll look into this myself some more...

I don't know about the application about what I'm about to describe regarding abilities brought back from hyperspace other than the fact that I can sometimes employ it outside of hyperspace and that I'm far more sensitive to this particular and related phenomena while in hyperspace.

Basically I've gained an increased sensitivity to "magnetic" phenomena which seems to have a peculiar relationship to sunlight. Last 420 I noticed after smoking some cannabis enhanced leaf that as I was sitting near a window with slotted shades, that where the sunlight was poking through was physically pulling on my arm which was exposed to it. My arm would move itself along the trajectory of ever-intensifying sunlight until it found the maximal point and then would just try to establish equilibrium. I didn't even know what was going on at first. Ever-intrigued, I decided to take a couple more rips and go outside into full sunlight. As I walked with my back to the sun, it literally felt like the skin on my back was being pulled in the opposite direction. I stopped in a field and faced the sun with my feet planted. I began involuntarily walking forward as the sun was quite strongly and physically pulling on my legs.

Since that event, I've had increased incidences of magnetic phenomena in hyperspace. If I see an entity with my eyes closed, I can reach out and my hands will naturally be either attracted or repelled to/from the entity. Let's assume that with my eyes closed I see an entity moving towards me to the point where it's practically collided with my physical body. If I open my eyes, I can no longer see the entity, however if I raise my hands, they will naturally on their own volition and with a concrete physicality move about the contour of the entity. Even though my eyes don't know where the entity or energies are, my hands certainly do. With my eyes open I can create holographic energies which I can manipulate with my hands in a very physical way. Sometimes they have a distinct heat content, sometimes not. The day following a particular ayahuasca session, every time I smoked DMT that day, I could create white light energy in my hands which was markedly neutral magnetically with a numbing sensation. This lead me to believe that perhaps the numbing capacity of white light is what helps to simulate the feeling of not being in one's body when one is immersed in it.

In a sober state, with much concentration, I can now create much more subtle magnetic forces with my hands, though I'm starting to look into Qi Gong to hopefully allow me to augment this ability both within and without hyperspace. Funny enough the other day, a friend offered me some pot brownies (allegedly from cali) to take and go to a street fair. I don't recall having that much, but then again I have no idea how much went into them. Anyway, we're at the fair an all of a sudden I get the same distinct and profound magnetic sensations from the sun that I did with the enhanced leaf on 420. Once again, my hands/body were moving themselves along the sunlight's varying intensities. I hadn't smoked DMT in at least a week nor taken any other psychedelics in months, but I was having this distinct tripping qualities. Perhaps it was a flash back. Perhaps cannabis too allows me to harness these energies. Perhaps there were more in those brownies than just bud. I don't really know, but suffice to say I'm constantly trying to come up with experiments to try and find out just what properties these energies have.

I wouldn't expect too much from psychedelic's in that sense. Many experiments have been done with this and it's clear that psychedelic's can increase a person's creativity somewhat...but that's it.

Real groundbreaking insights always require some hard working, studying, reading, experimenting, etc. If you've done all that, then psychedelic's may function as something of an intellectual lubricant.

They cannot provide you with any knowledge you didn't already posses somehow.

While Polytrip is certainly correct in saying that psychedelics won't magically do anything for you that you didn't already have in you...

They can be the feather to tip the bucket. They can also alter your perception significantly enough that you may notice things you wouldn't have without them. And, if you are already somewhat skilled at something, they can certainly bring that forward.

[Global, you really do need to find a Chi Kung master. The sensation of chi correlates quite well with your magnetic phenomena.]

Many things which seem paranormal (or are lumped into that psudeo-science category anyway) are actually quite natural and normal for humans. Aya was known as telepatine at one point. This is because basically ALL of the indigenous people that deigned to speak of it described having telepathic experiences with the vine. Just because laboratories haven't been able to quantify something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. They haven't quantified funk either, but funky people know it exists despite the fact that it would be really hard to teach it to a lab geek.

Personally, I have brought so much useful shyte back from journeys that I could fill a large museum. No shit. A 500 page book wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface.

Well I very rarely if ever leave empty handed.