Christian I wasn't asking not to come to this forum, sorry if I poorly express my point, I was just asking to not come back over and over again to argue that ayahuasca is wholesome and extracted purified crystals dmt is candy-eye.

This I found was a poor statement, especially in a forum dedicated to entheogenic preparation, whatever they are.
Now I read also a few man who all say something different and they have their sort of holy grail.

Some will tell you aya is very limited compared to what Iboga can teach you and do to your brain.
If you fellow them you simply drop the rest and go work with the root.

I'm not fellowing this,nor will feed the arguments with statements like iboga is superior to ayahuasca anyway so everyones got it wrong.
This looks pretty deluded in my opinion.
Now we keep sharing our point of view but you seem to stand here against everyone. And you know this have no end.

Endlessness, i think you have a basic understanding of what i'm saying. So in this case i'll agree that we disagree. PS- this is not a "cop out", i was just posting some views from someone else. That's all.

Rom, you are correct in what you said. I can see your point, and sorry for misunderstanding your post. Onwards, and upwards!

I think there is something elegant and animistic about the idea of the spirits of molecules. This discussion has now taken on an extremely rational and materialistic tone...as if plants can have spirits but molecules dont..that idea sounds absurd to me.

"a last thought on Syrian Rue for now..a friend the other day commented that while they really liked caapi, they personally preferred to use rue (in water extract brews and/or pharma)
..they said 'With rue you know within about half an hour what kind of strength it'll be and if it'll work..the caapi can often leave one guessing, seem mild for ages and suddenly knock you out, or be strong quickly at the start and then go mild.'..or words very close to that effect.."

It has at times been like that for me as well, which can make things very unpleasant if you try to drink more thinking it is not working.

I dont mind talking about plant spirits, I find it interesting, if we are all aware that nobody has the absolute truth and we're all speculating or giving our (possibly mistaken) subjective ideas and beliefs

So, before, there was a quote from someone saying that purified extracts lose the spirits. So im trying to understand, why? At what point during purification does this happen? As I asked before, the spirits are ok with boiling plant material? Or only with cold water extraction? Or only with eating the plant material directly? If spirits are ok and come through a boiling extraction, what if you boil it down to dryness, are they still there? What if instead of water you soak plant material in ethanol do spirits come through? Or what if you add a food safe base and then pull with food safe ethanol, are the spirits still there? What if you recrystallize with a petrochem solvent, do they not accept that? What about running a crude soak through a chromatography column, are spirits eluted or do they stay in the column?

I really dont mean to be rude or sound sarcastic, these are reasonable questions that follow from the claim that purified=no spirits and less purified=spirits. I ask these questions honestly because you all always have interesting things to say

Nen mentioned he can feel plant spirits even with more purified extracts, do others agree?

What do you think, jamie?

I think the spirits of the tannins and whatever else is eliminated in extractions is not there..the spirits of the molecules that are extracted remain in isolation.

If you are into homeopathy you might say that there is an "imprint" from all of those other spirits though still present I guess.

If everything has spirit then trying to say that a partial extraction(ayahuasca) has a spirit but isolated alkaloids(pharma) has no spirit than you are being just as materialistic and overly rational as any overly rational scientist.

If you study a little bit about molecules and what goes on at atomic levels, it seems hard to assume a plant is alive and conscious but a molecule or atom is not. I think consciousness permeates everything and is fundamental so to seperate things like this seems strange to me.

Christian if you actaully get into studying the beta carboline molecules there are MANY reasons belive this is medicine, extracted or not. Harmine/harmaline exert an 8 hertz nuclear magnetic resonance and bring the brainwaves into an 8 hertz alpha rythm and hemispherical cohernace is observed. I think many people at this point can understand the importance of alpha bainwaves. They(harmine/harmaline) are also proven to be anti cancerous, anti viral, anti bacterial..at least some upregulate seratonin platelet density..this 8 hertz alpha pulse also matches closely the schumann resonance which is like ther pulse of the earth so harmala alklaoids are bringing you into coherance with that frequency.

Anyone who wants to tell me DMT is not a all of it's own filled with spirit never bothered to pay much attention IMO..

So this whole discussion has just taken on a tone of extreme bias IMO that does not reflect reality. Reguardless of what Alan Shoemaker said in some interview..has he ever taken pure harmine? I have many many times and gotten a lot out of it. I have eaten harmine/harmaline crystals more times than I can count and then vaped pure DMT and it is definatly medicine.

Crystal are alive. They grow like any other life force..they remain in formation, grow in formation..they have information. You can take a hunk of quartz and use it for a computer chip..why would a quartz crytal have less spirit than a banisteiopsis vine? Why would a pure crystal of harmine or DMT have any less spirit than a chacruna bush?

I feel like the spirits of harmine, harmaline and DMT are sort of being forgotten here..just because some of us prefer a a fuller spectrum of spirit molecules found in a brew does not mean that pharma has no spirit or that it is not medicine any more and is just some drug.

Interesting post jamie

This reminds me of the concept of "spirit" from the indigenous ethnicity I had some rituals with (the huni kuin, or kaxinawa). For them, they have a word caled Yuxin (or Yu-shin). The thing is, this doesnt translate as spirits in the sense westerns are used to having, as if only "complete" beings have a spirit (like the spirit of a human, the spirit of a plant, the spirit of an animal), but rather yuxin permeates the different parts too, as well as the collective part together. So for example, not only a human being has a yuxin, but his smile also has a yuxin. Not only the tree has yuxin, but the whole mountain has a yuxin too.

So this would be more in tune with what you said too, that the different parts are also fully spirited on their own.

^ that is actaully a concept I became sort of obscessed with when I was studying anthropoly at college, that "spirit" to indigenous native peoples does not translate to be in line with the populer definition of the term in the west..

I think the cold or flu virus would be called a "spirit", as would malaria and other pathogens..in that way there would be some parallel between our current scientific medical understanding and the traditional animistic take on illness, although the way we choose to weave a certain kind of story into being that we would call a "paradigm" might be totally different.

Firstly, i would like to say that when Alan Shoemaker was writing, i think he meant that crude extractions were likely to contain more beneficial goodies/ plant spirits, than say Harmine, Harmaline, THH pure extracts alone, etc.



Agreed Jamie, i wasn't saying this wasn't true! Alan was trying to say that the other goodies were quite possibly offering some kind of "additional support and benefit", than simply the isolated extracts would, alone. Obviously the man has a very good point. Why should any serious "traveller" simply accept that in Ayahuasca vine that only x,y,z, is of value and the rest is not?. How does he know, really,?, and does he consider how these other compounds may work as a whole, in a cumulative manner? Science can be ignorance when it says case closed, and doesn't consider other factors.

Referring to the 'plant spirits' issue. I guess we can instead use the term "energy", or "energetic vibrations", let's not get too snotty over terms. I'm no expert, but we know that a plant can be cut, and still have energy inside it. Let's consider San Pedro cactus, which seems to regenerate itself like waking from a long sleep, when it looks like it has died, and has indeed been cut and uprooted and " left for dead"...put that "dead" cactus on the right soil without even planting it, yea, just throw it somewhere, and it'll regrow as long as it lands somehow on suitable soil!. Perhaps the plant energies, or spirits reside in the cellular matter, whatever, the damn thing has something alive inside!

Let's take Kirilan photography, which demonstrates the auric field around vegetables when they are cut. Plants have energy, and it stays with that plant till it dies completely. And i'm sure that the Caapi energy can be maintained in boiling water till it gets ingested. Whatever, It would be interesting to do some Kirilan photography on a cooked Caapi tea. It is also interesting to see how Caapi infused water glows when backlit in the dark. More energetic proof!



Yes, i think this is like some kind of Chakra like thing, where different parts have different energies, as well as the whole. Maybe this explains why certain parts of plants are used, and not others.

More on the 'plant spirits' theme. It is known to both Shamen and their students that each plant has it's unique 'plant spirits', and these present themselves in the form of certain animals or humans in the visions that they produce in the right conditions.

Maybe they are simply energies, but the Shamen, etc, call them plant spirits, because they reside in the plants, and from these plants they get their visions , etc....

"Let's consider San Pedro cactus, which seems to regenerate itself like waking from a long sleep, when it looks like it has died, and has indeed been cut and uprooted and " left for dead"...put that "dead" cactus on the right soil without even planting it, yea, just throw it somewhere, and it'll regrow as long as it lands somehow on suitable soil!. Perhaps the plant energies, or spirits reside in the cellular matter, whatever, the damn thing has something alive inside!

Let's take Kirilan photography, which demonstrates the auric field around vegetables when they are cut. Plants have energy, and it stays with that plant till it dies completely. And i'm sure that the Caapi energy can be maintained in boiling water till it gets ingested. Whatever, It would be interesting to do some Kirilan photography on a cooked Caapi tea. It is also interesting to see how Caapi infused water glows when backlit in the dark. More energetic proof!"

Christian, what you are getting into here is relevant to bio-photons..if you are familiar with that term..if not google it. This is one big benifit IMO of raw food..it is rich in biophotons..when living plant tissue is heated it's biophoton levels actaully start to increase..but when it reaches temps high enough to cook it(or burn your finger) bio-photon levels decrease..even raw dried or dehydrated foods contain zero biophotons. Biophotons are essential for cellular communications. So the cacti in your analogy would still be living and be able to regenerate and you would be able to register biophoton levels in the cacti still..

Dry cacti however contains no biophotons, is dead and will not regenerate. It has lost it's life force(though at a molecular or atomic level you can still aruge that the atoms etc have some life force)...this is the same with an ayahuasca brew..it boiled for hours and hours and biophoton levels drop to nothing..

Now about ayahuasca and caapi tea glowing..harmine/harmaline also glow under a blacklight like that, as does LSD..many indole alkaloids will glow under UV light like that.

If you took kirilan photographs of a brewed ayahuasca tea it probably would not be any different from any other dead matter, or extracted alkaloids. living vine or cacti sould be different though. Kirilan photography is also a highly debatable subject but I dont know enough to really get into that whole thing..

Jamie, just admit it, you are dreaming about that next sweet bit of Caapi you're about to bash and brew, just admit it!

TBH, i'm looking forward to tring some rue quite soon. I've had it sitting about for a while.

Sorry to interrupt your discussion but most of you seem to suppose that spirits come to us, did you ever think that it is the other way around?
It seems more logical to me that we are going towards them, or better yet, our perception is widened in order to perceive them thanks to active compounds in ayahuasca. We are the vehicle.

If the latter is true, no need to question extraction methods, they are legit if the end result can help us travel to the right destination. IMO those are all SAME spirits/entities we see, they don't change because we use different substances or extraction methods to find them. They seem different because our perception is "widened" differently. The whole reality seems different depending on our perception of it.

Also, do you know how much harmine/harmaline/THH 50g of caapi has? 1g? For me it is the ultimate proof that traditional extraction method is not the most efficient one: there is obviously something severely under powering the active compounds in it, something that is absent from pure extract. Something trying to prevent you from seeing differently. Food for thought

NO, NO , NO!.... Of course an extract is more potent per weight than regular Caapi, because it's an isolate is free from all the other stuff.

Therefore obviously you'll only need milligrams of the stuff than grams. SIMPLZ!

Elementary my dear watson!

Hmmm christian, I think you need read again that.

..equally, 'they' could be the vehicle for us..
..my concept of spirit is like the concept of 'manitou'..field related..as an example, if i am looking at a used car to buy, i will feel out it's vibe..it's history..different examples of exactly the same make of car have different histories..different 'manitou'..similarly, an individual molecule (or even atom in string theory) has a particular history..a 4 dimensional (or higher) field..the journey of that 'entity'..
..in my intro essay a while back i asked the philosophical question: "If i got your grandmother, ground her up, and extracted the DMT from her cerebrospinal fluid, would smoking that DMT be 'energetically' the same as smoking synthetic lab grade DMT?" ..so concepts of homeopathy (as mentioned by jamie), or karma are related, but i see it more as 'history'..
..the combination of other molecules (tannins) etc in a water brew may create a more complex 'poly-field' of the paths of these 'entities' through time & space..the spirit of the plant, which is more than one molecule..
actually, i personally believe plants have some form of consciousness which may survive physical change more easily than humans, but that's getting deeply subjective..
..and lets not forget what the plant DNA could subtly contribute to our internal information systems..DNA wouldn't make it through an NP extraction..there is the McKenna's theory of betacarbolines allowing changes in our DNA, particularly through sound activation..not as far fetched as it may initially sound..

..i'm kind of saying, as well, that our increased perception (via the CNS action) allows us to potentially sense such things more easily..

..which traditional method? the 'deep-jungle' brews i mentioned earlier boils for 9hours or more..these brews are strong..they are probably getting about 80% of alkaloid out, albeit with possible heat induced changes..
..full spectrum water brews have, on occasions, given me a much wider range of modes of vision than i have experienced usually with pharma..i do think the extra compounds actually contribute a little to the character..
..also, perhaps the 'traditional' technology of Ayahuasca is not simply 100% focused on DMT/harmine visions, and is attempting to create a more complex bioactive/medicinal brew..we, of the modern headspace, are often more obsessed with having to achieve high DMT levels to 'see' things which many indigenous people say they 'see' without psychedelics..
..but, jeez, those water brews (made well) have sure not prevented me from seeing anything..quite the opposite..maybe it's the individual human mind, and expectation, which can get in the way of seeing things..
many of the actual ayahuasqeros themselves would say that, with a traditional drink, it is diet and attitude which gets in the way of visions..they personally don't need much at all to get good effects..so i can't see any obvious proof of the ineffectualness of water brews..and the majority of people aren't going to achieve 100% alkaloid extraction efficiency even with the modern method..how good a cook are you?
some more food for thought..
.

You can try extracting the DMT from anything or anyone you want, you'll always have same effects as it is only the fuel for us (vehicle). Like the fuel for our real vehicles probably has history, but it is irrelevant to the destination we are going to. Fuel from Iran or Texas will take you anywhere you want with same amount. How do you incorporate that into your theory?


I've read somewhere that 80% are coming out after 3h already, but that is not the question. Let's say you have 50g caapi with 1g active compounds in it, you're telling me that you are getting the same effects as from 800mg pure extract? I seriously doubt that
I'm just saying that 10g should be enough (equivalent to 200mg pure extract) but it isn't for some reason.

amazingino wrote: ..i personally say NO..it is NOT THE SAME FOR ME from every source, and i've been experimenting with this for 20 odd years..
..i wanted to keep this discussion as balanced and objective as possible, but for me, 50gram (or more) water brews have taken me further at times (or perhaps 'deeper' ) than extract ingestion of even larger doses of alkaloid..the pure extracts are more consistent in their action is what i said..doubt what you will, but the deepest deepest i've experienced is with water brews (not all of them obviously) ..but, regardless of what the individual prefers, Ayahuasca (as a drink) is by definition and tradition not the same is looking for 'pure' 'compounds' (modern reductionist concepts)
..some say it's about magic, connection and spirit..that's harder to achieve on demand than DMT visuals..
.

ps. and if we agree that DMT increases perception/heightens senses, then wouldn't that increase the ability to sense where a particular molecular configuration has recently originated from?

You're not answering my question about real fuel. You are talking about YOUR subjective and impossible to verify experience. Is it or is it not true that a same quantity of fuel coming from Texas and Iran will get you to the same distance in same vehicle. Yes or No. If Yes (it is yes and it can be verified), does it mean that it has no "history" according to you (or at least does not influence the effects of it)?


It is subjective again and I respect that. Your experience is just completely different from that of majority, which of course doesn't mean it is not true for you.

"You can try extracting the DMT from anything or anyone you want, you'll always have same effects as it is only the fuel for us (vehicle). Like the fuel for our real vehicles probably has history, but it is irrelevant to the destination we are going to. Fuel from Iran or Texas will take you anywhere you want with same amount. How do you incorporate that into your theory?"

I tend to see that view as limited within an animistic worldview, a paradigm I find most useful for myself. Why do you assume that just because these psychedelic alkaloids are the fuel that gets us there(which I agree with) that there is also not "spirits" or signatures etc to each different plant as well? Within an animistic paradgim EVERYTHING has spirit..that includes plants, rocks, crystals, water, animals, molecules..everything. To say that it is only the psychedelic alkaloids because they take us to another place and that there are not other things going on at the same time is a very rational approach that does not take a wholistic paradigm into account.

I would think that yes, DMT and beta carbolines themselves do take us to the spirits..but also that DMT and harmine might have their own spirit as well, as do the plants that we ingest when we brew with them..I tend to think that all of these things factor in depending on what level you want to take it to..

"You're not answering my question about real fuel. You are talking about YOUR subjective and impossible to verify experience. Is it or is it not true that a same quantity of fuel coming from Texas and Iran will get you to the same distance in same vehicle. Yes or No."

Humans are not vehicles. We are far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far more complex than any vehicle so that analogy is also somewhat limited in its application.

Concider that silicon dioxide can be both glass and quartz crystal..and when was the last time you heard of anyone using glass in a computer chip?