I’ve looked around at a lot of psychedelic figures, and I haven’t found many I considered deeply insightful. Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary? Nope. Ram Dass? Eh, maybe, but a more “general” wisdom than “psychedelic wisdom” per se. Alan Watts? Not at all. These folks were all great as popularizers, but I always find their actual insights to be fairly thin fare. The psychedelic figures I really respect I rarely respect out of some deep engagement with psychedelic wisdom - I respect them more for their contributions to the sciences (both the McKenna brothers for developing grow-at-home techniques for psilocybe cubensis, Dennis McKenna’s scientific work, Sasha Shulgin’s work, etc.) or for their self-sacrifice in terms of personal safety (the underground LSD chemists most notably), or for their work on legal issues (most prominently Rick Doblin and associates). But none of these folks for straight wisdom out of the psychedelic experience…

There’s only two figures I’ve encountered who I consider to have brought back some real wisdom from the psychedelics.

Nick Sand, in his two essays on the DMT breakthrough realm,

And Hamilton Souther, who as a Westerner became fully initiated into Amazonian ayahuasca shamanism, and learned how to work with the plants.

Who do you consider a source of wisdom? I just want to put a list of names together. If you love some of the figures I’ve listed above as not being of interest to me; that’s fine! I just want to hear your personal sources so I can look at them and see if they’re laying anything down that I might find of interest.

I think the only person to be insightful is yourself.

As you have hinted, the deeper wisdom you seek is mostly in actual "shamanic" practitioners.

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by "psychedelic wisdom" and its distinction from "wisdom?"

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This^^^^^

I love listening to many wise and worldly creatures. But in the end, when it comes to tripping balls, no one else has any clue what my trips are going to be except me.

And let's face it, underneath the facade of chemistry, politeness, social etiquette and philosophy... this forum is full of people who love to trip their face off into a melted pile on the floor. Then discuss how deep and intriguing the face melting parts were.

In the words of said McKenna, whose ideas you don't particularly seem to subscribe to,


Just take whatever you take, and you'll find all the wisdom you need in there. It's all an interpolation of our own nature anyways.

I'm glad strtman said that, as I wonder if I'm "close-minded" or arrogant for my approach to understanding and appearing not open in certain ways. I've had an idea that "enlightenment" can be found anywhere, it's about the work an individual does to be aware enough to achieve such. It's why I like figuring a lot of things out on my own, which tends to be the long way and the hard way with a lot of things, but is more fulfilling, meaningful, and satisfying. And that's not to say that we shouldn't still learn from others, but at the end of the day, to listen to ourselves about the information that we receive.

I'm also curious to hear the distinction the OP may make about psychedelic wisdom vs just wisdom. I feel, that while most of say, the people mentioned above, try to espouse certain ideas in a universal way, or at least in a manner that appeals to more rather than less, their "wisdom" is very much their own, predicated on their personal experiences, and are generally more subjective than intersubjective. What's wise to one may not be wise to another.

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I loved your question Void, very pertinent indeed. Is there even a difference between wisdom and psychedelic wisdom?

Thank you. That brings up more of why I asked. I find that any wise downloads obtained from a trip are not unique or specific to the trip or tripping in general, but is something that is applicable both in my trips and in my life.

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Charles Eisenstein?

Daniel Vitalis

Me

Regarding wisdom, I tend to agree with Zizek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKoGQpEkpO0

If you are looking for people as a source of knowledge:

Robert Anton Wilson - just for sheer volume of side-references and "oh shit same thing happens to me" you will get from his books. Also overall looks like a great dude to me.

Overall it's all bits and pieces of the great puzzle sprinkled all over the history and world. I haven't found "The Text" yet, they all suck in one or another way. Just like life I guess

Also John C. Lilly, worth a read.

While I get this, and appreciate it's meaning. I think that isn't a real answer or full answer and it ignores so many of the realities of life and what it means to be a human being. No, you can't give insight to another person. But implicitly suggesting that there is no value in learning or being guided by others seem ridiculous to me. We are social creatures and gain so much knowledge from those around us. Where would any of us be if we didn't have other humans to learn from? We'd be dead- starved, dead from exposure, or eaten by bears and even if we did live, we'd have no language to form our ideas into, no writing system to record whatever our wordless sense of wisdom would be.

We learn so many things from others in every single other field of knowledge, I don't see why this is the one domain which a person needs to approach in a vacuum with no possibility of useful input from others. If we really think the insights of others are so useless, why are we on a forum sharing our thoughts and experiences? Jeeze, it's sad to think nothing I have ever contributed could have possibly helped anyone ever because people strictly get insight from themselves and don't need to hear or learn anything from anybody ever.

Each person needs to unlock insight for themselves, but I believe those insights can be signposted, paths and dead ends can be pointed out, people can be saved from getting stuck in looped or going down dead ends.

IDK, I don't get it. We are all aware enough we need to gain our own wisdom, I am not sure why everyone is flooding into this thread to nag OP for even considering wanting to learn for others. Is that really so ridiculous? Take off your psychonaut hats for one second and actually think about that.

I totally agree with trusting only yourself ultimately, but I also enjoy reading theory, so here we go...

For wisdom I as a christian tend so seek corresponding sources. Forget the bible. I mean, read it but ignore most of it. I see my holy book as a very narrow selection of teaching, selected by the indeed totally unbiased white(washed) male church fathers, and it is a translation of a translation of a translation.
On the translation part: Did you know that the idea that eve was created as adams "helper" is probalbly a strategic "mistranslation"?



The original word that is rendered as "helper" -here, but nowhere else- is "ezer kenegdo", which means (difficult to translate) something akin to "to save/rescue or to be strong". The word appears multiple times in the hebrew bible and is usually refering to the lord themself or even to military aid.
You see translation is indeed a problem, if you don't speak the language or like me, you have scholarly friends.


If I don't recommend reading the bible what christian source is there?
I love medieval christian mysticism. I'd like to highlight 3 autors I like:

Hildegard von Bingen
She wrote multiple visionary books where she details visions she recieved directly from god, but she also wrote the "physica" which is a book of medical praxis and "causae et curae" where she details her medical theory which is intertwined with her theology.
Notable about her work is the concept "viriditas", translateable as greenness, green power or life force. It is a force that connects all life with the divine, tho theological interpretation of that concept is disputed and complicated.
Hildegard von Bingen is a saint of the catholic church.

Meister Eckhart
A christian scholast if there ever was one. He was termed (recently be scholars) "the man from whom god hid nothing". He is a very complicated figure and it is disputed if he should even be called a mystic. He wrote his more academic works in latin and I kinda dislike them, but his sermons and some written works intended for the broad public were in german and it is where his spicy stuff is to be found.
His concept of the "Seelengrund" is outstanding. Seele means soul and Grund can mean bottom, ground but also reason. It is usually translated as Abyss. He maintained that the human soul and God have the same "Grund", but he excluded the rest of the creation, on which I disagree with him, but the quest of going inside yourself finding and entering this abyss is to me a vital part of the psychedlic journey. He was tried for heresy, but died (due to natural causes, he was really old) during the trials. Some of his ideas were deemed heretical, but because he unconditionally accepted any verdict before he died, he himself was not condemed as a heretic.
He is regarded as an important christian teacher by various traditions.

Margarete Porète
I feel a deep spiritual kinship to her. She claims in her "Mirror of simple souls" that in absolute love of god and thus union with the divine, the soul itself is annihilated and seizes to exist (kinda sounds like ego death right?). She also hinted at that in this state a human is nolonger able to sin, which the church did not like (heresy of the free spirit).
By this she did not mean that one could then do whatever, but that in union with the divine one could never sin because one seizes to desire anything exept god. In the introduction of her work she states that the book is actually kinda ridiculous, for the knowledge whe wishes to transfer cannot be put into words really. Meister Eckart was probably heavily inspired by her thought.
A truely outstanding woman. She was a beguine, which were basically nuns, but in a decentralized organization who took no formal vows (as opposed to for example Hildegard von Bingen) and therefore they stood outside the authority of the church.
And were persecuted and killed by the church, because popular and independant women? How about no? (said the church)
Porète was killed by the stake on 1.6.1310 in paris, because her work "Mirror of simple souls" was deemed heretical. During her trial she refused retract her work or to give any statment, claiming that her work should be clear and speak for herself.
The church did not want to kill her, since she was very popular, she chose to die for her beliefs.


There is a wealth of transcendental knowledge to be found in christian traditions and some powerful personalities, including women ranging from saints to heretics. It is a history that was "male-washed" but it is there to be discovered.

I went a bit of the rails here I guess... XD

Happy Mushroom wrote:

..Hildegaard is great..she also invented her own secret language, and saw the 'language of the living light', which sounds much like a kind of synaesthesia (as well as the 'numinous' )
..that's a different level of wisdom of any ordinary language or the written word..
Pistis Sophia perhaps..?

I agree that you have to develop wisdom yourself and let the plants be your teacher, but, the wisdom that the plants give is also collective. We can and should learn from each other.

There are a few essential points I have learned from my own experiences, discussions here and elsewhere that have helped in getting further in the hyperspace and my spiritual and earthly path as well. I try to summarize a few points.

-Seek the wisdom that goes beyond the weird and astonishing experiences. Nick Sand has written very well on this subject.
-Healthy dose of skepticism helps a lot when you have powerful encounters. You can always ask: is this all there is to this? Can I change the framing of this experience? I have to credit Voidmatrix for reminding about this again and again.
-Be respectful to the advice you are given by the plants. When they tell you to stop doing unhealthy things, you should follow. This is very much what McKenna means by "When you get the message, hang up the phone". That is, if you just keep taking psychedelics as a means of escapism, your trips can take a dark turn and you can be presented with all kinds of fancy fantasies that just take you further from the path.
-Take care of your own spirit. Willingly confront adversities to build willpower and strength and take time to reflect your intentions. The more pure and strong your spirit is the more wisdom you are entrusted. The stronger your own light is, the more light you attract.
-Keep respectful attitude to all spirits and expect respect for yourself. This was the take home message from a huni kuin chief who led an ayahuasca ceremony I attended this summer.

Also, leading healthy life, living in harmony with your environment and the people you associate with, having a profession and overall not making the psychedelics your number one fascination in life is very important. Having a spiritual mindset and practices you follow has been important part of my path, even though my beliefs continue to take shape. I have to mention one teacher I respect very much at this point, and that is the late Vietnamese zen master Thich That Hanh.

And lastly, you don't need to know what this all is about, regarding the hyperspace or the existence in general. Temptation to gain unnecessary wisdom (eating the forbidden fruit) can be great while pursuing psychedelic endeavors. Especially secret or hidden knowledge and to become special or powerful by such pursuits. Inquisitive inquiry is a different thing as it seeks harmony rather than supremacy. In my opinion psychedelics, especially Ayahuasca, is about strengthening your connection to this reality, living and loving. Psychedelics can open a path that abandons and seemingly transcends this, but I advice not to go that way.

Anyway, I'm always on the lookout for genuine spiritual wisdom and deeper psychedelic wisdom specifically seems hard to come by, so, I'd be grateful to hear what you have found 🙂

That is a very good advice and summary. +1 for this!

Interesting replies.

What I find of most interest is that, there isn’t really much that seems to come to people’s minds, other than a) mystics who never encountered psychedelics, or b) pop culture philosophers such as Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Terence McKenna, and similar. None of these latter figures can really be described as skill-based users - they are cultural commentators and activists and philosophers, who have some perhaps good ideas - but they are not what indigenous models of psychedelic use would acknowledge as experts in the use of psychedelics. The mystics hit closer to the mark - but these mystics did not have experience with psychedelic drugs.

While I appreciate the “wisdom from within” line of thought, I do ultimately have to reject it as being naive. Whether it be in philosophy, meditation, shamanism, or really any challenging pursuit that requires the development of skill, starting from scratch will just about always be worse than learning from a long series of predecessors. Can you imagine being handed a guitar without knowing how to play or indeed having heard music played before, and being expected to compose with a degree of sophistication rivalling Bach by the end of a lifetime? Inconceivable, even for Bach himself, had he not had the benefit of his cultural learning! For us, to merely play Bach even with the benefit of cultural support is a great accomplishment.

What this tells me is what I already suspected. There is just about nothing in our culture that has any idea about how to go about using psychedelics with any degree of sophistication. In guitar terms, “smoke on the water” would be a great accomplishment for ones such as us, for where we are at present.

For my own part, I simply practice meditation as it is taught in Buddhist tradition - specifically, anapanasati so as to access jhana - and I contemplate that tradition philosophically. It’s the best I can do for what I have access to, but Buddhism is not a tradition that knows anything about psychedelic drugs in its traditional context, really. Nick Sand was self-taught, but he lived a highly idiosyncratic life as an underground LSD chemist, and Hamilton Souther was taught by shamans in the Amazon. What Souther reports is what really intrigues me, because I have experienced some of what he describes, but his descriptions seem to indicate levels of skillful engagement with that beyond anything I personally can approach, which surely requires personal apprenticeship (and natural ability) to reach. I wish that level of engagement was more widely disseminated within our culture.

A bit of indigenous sensationalism here. Indigenous peoples mat have been the first that we know of to work with these medicines and develop practices around them, but that doesn't make them absolute authorities on their use or for what can be gleaned from the psychedelic experience. The psychedelic experience is an open book, and the work is constantly in development, so I'm not sure why the door is closed to paving new pathways that can elicit what some may call wisdom.

Your statement about "wisdom within" being naive I find a bit short-sighted and elitist, seeming to come from a place of privilege. What if someone has an interest but is without the means and opportunity? Should they avoid learning all they can on their own? No, I don't think so. Do the best with what you've got. Enlightenment can be found anywhere. And it all had to start somewhere, which means if a way wasn't paved, then it begins with people who teach and explore on their own. I don't see why anyone who comes to the table later has to do any different. What one finds wise is subjective at the end of the day, so we have to do regular inventories and listen to ourselves to a high degree anyway.

I'm largely self-taught with regards to meditation. I've read and researched, but have never had a teacher. It wasn't in the cards for me. But I'm glad, because I know what I think about where I am in my practice without having been spoonfed a thing or heavily influenced by anything. Has it been the hard way and slow going in many ways? Yes, but it's more fulfilling and authentic to me and I don't feel has curtailed me in anyway.

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I wouldn’t say it’s sensationalist. Maybe elitist; but I don’t care if it is. There are uncontacted tribes in the Amazon that have not yet discovered the wheel. We have similar deficits regarding psychedelic use. If it is elitist to say that humans learn new things generationally (like: the wheel, or, more advanced uses of psychedelics), then yeah, sure. And?

That's not what I was saying is elitist, but since you don't seem to care, I don't care to respond further. Hope you find what you're looking for.

One love