We live our entire subjectively experienced lives inside a "simulation" that our minds create by presenting "mental constructs"(synthetic) to awareness. These mental constructs are "representations" of external reality(received and processed by perceptive apparatus) OR of ideas/thoughts that arise from sub/supra conscious realms. Mentally constructed representations are then "presented/projected" onto our awareness. The representations "refer" to material reality or thoughts(referents).

During ordinary states of consciousness, these referent and representational "layers" are "tightly bound". During psychedelic/entheogen catalyzed SOC, the layers are LESS tightly bound such that they may be perceived as distinct, which indeed they are.

In the ordinary cognitive state, the mind generates the sensation of being an autonomous egoic agent wielding cross-time control while moving through time and space. This sensation(referent) is a synthetic/constructed(representation) presented/projected onto awareness.

Salvia, skillfully used, can be an ergonomic means for revealing the "synthetic" nature of the mental representation of oneself. Together with the often had sensation of "static/frozen" space/time unity, the absence of the accustomed sense of personal solidity, MAY be experienced as "death".

This capacity is not unique to Salvia. The modest duration and relatively easy access(of sacramental material), make it an ergonomic means of sacred revelation, transformation and mental-model death-rebirth regeneration.

Happy Easter!

Salvia showed me what its like to become a couch...

And a pine tree...and impossible ferris wheels of gravity and matter. And how weird being a person is.

You're using a lot of big, academic words, without actually defining any of your terms. For example, what on Earth does this even mean:



As a neuroscientsist, I'm not sure I buy a lot of this high level cog-sci/psychological/philosophical analysis. You can talk about sub/supra-consciousness and the different 'layers' or 'levels,' but as far as I know, a lot of this is still speculation, better conceptualized as abstract models of what might be, than actually rigorous descriptors of what really is.

You also (in your last section) seem to be suggesting that the self is somehow synthetic, but other experience (such as the entheogenic one), somehow isn't? If I take synthetic to mean "a conscious percept generated by the brain," then every experience, no matter how profound, is equally synthetic.

Blessings
~ND

That was more or less my impression as well ND.

Rey, so what is it that you've learned or experienced from salvia that relates to all this?

Absolutely. I think Salvia presents an incredibly insightful look into consciousness that goes so deeply that it is almost unreasonable to expect rigorous academic "backing up" of your claims. I think it's worth exploration and documentation, and take the criticisms of uni and Nathanial.Dread with a grain of salt. It's always safer to criticize someone's new ideas on the internet.

Salvia has illuminated a lot (perhaps too many) layers of false or synthetic self-representation and identity in my life.

I think it would help to define your terms, though. Thoroughly, with examples, so that we all know exactly what you're talking about.

Nothing to buy into really. As an example, say a tree(referent) is gazed upon, through the perceptive apparatus(eye, cranial nerve, brain) a mental construct of a "tree" is created by the mind(representation) and presented to awareness. The mental construct is a mind generated representation referencing a tree. This representational layer is "projected" onto awareness giving us a "tree" experience.

During ordinary SOC, referent and representational are "tightly bound" and we, "see a tree" or "experience the referent". The fact that what we're actually experiencing a mind constructed representation of the tree is not appreciated. During loose cognition, awareness seems to be less myopic, it is, as if, ones surrounding environment(the tree) has a tangible existence/reality of its own, uncoupled from/less bound to, the mind generated illusion we are having OF it. The movie screen nature of what one is experiencing seems discernably distinct from what is "out there".

This can similarly can be applied to ideas/thoughts(referents) that arrive from our environment(interior/exterior??), mind generated representations of which are delivered to awareness.

Psychedelics remind us that our experience of reality(material/psyche) is always, once removed. We EXPERIENCE a mind generated representation of what is out/in there. We don't have access to the true nature of the "thing". We know, that it is, never, what it is. We have direct, objective insight into nothing.

I'm ceaselessly humbled by the realization that my seemingly durable(across space/time) identity or personhood is a mental construct. Mystic experience model making to be sure, nothing more. The exercise can be useful for integrating bizarre and frightful mind states.

Salvia "brings it" for me.

Peace

It does very much seem that, among other aspects: the adhesion, stacking, binding occurring on the basis of some region or regions that are accessible to the presence of (whatever it actually is: molecules are really not small objects based on how many additional layers of reality apparently exist inside) salvinorin, whether neurally only or neurally and extending to patterns essentially within the medium of consciousness itself, changes from that mode of action (with some recognition experienced, depending on set and setting, that it will reform on its own later) to something closer to unstacking, or at least an experience occurs that seems to contain the sense that an actual process of stacking that previously was happening with significant priority, often suddenly, stops being prioritized, and, perception continues as acutely if not more acutely than before on behalf of not having to be stacked onto itself. Consciousness seems to enter into a phase where it learns from experiencing what can actually be "not stacked" , by, as you are describing, the elements that would normally be stacked, they happen/are seen and felt within the stream of consciousness, and it is perceived in those moments that they aren't being stacked onto eachother!

To continue, in the dissociative state, conflation of mental symbols with external referents stops/loosens; the representational layer mentally separates from the object realm that the representation layer projects or points to.

Mental contructs are all-purpose REPRESENTATIONS pointing to all experienced phenomena including, sights, sounds, images/thoughts/ideas, other people, one's body, oneself as an EGO-ENTITY and onself in the near future.

Importantly and additionally, the loosened cognitive state(particularly with Salvia), also includes a fracturing or slicing of the PERCEPTION of space/time into discontinuous packets/slices/quanta. This sensation MAY be felt, as if, the realm one occupies(the universe) is frozen/segmented/sliced or block like.

When one's ego-entity is perceived as a mental construct(not "real" AND moment to moment, space/time continuity is now discontiguous, one can experience a derealization/ego-death. It is , as if, oneself is "born" and "dies", over and over, as one moves from one, discontinous, space/time segment to the next. The sensation of a "real", egoic cross space/time "continuant/self", is lost. This can seem like "dying", again and again.

"endless thought loops", trapped in a vortex", "folded over and over", "smeared across space/time, "became the floor/wall", "thought would never get back"....You get the picture.

This experience can have one questioning the the true SOURCE of one's control agency across space/time. Am "I" in control of "me"(my thoughts moment to moment) OR is/are "myselves" GIVEN/GRANTED to me, by some outside source/power, each and every time I find myself in a new space/time block?

Strange and disconcerting. Likely the descriptive metaphor in all myth, religious story telling and scripture. Mystic state NOT ordinary state. It was common and on tap(plant induced mystic state) for the initiated through late antiquity into the modern era.

It is only in this modern/post modern(last 300y) that regular, taught/guided, plant based mystic experiencing has become an anomaly. Thanks to a repository like the Nexus, this birthright of ergonomic access to our innate capacity for "mystical orgasm" is being rediscovered and promulgated.

Long live the Nexus!

Peace