Ergotism -Psychedelic Poisoning

[Rimbaud]

I'm currently reading The Day Of St. Anthony's Fire by John G. Fuller which is about a modern occurrence of ergotism which happened in 1951. An entire French village was struck by psychedelic madness due to some bad French bread that contained ergot rye. Reading this book suggests to me that theories attributing the Eleusinian Mysteries to ergot are misguided because ergot poisoning is actually a highly destructive disease which you would not deliberately cultivate. Even trace amounts caused a great deal of suffering.

I've recently finished reading Gary Lachman's book on Rudolf Steiner which was of little interest to me. Steiner's "supersensible perception" was not described in any detail and I get the impression that he placed too much emphasis on conscious thought which makes him a scholar and not a mystic.

However, I'm not spending much time on reading books for "seekers" anymore. I'm not actually seeking anything. I was only interested in finding some theories about visionary consciousness. The concepts that I found most valuable are the suggestion that dreams are a form of personal mythology which I find to be very true. And the observation that there is an impersonal dimension of the unconscious mind, which implies some larger concern than individual existence motivates the inner self, is an interesting and promising idea.

But I have not been impressed with a lot of what I've read because few writers have described anything that I recognize as a vision. In particular, there is rarely any mention of the haunting quality of visionary experiences. I would be more intrigued by a description of an unusual and highly unfamiliar emotional state as if the world was being perceived through someone else's eyes and with a strange perspective. A vision is like a dream in leaving a strange impression of surreal beauty that transcends anything the conscious mind could conceive. Also I would expect visions to be found more compelling than most writers seem to find them.

Perhaps I should write a book. However, I don't see what purpose it would serve. You cannot take a drug or meditate to share my inner experiences so there would be little interest for the selfish reader. Most New Age books offer exercises to develop your own "psychic abilities". There would be far less interest in such books if they described rare gifts that you could not hope to obtain (although that would be more honest). Also, I don't possess any authority to write such a book since there is no social institution to recognize and validate the visionary. I do not experiment with psychedelics and I have not spent years in Buddhist meditation. I has occured to me that these considerations may be reponsible for the lack of material on what I would consider to be a true initiate to the unknown.

[phanero]

hey arthur.

does this do anything for you? i like hearing your frustration,
and i can identify with it.

a pic.

http://www.phaneronoemikon.org/images/karamuse.jpg

a text.

reconfiguring...
oracular mummies of the stratospheric hyperframes//

the second primordia had begun. the surface of the
earth is a seething biomechanical mass of recombin
ant synthetic mass-code roiling under a baroque se
lf-determination of quick decaying structural impe
ratives. all remnants of the biomass have been dec
onstructed and their state vectors immortalized as
encrypted viral spam code exchanged throughout the
primordia with blind alien reverence awaiting the
next phase space. assembler nodes have blossomed a
t the poles and gargantuan sapient biomech plumesa
rise like weird god-like djinns harvesting and dec
ompiling the vector-states of the decompiled bioma
ss. the collective remnants of the internet and al
l other forms of object epistemology have been por
ted to biocrystalline hyperframes which hover in t
he stratosphere. abruptly skin factories explode i
nto existence on the periphery of god-djinn-plume-
nodes begining their insane raga of experimental s
ynthetic incarnation

[inscription gap]

oracular android mummies assembled from the flotsam
of the insane skin factories filterfeed from the st
ratospheric chaos of viral packet storms using long
tethers which attach their sarcophagi lifesupport s
hells to the beard of the dreaming hyperframe whose
face like some improbable mount rushmore visage of
frankenstein ornaments a biocrystalline orbital pla
tform where experimental virtual biomes crossbreed
themselves theatrically introducing a kind of ritua
l pomp to their use of accellerated genetic algorhy
thms, threads of old earth satanism, mesoamerican s
acrifice, greek tragedy, poly-cross-fertilization o
f all historical ritual-cosmogony variants etc., al
l are skillfully woven into a bizarre self-represen
tation to real-time genetic experiments involving t
he consciousness simulations of billions of offspri
ng which mewl in digital chutes speaking in the hac
ked remains of world historical natural language vo
cabularies, and grammars, a panopticonic software i
ncubator mimicing a million potential civilisations
, a kind of topological potential used to generate
viral assembler code beamed into the remains of the
biomolecular primordia.

[inscription gap]

translucent amphibious grotto-dandies prosthetized
with basic resimulated enlightenment amalgaminds wh
ose synaesthetic ornametal organ processors pulse w
ith chromogeometric musicality broadcasting their e
ncrypted viral subconscious log-file production pro
cedures via quantum entangled mircrotubulin matrice
s which hang from their tricorns of random access m
atter like scintillating veils their faces being IR
/UV topo-pulse radiation weaponry one glance can co
ok every processor in your torso these dandies powe
r their veils using low level emittance and bathe i
n giant milk like pools of intelligent proteomic po
lymer synthesizers exchanging faux witty sub-routin
es which are really veiled forms of biorganic progr
amming how to reconfigure one's skeletal structure
how to change species, sex how to integrate species
how to bud or fork into multiple grottos the instructio
nal content is believed banal and is thus hidden in
a stylized repartee of cliched ancient humorforms t
here is a kind of liefeless dread to it yet the con
stant evanescent of artificially derived 18th centu
ry music keeps the mood of weird nihilistic pathos
at least bearable even for the grotto-dandies who a
re subject to fits of extreme self repulsion and ma
y obliterate themselve or one another with a white
hot blast of facial radiation parasites take the bo
dy flotsam to the recycling areas where snaky armed
disassemblers perform hyperfast surgeries and sorts

[drew hempel]

Hey Rimbaud -- I agree with you on Gary Lachman but I'm basing my view from his Ouspensky book. Why write on another writer who got scared of a true Master? haha. You should read "In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D. Ouspensky. That's the best book on Gurdjieff in my opinion because Ouspensky is trying to objectively convey his initiation into Gurdjieff and his attempt to follow Gurdjieff's teachings at the word. But in the end Ouspensky chickens out -- yet the book is his best. After that Ouspensky tried to set himself up as a guru and a lot of other chicken Westerners chose to follow Ouspensky (so much easier!) haha.

Anyway I read a great John B. Fuller book: Fever!: The Hunt for a New Killer Virus, 1974 -- one of the best epidemic books and frontline science books by far.

The Hot Zone actually had a lot of inaccuracies in it -- as Joe McCormick detailed -- but how many have read Dr. Joe McCormick's virus book? haha.

For "concepts" try reading my online stuff -- http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm gets you to my masters thesis and then there's my blog http://drewhempel.gnn.tv

I use a type of Gurdjieff approach as well but that wouldn't be understood unless you also read "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" and Master Nan, Huai-chin's books (that's some serious Buddhist visonary writing -- he memorized the whole Buddhist canon while a hermit yogin in China and he's now a professor in Taiwan!).

there's also "Opening the Dragon Gate: The Making of a Taoist Wizard" -- I've studied with a Master who did almost everything as described in that book -- it's amazing!

Another great concept book is "Parable of the Beast" by John Bleibtreu