Felnik said:
I thought it was one of his better episodes actually.
His experience with the shaman looked really genuine to me.
He mentions that an experience with salvia as a teenager got
him interested in psychedelics in the first place. I can totally
relate to this . I had a profound salvia experience as well that was definitely the spark for my own complete fascination with psychedelics. It has continued to this day .
I didn't mean to criticise his experiance, it actually was a very interesting salvia ceremony, I just feel that out of necessity to complete his program he may have passed up some amazing things as well, most good shamans will turn you away the first few times, I understand he did not have the time to really get to know these people, but I think that had he had more time he could have witnessed in greater detail the indigenous use of the plant...though he did end up with a very caring shaman, she really wanted to help him, and by all means she did a great job.
An interesting note regarding the episode:
When Daniel Siebert describes the first salvinorin-a extract experience in that episode, I remember him saying "it was no longer My house, I was in my grandparents house as a child" it really struck me, on my first salvinorin-a extract experience I was in an old friends front lawn, it was a beautiful sunny day, green grass, clear blue sky, we smoked, the first thing I thought was "I can't stand the sound of my own voice"...i may have said that out loud...speaking made me feel foolish, like a child, then laughter, then I was a child again, I was in the lawn of my childhood home day-care center, I remembered specifically a yellow "slip and slide" in the lawn, this was from my childhood, in perfect clarity, not only was I there, I was a child again, I was in that time and space...This was actually a profound experience...I never told this story before...
This living through childhood events struck me as one of the more profound aspects of salvinorin...I can't believe it was a piece of the first extract event as well...
For me, salvinorin-a introduced itself to me as "the water teacher", and all my salvinorin-a experiences are heavily connected to water...first there's this "pins and needles" feeling that rushes across the surface of the skin, as this happens, I always fall over to the left, as if some invisible currant is pushing me on my side, I've always interpreted this stage as a river, as being stuck in the currant of a raging river....
Here's an older anecdote:
I had just obtained the salvinorin-a extract and decided to smoke in a tunnel where I would often smoke cannabis as a youth, it's an isolated place, no worries about the public or police. I loaded a fairly large bowl of the salvinorin-a infused leaf into my marijuana pipe and finished it in a single inhalation...I held my breath, then I open my eyes, exhaled, and I look at the wall in front of me...
The bricks on the wall began to form a pyramid like structure in my visual field, a rush of cold pins and needles moved over my skin as I slowly lost contact with my body and the outside world, the pyramid structure became more defined, it was an Aztec style pyramid, covered in dense vines and jungle, climbing in to the pink and yellow sky...the air felt humid, like there was a thick layer of mist hanging heavy in the atmosphere surrounding me, I could hear this loud high pitched squealing static noise, I looked on its direction, I saw I was surrounded by small creatures, they were shaped like upside down horse-shoes or like a lower-case letter "n", they had feet at each point of the "n" shape of their body, large black eyes, and funny little arm like appendages that were warped around a stick which was resting across their "shoulders" with a bucket full of water on either end of the stick. All these little beings were carrying these pales of water up the pyramid steps. They communicated in this squeaky high-pitch ossiclation of frequencies which were packed with telepathic significance. "Follow us" they telepathically communicated, so I did, I followed them to the top of the pyramid, up a long line of wet stone steps, when we reached the top I could see a raging river was running down the back side of the pyramid, all the beings were dumping their buckets full water into this river, thousands of these little things pouring bucket after bucket into the river, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I felt wet, and blind, and as if I were falling, I had apparently jumped,( or was pushed? ) down into this raging currant, I falling as if I had just jumped off a thousand foot high water fall...i remember screaming, and opening my eyes, I slowly regained my vision, and regained physical coordination, and eventually reached baseline... -eg
I have entity contact far more often on salvinorin than I do on DMT. The salvia beings are rambunctious, ornery, mischievous, little things, bouncing and jumping, playing with your psychology, playing with you, but they also show you things...I don't think the "water teacher" is connected to these things, the wise teaching soul of seems to be separate, and it teaches in such an odd way, you will get a deep concept or phrase, like a thought, though it's an "alien thought" like an idea that you could never have generated, and its implanted into your psyche, the teacher is such a personal and difficult aspect of salvia to explain...
I probably sound foolish so I'll stop here.
-eg
Can you like me the mushroom one please, if you get it?