It is reassuring to find another person in this community who is more concerned with the question of "What is?" than the question of "What if?" in terms of the nature of reality. The potential dichotomy of the questions of "How the universe is as it is?" and "Why the universe is as it is?" also relates to this.

When our species reached a point that it stopped speculating about supernatural causality and started investigating things in terms of evidence this led to tremendous cultural advances including, ironically, in terms of our awareness of the nature of psychedelic molecules and their effects. Sadly, despite having clear evidence of what they are and how they work we are still fighting the ignorant superstitious beliefs that these molecules are magical substances that allow us access to supernatural realities. Many people are still not even aware that traditional psychedelic shamanism and sorcery involve deliberate deception and manipulation and even things light slight of hand! We are still dealing with people expressing magnificent delusions about them being in direct contact with deities, or being deities themselves, or about things like Timewave Zero and 2012. At least that one came with an expiration date for credibility... but the detrimental impact that its creator, Terrence McKenna has had upon the state of  knowledge of the psychedelic community is disease-like and incredibly problematic in numerous ways. Sadly it is the authors like him who are entertaining that capture the attention and imagination of people, while authors who are far more accurate but less entertaining, like his own brother Dennis, are largely ignored.

If there was a choice between a psychedelic scientific convention or the psychedelic equivalent of a revival tent, I'd be at the convention. I think most of the people in the community however would be at the revival tent. How many people here know the names of Joe Rogan and Terrence McKenna? How many here know the names of Richard Evans Schultes and David E. Nichols?  The struggle is real.

I should admit thought that I am not as invested in it as my opinion here might indicate. I spend very little time bothering with the supernatural suppositions and focus upon the scientific, measurable or at least consistently reproducible aspects of reality and experience. Hence my primary posting and discussion activity at this website is in relation to scientific papers dealing with the enzymatic activities and structures of the molecules themselves, as well as their natural histories and the biological aspects of their occurrences.