Jodistrict

It depends on the dose and how you use it. The shamen begin smoking when they are young and they develop the lung capacity to use it to alter consciousness just like a plant medicine. The average person would get a toxic reaction before reaching that state. In one of the ceremonies, the shaman was doing healing where he would fully inhale the smoke and then blow it on the person. There were a lot of people there and it became toxic and he had a reaction and was throwing up all over the place. I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners. I have reached altered states using large doses of rapeh.

No.

In this situation, Sadhguru is right. Pakistan can’t be allowed to use terrorism as a method of covert warfare and then claim their state wasn’t involved. India has a long history of being brutalized by Islamic rulers for centuries and they just aren’t going to take it anymore. The forces of darkness in the world are strong and the light can be snuffed out. Modi is a lion protecting the Sanatana Dharma. Kaishmir Shaivism is starting to make a slow comeback. This knowledge and culture is worth protecting for the sake of the liberation of the entire world.

Nicotine is also a psychedelic. I saw the shaman go into a trance smoking mapacho. I don't smoke mapacho, but I do use rapeh, which is the snuff form with a kuripe, which helps quite my mind during meditation.

Here is a good video showing the media bias whitewashing Islamic terrorism.

I have been following the same trader for over 10 years. His first rule is don’t look at the news. The markets are driven by big money and they have their own agenda. The media reporters look at the daily fluctuation and then attribute it to the day’s news story even though there is zero proof of causality. Also, using a single pattern is unreliable and backtesting doesn’t take enough of the context into account.

Anything that goes against the current learned belief system seems silly. In the 1940s many people, including doctors, believed smoking was harmless or even healthy. Some doctors even prescribed cigarettes for ailments like asthma. It wasn't until the 1950s when the scientific evidence mounted that public perception slowly shifted.

When I was in the Amazon, I was introduced to mapacho. It is a Peruvian tobacco which is very strong. The shaman had been smoking it since he was a child. He was in his fifties and in perfect health. I saw him once walking up a hill carrying two heavy water bottles over his shoulders. I was told that what causes the cancer in commercial tobacco are the chemicals that are used to dry the tobacco. In Peru they dry the tobacco naturally and add no chemicals. Tobacco is also considered a sacred plant, so they are aware it can either heal or kill you depending on how you treat it.

“I am god” is the last message that a shallow materialistic culture needs to hear.

I knew people who lived through the depression and World War II and they were ridiculously happy. Going through hardship in a society with good values made them strong and self reliant. The elites who control society today are materialists and their progressivism is garbage. All civilizations formed under the guidance of higher spiritual knowledge. The emergence of the right expresses the sentiment of the populations that something is wrong and the old system, with all its limitations, prejudices and blind spots, was actually better.

The physicalist arguments are weak and just don’t stand up to scrutiny. They can’t explain how a collection of unconscious billiard balls (or any other particle) can interact to magically create conscious experience. As for his observation that the organism would be doing the same thing without qualia, Advaita Vedanta has been saying this for over a thousand years, i.e. “you are not the doer”. Barnardo Kastrup has done a good job of demolishing all of their arguments. https://www.bernardokastrup.com/

That’s why you treat these substances responsibly as sacred medicines. Tobacco is a sacred plant to the indigenous. But it can be used to heal you or give you cancer. If something is powerful, it goes both ways. This is why I don’t see it as a positive development that psychedelics are becoming mainstream in a shallow consumerist culture hooked on entertainment.

I've consulted with him a few times for trip integration. He is very easy to talk to.

The spiritual teacher Maharishika talks about transgenderism and its effect on society.

The title of this thread should be: “Haphazardly throwing together a bunch of techniques with drugs has a dark side.”