Disregard Everything I say

Note: This is technically a repost but my understanding of this idea has increased so much since I posted the original sensory filter article several months ago that I had to rewrite the entire thing many times over. 

I and others have suspected for a long time that during sober living a large part of what our brain does is filter out the mass of sensory data and self thought into a highly streamlined package of what the subconscious brain has deemed important and relevant to pass along for our conscious selves to be exposed to. This exists because if it did not we would be immediately and constantly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of raw sensory input and our inability to process it all causing us to be completely incapable of functioning. It’s because of this that we have evolved to filter out irrelevant information.

It seems to me that all visual and mental components of the psychedelic experience are generated by a very specific mental component of the psychedelic experience which is the partial or complete removal of this sensory filter and the increased input that results from this change. 

A good example of this felt at low level psychedelic experiences is being able to look at a tree and comprehend the exact position of all of its branches in your visual field all at once instead of just the simple few that are in focus or being able to pin point every layer and tiny sound in a complex song.

But this sensory filter does not just block out irrelevant sensory input from being experienced but it also filters out irrelevant brain activity from the conscious faculties. This irrelevant brain activity includes many things such as the organization and firing of every neuron, every memory, every stored concept and every last structure of the mind until something such as a mind altering drug forces it to stop. In simple terms this means that closed eye visuals are literally the act of seeing the organization of our brain spilling over into our vision as the brain is chemically forced into revealing itself to itself.

This is possibly done through the way in which tryptamines bind with our serotonin receptors causing the circuits that they exist within to become over excited and to start sending their signals to our conscious faculties.

As a person is increasingly exposed to such things during a psychedelic experience the ego always proportionately goes down due to pure sensory overload and its this process that inevitably leads to complete ego death once a sensory filter is fully removed leaving the tripper exposed to their entire mind all at once. This is why ego death is almost universally described as being “one with the universe” because they are being exposed to every single subconscious structure, concept, memory, etc in their minds all at once in a single instance, this feels completely infinite in size when experienced but completely destroys your sense of self and your short term memory.This can be thought of as a set of scales, as closed eye visuals go up, the ego goes straight down and vice versa.

If this is all true then the function of Vibes can be explained, the reason every specific frame of closed eye visuals has a specific Vibe or stylized emotion attached to it that fits the current mood perfectly in a way that stems from the way it looks is because it’s simply a visual representation of your current state of mind and external sensory input.

Although all of this explains how closed eye visuals are generated and why it seems that our brain has a huge amount of impossibly complex geometry stored within it this is not everything as in my opinion the visual effects of a psychedelic experience can be broken up into two categories, the first is closed eye visuals and the second is distortions with the distinction being that visuals are complex and abstract geometry and distortions are enhancements of the external environment such as breathing, melting, etc.

Such distortions do not appear to behave in the same way as closed eye visuals and act as if they are generated by some sort of recursive visual looping within the brain which sends sensory input from the optic nerve into the processing faculties of our subconscious brain and straight back into the optic nerve. This continuously goes around and around with increasing inaccuracy until the loop is broken creating bizarre visual distortions that build up and up until the loop is broken by new visual input.
It’s because of this that distortions increase when stared at but reset when looked away from, because still out of focus eyes allow the loop to continue undisturbed but new input immediately breaks it. This is just like a visual form of the increasingly loud feedback you get looping through speaker systems when a microphone is placed near them.

I think the fractal effects found within visuals are closely related to this recursive visual looping. Fractals are generated by recursive formulas such as x=x² type stuff. Therefore it would make sense that the fractals you see within the visuals are simply the looping effect being played out onto visuals instead of your environment, you are reinterpreting the same stimuli multiple times, causing the geometry to flower out into these fractals.

I am not 100% sure on this part but I suspect that recursive visual looping ties into the Sensory Filter because it is a runaway effect caused by the sensory filter allowing your visual field to be exposed to your very immediate short term memory and then the exposure of your vision to that exposure and so on. This builds up inaccuracies quickly and creates the looping effect.

In fact the more I think about the sensory filter the more I come to the conclusion that it is perhaps most important component of a psychedelic experience as it seems to me that it is the “base component” that leads to all others.
This is purely based on personal experience. I completely understand that this is currently just speculative and I’ve hardly tested it through scientific study because I am just a teenager whose taken a huge amount of psychedelic drugs and not in anyway an expert but I’d like to think that from my personal experiences with tripping and extremely basic understanding of how the human brain works this does seem to be how the visual components of a psychedelic experience are generated.
It’s worth noting however that I have absolutely no idea how the hallucinations and entity contact at the higher levels of psychedelic experience work at all (yet) and cant think of any way in which they could tie into the sensory filter as for now they are still a complete mystery to me.

The concepts on the chart below show what I’m trying to express and each part depends on the component to its left and leads on to the components to its immediate right. You’re going to have to click to enlarge I’m afraid.

What it’s like:

Ego death is the highest level of psychedelic experience along side Hallucinations and Entity contact and exists in different forms even outside of psychedelics that can be reached through sensory deprivation tanks, meditation or simply being asleep / unconscious as any loss of self can technically be characterized as Ego death but here I am only going to talk about the state of Ego death that can be induced by psychedelics.

A state of psychedelic induced ego death is reached when a tripper has finally taken such a large dosage that their sensory filter is at 0% and is therefore allowing every single tiny bit of brain function and sensory input to reach the conscious faculties regardless of whether or not it is relevant in an extremely visual and felt form. This includes not just the sensation of being able to comprehend the input of every single nerve ending across your entire body all at once but also the sensation of experiencing all concepts, memories, archetypes and information stored within the brain in a single instant giving an extremely profound feeling that you are experiencing the entire universe all at once forcing you to feel completely one with all of existence and this is often interpreted as a perceived loss of boundaries between your body and the rest of the universe. This oneness is so infinitely huge and profound that the people who experience it in a positive and safe setting almost universally report that it feels as if their entire life has been building up to this single moment and that they are finally “getting off the train”.

Unlike the feeling of being able to comprehend all of your sensory input this state of oneness is not 100% constant when reached but is rather something that happens repeatedly over and over again pulling you in and out of the room. Egodeath is triggered by the experience of a concept and the completely all enveloping runaway thought processes that ensue because of them. For example if you were to hear somebody say the word “internet” a runaway thought process would immediately begin as you experience all concepts attached to your idea of “the internet” and all concepts attached to those. This spreads outwards infinitely and quickly encompasses everything in such a powerful and overwhelming way that you’re ego is immediately destroyed due to sensory overload. Once this is over in 3 – 4 seconds however your ego begins to quickly restack and reform itself as you are placed back into the room, this only stays however for a very short time as another trigger is usually experienced instantaneously putting trippers into rapid fire bursts of not having any concept of the real world or anything in it. This experience of the entire universe typically looks and feels like an infinite sea of all enveloping fractals, concepts and non Euclidean geometry.

Learning to function during this state:

Due to the overwhelming nature of this state your typical person’s reaction is to immediately lay down and not even attempt to get back up until it is over as trying to function during this state quickly leaves most people in a permanent state of confusion and thought loops as they try to grasp what is happening to them but just as a baby learns to walk and talk so can we learn to function while being completely one with the entire universe. 

Although this sensory overload completely envelops your ego and short term memory leaving trippers permanently stuck in the present and unable to remember anything from more than 1 or 2 seconds ago a persons long term memory is left completely intact allowing you to retain basic knowledge such as who you are and where you are but not anything beyond the most basic of conversation skills as new information becomes near impossible to store. Our long term memory being left intact during Ego death allows us to avoid a state of permanent confusion with some practice providing the person has already stored the concept of ego death and all that it entails into their long term memory before they begin to trip giving them the sensation that they know and have a basic understanding of what is happening to them but do not remember any of the unimportant specific details. This is enough to help avoid the commonly felt state of permanent confusion and from here you can begin to learn to walk and perform tasks in a mental state with capabilities somewhat similar to that of a very young child or an animal meaning only the most basic of knowledge is felt and understood during this state.

Despite the fact that your short term memory has almost completely disappeared however your memory of the recent past can be extended from the typical zero seconds into the past to 4 – 10 seconds into the past which is the length of a sober persons short term memory but only if extra sensory input is constantly experienced. For example if you keep moving around you find that egodeath only occurs once you stop and focus on a concept for even a split second and through this technique a constant source of sensory input can keep you in the room allowing you to walk, function and to eventually with practice: maintain a coherent conversation for more than 3 seconds.

The easiest way to do this is to constantly keep moving around with a spring in your step but it’s worth noting that the constant background stimulus of a strobe light such as the one found on this webpage here allows you to maintain a constant connection to the room and extends your memory field considerably. 

Learning to function like this opens you up to all sorts of experiences based on sensations such as walking around and living in a state based purely on animal like reflexes and an infinite sense of oneness that seems to come so naturally to the human brain. The subconscious has no problem whatsoever with creating sensations that the universe is one ongoing intertwined process that we are not in anyway separate from and this is often felt as a permanent but subtle change in perspective that lasts a very long time even after the tripper has come down from the experience.

If you want to experience Ego death your best bet is to combine a strong dose of LSD and some good weed but Ego death can also be achieved through Mushrooms and other psychedelics in very large doses. Keep taking increasingly high doses and you will eventually get there.

I’ve already spoken about testing the existence of DMT/ Ayahuasca and Mushroom entities through simple questioning right here but I think that using mathematics to do this could be a much more interesting way to go even if the existence of such things are immediately shown to be a complete fabrication. Which to be honest, is probably the most likely outcome.

As a person who is completely useless at maths it would be very interesting to ask autonomous entities (particularly entities who appear to be all knowing) simple mathematical questions that are beyond my immediate comprehension such as “64 x 112” and to then time how long it takes for a response. Assuming they can answer at all I could then across multiple trips ask entities questions of increasing complexity to find the upper limit of their abilities and see just how far I could push it as doing this could teach us multiple awesome things about the nature of psychedelics and the human brain.
This will obviously have to be done with a polite attitude because entities do have the power to crush you.

There are 3 possible outcomes to performing this experiment, which are: 

The Entities fail to answer the questions.

If the entities outright fail, refuse to answer or show mathematical skills no better than that of the tripper then this is yet another line of evidence suggesting that they simply do not exist or are at least not nearly as all knowing as some of them seem to be. This combined with the results of my further questioning that I suggested in the previous article on this topic would be the final nail in the coffin in my opinion and would finally provide us with an answer.

The Entities succeed in answering the questions, but there is an upper limit.

If the entities are capable of solving with greater ability than the conscious skills of the tripper then things are really starting to get interesting, this doesn’t necessarily prove their existence (although it certainly helps) but it does let us find out a few things about the human brain as finding the upper limit of their ability to answer basic multiplication questions would essentially show us what the exact processing limitations of the subconscious mind are and just how far it is ahead of our conscious processing power and personal experience leads me to suspect that it is might be leaps and bounds ahead of what is consciously available to us.

The Entities succeed but there is no upper limit.

If everything goes perfectly and the entities pass all questioning beyond what could reasonably be considered the physical limitations of a human brain then goddamn. This would be proof that this experience isn’t just a hallucination that acts like it is in possession of a huge wealth of knowledge inaccessible to me but that it really is exactly what it claims to be. OH MAN 

Each of these outcomes would be a fascinating discovery so although it’s probably going to be the first option this is still definitely worth a try and nobody else is working on it so it’s a chance to break some brand new ground and do front line research. I’m finally ready to get working on this very shortly through a series of high dose Ayahuasca trips and you’re welcome to help out and report back if you want to but I do understand that most people are far too lazy for this sort of shit so I shall push on regardless.

I’m pretty sure 99% of you will already agree with me on this one but judging by some of the messages I receive and the heated trollfests that I see quite often within my favourite online psychedelic communities there are an insistent group of people that like to push the idea of there being a “wrong” and a “right” way to trip and that it’s even possible to disrespect the trip through certain ways such as using psychedelics for purely recreational activities instead of deep spiritual journeys into the mind.

Now I understand that traditional shamanic psychedelics such as Ayahusca and Mushrooms are powerful ancient healers and should be treated with respect but if I want to watch Adventure Time and play videogames on a mind blowing dose of either then I will do just that, some people may prefer to be doing something else with their trips but to then assert that their completely subjective experience is somehow more valuable than somebody else’s completely subjective experiences is just plain retarded. Just because I am enjoying myself does not mean I am showing a lack of respect for anything.

Another way in which I have supposedly been violating the sacred rules of internet technoshamanism has been on this very tumblr as a result of the posting of simple and easy to follow extraction methods because apparently we should all know that these substances are a “calling” and if people truly want them they will seek them themselves and therefore to make it easy for people is to somehow disrespect the psychedelic experience. I honestly don’t see the point of messages like this as they seem a little silly. It’s not as if you were just sitting there and DMT called out to you from beyond the stars, no you heard about it through a friend or read about it somewhere just like everybody else. Making the extraction process easier so that people do not have to make sense of and browse multiple old forum posts that all contradict each other is not a terrible thing. In fact you could argue that since there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with modern culture and the only thing currently capable of fixing this problem on an individual level over a quick enough time scale to prevent us from collectively fucking everything up seems to be these very compounds it would have been rude not to post them. 

These rules apply to all psychedelics but none more so than Ayahuasca which has many restrictions and practises attributed to it that aren’t really based on anything at all, these include but are not limited to:

• You should never try Ayahuasca without the guidance of an experienced shaman.
• You should never use Ayahuasca recreationally in any capacity. Ever.
• You should never take preventative measures to remove the purge from the trip.

None of these are true. Although great care and caution should be shown until a user is completely comfortable with the powerful trip Ayahuasca has to offer a common sense approach and a sitter that knows what they are doing will make for just as safe a trip as any shaman from the rainforest. 

It is entirely up to the individual and the knowledge of their own limits when deciding what they want to do with their trips. How some people manage to place completely arbitrary cultural constructs onto a group of substances that’s main effect is the removal of such things I do not know.

The last restriction that is placed on Ayahuasca is the stigma of removing the purge as many people feel that it is an intrinsic part of the trip but I do still feel that it is obviously not an intrinsic part of the trip. It is an intrinsic part of ingesting pulverised rootbark that has been simmered down into a foul sludge and nothing more. If this were anything but the case you would not be able to remove it with an extremely simple recipe change (adding eggwhites hurr) and Pharmahuasca users who take 100% pure dmt instead of drinking it in liquid form would also experience such intense nausea. I do not want to ingest wood I just want to ingest the DMT.

I am with these people to an extent and completely agree that these moments of recreational use are not exactly deep spiritual work or how I should spend every moment of my trips but as somebody who has benefited enormously from tripping on a very regular basis I sometimes genuinely run out of introspection and personal problems to solve and just want to have fun, this is nothing but a good thing and although quite difficult, interacting with a breakthrough partial egodeath trip by attempting to play videogames, going shopping or whatever the hell you feel like doing can be a pretty hilarious experience if you know your limits. 

Although from the perspective of an outsider LSD and Mushrooms appear to have very similar effects on the human brain there are a number of very significant differences in the visual, mental and physical aspects in these three substances that make for very different experiences. It’s these differences that cause people to prefer one over the other and personally, if I had to choose it would be  perhaps Mushrooms for their deeper visionary states and more insightful headspaces because running out of introspection can eventually happen and cause one to hit what I call the “acid wall”.

Visuals:

When compared to the visuals of mushrooms, LSD’s visuals are generally described by most as much more vibrant, clean, digital, colourful, cartoonish and angular with bolder outlines. These visuals generally consist of very nonstop fast flashes well defined 3D and 2D geometric patterns with impossible complexity.
The thing that has always annoyed me about LSD is that although its visuals are astonishingly beautiful they are entirely lacking of deep visionary hallucinations and appear to be nothing but pretty patterns all the way up unless combined with other substances such as huge amounts of weed or other hallucinogens.

When compared to the visuals of LSD, magic mushroom visuals are generally described by most as much softer, less defined and rounder with slightly more earthy and natural colours. Its lower level effects such as distortions and melting are significantly more solid and a little more permanent, meaning they are more likely to stay if you look away from a distorted object and then back at it.
At higher doses there are usually large amount of visions as well as visuals. Visions differ from visuals as rather than patterns, shapes, colours and images they follow plots and themes that can be anything such as being thrust into outer space at extreme speeds, visiting alien lands or communicating with autonomous intelligent entities such as insectoid creatures, elves, gods and complex robotic machines.

The simplest way to put it is this; LSD CEV’s were generated in an advanced piece of vector imaging software whilst Magic Mushroom CEV’s were elaborately hand painted by an impossible artist. 

Headspace:

The headspace of LSD although drastically different from normal waking consciousness is surprisingly clear headed and concise when compared to Magic Mushrooms. It greatly enhances your current mood and can be incredibly euphoric to the point where at the end of a hard day tripping your biggest problem is usually that your cheeks hurt from the amount of smiling and intense laughter that you’ve experienced.
LSD feels like entering your own mind and not an alternate coexisting reality and its overall theme is one of greatly increased interconnectedness of the mind with rapid firing profound thoughts and intense introspectiveness accompanied by a very short attention span.

The headspace of Magic Mushrooms is much less clear headed than LSD and has a very obvious stoning effect to it that can be described as vaguely similar to weed. This severely reduced mental capacity leaves for a slightly more confusing trip.
People often note that the headspace on Mushrooms feels much less like an intense change of perception brought about by ingesting a powerful drug and much more like being tuned into a different frequency of reality or in other words things naturally feel that they are that way because “that’s just the way they are”.
The overall theme of the Mushroom headspace space although also one of personal problem solving places much more emphasis on “outrospectiveness” as trippers often find themselves contemplating the society they live in, their place in the universe and many profound philosophical thoughts.

Bodyhigh:

The body high of LSD is my favourite body high out of all psychedelics. It can only be described as an intensely euphoric, energetic tingling sensation that encompasses your entire body. This body high is one that encourages movement and running around and is almost the complete opposite of the body high experienced on Magic Mushrooms.
It’s also worth noting that the body high of LSD through means that I am unsure of unlocks complete control over a tripper’s body. During an LSD trip many trippers usually find that they have complete control of the movement of every tiny little muscle throughout their body and that they can be individually moved without a trigger. It’s this aspect of LSD that can put people back in touch with the animal body.

The body high of magic mushrooms is an incredibly relaxed and lethargic state that causes a tripper to want to sit down on a comfortable spot and enjoy the trip. It can however be accompanied with nausea and stomach cramps that stem from the ingestion of the mushrooms.

Duration:

Although the duration of LSD is generally considered to be 12 hours I have never managed to stay up long enough to completely sober up and have always fallen asleep still mildly tripping even after 24 hours. It is also worth noting that the peak of an LSD trip comes and goes in waves giving the tripper little moments of sobriety throughout the trip. The long duration of LSD allows for an entire days worth of events to be planned around its usage and is something that is very enjoyable.

The duration of a good mushroom trip is sadly much more fleeting than that of LSD and generally only lasts around 7 hours. This does however allow for the convenience of a person to have an evening trip and still go to bed at a reasonable hour or for a morning trip if a person has plans for later on in the day.

DISCLAIMER: The only important source I am using here is my own experiences over countless trips and discussions with friends which may be completely different from your own experiences.
I’ve tried to keep this as accurate and well worded as I possibly can but most of these mental aspects are near impossible to explain in English and cannot be done justice with words, especially once we get past low and moderate dosages. However, I’ve done my best!
The level 1 - 5 system I’ve used here is described in detail here.

Enhancement of Mood: (1 - 5)

Unlike many drugs that chemically induce euphoria within a person regardless of their pervious mental state and emotional insecurities Psychedelics only enhance a person’s current mood many times over whether or not this is done in a good or bad direction.
This means that a positive and rational person under the influence of a moderate to high dose Psychedelic drug will feel a sensation of pure bliss and absolutely overwhelmingly euphoric mindgasms that continue to wash over their brain and body for hours at a time in a way that is genuinely grounded in reality. A good trip will leave you feeling ecstatic, but not because you have ingested a drug, but because the beauty of your existence, your loved ones and your position in the universe are finally being put into a perspective that is not completely clouded with culture, drama and bullshit meaningless problems. 
To truly realize how lucky you are to be alive and how much opportunity is really in front of you is an incredible feeling but one that can only come about if you allow it to happen, a negative person coming into a trip may find themselves experiencing the exact emotional polar opposite of what I just described to you.

More Examples: Here

Removal of sensory filter:  (2 – 5)

The sensory filter is yet another barrier to ourselves that psychedelics allow us to overcome.
During normal waking consciousness your brain essentially filters out different mundane signals such as what each and every nerve ending over your entire body is currently feeling and stops them from entering the conscious mind. This aspect is most commonly experienced in the form looking at a tree and being able to completely comprehend and understand the position of every single branch all at once rather than just understand the few small areas that they are currently focused on and is also where the visual of increased obviousness of existing textures stems from.

This effect also gives people complete and utter muscle control over every tiny part of their body. Much can be learnt from this effect about what it feels like to be human and to have a physical body.

More Examples: here, here and here.

Time distortion: (2 – 5)

Time distortion is an effect that comes in three different commonly experienced forms. These forms are time compression, time dilation and time loops. Time compression is the felt experience of time speeding up and passing much quicker than it should. This effect although common is much less common that time expansion which is the felt experience of time slowing down, this feeling has a wide spectrum of intensities and can vary between the simple effect of much more time seeming to have passed than it actually has until somebody checks the time and snaps back into reality or it be the very unpleasant effect known as a “moment of eternity” where all concept of passing time is completely lost and a person feels as though they are trapped within a short moment infinitely. Time loops are a very common factor contributing to bad trips and are the felt experience of being trapped in a moment that is continuously repeatedly over and over again; this feeling can be either irritating or quite distressing. A common sign that a person is becoming trapped in a time loop is that they will continue to repeat the same few phrases, questions and actions over and over again, in this situation it’s best to try and subtly distract them and move them to a different environment.

Rapid fire thoughts: (2 – 5)

Rapid fire thoughts are an effect that I particularly enjoy while tripping. This is where your thought processes are sped up drastically and have a greatly increased sense of creativity and profoundness to them. When experiencing this effect it literally feels like one rapid thought after the other in incredibly quick succession and it’s this change in speed that results in massively increased creativity, problem solving abilities but also distractibility. One of the greatest features of this mental aspect is that it can partly stay many days or weeks after a good trip and can leave a person in a state of clear headedness.

“I flew through hyperspace this weekend, I’m sure I can handle this deadline at work today!”

Introspection: (2 - 5)

The introspectiveness of the psychedelic experience is probably its one of its most famous qualities and in my opinion the most obvious real world application to tripping balls.
It’s by far the ability to rationally think about and dissect my internal problems that has benefited me and all of the people around me more than any other aspect of the psychedelic experience and is also the single biggest contributor to a “bad trip” that most people encounter as everybody suddenly comes to the overwhelming realization that they have a lot more personal problems and emotional baggage than they originally thought. Whether or not a person is capable of overcoming these struggles is the largest factor in determining if a person will react positively or negatively to the psychedelic experience.

More Examples: Here, Here, Here, Here and Here.

Removal of cultural filter: (3 - 5)

To me this is by far the most profound cognitive effect that the psychedelic experience has to offer as it is a permanent and life changing perception switch that occurs consistently during all trips and becomes completely grounded in an individual’s personality after just a few good trips. The cultural filter is an extreme bias that we look through in our everyday lives when evaluating the world around us and affects our ability to judge something for what it really is enormously. It’s this filter that forces us to look at our lives and reality not as a human being but as a false version of our true selves be it materialistic white middle class male with European Christian heritage, a Muslim housewife or an aboriginal tribesman in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. The reason this filter exists within us all is because we are determined, shaped and held back by the culture that raises us in greater ways than most people feel comfortable admitting. Especially those that pride themselves on their individuality and think that each brightly coloured streak of died hair on their head gives them an ever more unique and profound outlook on life.
As far as I can tell this cultural filter is instilled so deeply within our own psyches that we cannot possibly get rid of it by normal means such as simply analysing our own thought processes and decisions but must resort to much more drastic measures such as an intense psychedelic chemical cleansing of the mind. It’s this effect of the psychedelic experience that can cause an unconscious selfish idiot to enter a trip and come out six hours later a halfway decent human being.

More Examples: here, here, here and here.

Increased Distractibility: (1 - 5)

As higher brain functions such as creativity and cognition are increased by any drug, neurological sacrifices have to be temporarily made for compensation. With psychedelics this comes not in the form of a comedown, hangover or profound stupidity but in the form of an increasingly large inability to comprehend anything outside of the present moment that grows proportionally with dosage.
This feeling is quite a familiar one to any Psychonaut as trying to maintain concentration during a trip can be incredibly difficult due to the sometimes overwhelming sensory input and complex visual effects that keep you permanently stuck in the present moment. At very high doses this increases up until the moment where it is impossible to comprehend anything that happened in the past or anything that might happen in the future as the present moment is so overwhelming these things seem distant, irrevalent and trivial. This increased distractibility at its logical limit becomes a crucial contributing factor to egodeath as an overload of sensory input inevitably leads to complete detachment from not only anything but the present moment but from your knowledge, ideas, memories and your sense of self. 

Egodeath:  (5++++)

Ego death is the highest level of psychedelic experience along side Hallucinations and Entity contact and exists in different forms even outside of psychedelics that can be reached through sensory deprivation tanks, meditation or simply being asleep / unconscious as any loss of self can technically be characterized as Ego death but here I am only going to talk about the state of Ego death that can be induced by psychedelics.

A state of psychedelic induced ego death is reached when a tripper has finally taken such a large dosage that their sensory filter is at 0% and is therefore allowing every single tiny bit of brain function and sensory input to reach the conscious faculties regardless of whether or not it is relevant in an extremely visual and felt form. This includes not just the sensation of being able to comprehend the input of every single nerve ending across your entire body all at once but also the sensation of experiencing all concepts, memories, archetypes and information stored within the brain in a single instant giving an extremely profound feeling that you are experiencing the entire universe all at once forcing you to feel completely one with all of existence and this is often interpreted as a perceived loss of boundaries between your body and the rest of the universe. This oneness is so infinitely huge and profound that the people who experience it in a positive and safe setting almost universally report that it feels as if their entire life has been building up to this single moment and that they are finally “getting off the train”.

Unlike the feeling of being able to comprehend all of your sensory input this state of oneness is not 100% constant when reached but is rather something that happens repeatedly over and over again pulling you in and out of the room. Egodeath is triggered by the experience of a concept and the completely all enveloping runaway thought processes that ensue because of them. For example if you were to hear somebody say the word “internet” a runaway thought process would immediately begin as you experience all concepts attached to your idea of “the internet” and all concepts attached to those. This spreads outwards infinitely and quickly encompasses everything in such a powerful and overwhelming way that you’re ego is immediately destroyed due to sensory overload. Once this is over in 3 – 4 seconds however your ego begins to quickly restack and reform itself as you are placed back into the room, this only stays however for a very short time as another trigger is usually experienced instantaneously putting trippers into rapid fire bursts of not having any concept of the real world or anything in it. This experience of the entire universe typically looks and feels like an infinite sea of all enveloping fractals, concepts and non Euclidean geometry.

More Examples: here

Click the chart below to expand:

Each component on this chart depends on the concepts to its left and leads on to the components to its immediate right.

By the way - There’s a guide for each class of hallucinogen not just psychedelics:

>THE VISUAL AND MENTAL COMPONENTS OF A DISSOCIATIVE TRIP

>THE VISUAL AND MENTAL COMPONENTS OF A DELIRIOUS TRIP

DISCLAIMER: The only important source I am using here is my own experiences over countless trips and discussions with friends which may be completely different from your own experiences.

I’ve tried to keep this as accurate and well worded as I possibly can but most of these visual aspects are near impossible to explain in English and cannot be done justice with words, especially once we get past low and moderate dosages so feel free to nitpick any tiny point that you disagree with by sending me a message. However, I’ve done my best and being able to put a name to a visual effect has really helped me understand and talk about my trips with others.

The level 1 - 5 system I’ve used here is described in detail here and never goes beyond 4 on this particular list because at level 5 the visual aspects are essentially impossible to describe. The leveling system I’ve used to describe Closed Eye Visuals is a different system entirely and can be found described in detail here. I am using the classic Serotonergic Psychedelic experience as my point of reference here but this guide still applies to the lesser known Phenethylamine family that are becoming increasingly prevalent. 

Most of the images are randomly found examples from across the internet but the main image for Tracers, Enhancement of Colours, Enhancement of Textures, Melting, Embedded Patterns and Scenery slicing were all made by my girlfriend whose tumblr is dedicated to the creation of such images and can be found here.

Tracers/ trails: (level 1 – 4)

Tracers are the simple experience of trails being left behind moving objects such as people walking, birds or cars. Trails are usually very obvious and are similar in appearance to the sort of trails left in long exposure shots. The trails can be either exactly the same colour as the moving object that is producing it or it can be a randomly selected colour of its own. These tracers float in the air for approximately 2 – 3 seconds.

The deepest or most extreme version of this visual effect happens when your entire visual field smudges into a tracer when you simply move your eyes rather than a single specific moving object, this makes it difficult to see unless you keep your eyes still.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to move your hand in front of your face or throw an object.

More Examples: Here and Here.

Enhancement of colours: (level 1 – 4)

Although this is one of the more basic visual effects, to be understood completely it needs to be experienced. During the onset of a trip almost all people notice that colours start to stand out and seem much more crisp than usual. Reds will seem “Redder”, Greens will seem “Greener” and everything will be much brighter and clearly defined in general.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to be outside in nature.

More Examples: Here.

Breathing:  (level 2 – 4)

Breathing is a very common place visual that can happen to any surface or object but is usually associated with the walls of a room. This effect makes walls appear to be steadily breathing in and out, expanding and contracting in the same way a persons chest does when they slowly inhale and exhale.

A fairly consistent way to reproduce this visual is to stare at a blank wall and lose focus.

More Examples: Here and Here.

Flowing Textures / Texture Distorions: (level 3 – 4)

Flowing, shifting, rippling or moving textures on surfaces are a strong visual effect that can happen to virtually anything in a number of different styles. A classic example of this however could be a wood grain pattern flowing like a river in a simple sort of looped animation. Pictures on a poster also commonly appear to be gently rippling and wobbling.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to stare at wood grain and lose focus.

Shifting Colours: (level 2 – 4)

Quite often the colours of various objects, particularly brightly  coloured out of place objects will become subject to an effect that shifts and changes the colours in a sort of strange fluid motion across the surface of the object. For example Moss on a rock could shift from green, to red, to blue and then back to green again in a very short space of time. This visual effect is not permanent and objects tend to immediately switch back to their original colour if you focus on something else for even a brief moment.

Enhancement of textures: (level 1 – 4)

This is an interesting visual effect as it does not really change the appearance of textures but rather a persons feeling towards them. During even a mild trip it is common for people to suddenly notice patterns and textures that they may have never previously appreciated or paid any attention to before. For example when looking at a carpet, a pavement or trees bark the complexity and beauty of the texture suddenly becomes obvious, this is because a persons sensory filter has been lowered dramatically giving them the ability to comprehend the entire texture at once, not just the small area that their eye is currently focused on which is the case during sober living. An interesting aspect to this visual is that it often partly stays with people after the trip giving them a new found appreciation for textures.

More examples: Here.

Melting: (level 3 – 4)

It is not unusual to see objects and sceneries to be completely or partially melting. This is a common visual and usually non permanent, meaning objects only appears to melt when a person is staring directly at them and immediately unmelt when the person’s eyes focus on something else even for a moment. It is also common for objects to appear to be melting before your eyes despite also never making any actual progress at the same time. This part of the effect needs to be experienced to be understood.

Transformations and distortions: (level 3 – 4)

This visual effect can vary widely in its intensity and distinctiveness depending on the setting and the dosage. There are an infinite number of ways this visual can manifest itself and can be anything from people turning into reptilians before your very eyes to pet dogs appearing to be much longer than usual. A mild or low level example of this could be a person’s face stretching and distorting into a caricature of themselves and a highly intense example could be the complete transformation of the external world into an incomprehensible anything. This visual is non permanent and is never realistic enough to convince a person that it is actually happening.

More Examples: Here and Here.

Embedded patterns: (level 2 – 4)

This is yet another visual effect that applies to textures. This visual effect, instead of simply distorting textures or making them more interesting completely replaces them with often fantastical versions of themselves. Quite often the textures on a person’s surroundings suddenly follow a patterned theme such as Aztec fractals that become embedded on anything and everything from the pavement, to the grass and the walls. This effect needs to be experienced to be fully understood.

A consistent way to produce this visual is to stare at a towel or rough surfaces such as tarmac and gravel.

Synaesthesia: (level 3 – 4)

Synaesthesia is a very interesting aspect of tripping and can be experienced via means other than psychedelics as it is a genuine condition experienced mildly by 1 in 23 people, simply put this phenomena is the mixing and blending of senses. The most common version of this is usually seeing sound and music in a visual form but is not limited to this. People can taste colours, hear smells or any other combination of senses that you could think of.

This visual is hard to consistently produce but listening to music through a set of headphones in darkness or with closed eyes or eating food with closed eyes can occasionally do it.

Scenery Slicing: (level 3 – 4)

Scenery slicing is a fairly uncommon visual but appears regularly enough and across multiple people to make it worth mentioning. This effect usually happens suddenly and makes the scenery appear as if it has been cut remarkably cleanly into separate slices with a razorblade. These separate slices can be as simple as 3 separate sections or as complex as multiple slices of a moving interlocking spiral that’s been cut into your field of vision.

Extreme Pareidolia: (level 2 – 4)

Pareidolia is the name for people’s natural ability to recognize faces and significant images in almost any vague or random stimuli. Examples of this include spotting Jesus on a piece of toast or spotting a face in the bark of a tree. During a trip a person’s sense of Pareidolia is increased many times over causing faces and images to be recognizable in almost anything to the point of ridiculousness. For example every single leaf on a tree might suddenly look like a little green face or clouds might appear to be easily recognizable as fantastical objects without any distortions or transformations taking place. Another aspect of this visual often experienced in busy public places is mistaking every other person for somebody you recognize.

More Examples: here

Depth Perception Distortion: (level 3 - 4)

It is very common to experience both extreme and subtle perspective distortions during a psychedelic experience. This is where the depths and layers of the scenery in front of you can become exaggerated, skewed and completely mixed up. A classic example of this that I often experience is the swapping of layers in a scenery. This is where objects in the background come into the foreground and objects in the foreground get pushed into the background. Another example of skewed depth perception is a complete loss of it, when the different sections of a scenery both close up and far away will unify into one flat pattern momentarily.

An almost consistent way to reproduce this visual is by laying down under a tree and looking through the branches at the sky causing the sections of sky in-between the branches to come into the foreground whilst the branches get pushed into the background.

Closed Eye Visuals: (level 3 – 5)

Closed eye visuals or CEV’s are the most exciting and profound element of a typical moderate dose psychedelic experience as well as one of the most impossible to describe or show to people in any meaningful level of detail that can be understood without having a firsthand experience with them. There are 5 different levels of CEV’s each one increasingly dramatic and incomprehensible.

1. Visual Noise – This is the most basic level of CEV’s and can be experienced in a completely sober state. It can be described as the random light and dark red regions that can be seen under the eye lids.
2. Light / Dark Flashes – This level is also easily obtainable without psychedelics and usually appears as regions of fleeting dark / light flashes of colour.
3. Patterns, Motion and Colour – This is the level where things start to get distinctively psychedelic and complex indescribable shapes and patterns begin to show themselves. These patterns are usually brightly coloured and very fractal like. 
   These closed eye visuals generally only manifest themselves when a person is closing their eyes at first but eventually become laid across your field of vision as a flat translucent veil in front of your eyes.  
4. Objects and Things – This is a fairly deep state where a persons CEV’s become increasingly complex and begin to manifest themselves not just as shapes but as imagery within the visuals. This imagery is limitless but commonly follows themes of fantastical people, objects and places that appear within the even more complex geometry.
   At this level the closed eye visuals are fully three dimensional and will be sprawled out across the surfaces, walls, objects and furniture of your environment instead of displaying itself as a simple flat veil.
5. Overriding Physical Perception – This is the point at which CEV’s have become so intense, vivid and bright that they have blocked out and replaced the external world giving the sensation that you are blind from being able to see so much. This is commonly known as “breaking through” because of the feeling of having entered into an entirely different dimension, to anybody else however the tripper just appears to be unconscious or at least highly incapacitated. 
   The visuals themselves eventually become complex enough to follow completely impossible plots, storylines and hallucinations that are so incredibly well defined that they seem realer than anything that could possibly be experienced sober.
   I can usually tell when I’m starting to break through when the visuals are no longer overlaid across objects or across flat surfaces but when the environment I’m in starts to break apart to become the patterns itself. You can see reality flaking away, layer by layer into an infinite sea of closed eye visuals as soon as you begin to focus on any point. This is almost as if everything is becoming everything else.

More Examples: Here, and Here. 

Hallucinations: (level 5+)

At higher levels of psychedelic experience amidst the chaos of intense closed eye visuals the imagery begins to become so elaborately complex and realistic that they start to form into full on vivid hallucinations that are limitless in their potential, generally logic defying, unlike any thing previously experienced and sometimes completely untranslatable into English. 

Hallucinations only happen at level 5 psychedelic experiences and are commonly described as feelings of being thrust into an expansive void-like alternate dimension consisting of bright, colourful, fast-moving kaleidoscopic environments, dynamic pulsating coloured beams, as well as complex three-dimensional geometric, mathematical and linguistic patterns made of light.

Contact with autonomous entities are very common, these entities generally appear to be the inhabitants of a perceived independent reality who are expectant of and clearly excited about the trippers sudden appearance into their dimension and enjoy interacting with them in various ways. 

The behaviour of a typical entity is one of a loving kind intelligence that simply wants to show you as much of their hyper dimensional space and bestow specific pieces of knowledge upon you as quickly as possible before you begin to come down or slip into another hallucination. This is often done by directly manipulating what you can see and view; intentionally propelling trippers in different directions at disorienting speeds, forcing them to view or pass directly through macro and microscopic scale settings, including: planetary systems, galaxies, quasars, natural environments, space habitats, technological utopias, neurons, DNA, mitochondria, trilobites, cephalopods, bryozoa, and artificial self-replicating machines. Once the comedown inevitably begins to happen they are genuinely saddened by your disappearance, often wave goodbye and encourage you to visit more often.

Entities can literally take any form but common subconscious archetypes are definitely present and contact with bodiless super intelligent Humanoids, Aliens, Elves, Giant Spheres, Insectoids, Beings of Light, Plants and Robotic Machines are common.

These creatures and entities are comprised of a non physical closed eye visual based material and communicate with trippers via a combination of telepathy, visual linguistics, mathematics and morphing coloured structures of different textures. This complex visual language is capable of expressing pure meaning in a way that our current system of small mouth noises will never be able to become close to matching.

Lower levels of simple entity contact can be described as a sensed presence of “The Other” that is clearly there but unable to fully manifest itself and communicate with you due to too low of a dosage.

More Examples: Here and Here

Miscellaneous, Unique and Rare visual effects: (4 - 5)

Although there are many universally experienced visual components of a psychedelic experience you should not allow this guide to give you preconceived notions for two separate reasons. The first reason is that although I’ve done my best with these descriptions and images they will never come close to the real experience, the real thing is incomprehensible, logic defying and impossible to translate into two dimensional images and words. The unenglishable factor is one of the few things that all psychonauts can universally agree on so keep it in mind.

The second reason is that the psychedelic experience is still a subjective experience and not by any means confined and limited to these visual components as occasionally, just occasionally rare and one time only visual effects seep their way into the trips, these effects can be anything and usually occur at higher doses. Unique visual effects are completely personal to you and something that nobody else on the planet has ever seen before or will ever likely get to experience again, the human mind has not even come remotely close to being fully explored making experiencing the unimaginable much easier than most people think. So remember, do not limit your perception to the components described above, because there is more to the psychedelic experience than words can ever say.

>PART 2 - THE MENTAL COMPONENTS OF A PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE

The next part to my guide although with less interesting pictures is just as important as the first half.

Useful Links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_experience
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant