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Topics - IndiaShroomer

#1
General topics / Tripping on Copes
October 27, 2004, 01:06:44 AM
This is an experience my friend had, he wrote to me about it in an email. He is referring to the copelandia cyans fresh from my latest grow attempt.
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I find it ironic that I cannot focus on a ?The first thing I can remember is?? concept while reminiscing about the sacred experience. ?Sacred? because the experience in itself recounts several amalgamated, myriad like experiences that could be clubbed as ?knowledge?. The other intrinsic factor that led to my writing this account is a somewhat obscure fact; at no level did I feel the experience to be stifling or overpowering. In one instance, I remember that I felt almost consumed by the apathy that I thought was the mushroom. But it turned out that some of the most notable experiences that I shared with it by my side were transcendental awareness, and a deep, spiritual, almost frenzied look at the ?glue? that was reality stretched across the infinite, manifold elements that make up the cluster of human experiences. When see under a new light, one that is served in a choice dish, the greatest opportunity opens itself to you and ?invites? you into the bosom of supra-sensual awareness.

Now that I?m more educated at perceiving through the barriers of certain experiences, recounting my own has rendered fruitful.

My Trip-Guide was much helpful in many cases. While he may have carried the water and other important necessities, he was also responsible for the quality of the experience. Seriously, most people might assume that a trip-guide roots your experience in something concrete. This is to say that the experience, however difficult, was anticipated by my trip-guide who never swerved from the path of a helping hand. In this respect, my trip was well handled by my guide who never failed to let me know that everything was all right.
On to the trip?


I was offered the blackish-blue mushrooms on a white plate with a glass of grape juice (which would be my undoing) at approximately 4.30am in the morning. I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach that distinctly took me back many months into another experience with Hypholoma. That experience was not controlled or designed but it was raw and powerful. I may have consumed a bit too much which resulted in an otherwise physical experience. My stomach felt the blunt of this for many days. I don?t think I acted thoughtlessly before consuming them but I was definitely wrong in consuming them inside a flat with many other people, a few of them only ?tripping? on it while others hoped and wished it to be an ?enlightening? experience. I remember distinctly that it was not an enlightening or learning experience in any way. What can you learn about the nature of reality when inside a flat with ?trippers?? It?s useless and what?s more, it?s a waste of extra perceptive capabilities. I, for one, was looking for answers to certain things in my mind. I don?t say that consumption of mushrooms is a door to an alternate reality. I say that they are the doors to the only reality there is. On the dose that I did, which was minimal and just right, I had a wonderful experience, very hallucinogenic and colorful, with the deep wonder that accompanies the love of the wild plants and greenery. I was struck by the closeness I felt towards the rock-face (a place which will undoubtedly be the anchor point for the experience) and the quarry. These were the central tenets on which I base my experience, and these were the places where I felt least oppressed.

After eating 7-8 mushrooms of the Copelandia Cyanescens variety, I was on the back seat of my trip-guide?s bike speeding up a hill behind his place. It was pretty dark, although fresh in sensual connection and beautiful. I could feel the foliage breathing, almost a low guttural connection to reality at that point. Sometime then, I was caught at a sharp mental point that was definitely the mushroom engulfing me, wide and grossly physical. I learnt later that the beauty of the experience cannot be had individuated and separated however much one would want to have so. I think it now to be some sort of non-intellectual activity that one does for a past-time. With the onset of the trip, I was violently taken aback from the time I started walking through the path that finally led out into an open space. This area was populated by plants and rocks of various sizes and colors. Since I had never been here before, and I had slept without any dreams, I had no desires for some unique experience. This is also to say that most of the times, trips like these ?force? you to imagine and expect some factor in the experience. Since I felt that everything could fail, and things may not be what I expect them to be, I was free from any prejudices whatsoever.


So here I?m. I?m standing with my trip guide at the start of the trip right on the track through which I will walk and enter a sort of paradise like land. Nothing out of the extraordinary. A regular hill sort of place with lots of green plants, lots of places to just sit down and enjoy the sunrise and all? Which was what was supposed to happen until I suddenly felt pukey and threw up near a bush. My trip guide was understanding enough, and deduced that the grape juice which I had by the glass was probably a bit too much. At that point, I remember an overpowering, nauseating sensation. This sensation was more powerful and engulfed me in many ways that were more mysterious than my all too recent experience with Hypholoma. It may well have been that I was consuming these mushrooms after a long, long time. Added to this was the fact that I had not eaten anything heavy the previous night; I had woken up at 4.00pm with an almost maniacal urge to be in that ?other? space. Looking back, I feel that it was undeserving of me to even imagine that this was being done in the name of a ?trip?. Up there on that beautiful hill, at the onset of the experience, the colors started arriving with the tenacity of their subjective intents. I realized almost instantly that every man who ate the mushroom would have a learning experience such that the ways in which one could see the world would be instantly multiplied. It was amazing. I cannot recall with acuteness a point in the onset where I was completely a vegetable. In fact, the vegetable experience is only possible when you allow yourself to be completely consumed. Yes, there is a certain degree of control one exercises while engaged, and especially pulled, into the experience as any mushroom aficionado would accept. But in my case, I was not prepared for anything spectacular, yet the mushroom showed me pathways and interconnections for the reality that I saw more clearly after consumption. I was amazed that nothing was blocked or hidden. For an eagerly philosophic mind like mine, I got more than a fair share of debatable experiences but the point is that nothing stands to reason while attempting that which may have given birth to reason in the first place. After reading McKenna, my situation, then, stays approved.

After the whole puking scene, I almost regret saying this, I felt cheated of the mushroom until my trip-guide told me that there is nothing to lose once the mushroom has been consumed. If it has gone inside me, it is inside me and there?s nothing I can do to evade its natural progression to the mind/body state. With these thoughts in mind, I settled down mentally to continue seeing what I was seeing and would see. My trip-guide talked to me for some time about a couple of things. It cleared some of my worries away.

We started walking. My trip-guide told me to do whatever I wanted. I wanted to walk for a bit. Later, I realized that I had only been walking most of the time. I must have walked a lot that day but these walks were certainly eventful; I walked because something inside me told me to walk and keep walking. With my trip-guide walking beside me, I had no fears or trials for at least that aspect of the physical phenomenon called ?Walking?.

I must also say that I conducted an experiment of sorts. I was mentally prepared after my trip guide told me that I would not necessarily relate to sounds made through inorganic mediums, and since music is the driving force in my life (to put it really. Really loosely!), I did think of it even while I was watching the rock face. I then began to realize that subconsciously, I was just one small unit of the entire machine. No, bad analogy. I felt like a strand composed of elements that made up my ?me? completely detach itself from my apparent insignificance as an ego. I was so to speak, enlightened. This part of the trip was highly intense and I remember being affected by it even after I had come down.

So what is this rock face? While I walked throughout that terrain, I came across some of the loveliest sights I have ever laid eyes on. My trip guide told me that I was always in contact with these things throughout my stay in this city. I was just seeing them in a different light. What were these ?things?? Dragonflies, yellow flowers, reeds, plants of varying sizes and shapes, and most definitely, the grass. The quality of the grass, the aesthetic power it wielded across the many multitudes of them scattered across the terrain was unbelievable. For the first time in my life, I hallucinated to the point of orgasmic awareness. Here, I knew the actual becoming of the mushroom within me. After having watched the sun come up slowly, softly, like an orange ball that could portend the birth of a new mankind, I completely fazed out on the beauty of it. The grass lit by the sun in soft, almost tenuous shades of yellow and red completely overcame me. I don?t know whether I sat there to stare it at all. But I do remember looking at all the blades of grass and thinking about how ignorant I was earlier. At this point, one month after consuming them, I can still feel the thrill of the phenomenon of grass.

Psychologically, I had passed at least an entire day in my head. Physically, it was for only four hours that the mushrooms stayed in my body. I had no desire of it wanting to stop overcoming me. In a way, the mushroom brings out the pure, unadulterated, psycho-organic element in you. It teaches you that you can forever be taught. And although I don?t meant this essay on perception to end, I must also pay heed to a certain man?s saying ? ?My words serve as a ladder, after which climbed, must be thrown away?. This could have only been the word, the gospel of the mushroom.
#2
Cultivation / Fungal Adaptation
September 23, 2004, 08:29:07 PM
I have been thinking about adaptation by fungi to the local environment.

In this particular case, copelandia cyanescens grows naturally for about two months of the year in this part of India. Over a couple of growing cycles with copes, i have realized that they are much more resistant to contamination than the cubensis strains I have grown.

I feel this may have something to do with their being native to this environment. The copelandia mycelium seems to be much more effective in dealing with contamination, bacterial as well as fungal. I have seen it deal with most moulds ,except trichoderma  :(

In this case it is common adaptation in most living things (in mammals termed as 'immunity'), so the copelandia fungus is adapted to dealing with the competing bacteria/moulds.

(Of course you would never want to consume any mushrooms grown on such substrates, you never what metabolic by-products the battle between the competing fungi has extruded.)

In my opinion a grower would have a greater chance of success if he/she chose to grow a local strain. The local strain of the fungus would (given a decently sterile chance) outgrow and outcompete any other competing contaminant.

Another consideration, think of the consequences of having an introduced species of fungi in a native environment. For all you know, the local strain might die out completely and their environmental niche taken over the by the invading exotic strain. This kind of invasion has been seen on a macro mammalian level in australia and new zealand. The local flora and fauna is under constant threat from exotics.
#3
Cultivation / Cope Cyan - bulk substrate dung/straw?
September 15, 2004, 12:52:25 AM
How old should dung be for use?  I intend to use a straw/dung bulk substrate for a new multispore Copelandia Cyanescens spawn run.(after pasteurizing).

The CopeCyan is a ridiculously common mushroom here in my part of India... it has been the trippiest monsoon ever :)
Also, I am still not so certain about the pasteurizing bit, I live in a hot steamy tropical land, and am almost certain to get contamination soon. If I do a small quantity can I sterilize?


Anno: BTW, if you remember a little bird sent me a psilocybe azurescens (1999, Austria) print in early 2000... I am still maintaining and cloning cultures, will these still be viable?
Or should I try another multispore innoculation?  I am going to try and get them to fruit this winter, I have alder chips for the wood based substrate when needed.