James Oroc - Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad

Dedicated to the Fathers of Western entheogenic literature:

William James (18421910)

Aldous Huxley (18941963)

R. Gordon Wasson (18981986)

Albert Hofmann (19062008)

William S. Burroughs (19141997)

Ken Kesey (19352001)

Terence McKenna (19462000)

And to Alexander Sasha Shulgin, for continuing to stoke the fire.

But most of all, to my beautiful wife, for marrying a madman!

Youre assuming, said Dr. Robert, that the brain produces consciousness. Im assuming that it transmits consciousness. And my explanation is not more farfetched than yours. How on earth can a set of events belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belonging to an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has the faintest idea. All one can do is accept the facts and concoct hypotheses. And one hypothesis is just about as good, philosophically speaking, as another. You say that the moksha-meditation does something to the silent areas of the brain, which causes them to produce a set of subjective events to which people have given the name mystical experience. I say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain, which opens some kind of neurological sluice and so allows a larger volume of Mind with a large M to flow in to your mind with a small m. You cant demonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I cant demonstrate the truth of mine. And even if you could prove that Im wrong, would it make any practical difference?

ALDOUS HUXLEY, ISLAND (1962)

Use the light that dwells within you
To regain your natural clarity of sight.

LAO-TZU

Acknowledgments

I would like to first and foremost give thanks to my wife, the Large Laser and my shining light, for supporting me unconditionally throughout all of my adventures; to Rob for listening to hours and hours of my ideas as they slowly emerged; to Y. for taking me toading; to Kelly N. for being a role model of a truly open intellect; and of course to J. for turning me on in the first placeI love you my mad toad brother.

Through my gifting of copies at Burning Man, an early draft ofTryptamine Palace ended up in the hands of Jon Hanna, who I ultimately hired to edit the book for what I thought would be self-publication. Jon has played an important part in challenging me to really understand my own ideas as well as providing me with a wealth of information and references. His support has been invaluable, his intellectual antagonism stimulating, and I must thank him for his dogmatic insistence that those wiggly little things called facts really do exist. His efforts to wake me up from my complacency resulted in a much better book.

I would also like to thank specifically Goody for all the times he had to take care of the practicalities while my head was still in the clouds; Flashy for her unwavering enthusiasm; and Ronnie for lighting up when he read this book and for letting me know. Also my Burning Man tribemates, past and present, for always making me think that this work was importantwith special thanks to Brother Dance, Jeff, and Uncle Andy for their invaluable support and trust. Love to King Weep, sorely missed. I would like to thank Lorenzo Hagerty for giving me the opportunity to speak at the Palenque Norte dome at Burning Man in 2007; Love and appreciation to the Burning Man organization, the DPW, and the entire Burning Man community for all the hard work that is accomplished each year to make Black Rock City a reality. Finally, I would like to thank my editors, Chanc VanWinkle and Nancy Yeilding, for their hard work and invaluable help in clarifying my views and thus making this a much better book, and I would like to thank Jon Graham from Inner Traditions for allowing my voice to lift off the playa and out into the greater world.

True liberation is in our hearts and in our minds.
Namaste, peace, love, and light.

The author can be contacted at .

Remember these teachings,

remember the clear light,

the pure bright shining white light

of your own nature.

It is deathless.

ATTRIBUTED TO THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

APPENDIX 1.

APPENDIX 2.

APPENDIX 3.

APPENDIX 4.

APPENDIX 5.

APPENDIX 6.

Foreword

T he mystical experience is the foundation of all world religions, whose ultimatepurpose is to provide to the faithful an intimate encounter withGod, Christ, Consciousness, Buddhamind, Primordial Awareness, InfiniteIntelligence.... To claim that the divine can be accessed via the use of amaterial substance would be considered heresy by most traditional religionsas well as by science in our postmodern culture. However, the question ofwhether entheogens can catalyze a full-blown mystical experience has beenanswered affirmatively and verified scientifically.

In an early Harvard study formulated by Walter Pahnke in 1962, thirtyHarvard Divinity students were given a single dose of either psilocybin ornicotinic acid. The dosed students were brought to Marsh Chapel to attenda Good Friday service and later asked to answer criterion defining the categoriesof the mystical experience. Over 60 percent of the subjects who ingestedpsilocybin reported a primary religious experiencepersonal contact withthe Divine.

The war on drugs has prevented further follow-up studies until recentlywhen, in a related but even more tightly controlled and carefully preparedtrial at Johns Hopkins University, Roland Griffiths and his team demonstrateda 65 percent success rate. How many religious institutions ortraditions can offer a similar guarantee, subject to the rigors of scientific verification,that in one afternoon 65 percent of their practitioners will achievea bona fide mystical experience, one of complete unity within and with the cosmos, transcendence of space and time, a sense of vastness, infinitude and blissful ineffitude? Because the substances are illegal and reviled by much of society, these results hover like a heretical miracle in a materialist and rationally reductionist world.

Does this mean that the psychedelic movement of the 60s and the continued exploration of entheogens by millions worldwide have in fact ignited the beginning of a new world religion? The answer is yes. The examination of the nature of God and religion has landed squarely in the lap of the entheogenic community. A few brave seekers are willing to speak to the mystical experience and higher levels of awareness that are the result of their exploration of altered states through ingesting sacramental substances.

A new voice in the evolving literature of experimental mysticism is heralded with the book you hold in your hands, Tryptamine Palace. James Oroc has built this book around his connection with the Divine through the unique properties of 5-MeO-DMT. This special substance catapults the consciousness of its user into the white-light vast expanse beyond all distractions from the physical and subtle visionary dimensions.