Oroc - The new psychedelic revolution: the genesis of the visionary age

Dedicated to the living memory of the Master alchemists

Albert Hofmann(January 11, 1906April 29, 2008)

Alexander Sasha Shulgin(June 17, 1925June 2, 2014) andNicholas Sand(May 10, 1941April 24, 2017)

THE NEW
PSYCHEDELIC
REVOLUTION

Compelling, adventurous, and visionary, this book is packed with fascinating and useful information and inspiration. James Oroc is a fine storyteller as he leads us through a twisty tale that is part personal odyssey, part well-researched ramble through the past and present of psychedelic art and culture, and part love letter to humanity and our potential for awakening to the wonder and beauty of life.

STEPHEN GRAY, AUTHOR OF CANNABIS AND SPIRITUALITY: AN EXPLORERS GUIDE TO AN ANCIENT PLANT SPIRIT ALLY

James Orocs book is a timely reminder to translate our psychedelic visionary insights into action: to make our minds manifest. Oroc proposes that we can create the future we want to live.

CASEY WILLIAM HARDISON, WRITER, FORMER LSD CHEMIST, AND COGNITIVE LIBERTY ACTIVIST

An important and fascinating book for anyone interested in the bold psychedelic visionaries whose work and legacies will continue to shape and be felt by our culture for generations to come. Oroc explores the practical application of psychedelics in the modern world and advocates the immense value that they bring.

ALEX SEYMOUR, AUTHOR OF PSYCHEDELIC MARINE: A TRANSFORMATIONAL JOURNEY FROM AFGHANISTAN TO THE AMAZON

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following; Jon Hanna for his always excellent editing and support; Ken Jordan, and Reality Sandwich; Alex and Allyson Grey; Rick Doblin, Brad Burge, and the rest of MAPS; Fire and Earth Erowid; David Jay Brown; Martina Hoffmann; Jennifer Ingram; Mark McCloud; Jacaeber Kastor; Eli Morgan; Brian Chambers; Jon Graham and Jennie Marx, my poor editor at Inner Traditions; and Ann Shulgin for her legendary hospitality. I would also like to remember again and recognize Alexander Shulgin and Nick Sand, and my friend, the brilliant and sorely missed, Andrew Sewell.

There are many here among us now

Who feel that life is but a joke

But you and I, weve been through that

And this is not our fate

So let us not talk falsely now

For the hour is getting late

BOB DYLAN, ALLALONG THE WATCHTOWER

INTRODUCTION

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

ALDOUS HUXLEY, TEXTS & PRETEXTS: AN ANTHOLOGY WITH COMMENTARIES

S ince I was a teenager I have always been fascinated by the art of fiction, and it was never my intention to become either a psychedelic author or a nonfiction writer. Therefore I clearly remember that starry night in December 2003, when, while walking the dirt streets of Pushkar, India, I first considered the possibility of abandoning the novel that I had been writing sporadically for twenty years, to instead begin penning an account of the ongoing personal transformation that I was undergoing thanks to the rare, and barely-known, entheogen 5-methoxy-DMT (5-MeO-DMT). I also clearly remember my first instinct was that this was a terrible idea, if only because I believed that any book on the subject would be virtually unpublishable.

This personal transformation, which I had encountered almost by accident only a few months earlier, was one of the oldest mysteries known to Mankind; for after smoking 5-MeO-DMT for the first time with virtually no knowledge of its effects, I had received a mystical taste of the Otheran egoless experience of Oneness after I had merged with the conscious totality revealed in the Voidbefore returning to my body from that singular inner journey transformed from a hardened scientific rationalist and confirmed atheist into a modern mystic. And while I was now fully convinced of the existence of a God far greater than any I could have had imagined, I knew rationally that few books are published these days about psychedelics, and even fewer are published about the mystical experience; hence my skepticism about the value of writing a book that would attempt to combine the two. (See chapter 7, Where Is God in the Entheogenic Movement?)

Considering my unshakable faith in the universal nature of the mystical experience after this first transpersonal integration, and the fact that this would become a central pillar in the psychedelic philosophy presented in the book that I would eventually write about my 5-methoxy-DMT experiences, it is interesting to realize in retrospect that I had the sudden inspiration to write such a book while in Pushkar. A small oasis town that surrounds a tiny lake in the desert in Rajasthan, Pushkar is a major pilgrimage site that has the reputation of being one of the holiest places in all of India. Temples, mosques, ashrams, and churches of all the major religions line the lakes shore, and I later found out that Pushkar also has the only temple to Brahmathe ultimate Vedic god from which all the other gods manifestin all of India. It was also probably the stunning variety of spires, arches, and domed ceilings displayed in Pushkars various houses of worship that inspired the title for of my bookTryptamine Palace.

This unwanted inspiration began what was arguably one of the more remarkable journeys of any book in the modern era. For as doubtful of the project as I was personally, I always say that Tryptamine Palace was a book that was determined to be written and published, while I was merely the vehicle that was chosen for the job. It was only a week or so later, on a slow-moving train across the flat and featureless gray desert between Jaisalmer and Jaipur, that I received a steady stream of ideas about the nature of light and consciousness that were so convincing that I had no choice but to write them down. Over the following five years, these ideas would evolve into the central original theory that I present in Tryptamine Palace: that the transpersonal-entheogenic experience is a rare form of quantum coherence (known as a Bose-Einstein condensate) within the quantum-holographic fieldknown as the zero point, or Akashic Fieldwhich is the Universal Field that connects all things, as well as the place where consciousness actually resides. (And not inside the brain, as our Newtonian sciences propose. See chapter 8, 5-MeO-DMT: Visions of a Quantum God, for a more in-depth and updated description of this theory.)

While suitably inspired to have begun writing Tryptamine Palace, I still did not believe that such a book could actually be published for mainstream consumption. Fortunately a surrogate presented itself in the opportunity to participate as a Burning Man artist by writing the book to gift at Burning Man, where I had no doubt that it would be read and appreciated. Which is exactly how the first draft of Tryptamine Palace was writtenas a life raft for some unprepared soul who had just encountered 5-MeO-DMT, and, with their world-view in tatters, was wondering what had just happened to them. In total in its original playa form, I personally gifted five hundred copies of