Soma and 5-MeO-DMT with Indian yogis

Did soma (elixir containing a secret psychedelic mushroom or plant) give rise to "Hinduism"?

(dakota 2 earth) I gave [Indian wandering ascetic shaman] Aghori Yogis sapo (bufo), 5-MeO-DMT. They laughed at it, not rejecting the mind-expanding experience but seemingly accustomed to it by their own sadhana or daily spiritual practices.

• Hinduism (aka Sanātana Dharma)

Hinduism's secret mushroom theory

(dakota of earth) July 10, 2025: INDIA: The information presented here is purely for historical and cultural exploration and should not be interpreted as encouragement or promotion of any substance use. Some content may be sensitive or challenging to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised!

DISCLAIMER: This educational documentary investigates a theory about the entheogenic origins of Hinduism [what the British dubbed Indus-ism to describe all the varied practices and belief around the Indus River Valley, melding them all under one rubric when they never saw themselves as "religions" or anything apart from regular life].

LINKS: dakotaofearth / dakotawint http://www.kick.com/earthie In this documentary, I travel across India exploring temple carvings, sacred rituals, and hidden clues that point toward a secret mushroom cult at the roots of Hinduism. Is it possible that psychedelic mushrooms were the true Soma of the Rig Veda? Join me as I uncover evidence, interview scholars, and search sacred sites to reveal a story that’s been hiding in plain sight. ➤ Subscribe for more documentaries on spirituality, ancient history, and hidden truths. Watch the full story and decide.

Who cares about the Moon? Vanity does

Who cares about the waxing and waning Moon?

CONTINUED FROM PART 1

When they open, strap your seatbelt and hold on.

What does the Moon matter? O, shining Chandra, glowing Soma, ever changing Luna...

Well, once upon a time in East Hollywood at Dharma Punx on Melrose Avenue, across from Los Angeles City College, I met a beautiful meditator. Let's call her Vanity Lycan. This is her saga, about how she traveled to India and had an experience of enlightenment, sort of.

We became friends, and she so trusted me that she asked me if I wanted to accompany her to India. She was going, among other places, to Dharamshala (the Dalai Lama's abode in the Himalayas).

Heavens yes, I thought as I said, "Hells yeah!" Sadly, this being LA, something came up that could not be put off, and she could not change her round-the-world ticket. So we vowed to stay in touch online so I could guide her from on high. There might be pitfalls along the way for a Western gal on a solo-travel adventure that she didn't think of but that I could solve.

Oh, Moonglow, elfin magic

I remember one email then radio silence. It was a about year later as I was sitting at the weekly meditation meeting. When it opened up for shares, someone started to talk and cry. Imagine my astonishment, being hypervigilant and too easily annoyed by anything I notice and ignore while trying to sit still. It was her!

I hadn't noticed. I had forgotten even to wonder what had happened to her since it had been so long. There she was a few feet away on a cushion, crying. No one much listened to what she was trying to say.

But I thought I understood -- a lone girl wandering around at night in a strange country with strangers and men being what they are (though they didn't used to be like that in most of India in the times that I was there, which was a big surprise). She kept telling me that I didn't understand. Something had happened to her on the trip. I really thought that for once I did get. I didn't need it spelled out. I should have been there to prevent it.

What does one who knows say?

I was wrong. It wasn't a case of [S.A.] like 99% of people would have guessed and not been surprised to hear.

She confessed she had become "enlightened." Of course, it's not real Buddhist enlightenment (bodhi, liberating insight, thorough comprehension of the Four Ennobling Truths, touching nirvana, comprehending anicca, dukkha, and anatta by direct experience of the ultimate truth). It was nothing like that at all.

• My Kundalini Awakening turned into a nightmare after too much energy went to the brain...now barely functional...How do I recover a mind and nervous system that feel destroyed? (Quora)

What was her "enlightenment," not having a better word for the spiritual, psychological, entheogenic madness that was now going on? Her chakras had spontaneously opened, and with that come the powers of each chakra. It is not the real thing but that thing that happens to many Western travelers every year.

Was Wicca wise to the ways of the Moon?

Argue until you're blue in the face that she didn't know what she was talking about. But I had seen this before and heard about it from one superwoman who not only experienced it but survived and studied it academically to help others undergoing the premature experience, calming and closing those chakras up again until ready to move kundalini energy up the spine for good rather than all of the out of control pains, visions, and raving madness that could accompany them.

The most amazing thing she talked to me about, holding Western meds forced on her before she was thrown out of India into the arms of her family (who if they had not taken her out she would have been institutionalized, forcibly drugged with Thorazine or similar antipsychotics, warehoused, and forgotten there, she claimed) was how much the opalescent MOON now governed her moods, actions, and future. She had become "unmanageable" by consulate rules, so she had to be neutralized or sent back to the USA.

Triple moon symbol as gold charm

She feared it. She knew it even if she were to never see it again. I asked what she meant. She explained that the Moon has a profound effect on us on this planet, governing things (estrus, the ability to awaken, as with Siddhartha awakening on the evening of the full moon). It is more than Earth's calendar, making the months and seasons, not reflecting golden sunlight as we are told but emanating its own different kind of silvery light. The Zetetic scientists of the past proved this beyond on a doubt with demonstrable, reproducible, experimental published research.

She was not clear if the Moon was only a goddess, a sentient entity with powers, or a hollow world with beings in it directing their surveillance and energies at us from it. But when it waxed and rose, she was altered. She might dance naked like Shiva Nataraj with a message for the world embedded in postures and mudras, possessed as she would become by that spirit of Shiva, which she claimed was a real, literal being (blue extraterrestrial), not simply some historical or mythological figure.

I said to her at some point that "I want this." She said, "No, you don't! It's painful, it's horrible, it's unmanageable." "Yes, well, I'd manage it better with Ashtanga Yoga" (the "Eight Limbs of Union" with the holy spirit, prana, or subtle breath). "You think you would, but you can't. It's not to be managed. You think I want to take pharmaceuticals?" "No." "Well, I would rather take them than undergo what will happen to me without [chemical tranquilization]."

Oriental MS Indic beta, Wellcome

"But this awakening of the serpent Kundalini to rise from the base through the spine, energizing the chakras and gaining the siddhis or magical powers and samadhi, piercing and transcending the moving 'wheels' along the way, it seems to me that that's the whole point of our yogic aspirations." "What the hell are you talking about?" After arguing good/bad back and forth, I finally asked her, "Look, all right, I don't want it. But HOW did you do it? How did you get it to happen?" She shocked me with her answer.

You don't want sudden chakra openings

She looked at me like I was crazy and stress, "I didn't 'do' it. The Mountain did, somehow in connection with the Moon." "The 'Mountain,' what mountain?" "The Himalaya," she said and started crying to remember how she had gotten to Dharamshala and went off to sit under the full moon. And some guy had come along. "Aha! And then he attacked you?!"

"He didn't attack me. We talked, and I left, wanting to be alone. Then it happened. And I was aware of the Moon as it happened, and I knew the Moon was [or the beings in it were] aware of me [like a panopticon]." "And by Himalaya do you mean Mt. Everest or K2 or Kailash or Mt. Meru? Is there a special place for this one might go to?" I asked full of hope.

"No, you don't want this to happen to you." Foolishly, and I knew it was foolish, I kind of still did.

• Kundalini awakening
• Amethyst Moon Goddess Necklace: Sterling Silver Wiccan Jewelry - Etsy
• History of the Shotgun House | Santa Monica Conservancy

Turn on, tune in, drop out: The Hippie Trail

The Hippie Trail: The Story of the Original Travel Influencers

Our quest will take us high up to the very top

(Alive & Curious) Who were the original travel influencers? This is the story of the Hippie Trail, the ultimate road trip of the 1960s and 70s, a countercultural odyssey that saw free-spirited travelers journeying overland from the U.S. and Europe to Asia in search of enlightenment and adventure.

The journey usually began in Western cities like London, Amsterdam, and West Berlin (with plenty others coming from New York and Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Jersey) before weaving through Istanbul and venturing into Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and finally Freak Street in Nepal.

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:52 What started the Hippie Trail?
• 04:01 The Hippie Trail routes
• 09:49 Modes of Transport
• 11:01 The Loney Planet story
• 12:53 Drug use and psychedelic rock music
• 13:22 Charles Sobhraj
• 14:21 Why did the Hippie Trail end

Natural class of drugs

Like new the Silk Road for Western Seekers

Entheogens are mind-expanding drugs that are capable of bringing out the divine that resides within. More than mere drugs and far from pharmaceuticals, these natural substances (like DMT, bufo, magic mushrooms, a fungus synthesized as LSD, harmaline, and even cannabis in some uses) may have been the lure -- along with the promise of "free love" -- of the Hippie Trail:

The Hippie Trail: West to East

Bamiyan was a destination the CIA/ISI blew up

The Hippie Trail (or Overland) was a land journey taken by members of the hippie subculture and others from the mid-1950s, all through the 1960s, to the late 1970s [2], travelling from Europe and West Asia through South Asia via countries such as

• Formerly Buddhist Afghanistan (ancient Gandhara, particularly the fabled hometown of the Buddha, Bamiyan),
• Pakistan [3],
• India,
• Nepal,
• Sri Lanka,
• Bangladesh to
• Thailand.

American hippies ruined by Pres. Dick Nixon

The Hippie Trail was a form of alternative (sometimes spiritual) tourism. One of the key elements was travelling as cheaply as possible (on a shoestring, with a knapsack, rucksack, or backpack and a big thumb), mainly to extend the length of time away from home.

Pres. Dick Nixon killed Freak St.

This is part of the trail that started in the U.S.

The term "hippie" became current in the mid-to-late 1960s; "beatnik" (BG) was the previous term from the later 1950s, when everyone was reading Jack Kerouac's Buddhism-infused The Dharma Bums.

• American Buddhist Beat Poet Jack Kerouac

At every major stop of the Hippie Trail, there were cheap hotels, cozy restaurants, and far out cafés for Westerners, who networked with each other as they travelled West and East.

These hippies tended to interact more with the local population than traditional sightseers did [1], really wanting to experience each location fully.

Pink Floyd starring in Dune (Jodorowsky)

Old Freak Street, Kathmandu, Nepal

The Hippie Trail largely ended in the late 1970s primarily due to both the Iranian Revolution resulting in an anti-Western government, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, closing the route to Western travelers [4, 5, 1, 6].

Nowadays, a handful of overlanders, van-dwellers, and adventure travelers follow roughly the route of the old Hippie Trail [7, 8] -- destination Freak Street (Jhochhen Tole). More

The Beatles destinations Pink Floyd Jimmi Hendrix The Pudding Shop Istanbul the Lale Restaurant Magic Bus Company Goa Volkswagen Kombi VW Combi Van Travel in 1960s Travel in 1970s Role of Psychedelic Music The Bikini Killer Serpent Bangkok Drug Tourism Rishikesh Ashram The Who

• Lunar.latitude (IG), Aliveandcurious, YouTube, Dec. 15, 2024; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

For those who've had a mystical experience

The Institute for Mystical Experience Research and Education (imere.org)

“A human being…experiences himself…as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness….Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature…”

— Nobel Laureate in Physics Albert Einstein (1921)

What to call the reverse, the sudden realization that we are not separate? Mystical Experience • Cosmic Consciousness • Enlightenment Experience • God-Realization • Kensho • NDE Like Experience • Near Death Like Experience • Oneness Experience • Religious Experience • Samadhi • Self-Realization • Spiritual Awakening • Spiritual Experience • Transcendent Experience • Unitive Experience.

For at least the last 3,000 years, people from every region of the world have experienced something extraordinary and transformational – the mystical experience.

During a mystical experience, there exists a simple unity, a pure consciousness, or non-duality of observer and observed (advaita).

In addition to oneness, the defining features of mystical experience include feelings of sacredness, peace, and bliss, a sense of transcending time and space, and an intuitive conviction that the experience is a source of objective truth about reality.

1 The effects of mystical experiences are of enormous value to both experiencers and humanity. On a personal level, mystical experience leads to sudden and lasting positive changes in an experiencer’s character and values.

2 And on a global scale, mystical experiences lie at or near the foundation of religions generally and thus even of civilization itself. Indeed, the mystical roots of conscious experience reveal a deep human identity, transcending all national, racial, personal, and theological differences.

3 It is therefore vital to further our understanding of these important, transformative experiences. The Institute for Mystical Experience Research and Education (IMERE) is dedicated to empirical research on mystical experiences.

Its mission is to advance the creation, communication, and application of mystical experience knowledge to help unite people throughout the world and to assist individuals in their spiritual growth. 

At present, IMERE’s primary research project is an international survey of people who have had mystical experiences. (See the Mystical Experience Questionnaire page for more information).

By working to collect thousands of mystical experience questionnaires from people from all over the world, IMERE is furthering the human understanding of these important transcendental experiences.

IMERE invites all to thoroughly explore its website to find out more. And if anyone believes such an experience occurred or may have occurred, such persons are warmly encouraged to share such experiences using the Online Mystical Experience Questionnaire. (Submissions will be kept anonymous unless they indicate otherwise).

It is these people who drive the success of IMERE. Questions or comments? Do not hesitate to contact IMERE, who very much looks forward to hearing from mystics.

I was God. Everyone told me so.

NOTE: mystical experience is often referred to by different names, including, but not limited to, cosmic consciousness, ecstatic experience, enlightenment, enlightenment experience, experience of god, experience of oneness, god consciousness, god-realization, intellectual vision, kensho, mystic experience, mystical consciousness, NDE like experience, near death like experience, religious conversion, religious experience, sacred experience, samadhi, self-realization, spiritual awakening, spiritual experience, spiritually transformative experience (STE), transcendent experience, transcendental experience, transpersonal experience, unity experience, and unitive experience.

If anyone believes that such was his or her experience, then IMERE warmly encourages the completion of its Mystical Experience Questionnaire. More

1: W.T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, Los Angeles, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1987, pp. 131–132.

2: Bruce Greyson, MD, “Shift: At the Frontiers of Consciousness,” # 17, December 2007–February 2008, p. 11.

3: Edward Kelly, et al., Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, pp. 573–574.

SUFI version of the Buddha's life

Dhr. Seven, Amber Dorrian, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; TheMorgan.org

St. Issa (Jesus), the Buddha, Goddess Oshun, Bodhisattva Kwan Yin, Shiva (tumblr.com)

Sultan "Ibrāhīm Ibn Adham of Balkh Served by Angels" from the Read Mughal Album. Mughal, probably Oudh, third quarter of the 18th century, attributed to Mīr Kalān Khān. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1911; MS M.458.32 (themorgan.org).

  

Rumi, inspired by Buddhism, set forth Seven Pieces of Advice. They are universal, transcending religious boundaries, epitomizing the highest sentiments of humanity, and encompassing the common values of all religions:

1. In generosity and helping others, be like the river.
2. In compassion and grace, be like the sun.
3. In concealing others’ faults, be like the night.
4. In anger and fury, be like the dead.
5. In modesty and humility, be like the soil.
6. In tolerance, be like the ocean.
7. Either appear as you are, or be as you appear.

Rumi, Founder of Whirling Dervishes

Sufism well knows the story of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha. But the story is told of an ancient king of Balkh:

 

After a spiritual awakening, Ibrāhīm Ibn Adham (d. 798), an 18th century ruler of Balkh, renounced his kingdom and wealth to become a wandering dervish.

 

Part of his spiritual awakening happened one night when he heard people on the roof of his palace. When he made inquiry, a man told him they were looking for a lost camel.

 

Ibrāhīm then replied it was ridiculous to expect that the camel would be on the roof of his palace. The man then said it was equally crazy to expect to find Allah [oneness with the divine, GOD, the Source, the ultimate, etc.] in the lap of luxury. Ibrāhīm then realized that his hope of finding Allah in his present surroundings was as futile as searching for a camel on his roof.

 

Rumi Museum (newlotus.buddhistdoor.com)

Jalal al-Din Rūmī (1207-1273), a later Sufi mystic, also born in  Balkh (an early center of Buddhism), recounted Ibrāhīm's story in his six-volume poetic work, the Masnavī. (He is depicted showing his love for his young male disciple Hussam al-Din Chelebi, c. 1594, extract from Tardjomev-i-Thevakib, by the Mawlewiyya Dervich Aflaki Baghdad, Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York).

 

Legend has it that Khiżr, the immortal guide of the Sufi, played a role and that Ibrāhīm, regarded as a spiritual ancestor of the Chrishtī Sufi order, was fed by angels. (Siddhartha during his futile period of severe fasting and penitence was going to be fed by the devas through the pores of his skin to keep him alive, but he declined thinking it would be deceptive since everyone assumed him to be fasting).

 

Here the haloed Sufi shaikh (spiritual master) sits at the right, with eyes closed and supported by a staff. Seven "angels" (devas, "shining ones") have already arrived, and an eighth is en route. A pensive man, at the far left, echoes the figure of Ibrāhīm.

 

The subject may have been inspired by engravings of Christ fed by angels in the wilderness -- another echo of the Bodhisattva Siddhartha's quest for spiritual enlightenment. The painting is probably by Mīr Kalān Khān, who was active in Oudh and Delhi during the 1760s.

The Read Mughal Album

Rumi Mausoleum (newlotus.buddhistdoor.com)

Pierpont Morgan purchased the Read Mughal album, along with a Persian album, from Sir Charles Hercules Read, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum, in 1911.

 

The Morgan purchase consisted of 30 folios (including both Indian miniatures and the Mughal portraits). But Read owned at least 48 others, now widely dispersed. The leaves were probably once bound in several lacquered bindings. 

 

The identity of their compiler has not been established, but many borders date from the 18th and 19th centuries. The Mughal emperors of India commissioned biographies and were frequently portrayed by artists. Here the paintings are presented in the order of the emperor's reigns rather than the dates of the miniatures, starting with Bābur (r. 1526–30), the Muslim founder of the dynasty, and ending with Shāh Jahān (r. 1628–58), builder of the Taj Mahal. More

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Baloch women lead fight to secede from Pakistan

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Teen Yogi in IMAX's "Mystic India"

An Incredible True Journey

.

The Trailer Of Neelkanth Yaatra - The most popular videos are here

Mystic India: An Incredible Journey of Inspiration is a new large-format film opening at Phipps IMAX® Theater on Friday, September 23. It was created to honor and share the essence of India, using the story of Neelkanth, a child yogi, as a connecting thread. As explained in the film, yogis are special individuals who undertake a journey to attain a deep understanding of the existence of life. In the process, they develop amazing powers of body and mind through the means of yoga, meditation, and self-discipline.

Yogi Neelkanth was a real figure in Indian history. Mystic India begins with the story of Yogi Neelkanth’s life on June 29, 1792, a pivotal day when the 11-year-old yogi set off on his journey of spiritual awakening. Having resolved to embrace the challenges of nature, Yogi Neelkanth left his home and walked alone into the cold, stormy night carrying nothing—no maps, no money, no food. Yogi Neelkanth’s walk lasted seven years and covered 8,000 miles.

In the film, his footsteps map the length and breadth of India, taking him through its dense jungles, fertile plains, majestic mountains, mighty rivers, and peaceful coastlines.

Along the way, Yogi Neelkanth took part in rituals and celebrations and visited some of India’s most revered temples. But by far the most arduous portion of his journey was through the Himalayas. For six months, in freezing temperatures with no shelter, Yogi Neelkanth trekked barefoot through snow and ice and bathed in ice-covered water. Yogi Neelkanth’s survival may have been due in part to a system of meditation known as Tum-mo or “inner fire,” which has been shown to raise a person’s temperature as much as 17 degrees, according to a study by the Harvard Medical School.

Eventually, Yogi Neelkanth reached Muktinath at 12,500 feet, where an ancient temple of Lord Vishnu stands, circled by 108 waterspouts. For the next five years, Yogi Neelkanth would remain there, meditating and performing the severe austerities of a yogi, and gaining insights into the nature of life.

Having grown older and wiser, Yogi Neelkanth departed the temple, and traveled deeper into India for the next two years, passing through the rainforests of Assam, the jungles of the Sunderbans, to the shores of Jagannath Puri, and through the villages of Kerala. He ended his journey in the village of Loj in Gujarat, where a local saint and teacher, Ramanand Swami, persuaded Yogi Neelkanth to become his successor.

He was renamed Bhagwan Swaminarayan. And for the remainder of his life, Yogi Neelkanth devoted his efforts to social reform, equality, and nonviolence (ahimsa). He dug wells and ponds for the poor and personally distributed food to the needy. He urged people to treat women with respect and ended female infanticide, a practice in which newborn baby girls were drowned in pots of milk. Yogi Neelkanth also constructed six beautiful temples before dying in 1830.

Background on Neelkanth

Lead Character in Mystic India,

Opening at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science Friday, September 23, 2008

DMNS-05-062

Many of the Museum’s educational programs and exhibits are made possible in part by generous funding from the citizens of the seven-county metro area through the Scientific & Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). IMAX® is a registered trademark of Imax Corporation. ©2005 Denver Museum of Nature & Science. IMAX® is a registered trademark of IMAX Corporation

• Link: Mystic India
• Life story of teenage yogi Bhagawan Swaminarayan