Radical Psychonautics


  1. Conventional Psychonautics: Psychonautics is the exploration of altered states of consciousness induced by the limit cases of meditation, ascetic practice, psychedelics, lucid dreaming, etc. The exploration, or trip, takes place within the tightly controlled confines of set and setting; the trip is often followed by a trip report. By contrast, unconventional or Radical Psychnonautics is the exploration of any and all states of consciousness of human life on planet earth. The central axiom of Radical Psychonautics is that any given mental state is always already a drug state; for the Radical Psychonaut everything is a trip.

  2. Some Trips: A by-no-means-exhaustive list of “trips” from the field of Radical Psychonautics would be, exercise, a long walk in a forest, coffee and cigarettes, cinema, sunrise and sunset, road trips, sleeping, a bath, a message, a hair-cut, living with a house cat or a dog, pregnancy, raising a child, being a child, making art, human affection, wine, music, food, sex, the total silence of deep winter in the woods, the full moon, the ocean, falling in love, heart-break, ceaseless time, any bodily injury or emotional injury whatsoever, cabin fever, a transatlantic flight, a shopping mall, a gas station, a job, a car crash, your bank account, your smart phone, the ER, divorce, pandemics, sickness and disease, loneliness, depression, anxiety, grief, the death of a parent, the death of a spouse, the eventual experience of your own death.  

  3. Human Sensitivity: One central axiom of Radical Psychonautics is that though humans have been experiencing many of these “trips” since before recorded history, they have by no means been fully explored. Likewise, should you already have experienced much of the above, there will always be more to explore. The depth of your exploration is limited only by your level of awareness. Awareness is happening all the time, on multiple spectrums and can be turned up and down. It is the belief of Radical Psychonautics that the full extent of human sensitivity has yet to be explored. Though it may be the thrill-seeking tendency of Radical Psychonautics to turn awareness up to eleven in order to experience, for example, the full vicissitudes of the death of a parent, one should realize that there is danger; one can be permanently damaged by such experiences.

  4. Set and Setting: And yet it is also the central practice of Radical Psychonautics that one can mitigate the dangers of the grief and trauma of the involuntary trips that life causes by the selective combinations of voluntary trips; wine, music, food and human companionship being principle among them. These fundamentals can be combined further with settings of time (sunset) and place (a forest in deep winter) to generate a safe set and setting from which to experience the full onslaught of a bad break up or the death of a loved one

  5. Trip Reports: It is axiomatic of Radical Psychonautics that life for humans on planet earth has always been difficult in the extreme. The express purpose of Radical Psychonautics is not to deny or turn away from such difficulty, but rather to face it head on for the full duration of the ride. This ride is essentially unknown; this unknown quality of our experience necessitates what we have described elsewhere as the Beginner’s Mind. It is from this position of Beginner’s Mind that Radical Psychonautics always begins, here at the rim of the new un-examined territory of the rest your own life. You should be greatly relieved, however, that you are not alone in the exploration of this wilderness. Indeed, one may read the entirety of world literature as a collection of such like-minded trip reports.


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Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind