Music and Psychedelic Visions, Tokio Aoyama Art Gallery

Music and Psychedelic Visions, Tokio Aoyama Art Gallery | Third Monk image 2

Tokio Aoyama and Painting

An artist who paints with a combination of metaphysical, spiritual, and music themes, Tokio Aoyama hails from a tiny town in the north of Japan.

Tokio has painted murals and has done commission work for clients all over the world. He has designed art for record labels Epistrophik Peach Sound, Mello Music, Moamoo, and Jazzy Sport.

Tokio has done many private commissions for domestic and international clients. He has also done many live paintings at Music events such as Appi Jazzy Sport, Japan.

Tokio Aoyama’s trippy art has a hip hop feel with psychedelic undertones. Enjoy this collection of his fine work.

Trippy art

trippy world

tokio-painting

tokio goggles

tokio aoyama blue-mitchell

tokio aoyama - DJ

tokio 1

th_can-a-sista-rock-a-mic.-big1

Self Cello

sea world

Psychedelic skateboards

Pick Fros not Fights

Mural

chiefing

peyote-woman

Einstien - Canvas Painting

Official Website | Tokio Aoyama

The Healing Shroom Tea of Mexico (Video)

The Healing Shroom Tea of Mexico (Video) | Third Monk

Deep in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico natives have been using psilocybin mushrooms, or ‘shrooms’ for thousands of years not as a drug, but as a medicine to heal both physical and mental disorders.

Amber Lyon travels to San Jose Pacifico, Mexico to meet with a mushroom guide who shows us how he makes his famous shroom tea which he serves to tourists from all over the world in seek of the sacred mushroom.

Psilocybin Mushroom Ceremony, Mexico

Journalist Amber Lyon joins native Mazatec healers for a mushroom ceremony. The psilocybin mushrooms are part of Lyon’s therapy to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The Curanderas in this area of the world have been using magic mushrooms medicinally to treat illness for thousands of years.

shroom-tea

Psychedemia – Merging Psychedelics and Academics (Video)

Psychedemia - Merging Psychedelics and Academics (Video) | Third Monk image 1

From Neuroscience to Shamanic Healing and everything in between. This documentary film concisely illuminates the emerging interdisciplinary field of Psychedelic Studies in a way that is accessible, informative and inspiring.

Psychedemia” is the first academic conference funded by an American university to explicitly focus on the risks and benefits of psychedelic experience. Ph.D’s, M.D.’s, M.A’s, graduate students and lay folk from all walks of life convened at the University of Pennsylvania to present new research addressing the historical and potential influences of psychedelics on knowledge production, health, and creativity. The four day event brought together scientists, artists, journalists, historians and philosophers from more than 10 countries for an Ivy League convocation unprecedented not only in view of its controversial subject matter, but in its unparalleled inter-disciplinary scope.

Psychedemia, the film, concisely presents the varied complexity of the emerging field of Psychedelic Studies in a way that is accessible, informative and inspiring.

Directed and Edited by two-time Emmy Award winner Vann K. Weller and Drew Knight, the documentary is being dedicated to the Public Domain to be freely used for any non-commercial purpose as an intellectual and cultural artifact.

psychedemia - michael divine

Research on Psychedelics Should Be Wide Open – Scientific American

Research on Psychedelics Should Be Wide Open - Scientific American | Third Monk image 2

shrooms-illegal

Cannabis, LSD, psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”), MDMA (the “ecstasy” drug) and other psychedelic drugs all have significant potential medical uses, as illustrated in the limited research organizations like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Science (MAPS) have facilitated over the years.

But the war on drugs and resulting classification of those psychoactive substances as Schedule I—meaning with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration—has caused a national research blockade and left that medical potential largely untapped.

The editors of Scientific American—the 168-year-old magazine to which scientists like Albert Einstein have contributed—called for an end to the “national ban” on psychoactive drug research, noting that LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and cannabis all “had their origins in the medical pharmacopeia.”

More than 1,000 scientific publications chronicled the uses of LSD for psychotherapy during the mid-’60s, and MDMA similarly complemented talk therapy through the ‘70s.

Cannabis has logged thousands of years as a medicament for diseases and conditions ranging from malaria to rheumatism. – Scientific American

Scientific American lamented the fact that since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 declared these psychoactive drugs void of any medical use by categorizing them as Schedule I substances—and three United Nations treaties extend similar restrictions to much of the world—a catch-22 has arisen:

Federal research on these drugs is banned because they have no accepted medical use, but researchers cannot explore their therapeutic potential because they are banned. – Scientific American

High Barriers to Psychedelic Research

psychedelic-exp

While the stigma that comes from Schedule I placement of these substances makes scientific research clearance and fundraising difficult, research itself is not prohibited. Scientific American’s assertion that there is a “research ban” is innacurate. For example, MAPS has been performing FDA-approved studies on psychoactive substances for years.

Brad Burge, the director of communications and marketing from MAPS said there is not an explicit ban on cannabis research either, “though there are laws in place that make doing research to make marijuana into a prescription medicine impossible, so far.”

The few privately funded studies that have looked at these compounds have yielded tantalizing hints that some of these ideas merit consideration.

Yet doing this research through standard channels … requires traversing a daunting bureaucratic labyrinth that can dissuade even the most committed investigator. – Scientific American

As a result, some psychologists are left wondering “whether MDMA can help with intractable post-traumatic stress disorder [as work with combat veterans has shown], whether LSD or psilocybin can provide relief for cluster headaches or obsessive compulsive disorder and whether the particular docking receptors on brain cells that many psychedelics latch onto are critical sites for regulating conscious states that go awry in schizophrenia and depression,” the article notes.

Additionally, while doctors in 20 states (and counting) can recommend medical marijuana, researchers aren’t allowed to properly study its effects. Scientific American notes that this leaves “unanswered the question of whether the drug might help treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, nausea, sleep apnea, multiple sclerosis and a host of other conditions.”

Consciousness and Freedom

Star-Gazing

Like many researchers, therapists and drug policy activists have been saying for decades, it is time to allow scientific researchers to do their jobs and find out what these substances can actually do—and in order for that to happen, the U.S. needs to reschedule these substances and effectively lift its research blockade.

As the Scientific American article concludes, the endless obstructions to research caused by current scheduling have meant a research standstill for Schedule I drugs:

This is a shame. … If some of the obstacles to research can be overcome, it may be possible to finally detach research on psychoactive chemicals from the hyperbolic rhetoric that is a legacy of the war on drugs.

Only then will it be possible to judge whether LSD, ecstasy, marijuana and other highly regulated compounds—subjected to the gauntlet of clinical testing for safety and efficacy—can actually yield effective new treatments for devastating psychiatric illnesses. – Scientific American

The more trusted publications like Scientific American come out and call for change, the closer we will be to medical research and scientific facts that liberate us from the medical Dark Ages when it comes to psychoactive drugs.

Major Scientific Publication Calls on U.S. to Open Doors to Psychedelic Research | AlterNet

The Overview Effect – A Profound Shift in Human Consciousness (Video)

The Overview Effect - A Profound Shift in Human Consciousness (Video) | Third Monk image 4

The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it.

Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment. 

Earth-From-Space_Overview Effect

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available… a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose. – Fred Hoyle, 1948

edgar-mitchell-quote-earth-moon-Overview Effect

For more pictures of the Earth taken from space go here and here.

Overview Effect

Enchanting Photos of Mushrooms in Their Element (Photo Gallery)

Enchanting Photos of Mushrooms in Their Element (Photo Gallery) | Third Monk image 14

Mushrooms have a variety of uses, as many of you may already be aware of.

However, despite your preferred use or favorite strain, we can all agree on the intrinsic beauty, of the mushroom.

Bon appétit!

Enchanting Photos of Mushrooms in Their Element

Mushrooms

Enchanted Mushrooms by Elliotphotos, via Flickr

4138418274_f4ea595235_b

Walk in the woods~ by Red~Star, via Flickr

295194874_ab7497d86b_b

mushroom on the roof by hans s, on Flickr

5004124358_b758d52e66_b

Protected from the grown ups (explored) by Outburner, on Flickr

5591620469_8ea4236923_b

~This to me looks like ART ~ by Nina Matthews Photography, on Flickr

5250044843_f66aa3c41d_b

Texture/Background 18 by ~Brenda-Starr~, on Flickr

5034267011_2282fbe087_b

Mushroom Mountain by JamieLeeBaker, on Flickr

5285755443_a89d85e956_b

November by orestART, on Flickr

400869683_877e361d3a_b

urban sprawl by Vik Nanda, on Flickr

2389163593_27d2862c0a_b

Shroom by Jesse Kruger, on Flickr

1110294641_d1ebe76bca_b

Mushrooms by Gattou/Back to work 🙁, on Flickr

4945949218_a6bbcae119_b

But I just can’t help it if I’m such a Fungi ~ by turtlemom4bacon, on Flickr

2387286321_009cdca58b_z

0001 Criança by orxeira, on Flickr

4861873483_35d58c8734_b

hygrocybe cantharellus by Gary Yankech, on Flickr

5014417260_81746bded9_b

big family by Outburner, on Flickr

2923872183_b614462a10_b

Morning after the rain by Joel Olives, on Flickr

5225693832_0a4422c3ab_b

wilderness by chantel beam photography, on Flickr

4983919116_48411fe40a_b

Lonesome forester by sumo4fun, on Flickr

4047950180_2b2c13712c_z

Sortie de cône by didier.bier, on Flickr

4998801265_8d26b606e8_b

Legendary Mushroom by aginorz, on Flickr

4986393492_75d48a4fd3_b

Amanita by Ernst Vikne, on Flickr

solitary

solitary by Robert S. Donovan, on Flickr

517841878_ba80dd6920_b

Psilocybe Cubensis Thai by Dr. Brainfish, on Flickr

250967993_742ef6564e_z

Mushroom? by Oslo In The Summertime, on Flickr

2059577371_56a208c96d_b

Mouse’s View by Randy Son Of Robert, on Flickr

5253136123_3bb71d3c4f_b

Elements by hapal, on Flickr

4180565491_24c180282a_z

world behind perception by Outburner, on Flickr

4990386275_4ab31b9df7_b

Wearing the hat sideways by Ernst Vikne, on Flickr

1563983942_34a095b462_b

the planet of the mushrooms by anathea, on Flickr

Why does fungus come in small groups? Because there isn’t Mushroom… I’m sorry that was in Spore taste…

> Enchanting Photos | Light Stalking

Best Psychedelic Videos to Watch While Tripping (Video)

Best Psychedelic Videos to Watch While Tripping (Video) | Third Monk image 4

The psychedelic experience can be a magical one with the right environment. However, an unsettling environment can be equally detrimental. Make sure that when you take your psychedelic trip that you are surrounded by loving energy.

The videos below may increase your experience since they are highly artistic visual creations accompanied by appropriate musical scores. That said, if you get a bad feeling from any of them, just stop watching and watch something you do enjoy. Environment is key, and I don’t want anyone to have a bad trip.

If you aren’t tripping, don’t worry! These videos are pretty awesome regardless. Just remember to watch in High definition.

You can find more psychedelic videos here, here, and here.

Let us know in the comments which other videos you like to watch when you’re tripping.

Psychedelic-Videos-Feature

Best Psychedelic Videos to Watch While Tripping

‘Aves del Valle,’ by Armadillo: Animated Music Video from Colombia

Armadillo is a band that sprouted out of a creative coincidence in Valledupar, Colombia (the land of Vallenato). Mauricio Álvarez (Cero39) and Diego Maldonado (DeJuepuchas & La MiniTK del Miedo), met up with a bunch of local musicians in that town and started a jam session. The result, an album with 9 tracks, a musical journey through the sounds and timbres of vallenato, mixed with electronic and IDM beats and sequences.

The video centers around symbols and elements inherent to the culture and imaginarium of the Valle de Upar (later called Valledupar). Animals, colors and textures appear throughout the video undergoing change and evolve, as life does. ‘It’s a metaphor about culture in life’ says RAMA, it’s creator. More about Armadillo here. – Boing Boing

Slugabed – Quantum Leap

crazy shrooms

Birdy Nam Nam The Parachute Ending

Ayahuasca DMT: Drug Trip Sequence

A clip from the movie Renegade (aka Blueberry) in which the main character drinks Ayahuasca which contains dimethyltryptamine, and has a mind blowing trip.

Psychedelic-videos2

Blockhead – The Music Scene

From Blockhead’s album ‘The Music Scene’ – released 18 January 2010 on Ninja Tune.

HIGH MIX – This is some trippy shit

Psychedelic Shrooms

Deep Mandelbrot Set Zoom Animation

Gong – How To Stay Alive

From the new Gong album 2032 – You can buy the CD (with lyrics booklet) from http://www.planetgong.co.uk A wonderful manga animation of Daevid Allen’s drawings by ace Japanese team Mood Magic, who also made System 7’s Hinotori.

Psychedelic-videos-shrooms

Mellow – Shinda Shima (1999)

From 1999 and the album “Another Mellow Winter.”

the bird and the bee – Polite Dance Song

Trippy Peace

Psychedelic Audio Visualizers (Video)

Psychedelic Audio Visualizers (Video) | Third Monk image 1

Audio visualizers generate animated imagery based on the sound and frequency of a piece of music. They can be an interesting addition to any bag of shrooms, as the synched music and visuals can lead one deeper down the rabbit’s hole.

People may enjoy watching these videos without the music on, but either way make sure to watch in High-definition.

After your trip, comment below on what other videos you enjoy watching on psychedelics.

Psychedelic-audio-visulization

Particle Tests – 3D Audio Visualizer

280282

The Space We Live In

211903

Entering The Stronghold

376934

Electric Sheep Fractal Animation (No Audio)

448573

The Fractal Plane by Christopher Ursitti

Mushrooms - Audio Visualizers

How Do Psilocybin Mushrooms Reduce Brain Activity of the Ego? (Video)

How Do Psilocybin Mushrooms Reduce Brain Activity of the Ego? (Video) | Third Monk image 1

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, of the Neuro-psychopharmacology Unit, Imperial College London, discusses research on Psilocybin and how psychedelics could be used in therapy to help with depression, addiction, and other problems of rigid thought patterns.

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris is one of the first researchers in 40 years allowed to investigate the effects of psychedelic drugs. He used an FMI brain imager to study the resting state activation in the brains of volunteers who had taken a small, but very intense intravenous dose of psilocybin mushrooms. What he found surprised everyone.

He found that the psilocybin caused large decreases in activity in various centers of coordination in the brain. This was exactly the opposite to what Robin and everyone else had predicted, but it is a clear and far-reaching finding. Decreasing brain activity that generates a sense of “self” allows our consciousness to expand, a process that Aldous Huxley described as opening the mind’s “reducing valve” in The Doors of Perception.

ego-deflate-Psilocybin Mushrooms

egovseco - Psilocybin Mushrooms

DJ Mark Farina – Mushroom Jazz (KJ Song Rec)

DJ Mark Farina - Mushroom Jazz (KJ Song Rec) | Third Monk image 4

Mark Farina is a Chicago born disc jockey and musician best known for his acid jazz music. 

Mark’s trademark style, Mushroom Jazz is a blend of acid jazz and organic productions infused with urban beats.

His downtempo music is a great addition to any psychedelic journey.

mark-farina-mushroom-jazz-2011

Mark Farina – Mushroom Jazz 18

Mark Farina – Mushroom Jazz 5

1335562a_orig

Mushroom Jazz Live, San Antonio (1997)

Mark Farina – Mushroom Jazz (Album 1998)

0:00 Bossa Nova – Mr. Electric Triangle
5:09 Remember Me – Blue Boy
9:23 Get This – Groove Nation
15:15 Pick Me Up – Deadbeats
19:46 Gibby Music – Apollo Grooves
27:54 Midnight Calling – Naked Funk
33:10 Midnight Calling (Fly Amanita Remix) – Mark Farina
36:40 If We Lose Our Way – Paul Johnson
44:11 In Hale – Hydroponic Groove Session
53:50 Warm Chill – Julius Papp
1:00:24 Music Use It – Lalomie Washburn
1:06:11 Longevity – J Live

Mark-Farina

Listen to more of Mark’s music here.

LSD ABC, Psychedelic Alphabet Animation (Video)

LSD ABC, Psychedelic Alphabet Animation (Video) | Third Monk image 1

LSD ABC is a short animated film of an unusual alphabet where they explore “different worlds and characters as different as they are crazy.”

The animation combines a dose of LSD with an alphabetic journey, walking us through each letter one by one. Unlike Sesame Street, this trip takes on psychedelic subject matter fitting only for those who’ve looked outside the boundaries of normal experience.

Directed by: LSD ABC (A collaboration between French designer/animators Laura Sicouri and Kadavre Exquis)

LSD-ABC-4-600x285

LSD-ABC-1