**2. Psychedelic signatures**

Each psychedelic compound presents an experience with unique features, with great variability of intersubjective range, duration and breadth of noetic feeling. There are particular signatures or qualities cultivated by different compounds in regard to the atmosphere and climate they generate. The medicine dose and route of administration further modulate the experience and should be considered as distinct variables to be leveraged for coloration, depth of immersion and the desired platform of experience. Similar to geographic travel, in which every location and culture offers unique customs and traditions, each psychedelic compound affords a unique atmosphere and invitation to explore. It is through the navigation of the experiential

landscape one encounters that one enters into a specific discourse with the medicine and from which detailed knowledge may be gained about and through the self. Each medicine cultivates its own sense of the sacred, sense of wonder and access to a perspective beyond a routine self—along with the structures that inform and contribute to an experience of self—and simultaneously a glimpse of those forces that lie just beyond the margins in which we reside.

**MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine)** as a psychotropic agent allows one to release from fear-based protective systems held in the mind, emotions and body to support an experience characterized by safety and liberation from the dominance of thoughts and thinking. In a field where the mind is quieted, the subject discovers a connection to emotions and sensations of gratitude and awe. Prominent expressions and experiences of profound love and compassion activate an ideal field for forgiveness, repair and re-evaluation of existing life narratives. Traumatic events are able to be processed without re-traumatization. The world and past experiences are navigated in the context of the kind, loving emotional fields, free of risk or danger, to permit rediscovery of forgotten memories, dismissed feelings and fresh perspectives that encourage a reconsideration of relationships and life events.

**Psilocybin** has the distinct and widely-noted distinction of serving as a teacher. In his legendary book *The Doors of Perception* [9], Aldous Huxley proposed that the brain acts as a "reducing valve" to limit the outside "Mind at Large"—essentially the sum of all of reality, all ideas and sensory experience present in the Universe. Huxley speculated that the brain permits a "measly trickle" of what exists into ordinary consciousness as a measure to permit efficient survival. Psilocybin, like all classical psychedelic medicines, provides access to an expansive, sensory feast of surrounding details. All the elements encountered in a psilocybin experience present as uncannily but convincingly vibrant and alive, rich in intricacy, delight and charm. Introspective attention generates knowledge about the self-presented through the so-called "primary process" modes of knowing, such as those embedded in music, imagery, somatic sensations or at times an immediate apprehension of information in a fully formed parcel of knowledge. There is not infrequently a sense of "meeting one's being" or entering into a rapport with the very blueprint of one's DNA—the architect and designer of the self, and the genetic lineage from which the latter issue.

**Ketamine—**a dissociative anesthetic and potent antidepressant, has the potential to offer a profoundly meditative experience. In tailored lower doses, the medicine may be finely titrated to permit a gentle release from the defensive, fear-based systems operant in the mind, body, emotional realms and nervous system. The character armor and protective systems in the body typically release in a ketamine session, as the chatter of the thinking mind dissolves. The variety of components that form the experience of self—thought, emotions and somatic sensation—distill and grant access to a platform of uncustomary awareness that permits one to observe the symphony of streams that typically drive action and performance in everyday life. Deep listening to the self beyond the dominance of the mind allows access to novel forms of understanding, presented in the body through sensory domains. A capital aspect of this experience is the cultivation of pathways in the mind, body, feelings and nervous system away from fear, protective reflexes are softened, permitting the concomitant arrival of relaxed and spontaneous play fueled by imagination and creativity. Careful dosing may permit exploration throughout the self-sculpture to the very margins of self, and indeed well beyond, to mystical, unity states of oneness.

Even with this qualitative array of distinct experiences, all psychedelic medicines may be said to share several themes. Each permits an experience beyond the limiting
