Now I can’t even remember by what wind this story came into my head, as if from childhood, but all the circumstances are vague and dream-like. Gulg doesn’t really help, although there are mentions, so it’s not a dream. So, what I remember and how I understand it:
Once upon a time there lived a scientist...
Once upon a time, probably in the 19th century, when scientists experimented not on monkeys, but more and more on themselves. And so this scientist decided to try the effect of some drug on the brain. (Although perhaps he was sad and drugs did not dilute his gray everyday life times).But one thing is clear: he was very curious, as befits a scientist
This drug was either morphine, or some kind of opium, or something like cannabis. (In one word: it was possible to catch glitches)
He took this drug and sat in front of the mirror to observe how his consciousness, and with it the grimace, would change from the drug (such as euphoria, gee-gee and ha-ha all sorts of things... well, you get the idea). -hee it never got through...
Instead, he began to have incredible thoughts and scientific ideas. They were so brilliant that the scientist probably thought about winning a Nobel Prize. But he, like a scientist, decided: “The morning is wiser than the evening,” and fell asleep among his scientific works, frightening the servants with his snoring.
That same morning has come...
The scientist woke up, but could not remember a single idea (although I think he didn’t even remember his name from the beginning, and the first one was “WHERE AM I?”.)
But the thought of winning a Nobel Prize apparently had a strong hold on his brain, he decided to repeat it. (Yes, yes, addiction from the first time, so drugs are not a joke to you!!) He threw himself again, but as a cunning and wise scientist, he decided to take it and write it all down it’s brilliant why he was so pissed off yesterday))
And here are the ideas again... euphoria (Akrevedko!!!), sleep comes again. (but don’t forget, the scientist was cunning and with a pen!) He carefully wrote down one of the ideas, the most daring, which threatened to shake the very universe and Newton’s theory in a notebook.
He woke up, walked away... and glanced at the sheet where a great and grandiose scientific theory that promised glory was inscribed in intricate handwriting:
"The banana is big, but the peel is even bigger."
And on the topic of bananas, while I was trying to find the story, I found a funny article)))
Banana serial killer
Joint terrorist attack by Bushitel and Banana Killer - a giant banana peel placed between two exits of buildings, the so-called “Twin Towers” - 1,500 killed, wounded and missing
In the United States, after the pervert and maniac Texas Bushman, famous for his cold-blooded attacks on weak and unprotected people, a new serial maniac appears, nicknamed by the public the Banana Killer - the greatest of villains who kills in such a way that it is impossible to prove his involvement in the crimes. All his accomplices, although not arrested, have long been scolded and shamed by democracy and the media, everyone except him. Using cunning tactics, placing banana skins on the staircases, even if caught in the act, he always remains innocent. Walking freely through the streets and fearing nothing, he enters the same entrances where his predecessor hunted, and just as cold-bloodedly, but without judgment, kills his victims.
And a couple of facts about bananas)):
The peel placed on the head provides good protection from direct sunlight. This is how dreadlocks once came into fashion in Jamaica.
Banana peels are tastier and healthier than the banana itself. Nobody knows about this because they have never tried it.
Banana peel contains 10% alcohol, so you can not only eat it, but also drink it.
King Kong has the largest banana peel.
Banana peel is a killer! In America alone (and nowhere else) it kills 2 million people every year because they fail to peel a banana.
Banana peel heals! Every day around the world, the peel saves hundreds of people from spinal curvature and occipital migraines.
Banana peel is soothing! Typically, peeling a banana for an average of 11 minutes gives the average man a feeling of deep satisfaction.
Ecuador is 30% population and 70% bananas. The same ratio is the proportion of the peel to the mass of the entire fruit.
Due to the fact that the banana plant is a grass, and people can slip on the peel of its seed, scientists have expanded the category of animals called Insects, adding Humans to its composition.
Due to the fact that the banana plant is an herb, Mad Scientists have discovered that banana peels can be smoked in a variety of ways.
There is zero friction on the inner surface of a banana peel.
Scientists have developed a summer version of a snowboard by applying a banana peel nanocoating to the bottom surface of a regular winter board.
Scientists also blame banana peels for the fall of Rome.
Banana peels are so beneficial that they can even delay the onset of death.
In the 18th century, the native Russian gymnast Maya Plisetskaya demonstrated the world's first longitudinal split at the Olympic Games in Albania, and when trying to stand up, the first transverse split (after an investigation by the commission, the Ecuadorian team was disqualified from participating in the Olympics for 20 years).
The glove slap is a modified custom of the banana peel slap. Brought to Russia by Peter I from Africa. It did not take root in its original form due to pocket discomfort and the low general availability of the fruit at that time.
We are accustomed to the fact that a good banana is a yellow banana. Even, smooth, ripe, but not overripe. Well, that's how it is. But banana is an amazing fruit, it can be useful in different ways at each stage of its ripening. What? Now we'll tell you!
Let's start with green bananas. They retain all micro- and macroelements that are beneficial to health. For example, green bananas are an excellent source of potassium, which helps normalize blood pressure and protect the heart from harmful effects. Eating green bananas reduces calcium loss from the body - this is especially important if you eat a lot of salty foods. Green bananas also neutralize high acidity in the stomach, which means they prevent the occurrence of gastritis and ulcers. The presence of specific fatty acids with short chemical compounds in them helps to normalize the activity of the gastrointestinal tract as a whole. These bananas may taste a little viscous, so it is convenient to make smoothies and purees from them, or add them to porridges and granolas. In the picture these are bananas 2-4.
Let's move on. With yellow bananas everything is clearer. This is a high-energy product that can quickly increase blood sugar levels. Moreover, the yellower the banana, the sweeter it is. This happens because enzymes in the fruit constantly break down starch (the long polymer form of sugar) and change it into simple sugars (monosaccharides, disaccharides), which make the banana sweeter. Yellow bananas contain B vitamins, which have a positive effect on the nervous system, calming it, and normalize sleep. Such ripe bananas are shown as numbers 5 and 6 in the picture.
Finally, the so-called “overripe” bananas, with brown dots, are the sweetest. Indeed, they contain a lot of sugar - fructose and glucose in their pure form, which are very quickly absorbed into the blood, so if you suffer from diabetes, you should avoid bananas with dots. It would seem that there is no benefit here. However, Japanese scientists have proven that it is these overripe bananas that have anti-cancer and antioxidant properties. They contain a substance that strengthens our immune system. This property is inherent in the extracellular protein – TNF, which stands for “tumor necrosis factor”. This is a substance that fights cancer, inhibits the growth of tumor cells and prevents their spread in the body. Well, in combination with antioxidants, they perfectly strengthen our immune system. In the picture, such a banana is shown as number 7.
We bring green bananas for our smoothies, because... they contain less sugar (you can always add honey to sweeten the drink itself), and in the fruit box you will find yellow bananas, which are more familiar to your taste.
Finally, we remind you that fruits and vegetables are divided into two categories: some produce ethylene, others absorb it. This gas promotes faster ripening. The first group (those that emit ethylene) includes tomatoes, pears, apples, the second group includes bananas. That is, if you place apples and pears next to green bananas, they will ripen much faster.
So choose any bananas you like and be healthy!
Once upon a time, an American experimental physicist R. Wood(1868-1955), a rather eccentric person, a lover of all kinds of thrills, decided to do a risky experiment on himself - to test the effect of the drug. Having obtained opium with great difficulty, he smoked the potion and soon fell into oblivion. Having regained consciousness after some time, he remembered that, while in a stupefied state, he had attacked some extremely deep and important scientific idea, but which one exactly had completely slipped his mind. Then Wood decided to repeat the experiment in the hope that he would be lucky enough to regain the escaped thought. And indeed, as soon as the narcotic effect of opium began to take its toll, a forgotten thought was not slow to arise in the scientist’s mind. Feeling that consciousness was about to leave him, Wood managed to concentrate his will at the last moment, write down the idea on a piece of paper and fell into unconsciousness. When he woke up, he thought with jubilation about the successful outcome of such a difficult and dangerous experience and, trembling with impatience and experience, he hastily unfolded the piece of paper with the precious note. On it he read; “ The banana is big, but the peel is even bigger...”
"William James describes a man who experienced the effects of laughing gas; whenever he was under the influence of this gas, he knew the secret of the Universe, but when he came to his senses, he forgot it. Finally, by great effort, he succeeded in writing down this secret before as the vision disappeared. Having completely come to his senses, he rushed to look at what he wrote down. The smell of oil is everywhere"."
Bertrand Russell. History of Western Philosophy.
And this is a story by the famous physicist Richard Feynman (from his book “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman”)
By the way, there will be a mention that it is important to monitor your breathing. This is true. Several times I felt as if I was “flying away” somewhere from reality, and each time, the more I monitored my breathing, the stronger this feeling became. To recover, it was necessary to urgently focus on something specific, any object of the material world, and try not to pay attention to breathing.
"..I quickly accepted Lilly's invitation to use the container, which was very kind of them, and they came to listen to my lecture with their group.
So the next week I went to test the containers. Mr. Lilly introduced me to them, as he must have done to all the other people. There were many neon-like bulbs with different gases. He showed me the periodic table and did a lot of mystical tricks with different kinds of light that have different effects. He told me how to prepare for entering the container, looking at myself in the mirror, pressing my nose to it - all the little things, all the nonsense. I didn’t pay any attention to all this nonsense, but I did everything because I wanted to get into the container, and I also thought that perhaps these preparations would make it easier to get hallucinations. So I went through everything he told me. The only difficulty was choosing the color of the bulb whose effect I wanted to experience, especially since the container had to be dark on the inside.
The container, insulated from external influences, is similar to a large bathtub, but with a lid that drops down. It is completely dark inside, and since the lid is thick, no sounds can be heard. There is a small pump in the container that pumps air into it, but it turns out that you don’t have to worry about air because the volume is large enough, and you are only in there for two or three hours, and when you breathe normally, you don’t consume much air many. Mr. Lilly said the pumps were only there to calm people down, so I figured it was purely psychological and asked him to turn the pump off because it was making a little noise.
The water in the container contained Epsom salt, which increased its density compared to ordinary water, so that it was not difficult to stay on its surface. The water temperature was maintained at body temperature, or 34 degrees Celsius or so - he calculated it all. There should have been no light, no sound, no temperature sensation, nothing at all in the container! From time to time you might be carried against a wall, which you would easily hit, or a drop of water might fall from the lid of a container due to condensation, but these slight disturbances were very rare.
I must have gone into this tank twelve times, spending two and a half hours there each time. The first time I didn't hallucinate, but after I left, Lilly introduced me to a doctor who told me about a drug called ketamine, which is used for anesthesia. I've always wondered what happens when you fall asleep or lose consciousness, so they showed me the paperwork that came with this medicine and gave me one-tenth of the normal dose.
I experienced this strange feeling, which I could not understand later when I tried to characterize what its effect was. For example, the drug affected my vision in a certain way; I felt like I couldn't see clearly. But if I was looking closely at something, then everything was in order. It's kind of like if you don't pay attention to your surroundings; when you carelessly do this and that and feel like you're drunk, but as soon as you look carefully, concentrate, everything, at least for a moment, comes back to normal. I took a book from them on organic chemistry and looked at the table full of complex substances and, to my surprise, I was able to read them.
I did everything else, like moving my hands from some distance to see if my fingers would touch each other, and despite feeling completely unable to navigate or do anything, I still couldn't find anything concrete , which I would not be able to do.
As I already said, when I got into the container, isolated from external influences, for the first time, I did not have any hallucinations, and I did not have them the second time either. However, the Lillies were very interesting people; I really, really liked them. They often invited me to lunch and so on, and very soon we were discussing some things on a completely different level compared to that nonsense about light bulbs. I realized that other people found the insulated container a little scary, but I thought it was a pretty interesting invention. I wasn't afraid because I knew what it was: just a container of water that contained Epsom salts.
When I went there for the third time, they had a guest - I met a lot of interesting people there - who called himself Baba Ram Das. He was a guy from Harvard who went to India and wrote a popular book called Be Here Now. He told how his guru in India explained to him how to have an “out-of-body experience” (these words I often saw on a message board): concentrate on your breathing, on the way the air moves in and out of your nose, as the way you breathe.
I thought I would try anything to get a hallucination and went into the container. At some point in the game I suddenly realized - it's hard to explain - that I had moved an inch to the side. In other words, my breathing, in and out, in and out, is not happening in the center: my ego has moved slightly to one side, about an inch.
I thought, “Where is the ego actually located? I know everyone thinks that thinking happens in the brain, but how do they know that?” I've already read that this didn't seem so obvious to people until a lot of psychological research was done. The Greeks, for example, believed that thinking occurs in the liver. Then I thought, “Is it possible that children learn where the ego is by seeing adults touch their heads with their hand when they say, “Let me think”? So the idea that the ego is there may just be a tradition !" I realized that if I could move my ego one inch to the side, I could move it further. This was the beginning of the hallucinations.
I tried and after a while I lowered my ego through my neck to the middle of my chest. When a drop of water fell and hit me on the shoulder, I felt it “right there”, above “me”. Every time a drop fell, I got a little scared, and my ego quickly returned down the neck to its usual place. And then I had to lower it again. At first it took me a long time to bring my ego down, but gradually it became easier. I managed to learn to lower myself all the way down to my lower back, shifting to one side, but I couldn’t get any further.
Another time, when I was in a container isolated from external influences, I decided that if I could move myself to the small of my back, then I must be able to leave my body completely. So I was able to “step aside.” It's hard to explain - I moved my hands, splashed water, and although I didn't see them, I knew they were there. But, unlike in real life, where the hands are located on both sides and lowered down, here they were both on the same side! The feeling in my fingers and everything else was the same as in normal life, only my ego was sitting outside of me, “watching” it all.
From that time on, I hallucinated almost every time and learned to move further and further away from my body. It got to the point that when I moved my hands, I saw them as some kind of machines that went up and down - they were not flesh; they were mechanisms. But I could still feel everything. The feelings were completely consistent with the movement, but I also experienced this feeling of “he is that.” Eventually, "I" even left the room and wandered around, going to different places where something that I had seen earlier on another day was happening.
I have had many types of out-of-body experiences. Once, for example, I managed to “see” the back of my head, on which my hands lay. When I moved my fingers, I saw that they were moving, but between my thumb and the rest I saw a blue sky. This, of course, was not reality; it was a hallucination. But the point is that when I moved my fingers, their movement was completely consistent with what I thought I was seeing. A whole set of images appeared, it corresponded to what you were feeling and doing; it was a lot like waking up slowly in the morning and touching something (not knowing what it is) and suddenly realizing what it is. So suddenly a whole set of images appeared, the difference was only in its unusualness, in the sense that usually it seems that the ego is located in front of the back of the head, but here you feel it behind the back of the head.
However, during the hallucination, I was constantly worried, psychologically, that perhaps I had simply fallen asleep and was just dreaming. I already had some experience with dreams, and I wanted to have a new one. It was stupid because when you hallucinate or something like that, you can't think straight, so you do stupid things that make your mind work, like checking to see if you're asleep. Be that as it may, I constantly checked whether I had fallen asleep - since my hands often lay under my head - I rubbed my thumbs together, feeling them. Of course, I could have dreamed it, but I didn’t: I knew it was real.
When a little time passed and the excitement from the hallucinations I saw stopped “switching off” or interrupting them, I learned to relax and see long hallucinations.
A week or two later, I started thinking about how the brain works in comparison to how a computer works—especially when it comes to storing information. In this field, one of the most interesting problems is how memories are stored in the brain. They can be accessed from so many directions, compared to a machine - the memory does not have to be accessed directly with the correct address. If I want the word "rent," for example, when doing a crossword puzzle, I look for a five-letter word that starts with "r" and ends with "a"; I can think about types of income or borrowing and lending; this in turn can lead to all sorts of memories or information related to it. I was thinking about creating a "simulating machine" that would learn language the way a child does: you would talk to the machine. But I never figured out how to store all the information in an organized way so that the machine could retrieve it for its own purposes.
When I went into the sealed tank that week and had a hallucination, I tried to think about my earliest memories. I constantly said to myself: “It must be even earlier; it must be even earlier,” - it always seemed to me that the memories were not early enough. When a very early memory came to me - say, about my hometown of Far Rockaway - then a whole chain of memories instantly appeared, all of them connected with this city. Then, if I thought about something related to another city - for example, Cedarhurst or something else - then a lot of memories associated with that city came to mind. Then I realized that information is stored according to the place where you had the experience.
I really liked my discovery, I left the container, took a shower, got dressed, etc. and went to Hughes Aircraft to give another lecture. Thus, it was about forty-five minutes after I left the tank when I suddenly realized for the first time that I had not the slightest idea how memories are stored in the brain; everything I saw was just a hallucination related to how memories are stored in the brain! My "discovery" had nothing to do with how memories are actually stored in the brain; it was connected only with the games I play with myself.
During our many discussions about hallucinations on my first visits, I tried to explain to Lilly and everyone else that what seems real to us does not represent true reality. If you saw golden balls or something like that several times, and they talked to you during a hallucination and said that they were another mind, that does not mean that they were another mind; it only means that you saw such a hallucination. In this case, I experienced the strongest sensation of discovering how memories are stored, and it is surprising that it was only forty-five minutes later that I realized my mistake, which I had previously tried to explain to everyone else.
I've also been pondering the question of whether hallucinations, like dreams, are influenced by what's already in your mind—what's left over from other experiences you've had that day or from what you're expecting to see. I believe that I was able to have an out-of-body experience because we discussed a similar experience just before I entered the container. And the hallucinations associated with storing memories in the brain, I think, were caused by the fact that I had been thinking about this problem all week.
I talked a lot with different people who came to Lilly about the reality of impressions. They argued with me, arguing that in experimental science the impression that can be reproduced is considered real. Thus, if over and over again many people see golden balls that talk to them, then these balls must be real. I insisted that in such situations, before entering the container, these people talked about golden balls, and therefore, when a person sees a hallucination, and before entering the container his mind thought about golden balls, he sees something close to these balls - they can be blue or something else - and thinks that he is reproducing the impression. I felt that I understood the difference between the agreement that people reach through reason and the agreement that is obtained as a result of experiment. The funny thing about this is that it is very easy to understand the difference, but it is very difficult to define it!
I believe that there is nothing in hallucinations that is in any way connected with something external to the internal psychological state of the person who sees this hallucination. But, nevertheless, there are many cases that have happened to various people who believe that the hallucination contains reality. This same general idea may explain a certain percentage of success that dream interpreters achieve. For example, some psychoanalysts interpret dreams by talking about the meaning of various symbols. And then we cannot exclude the possibility that these symbols actually appear in subsequent dreams. So I think that perhaps the interpretation of hallucinations and dreams is a self-propagating process: you achieve more or less general success, especially if you discuss it in detail in advance.
Usually my hallucinations began about fifteen minutes after entering the container, isolated from external influences, but on several occasions when I smoked marijuana beforehand, they came very quickly. Although fifteen minutes was fast enough for me.
The following often happened to me: as soon as the hallucination began, something that could be described as “garbage” appeared - just chaotic images, in general, absolute incoherent trash. I tried to remember individual elements of this rubbish in order to be able to identify it again, but this turned out to be extremely difficult. I think I'm starting to get closer to something like the process that happens when you start to fall asleep: it's obvious that there's a logical connection, but when you try to remember what made you think about what you're thinking about, it doesn't work for you. succeeds. In fact, you soon forget that you are even trying to remember. I only remember things like a white sign with a pimp in Chicago, which then disappears. And this is nonsense all the time.
Mr. Lilly had several different containers and we did several different experiments. As for hallucinations, I didn’t see any difference and was convinced that there was no particular need for the container. Now that I saw what needed to be done, I realized that it was enough to just sit quietly - why do so much hocus-pocus?
So, when I got home, I turned off the light, sat down in the living room on a comfortable chair, tried and tried - and nothing worked. I have never been able to induce a hallucination while outside the container. Of course, I would love to do it at home, and I have no doubt that I could take up meditation and do it if I practiced, but I didn't."
