The Psychedelic Frontier: High-Doses and Hyperspaces with Kilindi Iyi
I was shocked and saddened to hear the tragic news of Kilindi’s passing in April this year from COVID-19. He was truly a unique human being, a frontiersman of the highest degree, a runner of edges and a cartographer of veiled beauty.
Since then, I have been searching through my archives for an interview with Kilindi, and at long last it has turned up. I conducted this interview in February 2015, and it was originally hosted on my now defunct tumblr blog, The Third Eye. I’m sharing it now as a tribute to a great man, and I hope it inspires you all as much as it did me.
Safe travels Kilindi, may you be at peace.
I first stumbled across these reports of supra-threshold dosing through Kilindi Iyi’s lecture at Breaking Convention, a multidisciplinary psychedelic conference bringing together scientists, psychologists, anthropologists and laymen to discuss our ongoing relationship with hallucinogenic substances.
Kilindi spoke of dosages in the twenty to thirty gram range and the profound and numinous spaces accessible thereof for around an hour, drawing on world history, McKenna’s stoned ape theory and his own extensive experience to present a picture of the far reaches of the psychedelic experience available nowhere else.
He’s with us today to shed further light on this most bizarre of frontiers.
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Hi Kilindi, could you tell us a little about yourself, your background and how you came to be involved with mushrooms and psychedelics in general?
My background is in martial arts, and I study and teach ancient and contemporary African fighting sciences.
I got involved in psychedelics through martial arts. Forms of traditional martial arts use power plants and fungi to gain access to the higher martial sensibilities, gleaned from the hyper dimensional realms. It doesn’t matter which art, be it Kung Fu, Silat, Kalari Payit, Bando, Eke Aikido or swordsmanship, all included psychedelics as a part of their craft and with the African martial arts it was no different. The difference with the African arts is that this psychedelic aspect is still preserved through initiation, apprenticeship and the secret societies.
What led you to consider pursuing high-dose experiences with psilocybin?
Well, my first dose was very high in the early 70s. There was no internet or body of information that I had access to which covered appropriate dosages, so I ate the whole bag.
I’m still in awe of the experience.
Later, when I gained more info and learned to cultivate, I also learned about dosing. In martial arts the mushroom is usually hidden inside of an alchemical compound so that the young wouldn’t know it was primarily the psychedelic mushrooms that were the driving force of the experience. So when I started dosing in martial arts, the doses never approached that first feeling.
I searched for the perfect dose, crept higher and higher until it got close to that original experience. Once I got into LD50’s I knew the sky was the limit.
Are there any safety issues in taking high dosages of mushrooms in the range of twenty grams or more?
As far as safety is concerned, just have a safe comfortable environment preferably your bed or on the floor. Some people have navigational difficulties on the high dose.
The LD50 for psilocybin is so high its virtually impossible to overdose, so that’s not a problem, but that said it can be mentally and psychologically challenging. In the beginning it’s worth having a trip sitter to see how you react, after a few times with a sitter then it is safe to go solo.
Solo is where the real work begins, when it’s just you and the mushroom.
You’ve spoken about the high-dose trip being an almost common experience in the psychedelic community, who are these individuals and why are they pushing out so far into psychedelic space?
There are hundreds of explorers out there who take the journey of the alone into the alone but you wont find many among the psychedelic luminaries.
There are some who will push the envelope, but certainly not many. I agree with Terrence McKenna that many take just enough to say they took it, which adds some legitimacy to their research, books, lectures and the like. These folks are as far away from a true, full blown breakthrough psychedelic experience as they would be if they had never taken any in the first place, in my opinion.
Then there are those who are just out there, in the comfort of their own basement couch that, during the experience, makes the bridge of the starship Enterprise seem pale in comparison, boldly going where no one has gone before. They strive to understand what this life we are living means in the true sense. That’s why these compounds were engineered, for exploration.
How do you prepare for a session with the mushrooms?
Personally, I prepare by trying to relax a few hours before because the anticipation has been building all week. Usually I travel on Saturdays so I can rest up the next day. When my set hour for ingestion comes I just start eating and eating until I get it all down, then I go lay down and just hang on; that’s it.
In spite of the numinous character of the experience, would you describe for us the quality of a high dose psychedelic experience in the range of twenty or more grams?
The quality of a high dose is access to the hyper dimensional realms with sharp visions, there is no vagueness. Kind of like a three hour DMT trip, you’re likely to experience visions of far away planets, the entities of legend, the home of the gods, wormholes opening up in the room, things floating around, saucers decloaking, just wild and weird.
Are there significant differences between say, a ten gram dose and a thirty gram dose?
The differences are exponential, twenty grams is not just double the strength of ten grams, it’s very far away. As far as the access you have, everyone is an individual. Some get in at ten grams but twenty is always more intense and more inclusive in the zone.
You’ve spoken about entities inhabiting psychedelic space, can you speak a little about what those entities are and what they’re up to?
Entities can be helpful, malevolent or benign.
Some are familiar, and some are not. I think all the entities of the ancient world, today’s movies, literature and themes exist on these realms and how they turn up is that these realms bleed over into our reality during the session.
It’s like cave paintings all over the world. Early man had no reference point for the creatures they drew until psychedelics and then they started drawing things that were not in nature per se, but rather in the greater nature of these novel states of consciousness.
Coming to sobriety after such an intense experience must be something of a shock, can you describe for us how you conclude a high dose session?
I usually conclude a session with a big breakfast.
Some people keep a journal to try and remember what they experienced. I don’t, I remember what I remember and I leave the rest until next time.
Aside from the obvious classification of fungi, what do you think psilocybin mushrooms are? What is it that we’re dealing with?
Psilocybin is pure magic.
It’s the only form of DMT that we can ingest and without an alchemical process, no water, no fire, no combining, just see it and eat.
In my travels, it was told to me that the mushroom is an organic technology for access to the multiverse memory bank, created to enable one to go into that library. But it takes discipline, courage, practice, patience and tenacity to get what you want and go where you want to go.
What role do you believe mushrooms have played in our species’ biological history? What role have they played in our cultural history?
I think the mushroom played a pivotal role in the early evolution of consciousness and today is poised to move us into the transhumanistic areas of mind and beyond.
We are in the beginning of the golden age of psychedelics. The sixties was the birthing process, hiding underground for the last forty years has been the infancy. Now, as psychedelic youth, we’re getting out of the front yard and into the world of the hyper dimensional.
What role do you think mushrooms could play in our society today?
I believe mushrooms can lead the human being into some form of mature sanity, leaving behind the immaturity of the last twelve thousand years.
In closing, is there anything you’d like to say to the world at large?
In closing, I can say trip safe, trip high, but slowly and incrementally.
It’s a race, but the race is a marathon, not a sprint.