ChaoSurfingFor millennia, different cultures have used consciousness altering techniques in ritualistic settings. A few selected priests and shamans would venture into altered states and retrieve information that might turnout useful for the community they served. Some, but not all, use entheogens to lay down these pathways into the unknown. We could call them the original Psychonauts.
Some of us cosmic monkeys come to this world with a thirst for knowledge and the exploration of our own consciousness. As a privileged inhabitant of a western industrialized society, I get to more or less freely embark on the Psychonauts Quest to satiate this thirst. In another time or place, the paths of the quest for self-knowledge have been hidden from the masses and only few would receive the offering of initiation into the techniques of altering our consciousness and exploring the multiple dimensions of existence.