What is psychedelic?

Lately there has been a lot of talk about psychedelic music, literature, art. What is psychedelic? This concept, denoting a set of phenomena that are associated with the altered state of consciousness and research in the field of the stability of the human psyche. In order to answer the question about what psychedelics are, we need to consider this phenomenon in more detail.

This phenomenon was widely spread in music (kraut-rock, goa-trance and other directions "music-psychedelic"). In addition, in literature, cinema and other forms of art.

If we consider the structure of the word itself, it becomes clearer what psychedelic is. The word consists of two parts: "psycho", which in Greek means "soul", and "delicacy" is also a translation from Greek, meaning "to manifest." That is, this is what the soul shows. Psychedelics - this is a fairly broad concept, used in various forms of art. Everything that is found in a person's sincere response and brings him to a new understanding of something, can be called psychedelic.

Sometimes the term is used as a synonym for some psychotropic substances, but it must be remembered that psychedelics are not just drugs!

The psychological effect, such, for example, as "expansion of consciousness", it is possible to reach and not applying psychoactive substances. For example, S. Grof's experiments related to the so-called holotropic (deep) breathing, sensory deprivation or sleep deprivation and various forms of meditation, spiritual enlightenments, special psychedelic programs, some forms of psychotherapy and alternative medicine, occultism, mysticism, esotericism are known in psychological practice. , Leading to similar effects, helping to understand what psychedelics are, in practice.

As for psychedelic music, it is very diverse. This and kraut-rock, and psychedelic rock, trance, ambient, folk, pop, soul and some other directions.

The first musicians who played such music were Jimmy Hendrix, Pink Floyd, part Beatles and other bands that were associated with the hippie subculture. With the development of electronic music, this genre has become more diverse.

Such phenomena sometimes spread to the so-called 25 frame. What is psychedelic 25 frames? This is supposedly a kind of technique for influencing the human subconscious by inserting into one of the additional frames any information, often of an advertising nature.

The meaning of the effect is that the person's vision can only discern 24 frames per second and the one that shows less than 1/24 of a second directly affects the subconscious structures of the human psyche .

In fact, the 25th frame is not so invisible: they are all registered by the eye of the observer, but because of the inertia of the vision process, it is mixed with others and is not allocated. But thanks to the same effect, to see the 25th advertising frame will not be very difficult. If you write a short familiar word in large print on it, you can even have time to read it, which is not difficult to see for everyone who has a computer and is familiar with the technique of video editing, even at home.

Concerning the psychological impact on the human subconscious of the 25th frame, we can say the following: its effect was officially denied by the American Psychological Association back in 1958.

Where did this myth come from? In 1957, a certain D. Vaikeri reported that he had conducted an experiment in one of the American cinemas that during the demonstration of the film "Picnic", advertising of popcorn and Coca Cola was held as the 25th block, Which, according to the version of Vaikeri, increased by 33%.

Some scientists tried to repeat the experiments of Vaikeri. So, for example, in 1958, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation advertising agency, during one of their popular TV shows, gave the insert "Call now!", However, the number of calls did not increase. And when the audience was told about the experiment and asked them to guess the text of the message, none of them sent the correct answer.

A few years later, Vaykeri admitted that the 1957 experiments and sales statistics were fabricated by him.