“Our greatest duty is to fulfill the great potential of the people around us. So whatever light you see in that person near you, your job is to cultivate that. We are responsible for each other’s greatness.”
—Baba Kilindi Iyi
Who is Kilindi Iyi
The hearts of the psychedelic community are heavy for the recent passing of Grand Master Baba Kilindi Iyi. He was a teacher and humanitarian whose work and legacy will continue to inspire the evolution of consciousness on this planet. In addition, he was a veteran psychonaut and a warrior of the multiverse. Kilindi was a believer that spiritual exploration wasn’t something you buy, but rather something you grow.
Education and Early Career
Humanitarian and Teacher
Grand Master Baba Kilindi Iyi was a native of Detroit, MI. He studied and taught ancient and contemporary African fighting sciences. Kilindi made a huge impact on his city through educational and humanitarian organizations. He was the head instructor and technical advisor of the Tamerrian Martial Art Institute. Their mission is to inform the world that martial arts and sciences began in Africa.
Kilindi was a strong force within the Black Liberation Movement. He believed in a human-centered movement, where no other human was excluded. Accordingly he had a deep understanding of the long-existing fight to maintain and preserve the human spirit. He could see humanity’s enslavement to the powers of corrupt priesthoods. Kilindi was a part of a lineage that came here to this planet to keep the warrior spirit alive, and to help wake us up.
He was a man of many mantras, one particularly being:
“Grow up, show up, step up.”
- Grow up—to break down cultural and mental notions that we have conditioned through society and reality.
- Show up—by participating in the community! Plain and simple.
- Step up—through the pursuit of the smaller and unknown principles of history, psychology, science, healing, and art.
Psychedelic Synthesis
Baba Kilindi got involved in psychedelics through his studies of African martial arts and sciences. He explained that 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 is known within his practice of African arts that this psychedelic aspect is still preserved through initiation, apprenticeship, and secret societies.
Kilindi’s explorations include, but are not limited to, fighting systems, dance, music, and philosophy. The synthesis of this work led him to pioneer the realms of high-dose psilocybin-focused psychedelic research.
Work in Psychedelics
Kilindi’s commitment to his work yielded much controversy, but also a dedicated following of fellow psychonauts. He traveled the world, presenting on the subject of psilocybin at conferences in many locations. Kilindi became particularly famous for being the “high-dose mushroom guy.” This was because he would present information from his explorations of high doses ranging between 30–50 dry grams of psilocybin mushrooms. Kilindi was then able to articulate such esoteric concepts of his hyper-dimensional and inter-dimensional experiences to individuals with little to no knowledge of psychedelic travel. Truly a genius!
The Beginning
Kilindi began his journey with psilocybin in the early 1970s when a friend brought him back a bag of mushrooms from a town near the village of Maria Sabina. He had no reference for an appropriate dose, as there was no internet in the ’70s, so he consumed the whole bag. The experience left him awestruck, which led him to acquire more information, specifically on cultivating and dosing.
In his studies of martial arts, he hid the mushroom inside an alchemical compound. This way, young students wouldn’t know that their driving force was being powered primarily by the psychedelic mushroom. When Kilindi started dosing in his martial arts practice, he couldn’t reach the same awestruck feeling he did during his first experience.
Therefore, he began to cultivate his own psilocybin mushrooms. The search for the perfect dose crept higher and higher until he reached an experience parallel to his original one. Once he got into the 50-gram range he knew that the sky was the limit.
Psilocybin Won’t Kill You
Although the LD50 (lethal dose) for psilocybin is so high that overdose is virtually impossible, Kilindi always reinforced that it is mentally and psychologically challenging. He advocated taking small steps, wherever you are. There is no shame in lower amounts. Kilindi saw psychedelic exploration as a mastery, and some people don’t even master three grams. Take time to master all levels.
For those of you who are beginners to the realms of high doses, he highly recommended having a trip sitter or a gatekeeper to oversee how you react. Only after a few times traveling should you attempt to go solo. Kilindi said that solo traveling is where the real work begins … when it’s just you and the mushroom.
“It’s safer than Reese’s Pieces, so you can’t kill yourself with it, you can’t overdose. It’s nonaddictive. As a matter of fact, it’s anti-addictive. It’s a very, very ancient, sacred compound that’s been used for eons by many different cultures, in Africa, South America, Australia, and Europe. It dissolves boundaries of race and class.”
—Baba Kilindi Iyi
Evolution of Consciousness
Kilindi was a firm believer that the mushroom played a pivotal role in the early evolution of consciousness. Today, the mushroom is poised to move us into the trans-humanistic areas of the mind and beyond. He saw that we are currently at the beginning of the golden age of psychedelics. The ‘60s was the birthing process, incubating underground for the last 40 or so years. Today, as psychedelic youth, we are getting out of mom’s house and into the world of the hyper-dimensional.
Kilindi understood the power and pure magic of psilocybin mushrooms. They have survived in pockets of space; scientists date them 460 million years older than plant life on our planet. The mushroom is a fungus, a living entity that has the ability to share ancient knowledge and technologies with you. Kilindi taught the importance of establishing a relationship with this entity. One of the most effective ways of doing so is by learning how to cultivate your own.
“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.”
—Baba Kilindi Iyi
A Candle Lighting the Darkness
One of the many virtues Kilindi lived up to was his transparency. He never left you in the dark. In fact, he spoke of it vividly in many of his presentations and interviews. When participating in high-dose entheogenic travel you must truly have discipline, courage, practice, patience, and tenacity. At specific levels of the multiverse, you experience both benevolent and malevolent existences. Kinlindi revealed during one of his interviews that once you lose the primal consciousness and move into that primal darkness, that’s so dark, it has no black to it; that’s one of the hardest challenges.
Diversity in Psychedelics
Kilindi knew that for many years, usually along with a couple of women, he was the “token black guy” that would help add diversity to the brochure of whatever conference he was speaking at. This fact never discouraged him. He saw himself as a pioneer of the field and his work will only continue to lay the foundations for others to SHOW UP and take the stage. At Delic, we recognize the under-representation of black culture in the field of psychedelics. We are honored to share the work and legacy of Baba Kilindi Iyi as our first black trailblazer representation. We pay gratitude to his psychedelic pilgrimage into the multiverse and we will continue to grow up, show up, and step up as fellow psychonauts.
Top Kilindi Iyi Quotes
“I believe mushrooms can lead the human being into some form of mature sanity, leaving behind the immaturity of the last twelve thousand years.”
“The most important thing I think that I’ve discovered dealing with psilocybin is that we’re not hooked to the body. There’s no end. There’s no death. Consciousness goes on, and it’s a trip and an exploration.”
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.
Kilindi Iyi In Culture
Works
Baba Kilindi Iyi– this is a great place to start your exploration of Kilindi’s work as well as donate to his legacy and family.
Highlighted below, is a tribute to the work and legacy of Kilindi by his companions and family, presented by the Breaking Convention. A special shout out goes to Ayana Iyi, Moudou Baqui, Darren Le Baron, and Omolewa Entheogenic Midwife for preserving his legacy and their continued work if this field.
RS Contributing Author: Niki Perlberg
Niki is a social and arts entrepreneur who specializes in project and creative production development. With her passion for social structures and the arts, she has been involved in the architecture of performance and festival culture around the country. In rapidly changing times she is now taking her passion for these sub-cultures and sharing them with us in our digital atmosphere through her writing and content development. Some of her favorite parts of life are coffee, campfires, and contemplating the mysteries of existence. Feel free to follow her on Insta @itsnikiperl
