Silk Road forums
Discussion => Drug safety => Topic started by: BreakOnThrough on February 23, 2013, 03:17 am
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This thread was kinda prompted by Self Sovereignty's post in another thread about the nature of consciousness and such matters, but I felt a new thread would be appropriate!
My question is: Are psychedelic revelations, (you know, the ideas that we are points of consciousness in time and space, that we can open the doors of perception; through certain actions etc. etc.) true?
Or are these so called revelations merely a symptom of our brains being altered by foreign chemicals?
I'm interested in the views of the good people of SR!
:)
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western psychology and epistemology are biased against non-ordinary states of consciusness. we have a certain state of consciousness that is arbitrarily considered "normal" and we consider it to be absolutely superior to all other states of consciousness. we consider our perspective on this state of consciousness to be absolutely superior to the perspective of any human group that has ever existed. All other perspectives are primitive, uneducated, and pathological. We have created theories about reality on the basis of observations solely from the ordinary state of consciousness. we have excluded from systematic scientific scrutiny anything that comes from the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness. this includes things coming from psychedelic experiences, anthropology, psychotherapy, near death experiences, etc. it is this psychological and epistemological bias, not psychedelic molecules, that distorts our perception of reality.
Psychedelic states are not distortions of reality. In a true psychotic state, there is usually disorientation (in terms of person, place, time), impairment of the intellect, amnesia, etc.; none of this happens in psychedelic states. Here the change of consciousness is very profound, but also very subtle. You remain connected with this reality - you can operate in the world, you know where you are and who you are, and you know why you are in that state. You are still in the everyday reality, but at the same time other realities are entering your consciousness.
the intellect is not impaired in psychedelic states. it functions, however, in a fundamentally different way. it is not matter-oriented consciousness where space is three dimensional, time is linear, events are connected by chains of cause and effect, etc. in material-oriented civilisation, we discourage non-ordinary states of consciousness, outlaw some of the means of experiencing them, and consider people who experience them to be pathological and put them on tranquilisers, and consequently western civilisation isn't getting information coming from that domain. but that doesn't mean that the information is false.
the effect of psychedelic drugs is to remove filters that normally distort our perception of reality. it does not create the experience; it merely occasions it. to dismiss the veridicality of a psychedelic expereince merely because it was occasioned by the ingestion of a chemical is absurd and arbitrary, because ALL of ours states of consciousness, including our ordinary state of consciousness, are chemically conditioned. When we come up with scientific theories, these are occasioned by the chemical state of the person's brain, but it would be quite absurd to say that the theory is therefore false. An idea isn't disproved just because you can point to its chemical antecedents.
the fact of the matter is, in the ordinary state of consciousness we identify with only a fraction of who we are. the ordinary state is a distortion of reality because it only contains a fraction of our selves. in psychedelic and other holotropic states of consciousness, you identify with the whole of your consciousness, which is at the same time recognised as the whole of the cosmos. To get to this state you need to transcend the ego, which can be facilitated by psychedelic drugs. This state of consciousness can take us step by step to the reclaiming of our true identity.
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western psychology and epistemology are biased against non-ordinary states of consciusness. we have a certain state of consciousness that is arbitrarily considered "normal" and we consider it to be absolutely superior to all other states of consciousness. we consider our perspective on this state of consciousness to be absolutely superior to the perspective of any human group that has ever existed. All other perspectives are primitive, uneducated, and pathological. We have created theories about reality on the basis of observations solely from the ordinary state of consciousness. we have excluded from systematic scientific scrutiny anything that comes from the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness. this includes things coming from psychedelic experiences, anthropology, psychotherapy, near death experiences, etc. it is this psychological and epistemological bias, not psychedelic molecules, that distorts our perception of reality.
Psychedelic states are not distortions of reality. In a true psychotic state, there is usually disorientation (in terms of person, place, time), impairment of the intellect, amnesia, etc.; none of this happens in psychedelic states. Here the change of consciousness is very profound, but also very subtle. You remain connected with this reality - you can operate in the world, you know where you are and who you are, and you know why you are in that state. You are still in the everyday reality, but at the same time other realities are entering your consciousness.
the intellect is not impaired in psychedelic states. it functions, however, in a fundamentally different way. it is not matter-oriented consciousness where space is three dimensional, time is linear, events are connected by chains of cause and effect, etc. in material-oriented civilisation, we discourage non-ordinary states of consciousness, outlaw some of the means of experiencing them, and consider people who experience them to be pathological and put them on tranquilisers, and consequently western civilisation isn't getting information coming from that domain. but that doesn't mean that the information is false.
the effect of psychedelic drugs is to remove filters that normally distort our perception of reality. it does not create the experience; it merely occasions it. to dismiss the veridicality of a psychedelic expereince merely because it was occasioned by the ingestion of a chemical is absurd and arbitrary, because ALL of ours states of consciousness, including our ordinary state of consciousness, are chemically conditioned. When we come up with scientific theories, these are occasioned by the chemical state of the person's brain, but it would be quite absurd to say that the theory is therefore false, simply because it flows from the state of the person's brain. The same is true of all states of consciousness. You can't refute an idea just because you can point to neurochemical causes for that idea.
we identify with only a fraction of who we are in the ordinary state of consciousness. the ordinary state is a distortion of reality because it only contains a fraction of who we are. in psychedelic and other holotropic states, you identify with the whole of your consciousness, which is at the same time the whole of the universe (cosmic identity). To get to this state you need to transcend the ego, which can be facilitated by psychedelic drugs. This state can take us step by step to the reclaiming of our true identity.
It's s almost scary how similar this response is to what I was arguing a couple of hours ago with my friend...like sentence by sentence... Really well put man, like, fuck...
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At the same time, keep your experiences and opinions coming.
"The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."
-Good ol' Plato-
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i think its both!
for example take mushroom and speed together. the realization that "eating is for suckers" and the promise that "i shall never eat again" is a big load of bullshit.
but if you take lsd and get ideas like: we are all one, the world is a vibration etc... these things got something interesting behind them...
what i think is that the substance brings out an idea from a memory and based on your mindset and body feel it creatively reassembles it and presents it to you in the form of a revelation.
every divine moment comes from within. that is where your reality lies. inside you.
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Revelations are not information coming from the outside, even though in many instances it may look like it does. Revelations is knowledge that is stored in our subconscious, and psychedelics allow access to this knowledge. This knowledge is most of the times to be taken seriously but bear in mind that its not always the case. Sometimes what you perceive as revelations is a lie generated by your own fears, also stored in your subconscious. If you're looking for God, Love, Revelations, Self-knowledge, it's all in your subconscious.
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Revelations are not information coming from the outside, even though in many instances it may look like it does. Revelations is knowledge that is stored in our subconscious, and psychedelics allow access to this knowledge. This knowledge is most of the times to be taken seriously but bear in mind that its not always the case. Sometimes what you perceive as revelations is a lie generated by your own fears, also stored in your subconscious. If you're looking for God, Love, Revelations, Self-knowledge, it's all in your subconscious.
bingo! our brains are like locks and psychedelics are keys. ;)
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i can think of several lessons psychedelics have taught me honestly.
i dont think low doses of things are good for cosmic revelations though. often times the lessons come from facing fears. fears that take a bit of time to get passed in some cases :P
just get faced and embrace the experience haha.
and id definitely say the best for spiritual revelations are tryptamines in my opinion. phenethylamines (for me) are more advanced in understanding social interaction
but they both have their place :)
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Revelations are not information coming from the outside, even though in many instances it may look like it does. Revelations is knowledge that is stored in our subconscious, and psychedelics allow access to this knowledge. This knowledge is most of the times to be taken seriously but bear in mind that its not always the case. Sometimes what you perceive as revelations is a lie generated by your own fears, also stored in your subconscious. If you're looking for God, Love, Revelations, Self-knowledge, it's all in your subconscious.
to say that it comes from your own mind is almost meaningless because we don't know what mind is. It is certainly not limited to the brain. It is not an ephiphemonon of brain function. It possesses the properties of awareness, creation (the material world is an emanation from the mind; it does not exist outside of mind), and immateriality, and may therefore be called 'God' without any abuse of language. It is all-pervasive, spaceless, timeless, prior to the world, and the basis of all phenomena.
According to the best theories of quantum physics, the universe is a holographically projected illusion every part of which contains the whole universe. Hence within the mind is already contained everything - past, present and future - that can ever be known. Not just your experiences in this life, but the experiences of all organisms that have ever lived. Not just your personal life, but the life-history of the whole universe is stored in your mind. Your mind is the only thing that exists.
So it is hardly a put-down to say that psychedelic experiences come from your mind. The external is contained within the internal.
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I would say that there is direct knowledge and there is indirect knowledge, and psychedelics can assist you in discovering or recognizing knowledge indirectly.
Let me use an analogy. You have a dream about swimming in the ocean. So do I. What does it mean? Does it have any meaning? Well, it might. But you might have had a near-drowning incident; I might be an olympic-level swimmer. That dream may have meaning, but it may mean very different things to the two of us. Which is why I think dreams can be meaningful, and you may be able to discover the meaning, but a dream manual is useless. It may tell you what a swimming-in-the-ocean dream means to the *author*, or historical meanings attirbuted to such a dream, but that is it. Indirect knowledge, not direct.
I have definitely had the impression that I am discovering things about the world, about human nature, about particular relationships, and about myself, on psychedelics. I have also often asked myself if this is accurate information - if I have a different perception of someone or something under the influence, which is the more correct perception? I acknowledge they may both be correct, perceiving different levels, but sometimes it's a stark contrast. For example, I became terrified one night on a psychedelic some years ago. I was certain my life was in imminent danger. Absolutely certain. But wait, I thought. These surroundings are no different than some hours and days ago, and I felt no sense of danger then. Am I wrong now or was I wrong then (or has something changed)? I decided to trust my sober self.
That's a pretty clear example of a false impression, and doesn't discount the possibility of truthful ones. I think anyone who has a bit of experience with psychedlics has had the experience of noticing things that were always there, just being filtered out. There's a good example of a truthful/accurate perception, more accurate in some ways than sober perception. And there's tons of stuff we filter out - from stimuli to threatening ideas. Psychedelics seem to be a way to suddenly expose yourself to these things, and I'm getting better at recognizing them when I'm not tripping. In that way, I think psychs can absolutely be revelatory on a relatively tame level.
Then there's the big stuff. Solipsism, pantheism, dualism, ego loss, new perceptions of time, conscious and unconscious mind, what it means to be human. I think psychedelics have some things to offer on these subjects. However, I would note that I tend to have different insights on different psychedelics. That leads me to believe, at least in cases where these insights are mutually exclusive, that I am not directly discovering something about myself or the world. At best, I may be discovering things indirectly. I'm learning about the machinery that is me, by subjecting it to conditions beyond that which I am used.
It's left me far more open-minded about the possibilities, though.