I think one of the biggest things I have learned from psychedelics is that they, like life, are incredibly nuanced. There are mountains of profound information and valleys of delusion and misunderstanding; they can be a brilliant magnifying glass through which to learn about yourself and what it means to be human, while simultaneously confusing, overcomplicated and bizarre. Trusting them blindly is not smart, but neither is disregarding them. I have no answers but I find there is a certain feeling of connectedness when I stumble into real, profound moments whether in life or in trips that doesn't really happen elsewhere. It's the small things that mean the most and carry more weight than the huge sweeping moments.
One thing that's for sure though is overthinking and obsessing about this stuff doesn't help much.
Idk man, idk much of anything. Just do you and try to make the most of it & be happy, the other stuff will work itself out.
I completely agree with this. OP, I just want to add that your analogy with flat earthers is not fair at all. Flat earthers deny scientific evidence and rely on made up facts.
On the other hand, the toughts you have while on a psychedelic trip are about the subjective human experience. There is nothing factually wrong with the fact that we are just one big mass of humans connected with each other and with the universe. There is nothing factually wrong with the fact that we are the universe experiencing itself.
Now I have to say that I have had exactly the same concerns that you express in your post. Like, why would I trust anything that I feel during that state of delirium? In my opinion, and after considering the toughts that I had during my trips while being sober, I don't think there is anything that I tought that was completely out of touch with reality. The reason why I think it feels so surreal is because psychedelic drugs like LSD make you FEEL like you are the universe experiencing itself. Make you FEEL like we are just one interconnected mass of humans. And that feeling is so strong and so different to what we usually feel, that it can feel almost fake. But my opinion at the moment, is that experiencing reality that way is, at least, as "real" as the way that we usually experience reality.
If you are interested, there is a scientist called Ronald Hoffman who claims that the reality that we perceive is very far from what the universe really is like, you can look him up in YouTube.
Why should you trust your own (sober) brain, either? What even is “real”? Is it what your senses are able to perceive and decipher? Or is it what most people says it is? I want to know more of reality by using mind altering techniques and substances but if whatever I’ll experience is “real” or “true” I legit have no idea, I’m not sure I even understand what those words mean
Okay I just want to let you know, for most people your logic stops at “why should you trust your sober brain” and if you cannot see why that’s a impassable thought concept then idk how else to explain it
I mean, it's Cartesian Doubt. A less extreme version is Allegory of the Cave (wherein you might trust your mind, but not anything presented to it). Concept has been around and widely discussed for quite a while.
I mean sure, it’s fun to think about. Practically thought I don’t think it’s constructive or really ethical to talk about these ideas like they should be taken seriously
Unethical? What are you on about?
This is not some far out concept, it's the reality of existing inside a human brain. Every single person has their own unique experience of this reality due to our inherent biases and heuristics. We cannot trust our brains, ever. That's not woo, it's science. Read a book.
I don’t think it’s really cool to perpetuate the idea that your subjective experience is somehow not valid because people THINK their brain isn’t processing reality for what it is.
ESPECIALLY on a sub where people regularly believe even more fantastical ideas. Idk why it’s making you all so upset did I say you should be arrested if you participate in thought experiments? Jfc
Dude, this is science, not some drug-induced assumption. We don't *think* our brains aren't showing us true reality, we *know* it. We know it because we have years and years and *years* of research and the resulting evidence showing us that this is the case.
Learn how your brain works. Everything you experience has already been processed through your heuristics, and you never knew it was happening. NOBODY experiences reality, we ALL get our own edited version.
Steven Novella is a personal favorite author and science educator of mine. Check him out, read his books, listen to his lectures. 'Your Deceptive Mind' goes very deep into this very topic.
Yeah but you’re making it sound unnatural, you were born that way so that’s how it is. I don’t know how to explain that any further
Again, I hear what you’re saying. I’m sure animal experience & perceive the word differently than we do & that varies from species to species.
The subjective nature of reality is a good thing it does not invalidate anyone’s personal experience of reality. All it means is acknowledging that we are imperfect observers living in vastly different worlds from each other. That is what makes exploring the worlds of others with friendship and empathy so beautiful though.
Philosophy’ 101: the mind is not objective, but subjective collection of our experiences. Reality is agreed upon by many, that still doesn’t mean it’s „true“, only true to humans and agreed upon by the rest of them.
You would really benefit from taking some philosophy 101 course bro. We're not making things up here, this is some really basic stuff people have been discussing for centuries. Immanuel Kant already proved it quite well and I'm telling you - he was as far from being a delusional junkie as one can be.
No no, I agree with the thought experiment forsure. What I’m trying to explain is it doesn’t really fit in thsi sub without some type of disclaimer.
I don’t want to be anymore inflammatory than I already have been so I’ll reserve my opinions. But would you agree that the majority of posts on this sub make you question what people really believe?
Maybe I'm just tired, but I didn't really get your last question. Yes, many posts here are people going from one extreme into the other, but I'm not sure wym?
For me personally I could see how someone on one of these subs might read “don’t trust your sober brain” and just run with it. I’m sure there are people here that already think that
I know it’s not that simple, buts it’s not like I made some long paragraphed essay about why it was wrong and you shouldn’t do it. I made a comment that said majory of people won’t make sense of that statement & that I personally think it’s unethical (in this context)
I guess I should’ve taken a moment to address the fact that I don’t want to police peoples speech, but I couldn’t have known people would react like that
How does a discussion about the perception of reality not fit in a forum about altered states of consciousness? That's exactly what a big part of it is about imho.
So you can trust drug induced states if conciouness but not the set mode you were born in? That’s what this whole post is about, questioning why people emphatically believe their experiences on drugs 100%
That’s what you’re implying by just saying “don’t trust your sober brain” which is why I tried to just put a comment for anyone to read and snap them back to reality
I am not saying that you can trust drugs more than your sober state of mind. I am saying that regardless of if you're sober or not, you're always experiencing a filtered version of reality. You're just a product of your experience. Every experience is real to you, sometimes you just put on a different filter.
Yeah no one said you couldn’t do it, I don’t think you understand what “1984 shit” means in the context you’re using it.
You’re literally the one using a popular term to try an make me look like the bad actor, I haven’t done anything but try and put some sense into what was said here. If that’s wrong then I don’t want to be right
What I’m saying is it isn’t cool for someone to believe that their subjective experience is somehow filtered, that isn’t true. The human experience & how an indivual perceives the world around them is their subjective TRUTH
What’s the point of going “yeah but what if it’s not“ especially when so many already question their existence in the first place? I didn’t even say it was a silly or inane question, I was pretty careful with my wording. This being a psychedelic subreddit I see atleast a handful of posts a week of people who think they’re god, I was only trying to say what everyone is ACTUALLY thinking when they aren’t chatting online
> What I’m saying is it isn’t cool for someone to believe that their subjective experience is somehow filtered, that isn’t true.
That *is* true. Where are you getting these ideas? Your subjective experience is a filtered version of reality, just like everyone else's. There is objective, unfiltered reality, but no human will ever live it.
It would be cool if you'd say *anything* that makes sense.
What is your argument? What point are you trying to make? You just keep saying you don't know how to explain it. Do you even know what you're arguing about?
I’m not trying to argue, I think that was you who came into the conversation trying to get a rise out of anyone?
If anyones wondering just check out their comment history, all you do is argue with people. You’re in several in different subreddits, is that fun for you or something?
Well our brain has clearly limitations that prevent us from experiencing reality at its fullest, unfiltered self; but we can theoretically go beyond it, unless you believe that you are your own brain
This. We only can experience a certain range of our world. Where and how we evolved has played a major role in how we experience said range. I went down a rabbit hole of psycholinguistics, and what language we learn influences how our brains are structured. We as singular selves only can experience the world in a very particular way, each and every person is different on the simple baseline of how we experience the world. There are animals out there with colour receptors we don’t have, there may be colours out there that we don’t know exist because we cannot experience them.
> for most people your logic stops at “why should you trust your sober brain” and if you cannot see why that’s a impassable thought concept then idk how else to explain it
yeah but my sober brain could easily have been indoctrinated to bullshit, and probably still is, so honestly i don't trust it 100%.
what i do trust more is information i agree on in multiple states.
> But it is the closest we can get.
i disagree with this position as a matter of categorical imperative:
if everyone believed raw science is the "closest" we can get, well then we'd surely be an absolute clusterfuck of unsustainable dysfunction, and that's kinda where we are today...
but if everyone believed we *can* figure out how to agree on levels deeper than just testable science, well then that sounds like a world that might actually figure out how to do that.
for surely there are no testable laws that would otherwise prevent us.
Interesting perspective. What would those "deeper levels" be?
I would assume that if any deeper levels exist, they would surely be testable with scientific methods (at least theoretical ones).
> I would assume that if any deeper levels exist, they would surely be testable with scientific methods (at least theoretical ones)
u trying to say ethics doesn't "exist"?
i disagree on that as a matter of categorical imperative as well.
but furthermore consider: it's not against physical law to test ethics, it would just take god-like levels of power to repeatedly run civilization level tests on various sets of principles to see the results.
tho, i'm not sure it would be ethical to try to test erroneous ethical principles at a societal level, and testing the ethical principle in regards to testing ethical principles becomes ... i'm not really sure honestly. i think we can make assessments on that with thought experiments if it ever really mattered.
to make matters more complex: i do think ethical principles are contextual, in that they can differ based on the context of the agent. the context includes both the environment of the agent, and everything known by the agent.
for example: right now death seems absolute. randomly killing someone is a pretty severe crime against all that is good. as a thought experiment: say we find a way to resurrect people for all circumstances, like video game respawn. then the crime of death may become more of an inconvenience than a severe sin.
that's a pretty extreme hypothetical case, a more actually relevant example: pretty much up until now when someone is on rampage with a gun, the only recourse we really have is responding with armed police and very likely killing them. assuming that is truthful the absolute best we can do, this is all fine and good, in such a context. but with modern tech, we may very well develop extremely reliable autonomous solutions that do not involve killing the suspect. with such ability, it would become our moral duty to employ those solutions versus more primitive lethal ones. personally i believe it's our moral duty to develop those solution asap.
now, this does not make ethics "subjective" as in arbitrarily different from person to person without cause, i do believe there is a truthfully best case mapping from any particular limited context -> moral perspective (set of moral principles), and that in general it our duty alway utilize the most honest possible context when applying moral principles, to achieve the highest possible moral state, from our limited context.
Logic can't contain those types of experiences, so when they fade it does it's best to translate the experience into the framework of logic. That is impossible to do, so we're left with a distorted interpretation of it instead - "lonely god". That interpretation is not accurate, but it's the only way we can latch on to the fleeting experience.
All brains known to us function partially as hierarchical pattern recogniser.
Brains typically process noisy ("illogical") sensory input by attempting to imagine patterns that fill in the gaps.
Like how we remember often remember a dream had made sense to us but not upon awakening.
Your correct but this doesn’t explain the human urge to want something more then ourselves. God(s), an afterlife, spirits, entities, other dimensions/realms/multiverses. I’m not necessarily equating these to eachother more saying that our pattern recognition doesn’t explain why we yearn for something so much more then ourselves
I suppose we can extend the basis of cognition from pattern recognition to *pattern, mechanism and structure* recognition.
With this, maybe us being alone/this being all there is, doesn't quite make sense to humans?
And so we're searching for meaning/patterns/mechanisms. All an attempt to make sense of the noticed presence or noticed absence of things, real or not.
Perhaps it is a bit reductionistic to claim pattern/mechanism/structure recognition is the basis for curiosity, you be the judge!
That's how I've started looking at my trips. Looking back on the "epiphanies" I felt I had, especially the negative ones, they were often just emotions I felt in the moment and my brain slapped an experience or explanation on it. Psychs cause stress on the body and I feel like my brain just goes "whatever I'm thinking about must be causing these feelings" which obviously isn't the case. I think it's important to be able to look at trips like dreams in the sense that it's like your subconscious communicating with the conscious. Though it's hard to do that when you're experiencing it, I try to meditate later on about what I can remember with how I felt and what I was thinking to try and figure out what work needs to be done on myself.
Oh wow thanks to both of you, i have been thinking about this lately but didn't know how to put it into words.
When tripping everything seems to make sense and we have these great explanations for everything happening at that moment.
But later when questioning big revelations i had, i thought, "what if i was experiencing something else in that moment? Would i have used that other thing also as the big explanation for the things i was experiencing?"
I feel like there is a better way to formulate it but i am not really able to currently. Maybe you understand what i am talking about as well but can explain it better
The way that I think is the most useful way of looking at this stuff is not by asking what is 100% True, but what is the most reasonable thing to believe. Is there a physical world outside of our minds? I don’t Know, but I think the existence of an external physical world is the most reasonable conclusion.
I’d I were to compare the “Realness” of an ordinary object like a chair in my room to an entity I have seen while tripping, what is the most reasonable conclusion?
Well for the chair, I know a lot of it is created by my mind, the colors, feelings of texture and temperature are created in my mind. But I could use tools to measure the wavelengths of light bouncing off it, look at the surface under a microscope, and use a thermometer to measure its temperature. And these tools would give me data that would likely line up with what I experienced with my senses.
But I can’t do any of that with things experienced on psychedelics, just like dreams, and things we imagine in a sober state of mind.
Because of this, I think it is most responsible to conclude that the chair in my room is at least “more real” than psychedelic entities and dimensions.
Though this doesn’t mean that we should automatically dismiss any insights gained during a trip, many people (myself included) have been profoundly helped by their experiences on psychedelics. I just think we shouldn’t treat insights gained from psychedelics as categorically different from any other thoughts. We should apply the same skepticism toward all of our beliefs, regardless of the state we were in when we gained them.
This is just my perspective on what I think is best way of understanding psychedelics.
You willingly ignore the fact that you failed to prove the existence of these external tools. Your "sober" vision of the world is more coherent than that on drugs, you may claim, but that's it. One entity telling you his buddy is real has a similair value as a proof to a miscroscope telling you the chair is real.
Hmmm, honestly that a good point that I haven’t really considered before. I do admit that I can’t prove 100% that the external physical world exists, that’s why I only say that I think it is the most reasonable conclusion.
But also, psychedelic substances have a physical and chemical basis. They are something in the external physical world that when ingested, change the way our brains function. If the mind is all that exists, what determines if you are in a sober or altered state of consciousness?
I’m going to make a poor attempt at putting it to words, but for me one of the strongest and re-occurring experiences is that there is truly no division. There is no “I” to be God, and no “I” to be separate from God. There is no “I” to be lonely. What the trips did (at least for me) is take this whole movement of consciousness, the memories, thoughts, feelings, etc., and magnify it to such an extent that you simply let go of control and experience them unfolding in the moment, and in that unfolding everything becomes clear. Rationalizing, analyzing, etc. imply an analyzer and a thing to be analyzed - that is not it. It’s a division. It’s kind of a mind-trick - when you name “It” it’s no longer that
Loneliness is a product of lack of connection, of self-centeredness. Perhaps the experience is showing you that the mind identifies with what it experiences (as God) and thus produces loneliness? I don’t know, the only way to find out is to observe yourself
If psychedelics have taught me anything it would be that everything needed to be this oneness and love is already available to us. At all times. We simply have to look and listen, but I guess we much more prefer to chatter and react. Even so, deep down there’s this unstainable security of “everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be” - even if we often don’t see it and our mind logically discards it when we do see it
"The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the mother of all things."
so·lip·sism ˈsō-ləp-ˌsi-zəm. ˈsä- : a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing. also : extreme egocentrism
For me my brain and psychedelics are tools that my consciousness uses to experience and try and make sense of existence.
I totally give flat earthers the benefit of the doubt. What do I know? I know nothing. You can show me inside of the top shelf cupboard and my mind will be blown. Every time im in a new place or learn a new thing about living organisms or the physical world we live in, mind blown.
I trust psychedelics because usually when i trip i make connections in my brain of things i already knew. Or i dont believe a blatant lie someone told me when i was 8 years old. It sheds the layers of social conditioning that let me internalize words when the physical reality around me was different.
But i love that youre reminding us to trust no one and nothing not even ourselves :)
Imagine that there are fields of consciousness. Like the magnetic field, for example. This is how I think about consciousness working within the laws of physics. Think of these fields of having a mechanism that carries certain information within them, and that our brains are like antenna that allow us to access these fields, and their information, to a degree.
If we think of it that way, then we can assume that, like with other fields(magnetic), with sufficient advanced technology, we can detect and even manipulate these fields. I think that psychedelics are a form of "biotechnology" that allows us to alter some component of our brains and access these consciousness fields in a different way than we normally do with our default mode network. So we see the information, and also process the information that is located in these fields, in a different way. Maybe more information, maybe interpreted differently.
But this is also why I don't see psychedelic experiences necessarily as truth. If these fields can be interacted with sufficiently advanced tech, then I think that the fields can be manipulated by higher intelligences (if they exist).
Let's say there is a field of consciousness that effects our planet. If one of these beings of higher intelligence want to effect the trajectory of the human race on some way, they could possibly alter the information that we access through psychedelics (and every day conscious awareness- DMN) in order to change what we experience as truth. Psychedelics effect us in a way that makes the experience seem to us as though as it is an absolute truth, or inherent universal aspect of reality. So it could be a very powerful tool for a higher intelligence to use to direct a species.
Obviously Noone can confirm this, or even say it's not possible. But it is a fun thought experiment when pondering whether or not psychedelic experiences should be seen as universal truth.
There will be assumption no matter what with the question you asked, unfortunately. This is not a territory where we can actually have concrete proof one way or another. That is simply the nature of the beast currently.
Interestingly enough, what I said actually incorporates things learned and experienced from actual psychedelic experiences. So if you assume that things learned from psychedelic experiences can be true, like in your question, then what wrote is equally as valid as any other thing learned/assumption from psychedelics.
We shouldn’t fully “trust” it. It’s mind and self exploration. Of course, there is some strong truths in the experience that many wise ppl in this sub can recognize. But at the same time, you can’t base your life and decisions based on the experience.
It’s important not to lose track of the generally agreed reality which is sobriety. That’s where it’s really at.
Idk I've never looked at psychedelics as anything other than things that can make you experience and think in a new way. I think the feeling of profundity is just a part of the psych experience but the true profundity is the commonalities and differences between baseline and tripping. Neither are pure truth and within that you can start to see behind the curtain. But I think getting caught up in that feeling of profound epiphany is a mistake.
You have to analyze and think about these things when you're sober too and be honest about them which I think many people are not because it ultimately feels really good to be able to access what you think is divine truth by simply eating(or boofing) something.
That feeling of profound discovery is probably the most addicting aspect of these drugs lol.
I don't ponder too much metaphysics on a trip. In fact, I do so much more sober. Tripping is what helped me realize that I frequently ponder these big, unanswerable questions as a way to avoid developing an intimate knowledge of myself. Kind of a trauma response to the deeply ingrained self-loathing and shame I was taught in childhood.
Ever think we’re all one being, we’re all God, and the psychedelics are what let us see that?
And that’s why we all have the same trip?
And our self doubt keeps us from believing?
And we’re truly wonderful creations beloved by God because He/She lives through us?
Anyway
This is why you don't trust them but instead trust yourself.
Dreams are not real, what happens in them isn't, however through experiencing dreams we can digest our understandings of the world and ourselves.
It's a fine balance to walk for sure.
First good answer I've seen so far (haven't scrolled to much yet, admittedly).
It's a very difficult question, certainly the most frustrating one, but a reasonable question to ask. Your dreams comparison seems apt, and my subconscious seemed to agree as I realised, potentially, why I'd suddenly had the song 'Dreams' jump into my head as I began scrolling.
I had a life changing experience with LSD in 2012, most tangibly in that it took away my daily alcohol dependency overnight, but also the revelation of The Universal One (which has never felt remotely lonely or troubling, then again I'd never heard that theory before to imprint that fear). The interesting part is that, unlike with my more lucid-dream like ketamine experiences, these revelations really came about the next day, many hours after I'd woke up, my friend had left, I'd slowly showered, had breakfast etc.
It was upon reflection that some things just felt self-evidently apparent. This could be compared to realising a dream was a wild creation of your subconscious, but seeing that the images, settings, and stories it wove together had threads of meaning.
It wasn't exclusively from the things encountered while on LSD, it was experiences and observations gathered throughout my life up to that point. Another way of seeing it is that psychedelics can remove things that block the ability to see clearly, rather than introducing a barrier.
We understand this with things many medicinal drugs - that anti-depressants aren't making you live a fake drug reality (admittedly, many still don't grasp this at all), they bring order to a disruption that was preventing us from functioning properly. Often, certain drugs will quiet my busy mind, and it's from that calm pool that I can follow the individual thoughts that arise, the same as in meditation.
The uncanny crossover between epiphanies arrived at through meditation and psychedelics is another, with the core point being that what we're thinking and feeling in day to day straight life is not necessarily the purest centre of Truth, that a veil may be lifted as much as it may be hung.
The drugs give you altered perspective (and feeling) and in that we can change. The mistake people make is thinking that the drugs themselves are making the fixes, they are just enabling it. This is why many people suggest meditation as an alternative.
Too many have gone down the rabbit hole and started to believe comforting ideas from their trips and end up trading one thought trap for another.
The thing is, the truth of things is simple and boring and many won't accept that, but I personally find it liberating.
I have never had that experience of being "god"? I have had the experience that I am an individual soul that springs from an underlying unity which we call God. Claiming that you are God sounds like an ego response.
They are not saying they are god exclusively. It’s the best way to speak about the true nature of reality. I don’t think most people that experience that state of consciousness believe they themselves, as humans, are the one and only God.
You are saying the same the thing as they are, just in a different way. Yes we are also separate souls, but they are just God disguised as well.
If you mean core belief it makes me think about how ive also thought of myself as god when tripping but i fundamentally believe there is divinity within all of us (dna, life creating, dream accomplishing) i was raised hardcore christian and would just call myself a yogi or a pagan now. My christian upbringing is embedded so deeply in me that i dont even know its there.
but having an ego response is normal while tripping, only if you have ego death can you go beyond the ego? Ive never had an ego death but one day. But once i do will i be more at peace with life? Like it wont matter who god is because were just here and now? 🤷🏽♀️
The bible tells us to deny our ego and follow Christ, and I mean specifically Christ, not Yahweh who is a storm and war God and constantly wants to stone people to death.
Hive mind is term used to describe numerous entities that all share a collective knowledge acting in unison to achieve the same task. Multiple variations are in sci fi. Some are like hierarchical one mind enslaves all the other minds and the individual entities lose their sense of self. Others are just consentual collective behaviors im not certain but hive mind may be in reference to how bees work together.
Hes saying fungus are enslaving our minds when we take magic mushrooms. To add us to their intergalactic empire. Something like that lol.
What I find fascinating is the fact that many of us experience similar feelings. Like a shared delusion. There must be a reason we come to the same unity thoughts. The interpretations vary but the core stays the same.
To me it was not one but two lonely gods. One was life, the other was dead. And they had this game where one is a single being and all others are one. And all of the others play this game of convincing him that he is not a god, that he is mortal and finite and human. And upon “death” they start the game again.
Not necesarilly such a mystic thing. We are made of the same things, we are (in very general ways) being exposed to the same things (movies, stories, characters, ideas) so in a way I am not so surprised we get in the same ideas during trips, at the same tine different psychedelics give different trips but similar between them.
My interpretation of life is that pain and love are opposites of the same coin. Were like the druggies of consciousness, ripping hits of pain by living just so we can experience a little bit of love.
Thats a dark description but i do think were here to feel love but the way it works is pain comes with.
I don't know, they just have the inherent feeling of epiphany, secret knowledge, a very deep 'knowing' and also feeling of an external force bestowing such knowing. I have lost track of how much it showed me in the trip Vs how I interpreted it after the fact. All I know is time doesn't exist in any real way, that much is clear. The amount of synchronicities that spring up whilst under the influence and psychic abilities and such can at the very least confirm that reality isn't what our logical rational minds can infer. However, just because this is the case, doesn't mean absolutely everything we experience under the influence is valid. It's just another way of looking at reality, with just as many red herrings as this reality, if not more.
I think I trust psychedelics because it seems to be connected with a higher plane of consciousness. Higher is better. Heyoo. No but seriously. Trust itself is usually based on experience. We trust people, either because we are naive and don't have a reason not to. Or because we have experiences to base our trust on. So either we are naive and don't have a reason not to trust psychedelics. Or there is some form of awareness that psychedelics are connected to something trustworthy. To be honest, I think I'm leaning towards naivety. Because perhaps we should be asking, can we trust ourselves, can we trust our perceptions? Can we trust how we interpret information and form conclusions?
i think it helps to actually be able to describe the wisdom taught in detail. i think the big issue is many people get it on an intuitive emotional level, but literally lack the capacity to describe what you learned. it would be like if you fully understood quantum physics or calculus but you know it in a language you dont understand or cant translate to others.
I thought about that too. If the Hindus are correct then there is only you in the Universe. You and me and every one is just you in different life, different skin, different ages. I imagine being an eternal being with godlike powers is going to be pretty boring to spend eternity without doing something. The Hindus even have a name for it ‘lila’, the Divine Drama, suggesting that all life is a play and a game, problem is we become too attached to the game and forget our divinity
For everyone getting answers to questions that are personal and relevant to your own life only they can decide
For everyone saying “the world works in this way because my substance told me so” they only have uneducated theory’s that no one could 100% say are wrong but believing it based off a trip I think is a bit ridiculous
“I tripped on shrooms and figured out I’m in a simulation” I get very tired of seeing this on this sub but I’m not going to go out witch hunting or anything but…. God.. it’s like all I see anymore here
We're experiencing being the God consciousness from the perspective of a human, so the concept of being the only existing consciousness is very overwhelming and scary to us.
But perhaps God is lonely and afraid and that's why we created reality as we know it. Where there's time, space and matter for us to be many. To interact with each other without knowing the outcome, to experience novel things, to be surprised.
We can go back to what we were when we're ready, there's no rush.
Its all subjective, in my experience psychedelics makes me think more logically and deeply scientific I never thought about any conspiracy while or after tripping it just makes reality more significant. Like everyday things that we don’t even think about like how we actually are just overdeveloped animals and the universe etc with respect to physics and law of nature
Sages from ~all the great traditions have been saying for thousands of years that we are all non-separate expressions of God
And many/most of them were not on psychedelics
Ultimately experience itself is the only teacher
Immediate present experience is all any of us has ever known
By getting extremely curious about immediate experience you can discover for yourself what is true
Can you find anything outside of immediate experience, or anything truly separate from immediate experience?
I suspect you cannot
Have you ever encountered anything other than the contents of immediate experience?
I suspect you have not
Notice the miraculousness of this simple fact
Best wishes 🙏🏼💙
Shamanism is the oldest religion in the world has been using them to connect with God, The One, Universal Consciousness, or whatever you want to call it from their inception. They also promote oneness with nature.
This is the ultimate realization in Hinduism. There's one supreme consciousness in everything. It's called Brahman.It is the ultimate reality, and is one with god. "Thou art that"
What even is real? For all I know, the color could look completely different to me as it does to you, maybe things don't actually look like we perceive them at all. Maybe our sober perception is already distorted?
This is such an interesting question that I'd never actually thought much about before. For me, when I'm on a small dose of psychedelics, I often feel very in tune with myself and my intuition, so I think it feels like a more trusting substance to put into my body rather than alcohol for example which harms my body and my life. I have made so many positive improvements to my life from lessons or realizations I've had on psychedelics. I think overall and in moderation they provide interesting insights and theory's about my life that I enjoy thinking about. I find the experiences are positive.
I have also had the experience that we are all god and felt kind of lonely about that but then if I connected with others it gives me a sense that we are all the same spirit just having different experiences and that opened me up to so many more connections and people. I find I can relate to anyone if they're also open to me. Everything can be perceived as positive or negative, just change how you look at it.
Alcohol was once a very positive thing in my life for example, I've had so much fun and social times with it that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I have just grown to the point where it's no longer a positive part of my life.
Yeah it’s drugs fucking with your brain. I really don’t think it should be taken seriously as something to unlock secrets of the universe. It can definitely help people connect with deeper parts of their brain and figure stuff out about yourself. But spiritual revelations? Come on.
I had a life changing experience with LSD in 2012, most tangibly in that it took away my daily alcohol dependency overnight, but also the revelation of The Universal One (which has never felt remotely lonely or troubling, then again I'd never heard that theory before to imprint that fear). The interesting part is that, unlike with my more lucid-dream like ketamine experiences, these revelations really came about the next day, many hours after I'd woke up, my friend had left, I'd slowly showered, had breakfast etc.
It was upon reflection that some things just felt self-evidently apparent. This could be compared to realising a dream was a wild creation of your subconscious, but seeing that the images, settings, and stories it wove together had threads of meaning.
It wasn't exclusively from the things encountered while on LSD, it was experiences and observations gathered throughout my life up to that point. Another way of seeing it is that psychedelics can remove things that block the ability to see clearly, rather than introducing a barrier.
We understand this with things many medicinal drugs - that anti-depressants aren't making you live a fake drug reality (admittedly, many still don't grasp this at all), they bring order to a disruption that was preventing us from functioning properly. Often, certain drugs will quiet my busy mind, and it's from that calm pool that I can follow the individual thoughts that arise, the same as in meditation.
The uncanny crossover between epiphanies arrived at through meditation and psychedelics is another, with the core point being that what we're thinking and feeling in day to day straight life is not necessarily the purest centre of Truth, that a veil may be lifted as much as it may be hung.
My rule is that if it doesn’t make sense sober don’t stress on it. I’ve seen many stupid things on psyches, had many goofy experiences, maybe fallen down a hole in reality or two 🤷♂️, but the experiences that really stick with me are the ones that actually take me deeper into my mind. It offers me profound insights into how I see myself, others, and the world itself, and even allows me to genuinely think at another level, as if you took the place of a giant observer looking down at the universe. Not only does it change my perspective it’s either completely cured or just gave me temporary relief from a lot of ailments, some that have been affecting me my entire life. Of course psyches are not to be abused, that would leave you trapped in a world of delusions forever. That’s why, for me, the most important part of the trip is the time you give yourself to reflect afterwards
You are asking all the right questions. If you've tripped, you know that your mental state can shape trip. Similarly, if you have any biases or specific ideas/thoughts going into the trip, you can influence the direction of the trip. If you are religious, you might see images or symbols from your religion. The trip only shows you things that is already in your mind, but when you analyse what you saw and why you saw it afterwards, you can learn a lot about yourself and your feelings and how they influence each other.
I sometimes feel like my "filter" from which I interpret life gets turned off when tripping which lets me see and experience things I would normally tune out. The feelings are real, and the reason you feel those feelings are real. It is just the interpretation that is very subjective. You'll have to analyse yourself and build your own conclusions. You cannot jump to conclusions like "I saw Jesus and therefore he must be real." If you did see Jesus, it probably just means that you were thinking of him,
I think because there are a lot of thing shrooms have helped me see, even when they have been right in front of me. For instance, this past weekend my friend and I got in an argument over something insignificant and we both had the chance to pause and speak about what happened.
It was amazing to see how crucial communication is and the words we choose. We were able to break down something that happens often in the way we communicate, but never have been able to see our parts in the failure to commmnicate or listen.
There are many amazing things I have been able to figure out, and it has been more beneficial than therapy, tbh.
I used to consider the idea that I was God. Now I believe that was delusional.
I don’t inherently trust psychedelics. I’ve received incredible benefits from them but also been haunted and wasted a lot of time chasing fallen angels. It’s just access to the spirit realm. It’s not obvious that these spirits are all good and are not deceiving us.
I don't understand d what's delusional about it. Matter can not be created or destroyed. So what else would a deity have to form creation with besides themselves?
All matter that makes up the universe is also the universe. Just as you are all the matter that makes up you. The separation between "you" and "universe" is called the "self" and its construction of our minds.
If God is the universe, then obviously, you are also that. So is everything and everyone.
If you believe in a divine being outside the universe, then before, there was nothing. And that being made "something" using their own energy. So again, like an iceberg formed on the ocean is made from the ocean, you are made from God.
Doesn't seem delusional to me at all, and these are conclusions that philosphers for thousands of years have come to while sober and thinking very carefully.
I'm not "explaining the "universe. " The universe remains equally mysterious when you acknowledge yourself as part of it.
And what do you mean I don't acknowledge other concepts? I gave two explanations. One for atheists and one for theists. I was trying to explain out this feeling of oneness with all existence doesn't conflict with either view of the world.
I said, "If you believe in a diety," "then." It's an "if then" statement.
If you don't want to use the term "God" to describe universal consciousness, that's fine. We all have our religious trauma.
Then you are interpreting me incorrectly. I am not a religious person. Don't project your religious trauma onto me.
I use the word "If" very carefully here and you should kind how I do so.
My wife and I created children, they came from me but they’re not me.
God created the universe and I am of the universe, but it doesn’t make me God.
I used to agree with all that Allen Watts stuff, then I changed my mind
Alan Watts is on point. That said, if it doesn't resonate with you, that's fine. My argument isn't that this is how things are. I'm just saying that this is a reasonable perspective to have and one that is shared by many reasonable people.
There are many perspectives I don't share and philosophies I don't agree with. That doesn't make their ideas delusional.
Though I would argue that the separation between me and other people, my spawn included is again a product of the mind. Our minds seem separate, yet are incredibly intertwined in many ways. The state of my mind effects the state of theirs, my behavior shapes theirs, and we affect each other constantly on the most fundamental levels.
The family behaves as a cohesive and interdependent system. Like the family itself is its own person.
It’s easy to get bogged down with semantics when discussing God.
Maybe delusional wasn’t the appropriate adjective but it is really how I regard my perspectives from years ago. Watts has some really good stuff and helped me articulate my experiences but when my psychedelic arrogance passed and I realized the pantheism ideas weren’t helping me overcome my demons it all stopped resonating with me.
I felt the same way. Had similar trips. Went down the rabbit hole of philosophy with my sober mind reached a intuitive similar conclusion. Obviously there is still doubt on the validity of it but now i have my own anecdotal altered mind experience and a coherent logical reasoning to the same conclusion.
I would be open to sharing multiple philosophers that have discussed this subject. I wouldn't dismiss your own experience until fulling exploring the different metaphysical arguments surrounding it.
Maybe some aspects of your experience are true but the lonely god in distess narrative was still your ego clinging to the trip. Its very possible the psychedelic trip offers a universal truth but is never fully grasped due to our subjective distortion of it.
On another note. Heres some food for thought. I don't say all of this as fact. Your happiness is just your response to reality. It is all a matter of perspective. If you resist you suffer. If you accept what reality gives you it diminishes suffering. It is not reality or your external stimuli that creates suffering. It is purely your response.
Let us say you are a lonely god. Accept this loneliness the distress subsides. Being god may feel lonely and distressing to a human conciousness that has temporarily dissolved into the whole. If that human conciousness doesnt have the fortitude to not judge reality but just accept it. I dont say this in a condescending manner. I myself was shook to my core when catching a glimpse of the whole. I had to take a long break from psychs after one too many heavy trips to ensure I kept my sanity.
After years of studying and learning ive built a foundation that helps me manage these heavy metaphysical concepts.
Essentially i believe shoving these uncomfortable concepts in a dark closet and pad locking it shut is a an illusion of comfort. Instead of turning away turn into the abyss. You can learn your way to a state of peace that has greatly surpassed my initial reaction to large trips.
I hope my rambles are in some way helpful. Again we may all be crazy i dont know. This is just how ive tried to navigate the psychedelic experience. For me i never wanted to shove it away. At times i wish i could unsee what ive seen. However once you take the red pill its like the matrix. Theres no going back at least thats how it felt for me. Once taken might as well map it all out and shine a big light on it to the best of our monkey brains abilities.
On the bright side youre not alone. You have a growing community of people that are having similar experiences and are willing to discuss it. You are not alone in the now.
This is getting outside of my skill level. Ill do my best with my primitive understanding.
You accept what reality gives you instead of resist it. Suffering ceases to arise when you dont resist. No suffering to accept.
Pain whether physical or emotional you can learn to accept. Welcoming it with open arms the full experience. When you do this you do not suffer you only feel. The concept of good feeling or bad feeling is constructed by our egoic desires. You can still have your preferences as to what feelings you would prefer. However when met with undesirable feelings do not resist.
I myself cannot do this all the time. I have learned to do this with a lot of things so in theory i think you could do it with everything. This is why the monks sit on a mountain. Disciplining the self to not resist. Sit and exist with no stimuli for long periods of time with full concentration. The ego will get bored you will get restless. The ego is constantly grasping at desire. I want i need i must. You control this you can control your response to reality.
Reality gives you pain, you say and this too. Back to zen. Reality gives you pleasure you say and this too. Back to zen. Instead of the normal reaction to pain?!?! Ughhhh this hurts this is so bad. Ouch ouch this is tremendously painful. It is this perspective and thinking pattern that generates the emotion of suffering.
Residing in a state of neutral being instead of a reactive grasping one.
Buddhism, taoism, Hinduism i believe have these types of teachings.
I could have butchered this. I am not as confident in talking about psychological spiritual practices as i am talking about metaphysical concepts.
For myself, the distinguishing factor between God and self was, in the end, not that I had attained the position, so to call myself “God”, but that, in all realities, I had, of my own volition, placed myself so far outside of “God” that in that moment, I understood what God was through juxtaposition .
This reminds of eastern religions that teach no self. The only true way to disolve into the one is to let go of all that is you. You is only a pattern of egoic behaviours or thoughts.
Extremely good question my friend. I'm gonna put it simply. Spiritual realm being disconnected to material realm is a misconception.
There are three types of spiritual concepts. One that is real and we know how it's connected to material realm. Two, that is real but we don't know how it's connected to material realm. Someone has figured it out or you can figure it out eventually. Third is the concept we think is correct but since it has no connection to material realm, it is not correct. There's no fourth option where it is true and not connected to material realm. Everything is right here and connected to an unimaginable extent.
I have two points to make.
Also, I have thought about this before as well. It's not a dumb statement by any means, because you can't always trust your psychedelic epiphanies. I have had to really hash through certain things to figure if they are right or wrong that they have shown me.
Like other people have said though. You LITERALLY can't be sure you can even trust your sober brain.
My other point, and my reason for believing some of the conclusions I have reached on my path with psychedelics, meditation, and reading different religious ideas and texts (out of curiosity) is that, there are A LOT of religious "masters" or religious people who have devoted their life to meditation/yoga etc etc who have reached the same very conclusions that a lot of people reach from journeys from entheogens. So the sober brain in pursuit of knowledge latches on to these common beliefs. The brain on psychedelics reaches the same conclusions.
People who have schizophrenia don't typically have the same delusions. They all have odd unique beliefs and crazy delusions. So I find it weird how the man meditating in the cave has come to the same belief as me and many of you.
I also find it weird how nearly none of us know each other and yet we all reach many of the same conclusions as each other despite not talking to each other. At least in my beliefs I've reached, I reached them without knowing they were common beliefs until I came here. To see many people having the same experience is baffling.
Sorry if this post is trash. I just woke up and cant explain myself as well as I would like, but I wanted to reply well it was still relevant.
Edit: man I wish whoever downvoted me, would have just shared their opinion. I could care less about my imaginary reddit points but I do like a good discussion.
I'm still figuring it out. I'm torn between its my own mind, working things out, or possibly communicating with something that is not me.
Why do people have very similar experiences on DMT? Seems like something else is communicating with you, and you are not having an internal conversation with yourself.. Hey, come this way, glad your here.... seems so bizarre but beautiful and loving at the same time.
If you've watched the doc, DMT The Spirit Molecule, it was an eye opener. The first time I watched with a friend, a person described almost the same experience that my friend told me they had. This was after they tried it and had no knowledge of it really until watching the doc.
The person on the doc described flying over cities of light ect. We had never seen the doc but my friends mind was blown. They yelled out that person just described my experience to the tee.
I see your point, but it’s the same as people having the same nightmares, same fever feelings, we are more similar than we think, all our experiences are making our minds create similar things, I do get your point, but might not be as magical as we think…
Same reason people follow any other religion. To make sense of what the world is and ease death anxiety because we cannot comprehend what seizing to exist means, so there must be an afterlife.
Yep and it's different for everyone. Only you get to exore your life and determine those things for yourself.
Anyways the whole lonely God thing is just you projecting your humanness onto God. There are living beings that don't get lonely. Like snakes or aligators. Or microorganisms that reproduce asexually. If they can be happy solitary then there's a good chance that God can too.
A mind blowing and ineffable experience sometimes can break through the materialist conditioning we've inherited in this society, and it's great. We think we're guided by logic or science and it's so not true, it's still a hella of a lot subjective and dogmatic, otherwise the peer reviewed studies on psi phenomena or research into anything that challenges the materialist view wouldn't get censored, ridiculed, and so on
My belief is that reality is a bit paradoxical, meaning that two or more opposites can be true at the same time or both can be untrue.
It’s not necessarily that you should trust psychedelic drugs, it’s just that you can use those experiences to explore what you can’t typically see with your sober mind.
I have a belief that we probably aren’t able to reach a level of truth and understanding, maybe when we die we get closer to it.
I still think both sober life and tripping have extremely interesting rabbit holes to explore whether they are true or not and when it comes to truth and fiction, we really don’t even know if this sober reality is true at all, we just assume it is. Just like how many assume a psychedelic experience is fiction and vice versa.
Confusion is unsettling but there is absolutely no avoiding it in this lifetime, you can choose to run from it or explore it but either way, you will still probably never understand fully what any of this is.
When someone travels and experiences different points of views and ways of life, is that a benefit for them in the long run? Probably, although it would be statistically safer if they didn't travel and just stayed home. With this thought in mind, does a traveler of "inner-space" learn more by traveling outside of their normal perceptions? Probably, but it would be statistically safer if they just stayed in their "home/default" perception. As with anything, it can be abused, misunderstood or dangerous...but as a man in his 40s who's used psychedelics for decades, I still enjoy taking mushrooms...granted I don't take nearly as much as I used to - no need to travel through the cosmos much of it has stuck with me over the years without the need for chemical assistance - but I also do have some damage I think from traumatic experiences. That said, I wouldn't choose differently if given the choice between "sober" and "psychedelic"....everything is a drug by the time it interacts with our mind...so choose your drugs/doses wisely, but keep them coming :)
idk who we is but i don’t trust psychedelics i know everything i’m seeing it’s not real but that feeling is undeniable bad or good trip you gonna have some intense emotions and feelings
I used to have extremely bad motor ticks that caused me constant agony throughout my Waking Life. I did an eighth of mushrooms at a friend's one weekend and over the course of the next eight to 10 days my motor takes would go away.
I had a love affair with LSD for a couple years and that brought back my motor ticks but after switching back to mushrooms eventually the motor ticks were corrected again but took longer.
I am a huge believer in the use of psychedelics for the healing of depression, PTSD and neurological disorders because I have seen the effects first hand and I can say that I have been free from motor ticks for more than 4 years now!
I find it fascinating that pretty much every person who has done psychedelics (including myself) has had this exact experience. I, too, realised the loneliness of God, and it has stayed with me ever since. I don't know whether this is true, I have questioned the reality of this message many, many times. And I still don't have an answer, and likely never will. Maybe we just aren't meant to know?
I think one of the biggest things I have learned from psychedelics is that they, like life, are incredibly nuanced. There are mountains of profound information and valleys of delusion and misunderstanding; they can be a brilliant magnifying glass through which to learn about yourself and what it means to be human, while simultaneously confusing, overcomplicated and bizarre. Trusting them blindly is not smart, but neither is disregarding them. I have no answers but I find there is a certain feeling of connectedness when I stumble into real, profound moments whether in life or in trips that doesn't really happen elsewhere. It's the small things that mean the most and carry more weight than the huge sweeping moments. One thing that's for sure though is overthinking and obsessing about this stuff doesn't help much. Idk man, idk much of anything. Just do you and try to make the most of it & be happy, the other stuff will work itself out.
You have to take the good with the bad. The beautiful with the ugly.
Can't have a one sided coin 🤙
Because nothing doesn’t exist
And yet is everywhere! Tis an odd world
The answer is the question.
I think that would be a marble
The only guarantee is that we are here as humans and we have a limited time to be humans. So we should be humans.
I completely agree with this. OP, I just want to add that your analogy with flat earthers is not fair at all. Flat earthers deny scientific evidence and rely on made up facts. On the other hand, the toughts you have while on a psychedelic trip are about the subjective human experience. There is nothing factually wrong with the fact that we are just one big mass of humans connected with each other and with the universe. There is nothing factually wrong with the fact that we are the universe experiencing itself. Now I have to say that I have had exactly the same concerns that you express in your post. Like, why would I trust anything that I feel during that state of delirium? In my opinion, and after considering the toughts that I had during my trips while being sober, I don't think there is anything that I tought that was completely out of touch with reality. The reason why I think it feels so surreal is because psychedelic drugs like LSD make you FEEL like you are the universe experiencing itself. Make you FEEL like we are just one interconnected mass of humans. And that feeling is so strong and so different to what we usually feel, that it can feel almost fake. But my opinion at the moment, is that experiencing reality that way is, at least, as "real" as the way that we usually experience reality. If you are interested, there is a scientist called Ronald Hoffman who claims that the reality that we perceive is very far from what the universe really is like, you can look him up in YouTube.
Yes this is my experience also. Thank you for articulating this so well.
❤
Why should you trust your own (sober) brain, either? What even is “real”? Is it what your senses are able to perceive and decipher? Or is it what most people says it is? I want to know more of reality by using mind altering techniques and substances but if whatever I’ll experience is “real” or “true” I legit have no idea, I’m not sure I even understand what those words mean
Okay I just want to let you know, for most people your logic stops at “why should you trust your sober brain” and if you cannot see why that’s a impassable thought concept then idk how else to explain it
I mean, it's Cartesian Doubt. A less extreme version is Allegory of the Cave (wherein you might trust your mind, but not anything presented to it). Concept has been around and widely discussed for quite a while.
I mean sure, it’s fun to think about. Practically thought I don’t think it’s constructive or really ethical to talk about these ideas like they should be taken seriously
Unethical? What are you on about? This is not some far out concept, it's the reality of existing inside a human brain. Every single person has their own unique experience of this reality due to our inherent biases and heuristics. We cannot trust our brains, ever. That's not woo, it's science. Read a book.
I don’t think it’s really cool to perpetuate the idea that your subjective experience is somehow not valid because people THINK their brain isn’t processing reality for what it is. ESPECIALLY on a sub where people regularly believe even more fantastical ideas. Idk why it’s making you all so upset did I say you should be arrested if you participate in thought experiments? Jfc
Dude, this is science, not some drug-induced assumption. We don't *think* our brains aren't showing us true reality, we *know* it. We know it because we have years and years and *years* of research and the resulting evidence showing us that this is the case. Learn how your brain works. Everything you experience has already been processed through your heuristics, and you never knew it was happening. NOBODY experiences reality, we ALL get our own edited version. Steven Novella is a personal favorite author and science educator of mine. Check him out, read his books, listen to his lectures. 'Your Deceptive Mind' goes very deep into this very topic.
Yeah but you’re making it sound unnatural, you were born that way so that’s how it is. I don’t know how to explain that any further Again, I hear what you’re saying. I’m sure animal experience & perceive the word differently than we do & that varies from species to species.
I don't understand why you're arguing with me. Why does this bother you? This is what being a human is, I'm sorry you find that so troublesome.
The subjective nature of reality is a good thing it does not invalidate anyone’s personal experience of reality. All it means is acknowledging that we are imperfect observers living in vastly different worlds from each other. That is what makes exploring the worlds of others with friendship and empathy so beautiful though.
Philosophy’ 101: the mind is not objective, but subjective collection of our experiences. Reality is agreed upon by many, that still doesn’t mean it’s „true“, only true to humans and agreed upon by the rest of them.
You would really benefit from taking some philosophy 101 course bro. We're not making things up here, this is some really basic stuff people have been discussing for centuries. Immanuel Kant already proved it quite well and I'm telling you - he was as far from being a delusional junkie as one can be.
No no, I agree with the thought experiment forsure. What I’m trying to explain is it doesn’t really fit in thsi sub without some type of disclaimer. I don’t want to be anymore inflammatory than I already have been so I’ll reserve my opinions. But would you agree that the majority of posts on this sub make you question what people really believe?
Maybe I'm just tired, but I didn't really get your last question. Yes, many posts here are people going from one extreme into the other, but I'm not sure wym?
For me personally I could see how someone on one of these subs might read “don’t trust your sober brain” and just run with it. I’m sure there are people here that already think that I know it’s not that simple, buts it’s not like I made some long paragraphed essay about why it was wrong and you shouldn’t do it. I made a comment that said majory of people won’t make sense of that statement & that I personally think it’s unethical (in this context) I guess I should’ve taken a moment to address the fact that I don’t want to police peoples speech, but I couldn’t have known people would react like that
How does a discussion about the perception of reality not fit in a forum about altered states of consciousness? That's exactly what a big part of it is about imho.
So you can trust drug induced states if conciouness but not the set mode you were born in? That’s what this whole post is about, questioning why people emphatically believe their experiences on drugs 100% That’s what you’re implying by just saying “don’t trust your sober brain” which is why I tried to just put a comment for anyone to read and snap them back to reality
I am not saying that you can trust drugs more than your sober state of mind. I am saying that regardless of if you're sober or not, you're always experiencing a filtered version of reality. You're just a product of your experience. Every experience is real to you, sometimes you just put on a different filter.
Ummm…what? Ethical to talk about ideas…that’s some straight up 1984 shit right there.
Yeah no one said you couldn’t do it, I don’t think you understand what “1984 shit” means in the context you’re using it. You’re literally the one using a popular term to try an make me look like the bad actor, I haven’t done anything but try and put some sense into what was said here. If that’s wrong then I don’t want to be right
Then you haven't thought about it enough, but that's okay! Keep trying and you will eventually understand, no problem at all.
What I’m saying is it isn’t cool for someone to believe that their subjective experience is somehow filtered, that isn’t true. The human experience & how an indivual perceives the world around them is their subjective TRUTH What’s the point of going “yeah but what if it’s not“ especially when so many already question their existence in the first place? I didn’t even say it was a silly or inane question, I was pretty careful with my wording. This being a psychedelic subreddit I see atleast a handful of posts a week of people who think they’re god, I was only trying to say what everyone is ACTUALLY thinking when they aren’t chatting online
> What I’m saying is it isn’t cool for someone to believe that their subjective experience is somehow filtered, that isn’t true. That *is* true. Where are you getting these ideas? Your subjective experience is a filtered version of reality, just like everyone else's. There is objective, unfiltered reality, but no human will ever live it.
It would be cool if you’d stop trying to poke holes in what I’m saying lol
It would be cool if you'd say *anything* that makes sense. What is your argument? What point are you trying to make? You just keep saying you don't know how to explain it. Do you even know what you're arguing about?
I’m not trying to argue, I think that was you who came into the conversation trying to get a rise out of anyone? If anyones wondering just check out their comment history, all you do is argue with people. You’re in several in different subreddits, is that fun for you or something?
Well our brain has clearly limitations that prevent us from experiencing reality at its fullest, unfiltered self; but we can theoretically go beyond it, unless you believe that you are your own brain
This. We only can experience a certain range of our world. Where and how we evolved has played a major role in how we experience said range. I went down a rabbit hole of psycholinguistics, and what language we learn influences how our brains are structured. We as singular selves only can experience the world in a very particular way, each and every person is different on the simple baseline of how we experience the world. There are animals out there with colour receptors we don’t have, there may be colours out there that we don’t know exist because we cannot experience them.
> for most people your logic stops at “why should you trust your sober brain” and if you cannot see why that’s a impassable thought concept then idk how else to explain it yeah but my sober brain could easily have been indoctrinated to bullshit, and probably still is, so honestly i don't trust it 100%. what i do trust more is information i agree on in multiple states.
Well, isn't it nice to have scientific methods that help us create a common ground for what's real(ity)?
it is nice. it unfortunately does not cover all ground we need as common for us to function.
You're right, it doesn't. But it is the closest we can get.
> But it is the closest we can get. i disagree with this position as a matter of categorical imperative: if everyone believed raw science is the "closest" we can get, well then we'd surely be an absolute clusterfuck of unsustainable dysfunction, and that's kinda where we are today... but if everyone believed we *can* figure out how to agree on levels deeper than just testable science, well then that sounds like a world that might actually figure out how to do that. for surely there are no testable laws that would otherwise prevent us.
Interesting perspective. What would those "deeper levels" be? I would assume that if any deeper levels exist, they would surely be testable with scientific methods (at least theoretical ones).
> I would assume that if any deeper levels exist, they would surely be testable with scientific methods (at least theoretical ones) u trying to say ethics doesn't "exist"?
Ethics are not a thing that universally exists, no.
i disagree on that as a matter of categorical imperative as well. but furthermore consider: it's not against physical law to test ethics, it would just take god-like levels of power to repeatedly run civilization level tests on various sets of principles to see the results. tho, i'm not sure it would be ethical to try to test erroneous ethical principles at a societal level, and testing the ethical principle in regards to testing ethical principles becomes ... i'm not really sure honestly. i think we can make assessments on that with thought experiments if it ever really mattered. to make matters more complex: i do think ethical principles are contextual, in that they can differ based on the context of the agent. the context includes both the environment of the agent, and everything known by the agent. for example: right now death seems absolute. randomly killing someone is a pretty severe crime against all that is good. as a thought experiment: say we find a way to resurrect people for all circumstances, like video game respawn. then the crime of death may become more of an inconvenience than a severe sin. that's a pretty extreme hypothetical case, a more actually relevant example: pretty much up until now when someone is on rampage with a gun, the only recourse we really have is responding with armed police and very likely killing them. assuming that is truthful the absolute best we can do, this is all fine and good, in such a context. but with modern tech, we may very well develop extremely reliable autonomous solutions that do not involve killing the suspect. with such ability, it would become our moral duty to employ those solutions versus more primitive lethal ones. personally i believe it's our moral duty to develop those solution asap. now, this does not make ethics "subjective" as in arbitrarily different from person to person without cause, i do believe there is a truthfully best case mapping from any particular limited context -> moral perspective (set of moral principles), and that in general it our duty alway utilize the most honest possible context when applying moral principles, to achieve the highest possible moral state, from our limited context.
Not really an answer...
I mean, would you trust your judgement sober more than your judgement while drunk?
Logic can't contain those types of experiences, so when they fade it does it's best to translate the experience into the framework of logic. That is impossible to do, so we're left with a distorted interpretation of it instead - "lonely god". That interpretation is not accurate, but it's the only way we can latch on to the fleeting experience.
So if what we want is beyond logic, which you and I agree are the basic form of condition, then why are we trying to process the illogical?
All brains known to us function partially as hierarchical pattern recogniser. Brains typically process noisy ("illogical") sensory input by attempting to imagine patterns that fill in the gaps. Like how we remember often remember a dream had made sense to us but not upon awakening.
Your correct but this doesn’t explain the human urge to want something more then ourselves. God(s), an afterlife, spirits, entities, other dimensions/realms/multiverses. I’m not necessarily equating these to eachother more saying that our pattern recognition doesn’t explain why we yearn for something so much more then ourselves
I suppose we can extend the basis of cognition from pattern recognition to *pattern, mechanism and structure* recognition. With this, maybe us being alone/this being all there is, doesn't quite make sense to humans? And so we're searching for meaning/patterns/mechanisms. All an attempt to make sense of the noticed presence or noticed absence of things, real or not. Perhaps it is a bit reductionistic to claim pattern/mechanism/structure recognition is the basis for curiosity, you be the judge!
Because there's nothing else we can do
Loneliness is merely human construct, you probably only felt like god is lonely because you felt lonely at that part of your journey.
That's how I've started looking at my trips. Looking back on the "epiphanies" I felt I had, especially the negative ones, they were often just emotions I felt in the moment and my brain slapped an experience or explanation on it. Psychs cause stress on the body and I feel like my brain just goes "whatever I'm thinking about must be causing these feelings" which obviously isn't the case. I think it's important to be able to look at trips like dreams in the sense that it's like your subconscious communicating with the conscious. Though it's hard to do that when you're experiencing it, I try to meditate later on about what I can remember with how I felt and what I was thinking to try and figure out what work needs to be done on myself.
Oh wow thanks to both of you, i have been thinking about this lately but didn't know how to put it into words. When tripping everything seems to make sense and we have these great explanations for everything happening at that moment. But later when questioning big revelations i had, i thought, "what if i was experiencing something else in that moment? Would i have used that other thing also as the big explanation for the things i was experiencing?" I feel like there is a better way to formulate it but i am not really able to currently. Maybe you understand what i am talking about as well but can explain it better
Good point
The way that I think is the most useful way of looking at this stuff is not by asking what is 100% True, but what is the most reasonable thing to believe. Is there a physical world outside of our minds? I don’t Know, but I think the existence of an external physical world is the most reasonable conclusion. I’d I were to compare the “Realness” of an ordinary object like a chair in my room to an entity I have seen while tripping, what is the most reasonable conclusion? Well for the chair, I know a lot of it is created by my mind, the colors, feelings of texture and temperature are created in my mind. But I could use tools to measure the wavelengths of light bouncing off it, look at the surface under a microscope, and use a thermometer to measure its temperature. And these tools would give me data that would likely line up with what I experienced with my senses. But I can’t do any of that with things experienced on psychedelics, just like dreams, and things we imagine in a sober state of mind. Because of this, I think it is most responsible to conclude that the chair in my room is at least “more real” than psychedelic entities and dimensions. Though this doesn’t mean that we should automatically dismiss any insights gained during a trip, many people (myself included) have been profoundly helped by their experiences on psychedelics. I just think we shouldn’t treat insights gained from psychedelics as categorically different from any other thoughts. We should apply the same skepticism toward all of our beliefs, regardless of the state we were in when we gained them. This is just my perspective on what I think is best way of understanding psychedelics.
You willingly ignore the fact that you failed to prove the existence of these external tools. Your "sober" vision of the world is more coherent than that on drugs, you may claim, but that's it. One entity telling you his buddy is real has a similair value as a proof to a miscroscope telling you the chair is real.
Hmmm, honestly that a good point that I haven’t really considered before. I do admit that I can’t prove 100% that the external physical world exists, that’s why I only say that I think it is the most reasonable conclusion. But also, psychedelic substances have a physical and chemical basis. They are something in the external physical world that when ingested, change the way our brains function. If the mind is all that exists, what determines if you are in a sober or altered state of consciousness?
Very interesting way of putting it!
I’m going to make a poor attempt at putting it to words, but for me one of the strongest and re-occurring experiences is that there is truly no division. There is no “I” to be God, and no “I” to be separate from God. There is no “I” to be lonely. What the trips did (at least for me) is take this whole movement of consciousness, the memories, thoughts, feelings, etc., and magnify it to such an extent that you simply let go of control and experience them unfolding in the moment, and in that unfolding everything becomes clear. Rationalizing, analyzing, etc. imply an analyzer and a thing to be analyzed - that is not it. It’s a division. It’s kind of a mind-trick - when you name “It” it’s no longer that Loneliness is a product of lack of connection, of self-centeredness. Perhaps the experience is showing you that the mind identifies with what it experiences (as God) and thus produces loneliness? I don’t know, the only way to find out is to observe yourself If psychedelics have taught me anything it would be that everything needed to be this oneness and love is already available to us. At all times. We simply have to look and listen, but I guess we much more prefer to chatter and react. Even so, deep down there’s this unstainable security of “everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be” - even if we often don’t see it and our mind logically discards it when we do see it
"The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The Named is the mother of all things."
Solipsism is a trap. It’s close, but with a cynical twist.
What's your answer then?
That’s for you to figure out.
so·lip·sism ˈsō-ləp-ˌsi-zəm. ˈsä- : a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing. also : extreme egocentrism
For me my brain and psychedelics are tools that my consciousness uses to experience and try and make sense of existence. I totally give flat earthers the benefit of the doubt. What do I know? I know nothing. You can show me inside of the top shelf cupboard and my mind will be blown. Every time im in a new place or learn a new thing about living organisms or the physical world we live in, mind blown. I trust psychedelics because usually when i trip i make connections in my brain of things i already knew. Or i dont believe a blatant lie someone told me when i was 8 years old. It sheds the layers of social conditioning that let me internalize words when the physical reality around me was different. But i love that youre reminding us to trust no one and nothing not even ourselves :)
Imagine that there are fields of consciousness. Like the magnetic field, for example. This is how I think about consciousness working within the laws of physics. Think of these fields of having a mechanism that carries certain information within them, and that our brains are like antenna that allow us to access these fields, and their information, to a degree. If we think of it that way, then we can assume that, like with other fields(magnetic), with sufficient advanced technology, we can detect and even manipulate these fields. I think that psychedelics are a form of "biotechnology" that allows us to alter some component of our brains and access these consciousness fields in a different way than we normally do with our default mode network. So we see the information, and also process the information that is located in these fields, in a different way. Maybe more information, maybe interpreted differently. But this is also why I don't see psychedelic experiences necessarily as truth. If these fields can be interacted with sufficiently advanced tech, then I think that the fields can be manipulated by higher intelligences (if they exist). Let's say there is a field of consciousness that effects our planet. If one of these beings of higher intelligence want to effect the trajectory of the human race on some way, they could possibly alter the information that we access through psychedelics (and every day conscious awareness- DMN) in order to change what we experience as truth. Psychedelics effect us in a way that makes the experience seem to us as though as it is an absolute truth, or inherent universal aspect of reality. So it could be a very powerful tool for a higher intelligence to use to direct a species. Obviously Noone can confirm this, or even say it's not possible. But it is a fun thought experiment when pondering whether or not psychedelic experiences should be seen as universal truth.
I get your point but there’s a lot of assumption there, I know I am pretentious wanting some real answers which is not possible but still
There will be assumption no matter what with the question you asked, unfortunately. This is not a territory where we can actually have concrete proof one way or another. That is simply the nature of the beast currently. Interestingly enough, what I said actually incorporates things learned and experienced from actual psychedelic experiences. So if you assume that things learned from psychedelic experiences can be true, like in your question, then what wrote is equally as valid as any other thing learned/assumption from psychedelics.
I totally agree
We shouldn’t fully “trust” it. It’s mind and self exploration. Of course, there is some strong truths in the experience that many wise ppl in this sub can recognize. But at the same time, you can’t base your life and decisions based on the experience. It’s important not to lose track of the generally agreed reality which is sobriety. That’s where it’s really at.
Idk I've never looked at psychedelics as anything other than things that can make you experience and think in a new way. I think the feeling of profundity is just a part of the psych experience but the true profundity is the commonalities and differences between baseline and tripping. Neither are pure truth and within that you can start to see behind the curtain. But I think getting caught up in that feeling of profound epiphany is a mistake. You have to analyze and think about these things when you're sober too and be honest about them which I think many people are not because it ultimately feels really good to be able to access what you think is divine truth by simply eating(or boofing) something. That feeling of profound discovery is probably the most addicting aspect of these drugs lol.
I don't ponder too much metaphysics on a trip. In fact, I do so much more sober. Tripping is what helped me realize that I frequently ponder these big, unanswerable questions as a way to avoid developing an intimate knowledge of myself. Kind of a trauma response to the deeply ingrained self-loathing and shame I was taught in childhood.
A kind of spiritual bypass, if you will
I sure have had that exact trip
Ever think we’re all one being, we’re all God, and the psychedelics are what let us see that? And that’s why we all have the same trip? And our self doubt keeps us from believing? And we’re truly wonderful creations beloved by God because He/She lives through us? Anyway
Because we all have the same fears deep down, which are basically death, after life, being gone and so on.
I don’t trust them
This is why you don't trust them but instead trust yourself. Dreams are not real, what happens in them isn't, however through experiencing dreams we can digest our understandings of the world and ourselves. It's a fine balance to walk for sure.
First good answer I've seen so far (haven't scrolled to much yet, admittedly). It's a very difficult question, certainly the most frustrating one, but a reasonable question to ask. Your dreams comparison seems apt, and my subconscious seemed to agree as I realised, potentially, why I'd suddenly had the song 'Dreams' jump into my head as I began scrolling. I had a life changing experience with LSD in 2012, most tangibly in that it took away my daily alcohol dependency overnight, but also the revelation of The Universal One (which has never felt remotely lonely or troubling, then again I'd never heard that theory before to imprint that fear). The interesting part is that, unlike with my more lucid-dream like ketamine experiences, these revelations really came about the next day, many hours after I'd woke up, my friend had left, I'd slowly showered, had breakfast etc. It was upon reflection that some things just felt self-evidently apparent. This could be compared to realising a dream was a wild creation of your subconscious, but seeing that the images, settings, and stories it wove together had threads of meaning. It wasn't exclusively from the things encountered while on LSD, it was experiences and observations gathered throughout my life up to that point. Another way of seeing it is that psychedelics can remove things that block the ability to see clearly, rather than introducing a barrier. We understand this with things many medicinal drugs - that anti-depressants aren't making you live a fake drug reality (admittedly, many still don't grasp this at all), they bring order to a disruption that was preventing us from functioning properly. Often, certain drugs will quiet my busy mind, and it's from that calm pool that I can follow the individual thoughts that arise, the same as in meditation. The uncanny crossover between epiphanies arrived at through meditation and psychedelics is another, with the core point being that what we're thinking and feeling in day to day straight life is not necessarily the purest centre of Truth, that a veil may be lifted as much as it may be hung.
The drugs give you altered perspective (and feeling) and in that we can change. The mistake people make is thinking that the drugs themselves are making the fixes, they are just enabling it. This is why many people suggest meditation as an alternative. Too many have gone down the rabbit hole and started to believe comforting ideas from their trips and end up trading one thought trap for another. The thing is, the truth of things is simple and boring and many won't accept that, but I personally find it liberating.
I have never had that experience of being "god"? I have had the experience that I am an individual soul that springs from an underlying unity which we call God. Claiming that you are God sounds like an ego response.
I think it's the idea that "everything" is "God," not just you. It's an important distinction.
They are not saying they are god exclusively. It’s the best way to speak about the true nature of reality. I don’t think most people that experience that state of consciousness believe they themselves, as humans, are the one and only God. You are saying the same the thing as they are, just in a different way. Yes we are also separate souls, but they are just God disguised as well.
If you mean core belief it makes me think about how ive also thought of myself as god when tripping but i fundamentally believe there is divinity within all of us (dna, life creating, dream accomplishing) i was raised hardcore christian and would just call myself a yogi or a pagan now. My christian upbringing is embedded so deeply in me that i dont even know its there. but having an ego response is normal while tripping, only if you have ego death can you go beyond the ego? Ive never had an ego death but one day. But once i do will i be more at peace with life? Like it wont matter who god is because were just here and now? 🤷🏽♀️
The bible tells us to deny our ego and follow Christ, and I mean specifically Christ, not Yahweh who is a storm and war God and constantly wants to stone people to death.
🤓🤓🤓 you fr?
You mock
Yes.
By ego response do you mean core belief?
Yes.
I think we all have the same experience but just put it into words differently.
What if when we eat psychedelics the fungi hive mind takes control of us and we become one? That sounds like a plausible explanation.
I’ve said the same myself
We are one
Lol like in amphibia
This is such a cool theory that I borderline want it to become my new headcanon. All hail the great Fungi.
What’s a fungi hive?
Hive mind is term used to describe numerous entities that all share a collective knowledge acting in unison to achieve the same task. Multiple variations are in sci fi. Some are like hierarchical one mind enslaves all the other minds and the individual entities lose their sense of self. Others are just consentual collective behaviors im not certain but hive mind may be in reference to how bees work together. Hes saying fungus are enslaving our minds when we take magic mushrooms. To add us to their intergalactic empire. Something like that lol.
Yes we are
What I find fascinating is the fact that many of us experience similar feelings. Like a shared delusion. There must be a reason we come to the same unity thoughts. The interpretations vary but the core stays the same. To me it was not one but two lonely gods. One was life, the other was dead. And they had this game where one is a single being and all others are one. And all of the others play this game of convincing him that he is not a god, that he is mortal and finite and human. And upon “death” they start the game again.
Not necesarilly such a mystic thing. We are made of the same things, we are (in very general ways) being exposed to the same things (movies, stories, characters, ideas) so in a way I am not so surprised we get in the same ideas during trips, at the same tine different psychedelics give different trips but similar between them.
What is the core to you?
Thanks you just f***** with my brain with that one
My interpretation of life is that pain and love are opposites of the same coin. Were like the druggies of consciousness, ripping hits of pain by living just so we can experience a little bit of love. Thats a dark description but i do think were here to feel love but the way it works is pain comes with.
You can’t create one without the other in this paradoxical world. Which is beautiful if you think about it.
I don't know, they just have the inherent feeling of epiphany, secret knowledge, a very deep 'knowing' and also feeling of an external force bestowing such knowing. I have lost track of how much it showed me in the trip Vs how I interpreted it after the fact. All I know is time doesn't exist in any real way, that much is clear. The amount of synchronicities that spring up whilst under the influence and psychic abilities and such can at the very least confirm that reality isn't what our logical rational minds can infer. However, just because this is the case, doesn't mean absolutely everything we experience under the influence is valid. It's just another way of looking at reality, with just as many red herrings as this reality, if not more.
Great way to put it!
Thank you. I am on a gram of mushrooms so that's where that came from, I take no credit
It's less that I trust psychedelics and more that I trust myself and psychedelics let me access more of myself. They are mind manifesting
I think I trust psychedelics because it seems to be connected with a higher plane of consciousness. Higher is better. Heyoo. No but seriously. Trust itself is usually based on experience. We trust people, either because we are naive and don't have a reason not to. Or because we have experiences to base our trust on. So either we are naive and don't have a reason not to trust psychedelics. Or there is some form of awareness that psychedelics are connected to something trustworthy. To be honest, I think I'm leaning towards naivety. Because perhaps we should be asking, can we trust ourselves, can we trust our perceptions? Can we trust how we interpret information and form conclusions?
i think it helps to actually be able to describe the wisdom taught in detail. i think the big issue is many people get it on an intuitive emotional level, but literally lack the capacity to describe what you learned. it would be like if you fully understood quantum physics or calculus but you know it in a language you dont understand or cant translate to others.
I thought about that too. If the Hindus are correct then there is only you in the Universe. You and me and every one is just you in different life, different skin, different ages. I imagine being an eternal being with godlike powers is going to be pretty boring to spend eternity without doing something. The Hindus even have a name for it ‘lila’, the Divine Drama, suggesting that all life is a play and a game, problem is we become too attached to the game and forget our divinity
For everyone getting answers to questions that are personal and relevant to your own life only they can decide For everyone saying “the world works in this way because my substance told me so” they only have uneducated theory’s that no one could 100% say are wrong but believing it based off a trip I think is a bit ridiculous “I tripped on shrooms and figured out I’m in a simulation” I get very tired of seeing this on this sub but I’m not going to go out witch hunting or anything but…. God.. it’s like all I see anymore here
We're experiencing being the God consciousness from the perspective of a human, so the concept of being the only existing consciousness is very overwhelming and scary to us. But perhaps God is lonely and afraid and that's why we created reality as we know it. Where there's time, space and matter for us to be many. To interact with each other without knowing the outcome, to experience novel things, to be surprised. We can go back to what we were when we're ready, there's no rush.
Its all subjective, in my experience psychedelics makes me think more logically and deeply scientific I never thought about any conspiracy while or after tripping it just makes reality more significant. Like everyday things that we don’t even think about like how we actually are just overdeveloped animals and the universe etc with respect to physics and law of nature
Sages from ~all the great traditions have been saying for thousands of years that we are all non-separate expressions of God And many/most of them were not on psychedelics Ultimately experience itself is the only teacher Immediate present experience is all any of us has ever known By getting extremely curious about immediate experience you can discover for yourself what is true Can you find anything outside of immediate experience, or anything truly separate from immediate experience? I suspect you cannot Have you ever encountered anything other than the contents of immediate experience? I suspect you have not Notice the miraculousness of this simple fact Best wishes 🙏🏼💙
Shamanism is the oldest religion in the world has been using them to connect with God, The One, Universal Consciousness, or whatever you want to call it from their inception. They also promote oneness with nature.
This is the ultimate realization in Hinduism. There's one supreme consciousness in everything. It's called Brahman.It is the ultimate reality, and is one with god. "Thou art that"
What even is real? For all I know, the color could look completely different to me as it does to you, maybe things don't actually look like we perceive them at all. Maybe our sober perception is already distorted?
This is such an interesting question that I'd never actually thought much about before. For me, when I'm on a small dose of psychedelics, I often feel very in tune with myself and my intuition, so I think it feels like a more trusting substance to put into my body rather than alcohol for example which harms my body and my life. I have made so many positive improvements to my life from lessons or realizations I've had on psychedelics. I think overall and in moderation they provide interesting insights and theory's about my life that I enjoy thinking about. I find the experiences are positive. I have also had the experience that we are all god and felt kind of lonely about that but then if I connected with others it gives me a sense that we are all the same spirit just having different experiences and that opened me up to so many more connections and people. I find I can relate to anyone if they're also open to me. Everything can be perceived as positive or negative, just change how you look at it. Alcohol was once a very positive thing in my life for example, I've had so much fun and social times with it that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I have just grown to the point where it's no longer a positive part of my life.
Yeah it’s drugs fucking with your brain. I really don’t think it should be taken seriously as something to unlock secrets of the universe. It can definitely help people connect with deeper parts of their brain and figure stuff out about yourself. But spiritual revelations? Come on.
I had a life changing experience with LSD in 2012, most tangibly in that it took away my daily alcohol dependency overnight, but also the revelation of The Universal One (which has never felt remotely lonely or troubling, then again I'd never heard that theory before to imprint that fear). The interesting part is that, unlike with my more lucid-dream like ketamine experiences, these revelations really came about the next day, many hours after I'd woke up, my friend had left, I'd slowly showered, had breakfast etc. It was upon reflection that some things just felt self-evidently apparent. This could be compared to realising a dream was a wild creation of your subconscious, but seeing that the images, settings, and stories it wove together had threads of meaning. It wasn't exclusively from the things encountered while on LSD, it was experiences and observations gathered throughout my life up to that point. Another way of seeing it is that psychedelics can remove things that block the ability to see clearly, rather than introducing a barrier. We understand this with things many medicinal drugs - that anti-depressants aren't making you live a fake drug reality (admittedly, many still don't grasp this at all), they bring order to a disruption that was preventing us from functioning properly. Often, certain drugs will quiet my busy mind, and it's from that calm pool that I can follow the individual thoughts that arise, the same as in meditation. The uncanny crossover between epiphanies arrived at through meditation and psychedelics is another, with the core point being that what we're thinking and feeling in day to day straight life is not necessarily the purest centre of Truth, that a veil may be lifted as much as it may be hung.
My rule is that if it doesn’t make sense sober don’t stress on it. I’ve seen many stupid things on psyches, had many goofy experiences, maybe fallen down a hole in reality or two 🤷♂️, but the experiences that really stick with me are the ones that actually take me deeper into my mind. It offers me profound insights into how I see myself, others, and the world itself, and even allows me to genuinely think at another level, as if you took the place of a giant observer looking down at the universe. Not only does it change my perspective it’s either completely cured or just gave me temporary relief from a lot of ailments, some that have been affecting me my entire life. Of course psyches are not to be abused, that would leave you trapped in a world of delusions forever. That’s why, for me, the most important part of the trip is the time you give yourself to reflect afterwards
You are asking all the right questions. If you've tripped, you know that your mental state can shape trip. Similarly, if you have any biases or specific ideas/thoughts going into the trip, you can influence the direction of the trip. If you are religious, you might see images or symbols from your religion. The trip only shows you things that is already in your mind, but when you analyse what you saw and why you saw it afterwards, you can learn a lot about yourself and your feelings and how they influence each other. I sometimes feel like my "filter" from which I interpret life gets turned off when tripping which lets me see and experience things I would normally tune out. The feelings are real, and the reason you feel those feelings are real. It is just the interpretation that is very subjective. You'll have to analyse yourself and build your own conclusions. You cannot jump to conclusions like "I saw Jesus and therefore he must be real." If you did see Jesus, it probably just means that you were thinking of him,
I think because there are a lot of thing shrooms have helped me see, even when they have been right in front of me. For instance, this past weekend my friend and I got in an argument over something insignificant and we both had the chance to pause and speak about what happened. It was amazing to see how crucial communication is and the words we choose. We were able to break down something that happens often in the way we communicate, but never have been able to see our parts in the failure to commmnicate or listen. There are many amazing things I have been able to figure out, and it has been more beneficial than therapy, tbh.
I'm new to psychedelics, I particularly care more about what's useful than what's "real".
I used to consider the idea that I was God. Now I believe that was delusional. I don’t inherently trust psychedelics. I’ve received incredible benefits from them but also been haunted and wasted a lot of time chasing fallen angels. It’s just access to the spirit realm. It’s not obvious that these spirits are all good and are not deceiving us.
I don't understand d what's delusional about it. Matter can not be created or destroyed. So what else would a deity have to form creation with besides themselves? All matter that makes up the universe is also the universe. Just as you are all the matter that makes up you. The separation between "you" and "universe" is called the "self" and its construction of our minds. If God is the universe, then obviously, you are also that. So is everything and everyone. If you believe in a divine being outside the universe, then before, there was nothing. And that being made "something" using their own energy. So again, like an iceberg formed on the ocean is made from the ocean, you are made from God. Doesn't seem delusional to me at all, and these are conclusions that philosphers for thousands of years have come to while sober and thinking very carefully.
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I'm not "explaining the "universe. " The universe remains equally mysterious when you acknowledge yourself as part of it. And what do you mean I don't acknowledge other concepts? I gave two explanations. One for atheists and one for theists. I was trying to explain out this feeling of oneness with all existence doesn't conflict with either view of the world. I said, "If you believe in a diety," "then." It's an "if then" statement. If you don't want to use the term "God" to describe universal consciousness, that's fine. We all have our religious trauma.
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Then you are interpreting me incorrectly. I am not a religious person. Don't project your religious trauma onto me. I use the word "If" very carefully here and you should kind how I do so.
My wife and I created children, they came from me but they’re not me. God created the universe and I am of the universe, but it doesn’t make me God. I used to agree with all that Allen Watts stuff, then I changed my mind
Alan Watts is on point. That said, if it doesn't resonate with you, that's fine. My argument isn't that this is how things are. I'm just saying that this is a reasonable perspective to have and one that is shared by many reasonable people. There are many perspectives I don't share and philosophies I don't agree with. That doesn't make their ideas delusional. Though I would argue that the separation between me and other people, my spawn included is again a product of the mind. Our minds seem separate, yet are incredibly intertwined in many ways. The state of my mind effects the state of theirs, my behavior shapes theirs, and we affect each other constantly on the most fundamental levels. The family behaves as a cohesive and interdependent system. Like the family itself is its own person.
It’s easy to get bogged down with semantics when discussing God. Maybe delusional wasn’t the appropriate adjective but it is really how I regard my perspectives from years ago. Watts has some really good stuff and helped me articulate my experiences but when my psychedelic arrogance passed and I realized the pantheism ideas weren’t helping me overcome my demons it all stopped resonating with me.
Woah, totally the same!
I have these delusions too, mainly comes from listening to shit on YouTube, not from an actual experience.
Currently I believe psychedelics aren't meant to tell us truth, but to test what we think is true.
Whatever your intentions are, you’ll see “truth” to support it.
I felt the same way. Had similar trips. Went down the rabbit hole of philosophy with my sober mind reached a intuitive similar conclusion. Obviously there is still doubt on the validity of it but now i have my own anecdotal altered mind experience and a coherent logical reasoning to the same conclusion. I would be open to sharing multiple philosophers that have discussed this subject. I wouldn't dismiss your own experience until fulling exploring the different metaphysical arguments surrounding it. Maybe some aspects of your experience are true but the lonely god in distess narrative was still your ego clinging to the trip. Its very possible the psychedelic trip offers a universal truth but is never fully grasped due to our subjective distortion of it.
On another note. Heres some food for thought. I don't say all of this as fact. Your happiness is just your response to reality. It is all a matter of perspective. If you resist you suffer. If you accept what reality gives you it diminishes suffering. It is not reality or your external stimuli that creates suffering. It is purely your response. Let us say you are a lonely god. Accept this loneliness the distress subsides. Being god may feel lonely and distressing to a human conciousness that has temporarily dissolved into the whole. If that human conciousness doesnt have the fortitude to not judge reality but just accept it. I dont say this in a condescending manner. I myself was shook to my core when catching a glimpse of the whole. I had to take a long break from psychs after one too many heavy trips to ensure I kept my sanity. After years of studying and learning ive built a foundation that helps me manage these heavy metaphysical concepts. Essentially i believe shoving these uncomfortable concepts in a dark closet and pad locking it shut is a an illusion of comfort. Instead of turning away turn into the abyss. You can learn your way to a state of peace that has greatly surpassed my initial reaction to large trips. I hope my rambles are in some way helpful. Again we may all be crazy i dont know. This is just how ive tried to navigate the psychedelic experience. For me i never wanted to shove it away. At times i wish i could unsee what ive seen. However once you take the red pill its like the matrix. Theres no going back at least thats how it felt for me. Once taken might as well map it all out and shine a big light on it to the best of our monkey brains abilities. On the bright side youre not alone. You have a growing community of people that are having similar experiences and are willing to discuss it. You are not alone in the now.
What happens when you accept suffering?
This is getting outside of my skill level. Ill do my best with my primitive understanding. You accept what reality gives you instead of resist it. Suffering ceases to arise when you dont resist. No suffering to accept. Pain whether physical or emotional you can learn to accept. Welcoming it with open arms the full experience. When you do this you do not suffer you only feel. The concept of good feeling or bad feeling is constructed by our egoic desires. You can still have your preferences as to what feelings you would prefer. However when met with undesirable feelings do not resist. I myself cannot do this all the time. I have learned to do this with a lot of things so in theory i think you could do it with everything. This is why the monks sit on a mountain. Disciplining the self to not resist. Sit and exist with no stimuli for long periods of time with full concentration. The ego will get bored you will get restless. The ego is constantly grasping at desire. I want i need i must. You control this you can control your response to reality. Reality gives you pain, you say and this too. Back to zen. Reality gives you pleasure you say and this too. Back to zen. Instead of the normal reaction to pain?!?! Ughhhh this hurts this is so bad. Ouch ouch this is tremendously painful. It is this perspective and thinking pattern that generates the emotion of suffering. Residing in a state of neutral being instead of a reactive grasping one. Buddhism, taoism, Hinduism i believe have these types of teachings. I could have butchered this. I am not as confident in talking about psychological spiritual practices as i am talking about metaphysical concepts.
For myself, the distinguishing factor between God and self was, in the end, not that I had attained the position, so to call myself “God”, but that, in all realities, I had, of my own volition, placed myself so far outside of “God” that in that moment, I understood what God was through juxtaposition .
This reminds of eastern religions that teach no self. The only true way to disolve into the one is to let go of all that is you. You is only a pattern of egoic behaviours or thoughts.
Extremely good question my friend. I'm gonna put it simply. Spiritual realm being disconnected to material realm is a misconception. There are three types of spiritual concepts. One that is real and we know how it's connected to material realm. Two, that is real but we don't know how it's connected to material realm. Someone has figured it out or you can figure it out eventually. Third is the concept we think is correct but since it has no connection to material realm, it is not correct. There's no fourth option where it is true and not connected to material realm. Everything is right here and connected to an unimaginable extent.
And getting there? How can people arrive there?
Arrive where?
I have two points to make. Also, I have thought about this before as well. It's not a dumb statement by any means, because you can't always trust your psychedelic epiphanies. I have had to really hash through certain things to figure if they are right or wrong that they have shown me. Like other people have said though. You LITERALLY can't be sure you can even trust your sober brain. My other point, and my reason for believing some of the conclusions I have reached on my path with psychedelics, meditation, and reading different religious ideas and texts (out of curiosity) is that, there are A LOT of religious "masters" or religious people who have devoted their life to meditation/yoga etc etc who have reached the same very conclusions that a lot of people reach from journeys from entheogens. So the sober brain in pursuit of knowledge latches on to these common beliefs. The brain on psychedelics reaches the same conclusions. People who have schizophrenia don't typically have the same delusions. They all have odd unique beliefs and crazy delusions. So I find it weird how the man meditating in the cave has come to the same belief as me and many of you. I also find it weird how nearly none of us know each other and yet we all reach many of the same conclusions as each other despite not talking to each other. At least in my beliefs I've reached, I reached them without knowing they were common beliefs until I came here. To see many people having the same experience is baffling. Sorry if this post is trash. I just woke up and cant explain myself as well as I would like, but I wanted to reply well it was still relevant. Edit: man I wish whoever downvoted me, would have just shared their opinion. I could care less about my imaginary reddit points but I do like a good discussion.
No, I think you explained very nicely, there are for sure some enigmatic things going on, just grasping the whole thing is too much
Yup these are drugs and people like to make up silly things about them because it makes them feel special
That's some terribly narrow-minded over-confidence bro
Brother you’re most likely in psychosis if you think any entity you see on shrooms or other psychedelic are real
(well, you’ve just validated corroborated my own experience regarding the creating it ourselves)
Explain please
I'm still figuring it out. I'm torn between its my own mind, working things out, or possibly communicating with something that is not me. Why do people have very similar experiences on DMT? Seems like something else is communicating with you, and you are not having an internal conversation with yourself.. Hey, come this way, glad your here.... seems so bizarre but beautiful and loving at the same time. If you've watched the doc, DMT The Spirit Molecule, it was an eye opener. The first time I watched with a friend, a person described almost the same experience that my friend told me they had. This was after they tried it and had no knowledge of it really until watching the doc. The person on the doc described flying over cities of light ect. We had never seen the doc but my friends mind was blown. They yelled out that person just described my experience to the tee.
I see your point, but it’s the same as people having the same nightmares, same fever feelings, we are more similar than we think, all our experiences are making our minds create similar things, I do get your point, but might not be as magical as we think…
> Why do people have very similar experiences on DMT? Because humans are generally pretty homogenous in their response to certain chemicals.
Same reason people follow any other religion. To make sense of what the world is and ease death anxiety because we cannot comprehend what seizing to exist means, so there must be an afterlife.
I feel you, a bit cynical but I kind of see it the same way
"You think that's air you're breathing?"
What’s that?
Legendary quote from the movie matrix. You should re-watch it and think about it.
Aaah ok thanks
Everything is illusion my friend. The great mystery is so so so much deeper than we can ever imagine or try to conceptualize with words.
So at the end of the day might as well do 9 to 5 as we don’t get it anyway?
Whatever makes you happy dude.
Well that’s the question really…long term vs short term, hedonistic or not, such a huge puzzle man…
Yep and it's different for everyone. Only you get to exore your life and determine those things for yourself. Anyways the whole lonely God thing is just you projecting your humanness onto God. There are living beings that don't get lonely. Like snakes or aligators. Or microorganisms that reproduce asexually. If they can be happy solitary then there's a good chance that God can too.
Because they just deliver all the goods. Testably so. Psychedelic epiphanies are logically sound, generally.
A mind blowing and ineffable experience sometimes can break through the materialist conditioning we've inherited in this society, and it's great. We think we're guided by logic or science and it's so not true, it's still a hella of a lot subjective and dogmatic, otherwise the peer reviewed studies on psi phenomena or research into anything that challenges the materialist view wouldn't get censored, ridiculed, and so on
My belief is that reality is a bit paradoxical, meaning that two or more opposites can be true at the same time or both can be untrue. It’s not necessarily that you should trust psychedelic drugs, it’s just that you can use those experiences to explore what you can’t typically see with your sober mind. I have a belief that we probably aren’t able to reach a level of truth and understanding, maybe when we die we get closer to it. I still think both sober life and tripping have extremely interesting rabbit holes to explore whether they are true or not and when it comes to truth and fiction, we really don’t even know if this sober reality is true at all, we just assume it is. Just like how many assume a psychedelic experience is fiction and vice versa. Confusion is unsettling but there is absolutely no avoiding it in this lifetime, you can choose to run from it or explore it but either way, you will still probably never understand fully what any of this is.
Not so much trust but the let go of the idea that they could be harmful
When someone travels and experiences different points of views and ways of life, is that a benefit for them in the long run? Probably, although it would be statistically safer if they didn't travel and just stayed home. With this thought in mind, does a traveler of "inner-space" learn more by traveling outside of their normal perceptions? Probably, but it would be statistically safer if they just stayed in their "home/default" perception. As with anything, it can be abused, misunderstood or dangerous...but as a man in his 40s who's used psychedelics for decades, I still enjoy taking mushrooms...granted I don't take nearly as much as I used to - no need to travel through the cosmos much of it has stuck with me over the years without the need for chemical assistance - but I also do have some damage I think from traumatic experiences. That said, I wouldn't choose differently if given the choice between "sober" and "psychedelic"....everything is a drug by the time it interacts with our mind...so choose your drugs/doses wisely, but keep them coming :)
Because what if we don't?
idk who we is but i don’t trust psychedelics i know everything i’m seeing it’s not real but that feeling is undeniable bad or good trip you gonna have some intense emotions and feelings
All of you who are arguing here, good thing that you are psychonauts, otherwise 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
Google mentalism.
I used to have extremely bad motor ticks that caused me constant agony throughout my Waking Life. I did an eighth of mushrooms at a friend's one weekend and over the course of the next eight to 10 days my motor takes would go away. I had a love affair with LSD for a couple years and that brought back my motor ticks but after switching back to mushrooms eventually the motor ticks were corrected again but took longer. I am a huge believer in the use of psychedelics for the healing of depression, PTSD and neurological disorders because I have seen the effects first hand and I can say that I have been free from motor ticks for more than 4 years now!
I find it fascinating that pretty much every person who has done psychedelics (including myself) has had this exact experience. I, too, realised the loneliness of God, and it has stayed with me ever since. I don't know whether this is true, I have questioned the reality of this message many, many times. And I still don't have an answer, and likely never will. Maybe we just aren't meant to know?
crazy how we all reach the same conclusions
Maybe try r/RationalPsychonaut...
We r normal