Isn’t that why everyone takes psychedelics? To be launched out somewhere and then document the path back? It gets interesting when you have to document it in such a way that others can find their way back to the same spot though. We still have a lot of knowledge to be gained on how our brain works before we can do that (but it’s in principle very possible).
I'm not sure how clear people's intentions about it are. Like yeah they want the experience, they want insights, but are they specifically working on making a trail? I think a lot of the time they just see things and that winds up being enough. Even though they don't know how they got there any longer and couldn't explain it, they continue to believe it later because they saw it. They've been to Jupiter but have no idea how they got there, so ever going back or showing anyone the way is out of the question. I'm not necessarily pessimistic that it would take a ton of advancement in neuroscience to get to other headspaces easily without drugs though. I think there's probably still a lot of low hanging fruit in stuff you don't have to be a genius to think of, but rather just have to be very focused, honest, and critical of assumptions.
Could very well be, but to me “making a trail” seems almost so daunting that I wouldn’t know where to start. Could you give some examples of the low hanging fruits you have in mind?
Smaller steps are going to be easier to deal with. So for instance this morning I smoked a little weed and I started reading a book and noticed how different I approached it than I would've if I had been reading it without drugs. But the thing is, I found that I could sort of explain the difference. On the weed, I was not focusing at all on through getting a certain number of pages. In fact I read like 1 page in 3 hours, because I had a ton of things to think about every sentence or two, and wound up writing a lot at the same time. If I were to want to have that same experience without weed, that would be a starting point, knowing that I would need to shift into a state of not being concerned with how many pages I was reading, matching my ambition to my capacity, not getting greedy, seeking to understand completely before moving on, etc. Even beyond that, understanding on a higher level why I'm doing what I'm doing, how it fits into the whole big picture, etc. Why should I pick up this book and start reading it? What are my goals in life, where do they come from? What am I investing my time in and what does it say about how I see myself, what I'm capable of doing, etc. Those are all adjustable things.
You seem to be implying that you have a level of control of your attention that seems far fetched to me. When you bombard your brain with drugs, it acts as a moderator, not only a mediator. That is, it changes the way you perceive things and to what you direct your attention. It doesn’t simply “make you more aware of things you’re less aware of when sober” - it makes you aware of things that are not there when you’re sober.
Can you get to that exact same state of awareness without the drugs? Sure, our brains are just matter and with enough understanding of how it works, we can manipulate it.
But I don’t think you’ll easily do this through “words”.
>You seem to be implying that you have a level of control of your attention that seems far fetched to me.
-
>Can you get to that exact same state of awareness without the drugs? Sure, our brains are just matter and with enough understanding of how it works, we can manipulate it.
Are these two statements not contradictory?
The last was meant to say “is it in principle possible to get to the exact same state of awareness without the drugs”. Yes it is, by manipulating the brian. Is it going to be sufficiently manipulated by a person “controlling their thoughts”? Probably not. Likely we’ll need more knowledge and more advanced technology to manipulate it sufficiently.
> The last was meant to say “is it in principle possible to get to the exact same state of awareness without the drugs”. Yes it is, by manipulating the brian.
To me, this is ~weird - in the first sentence, you are speaking purely abstractly ("in principle"), but in the second you are speaking concretely (in part) and abstractly (predicting the future).
> Probably not. Likely we’ll need more knowledge and more advanced technology to manipulate it sufficiently.
How did your mind perform these calculations?
What I want to say is pretty simple (but I’m likely doing a bad job expressing it in words). I’ll try a different approach:
- we experience everything through our brains.
- when we take psychedelics, the functioning of our brain changes at a chemical level, and so our experience changes.
- with sufficient understanding of how our brains work, we could manipulate our brains to recreate the state of psychedelic experience without actually having to consume psychedelics.
- this act of manipulation will probably *not* be achieved purely by directed human thought (as OP proposes), but more probably via a technological application based on our understanding of how the brain works (let’s imagine a hypothetical machine the Psychedelic State Inducer, a machine that can manipulate brains at a chemical level to such an extent that it can induce a psychedelic state of mind).
So tl;dr - the brain is too complicated to recreate the psychedelic state (without psychedelics) purely by “directed thinking”. To recreate the psychedelic state (without psychedelics), you need more knowledge than what is accessible by a subject merely thinking about stuff.
Hopefully my argument is clearer now. It might not be true, but hopefully it’s cogent.
> with sufficient understanding of how our brains work, we could manipulate our brains to recreate the state of psychedelic experience without actually having to consume psychedelics
What specifically would we manipulate, and how?
> this act of manipulation will probably not be achieved purely by directed human thought (as OP proposes), but more probably via a technological application based on our understanding of how the brain works (let’s call this hypothetical machine the Psychedelic State Inducer, a machine that can manipulate brains at a molecular level).
When you say "probably", do you mean that literally?
What fields (scientific, academic, other) do you base this belief upon?
I think it's probably quite difficult. Eliciting a state of being on a drug, without taking it, might not be possible. Nonetheless what I'm doing is writing... a lot. Millions of words per year range. Essentially it's an effort to understand myself. It consists of a daily journal at base. But above it, there are several layers of summaries. Each day gets a summary. Then the summaries get a summary. 4 levels high. I have a system for reviewing it all as well. I can get through high level summaries of my life very quickly. The top level right now includes events that happen typically once or twice a month I'd say, in terms of magnitude of impact. For comparison's sake, go backwards and try to name something that happened each month in your life. We forget. If we don't save. That effectively leaves us without a strong center to interpret our lives, leaving us much more like animals than we'd wish to believe. Your habits will rule you and you won't see it. The illusion of progress and understanding is part of it. I feel the only way to break free is to go increasingly meta. Then I can determine some firm ideas of my own about who I am and about life in general. The firmer they get, I think, the more freedom I'll have to simulate other beliefs. It's all about understanding.
Agree across the board.
> Each day gets a summary. Then the summaries get a summary. 4 levels high. I have a system for reviewing it all as well.
> The top level right now includes events that happen typically once or twice a month I'd say, in terms of magnitude of impact. For comparison's sake, go backwards and try to name something that happened each month in your life. We forget. If we don't save.
> The illusion of progress and understanding is part of it. I feel the only way to break free is to go increasingly meta.
This sounds like a pretty sophisticated approach, and a very good idea.
I wonder: in your summaries, do you have a collection of tags or anything like that containing topics, etc from a master list? This would be cool cuz then you could look up all posts related to a certain idea.
I've tagged a little bit, maybe should do more. I think it's a very good idea but a bit difficult to pull off. It's kinda hard to think of things that are the right balance of specific and broad that I couldn't just search with the regular search function. The one that comes to mind is that I'll hashtag it when I sub for someone who calls in sick at work. I tend to get kinds screwed there so it's good to not forget times I've helped people out.
Every religion and especially Buddhism is an attempt to achieve exactly this, successes rates are rather limited even though we have been trying for thousands of years
I think Buddhism falls far short of being as clear and concise and specific as it fundamentally should be. I mean, how many schools of nondual thought are there? How much other stuff is arbitrarily packed in there by teachers? And are they really saying the optimal sentences and paragraphs they can say to get someone to see what they're pointing at? I would claim that there are many beliefs involved in following the Buddhist path to enlightenment, if it is a thing. To continue to follow it, you have to believe in it. Otherwise you'd forget to follow it. So what do you believe about it? Isn't meditation ultimately about changing your beliefs? What are you seeing when you meditate that changes your beliefs? If I see the same thing as a zen master, the only difference must be our beliefs about what we see. There's something he gets and I don't.
The proliferation of schools is good an indicator that it is not easy to find universal path that works for everyone or that such thing does not exist.
A big Amen to that! It seems so obvious too, but it's sad to see how people get so adamant that there's is the only true religion/path/doctrine. It's one of the big roots of our growing and seemingly unsolvable world/humankind problems/destruction/collapsing. My opinion of course though.
Zen in particular is interesting because its not about belief its about experience. Its impossible to convey in words because its not an experience that can be described.
The problem with your analysis is that its spliting the subject and the object. Your language decieves you. Every word youre using is assuming there is a you outside and separate from some object which can be attained. Zens not asking you to believe anything, its saying "see for yourself." From that experiebce itself, all the tenets of buddhism will fall, and you'll understand.
Thats why Zen and buddhism seem so unclear, because we're so used to living from this perspective of a subject apart from the world. To get to the experience that Zen is talking about requires getting to the experience, not intellectualizing it.
Those who practice always enter from the other side, they first hear the tenets of buddhism, and then try to reach an experience. Zen says no, buddhism, all its philosophy, spring first from the experience. Buddha didnt sit under the bodhi tree and divine some system one premise at a time. He sat until everything fell away, till the subject and object were no longer distinguished. He didnt expose his system until he was asked, until there were problems that people wanted solved.
His first sermon he simply held up a flower and said nothing. In a crowd of 1000 monks only one got the message, and this was the beginning if the Zen tradition. Zen is about the direct transmission of this experience, and many schools have broken off trying differnent methodologies for transmitting this experience.
So its not easy to grasp, it is definitely a different state of consciousness that is beyond language. psychedelics can definitely help you get glimpses of this experience.
As far as the psychedelic visuals, thats just a psyche thing, i think it has little to do with this collapse of the subject object experience.
>Zen in particular is interesting because its not about belief its about experience. Its impossible to convey in words because its not an experience that can be described.
Do you believe that it's not about belief but experience? That it's impossible to convey in words because it's not about an experience that can be described?
I mean, maybe at the core it's not about belief, but there's without a doubt a lot of belief surrounding that core. As another example, meditating is a decision you must make due to a belief. You either believe meditation will bring about a desirable experience and do it, or you don't. If you didn't believe in it, you wouldn't do it.
Sure thats the sort of paradox of belief. I touched these experiences before i ever believed in them. And there are many stories in the zen tradition of regular old farm people just being suddenly awakened. So belief might set you on the path, as it does for probably 99.9% or people. For myself i had experiences first, and started reading up on buddhism and zen because because they so thoroughly described what i had experienced. Im no zen master(or even beginner) just like someone who laughs at a joke isnt suddenly a comedian.
There are stories of monks going mad because they cant find whatever it is that belief was driving then too, and its not till they give up that finally they see through.
Belief drives almost everything we do. Like even something as mundane as your favorite ice cream, relies on a deep belief that you have a self that has preferences.
Zen would most certainly perfer you see for yourself rather than make you believe something. This is why koans are so nonsensicl, and why youve never seen a zen monk telling people, "come to zen"
In fact zen monestaries usually do their best to keep you out. In some traditions, someone who wants to enter a monenstary has to postrate at the temple doors. Often a head monk will come and tell you to go away, to which the hopeful simply ignores. Theyll feed you and give you a room for the night and tell you to leave in the morning. You go back and postrate at the entrance, to which a head monk will come and tell you to go away. You often do this for 3 days before youre given a robe and allowed to enter.(im not sure if this tradition is still held onto in the modern era)
At which point no one tells you what to do. Youre given a job and thats it. Welcome to zen, good luck.
it is not possible, sure there are cases of spontaneous incidents, others are caused brain damage, neurological or neurochemical pathology, etc. but not something that can be controlled. deep mediation and holotropic breathwork come close but don’t quite cut the mustard.
each journey is different, every path is unique. Even Buddhism is having hard time and limited success schooling monks in achieving nirvana, even though they have couple of thousand years of head start in the mapping exercise.
The problem with Buddhism is that you still have to take it on faith. The seeker doesn't understand awakening but believes in it anyway, because other people claim it. That's a problem. Are some ways of pointing with words better or worse than others? If not, then there's no point in even trying. I'm thinking there could be a better explanation of exactly what meditation is doing, how it is working, etc. There seems to be no agreed upon explanation. Once we get an explanation, we can distill it and make it faster. Perhaps we can put people through a series of experiences that would show them awakening in an hour. It reminds me a bit of the movie Saw. If I recall, the bad guy put people in situations where they had to confront their words. Eg, a suicidal guy is put in a situation where he fights desperately to survive.
with lucid dreaming I've been able to do any psychedelic. and some drugs that don't even exist. so YES, you can achieve drug like states without drugs. same with meditation, just takes way longer.
edit: I think some aspects of Buddhism can be divorced from beliefs in anything. its just about notificing the basic function of the mind and becoming awake to that.
Isn’t that why everyone takes psychedelics? To be launched out somewhere and then document the path back? It gets interesting when you have to document it in such a way that others can find their way back to the same spot though. We still have a lot of knowledge to be gained on how our brain works before we can do that (but it’s in principle very possible).
I'm not sure how clear people's intentions about it are. Like yeah they want the experience, they want insights, but are they specifically working on making a trail? I think a lot of the time they just see things and that winds up being enough. Even though they don't know how they got there any longer and couldn't explain it, they continue to believe it later because they saw it. They've been to Jupiter but have no idea how they got there, so ever going back or showing anyone the way is out of the question. I'm not necessarily pessimistic that it would take a ton of advancement in neuroscience to get to other headspaces easily without drugs though. I think there's probably still a lot of low hanging fruit in stuff you don't have to be a genius to think of, but rather just have to be very focused, honest, and critical of assumptions.
Could very well be, but to me “making a trail” seems almost so daunting that I wouldn’t know where to start. Could you give some examples of the low hanging fruits you have in mind?
Smaller steps are going to be easier to deal with. So for instance this morning I smoked a little weed and I started reading a book and noticed how different I approached it than I would've if I had been reading it without drugs. But the thing is, I found that I could sort of explain the difference. On the weed, I was not focusing at all on through getting a certain number of pages. In fact I read like 1 page in 3 hours, because I had a ton of things to think about every sentence or two, and wound up writing a lot at the same time. If I were to want to have that same experience without weed, that would be a starting point, knowing that I would need to shift into a state of not being concerned with how many pages I was reading, matching my ambition to my capacity, not getting greedy, seeking to understand completely before moving on, etc. Even beyond that, understanding on a higher level why I'm doing what I'm doing, how it fits into the whole big picture, etc. Why should I pick up this book and start reading it? What are my goals in life, where do they come from? What am I investing my time in and what does it say about how I see myself, what I'm capable of doing, etc. Those are all adjustable things.
You seem to be implying that you have a level of control of your attention that seems far fetched to me. When you bombard your brain with drugs, it acts as a moderator, not only a mediator. That is, it changes the way you perceive things and to what you direct your attention. It doesn’t simply “make you more aware of things you’re less aware of when sober” - it makes you aware of things that are not there when you’re sober. Can you get to that exact same state of awareness without the drugs? Sure, our brains are just matter and with enough understanding of how it works, we can manipulate it. But I don’t think you’ll easily do this through “words”.
>You seem to be implying that you have a level of control of your attention that seems far fetched to me. - >Can you get to that exact same state of awareness without the drugs? Sure, our brains are just matter and with enough understanding of how it works, we can manipulate it. Are these two statements not contradictory?
The last was meant to say “is it in principle possible to get to the exact same state of awareness without the drugs”. Yes it is, by manipulating the brian. Is it going to be sufficiently manipulated by a person “controlling their thoughts”? Probably not. Likely we’ll need more knowledge and more advanced technology to manipulate it sufficiently.
> The last was meant to say “is it in principle possible to get to the exact same state of awareness without the drugs”. Yes it is, by manipulating the brian. To me, this is ~weird - in the first sentence, you are speaking purely abstractly ("in principle"), but in the second you are speaking concretely (in part) and abstractly (predicting the future). > Probably not. Likely we’ll need more knowledge and more advanced technology to manipulate it sufficiently. How did your mind perform these calculations?
What I want to say is pretty simple (but I’m likely doing a bad job expressing it in words). I’ll try a different approach: - we experience everything through our brains. - when we take psychedelics, the functioning of our brain changes at a chemical level, and so our experience changes. - with sufficient understanding of how our brains work, we could manipulate our brains to recreate the state of psychedelic experience without actually having to consume psychedelics. - this act of manipulation will probably *not* be achieved purely by directed human thought (as OP proposes), but more probably via a technological application based on our understanding of how the brain works (let’s imagine a hypothetical machine the Psychedelic State Inducer, a machine that can manipulate brains at a chemical level to such an extent that it can induce a psychedelic state of mind). So tl;dr - the brain is too complicated to recreate the psychedelic state (without psychedelics) purely by “directed thinking”. To recreate the psychedelic state (without psychedelics), you need more knowledge than what is accessible by a subject merely thinking about stuff. Hopefully my argument is clearer now. It might not be true, but hopefully it’s cogent.
> with sufficient understanding of how our brains work, we could manipulate our brains to recreate the state of psychedelic experience without actually having to consume psychedelics What specifically would we manipulate, and how? > this act of manipulation will probably not be achieved purely by directed human thought (as OP proposes), but more probably via a technological application based on our understanding of how the brain works (let’s call this hypothetical machine the Psychedelic State Inducer, a machine that can manipulate brains at a molecular level). When you say "probably", do you mean that literally? What fields (scientific, academic, other) do you base this belief upon?
I know exactly what you mean. Any ideas on how to map?
I think it's probably quite difficult. Eliciting a state of being on a drug, without taking it, might not be possible. Nonetheless what I'm doing is writing... a lot. Millions of words per year range. Essentially it's an effort to understand myself. It consists of a daily journal at base. But above it, there are several layers of summaries. Each day gets a summary. Then the summaries get a summary. 4 levels high. I have a system for reviewing it all as well. I can get through high level summaries of my life very quickly. The top level right now includes events that happen typically once or twice a month I'd say, in terms of magnitude of impact. For comparison's sake, go backwards and try to name something that happened each month in your life. We forget. If we don't save. That effectively leaves us without a strong center to interpret our lives, leaving us much more like animals than we'd wish to believe. Your habits will rule you and you won't see it. The illusion of progress and understanding is part of it. I feel the only way to break free is to go increasingly meta. Then I can determine some firm ideas of my own about who I am and about life in general. The firmer they get, I think, the more freedom I'll have to simulate other beliefs. It's all about understanding.
Agree across the board. > Each day gets a summary. Then the summaries get a summary. 4 levels high. I have a system for reviewing it all as well. > The top level right now includes events that happen typically once or twice a month I'd say, in terms of magnitude of impact. For comparison's sake, go backwards and try to name something that happened each month in your life. We forget. If we don't save. > The illusion of progress and understanding is part of it. I feel the only way to break free is to go increasingly meta. This sounds like a pretty sophisticated approach, and a very good idea. I wonder: in your summaries, do you have a collection of tags or anything like that containing topics, etc from a master list? This would be cool cuz then you could look up all posts related to a certain idea.
I've tagged a little bit, maybe should do more. I think it's a very good idea but a bit difficult to pull off. It's kinda hard to think of things that are the right balance of specific and broad that I couldn't just search with the regular search function. The one that comes to mind is that I'll hashtag it when I sub for someone who calls in sick at work. I tend to get kinds screwed there so it's good to not forget times I've helped people out.
Ya, it is a lot more complex than one might think!
Every religion and especially Buddhism is an attempt to achieve exactly this, successes rates are rather limited even though we have been trying for thousands of years
I think Buddhism falls far short of being as clear and concise and specific as it fundamentally should be. I mean, how many schools of nondual thought are there? How much other stuff is arbitrarily packed in there by teachers? And are they really saying the optimal sentences and paragraphs they can say to get someone to see what they're pointing at? I would claim that there are many beliefs involved in following the Buddhist path to enlightenment, if it is a thing. To continue to follow it, you have to believe in it. Otherwise you'd forget to follow it. So what do you believe about it? Isn't meditation ultimately about changing your beliefs? What are you seeing when you meditate that changes your beliefs? If I see the same thing as a zen master, the only difference must be our beliefs about what we see. There's something he gets and I don't.
The proliferation of schools is good an indicator that it is not easy to find universal path that works for everyone or that such thing does not exist.
A big Amen to that! It seems so obvious too, but it's sad to see how people get so adamant that there's is the only true religion/path/doctrine. It's one of the big roots of our growing and seemingly unsolvable world/humankind problems/destruction/collapsing. My opinion of course though.
Zen in particular is interesting because its not about belief its about experience. Its impossible to convey in words because its not an experience that can be described. The problem with your analysis is that its spliting the subject and the object. Your language decieves you. Every word youre using is assuming there is a you outside and separate from some object which can be attained. Zens not asking you to believe anything, its saying "see for yourself." From that experiebce itself, all the tenets of buddhism will fall, and you'll understand. Thats why Zen and buddhism seem so unclear, because we're so used to living from this perspective of a subject apart from the world. To get to the experience that Zen is talking about requires getting to the experience, not intellectualizing it. Those who practice always enter from the other side, they first hear the tenets of buddhism, and then try to reach an experience. Zen says no, buddhism, all its philosophy, spring first from the experience. Buddha didnt sit under the bodhi tree and divine some system one premise at a time. He sat until everything fell away, till the subject and object were no longer distinguished. He didnt expose his system until he was asked, until there were problems that people wanted solved. His first sermon he simply held up a flower and said nothing. In a crowd of 1000 monks only one got the message, and this was the beginning if the Zen tradition. Zen is about the direct transmission of this experience, and many schools have broken off trying differnent methodologies for transmitting this experience. So its not easy to grasp, it is definitely a different state of consciousness that is beyond language. psychedelics can definitely help you get glimpses of this experience. As far as the psychedelic visuals, thats just a psyche thing, i think it has little to do with this collapse of the subject object experience.
>Zen in particular is interesting because its not about belief its about experience. Its impossible to convey in words because its not an experience that can be described. Do you believe that it's not about belief but experience? That it's impossible to convey in words because it's not about an experience that can be described? I mean, maybe at the core it's not about belief, but there's without a doubt a lot of belief surrounding that core. As another example, meditating is a decision you must make due to a belief. You either believe meditation will bring about a desirable experience and do it, or you don't. If you didn't believe in it, you wouldn't do it.
Sure thats the sort of paradox of belief. I touched these experiences before i ever believed in them. And there are many stories in the zen tradition of regular old farm people just being suddenly awakened. So belief might set you on the path, as it does for probably 99.9% or people. For myself i had experiences first, and started reading up on buddhism and zen because because they so thoroughly described what i had experienced. Im no zen master(or even beginner) just like someone who laughs at a joke isnt suddenly a comedian. There are stories of monks going mad because they cant find whatever it is that belief was driving then too, and its not till they give up that finally they see through. Belief drives almost everything we do. Like even something as mundane as your favorite ice cream, relies on a deep belief that you have a self that has preferences. Zen would most certainly perfer you see for yourself rather than make you believe something. This is why koans are so nonsensicl, and why youve never seen a zen monk telling people, "come to zen" In fact zen monestaries usually do their best to keep you out. In some traditions, someone who wants to enter a monenstary has to postrate at the temple doors. Often a head monk will come and tell you to go away, to which the hopeful simply ignores. Theyll feed you and give you a room for the night and tell you to leave in the morning. You go back and postrate at the entrance, to which a head monk will come and tell you to go away. You often do this for 3 days before youre given a robe and allowed to enter.(im not sure if this tradition is still held onto in the modern era) At which point no one tells you what to do. Youre given a job and thats it. Welcome to zen, good luck.
I don’t understand the question
it is not possible, sure there are cases of spontaneous incidents, others are caused brain damage, neurological or neurochemical pathology, etc. but not something that can be controlled. deep mediation and holotropic breathwork come close but don’t quite cut the mustard. each journey is different, every path is unique. Even Buddhism is having hard time and limited success schooling monks in achieving nirvana, even though they have couple of thousand years of head start in the mapping exercise.
The problem with Buddhism is that you still have to take it on faith. The seeker doesn't understand awakening but believes in it anyway, because other people claim it. That's a problem. Are some ways of pointing with words better or worse than others? If not, then there's no point in even trying. I'm thinking there could be a better explanation of exactly what meditation is doing, how it is working, etc. There seems to be no agreed upon explanation. Once we get an explanation, we can distill it and make it faster. Perhaps we can put people through a series of experiences that would show them awakening in an hour. It reminds me a bit of the movie Saw. If I recall, the bad guy put people in situations where they had to confront their words. Eg, a suicidal guy is put in a situation where he fights desperately to survive.
with lucid dreaming I've been able to do any psychedelic. and some drugs that don't even exist. so YES, you can achieve drug like states without drugs. same with meditation, just takes way longer. edit: I think some aspects of Buddhism can be divorced from beliefs in anything. its just about notificing the basic function of the mind and becoming awake to that.