A skeptical view of psychedelic revelations

[TruffulaTree]

being a young'n of only 15, I'm a little less well versed in metaphysical psychedelic discussion, so forgive my ignorance, but if we are all one and there is no such thing as "I" or "you", then by that reasoning everything we experience (be it in our sober perception of "reality" or during an intense moment of psychedelic intoxication) is equally real and/or fake, depending on your viewpoint, and attempting to distinguish between the two is physically impossible, for we with our meager sense of perception and abundant amount of ego are not able to decide between reality and non-reality (if there even is such a thing)...right?

so by that reasoning, do these entities, spirits, self-transforming machine elves etc really exist? I mean, I know thats the center of this entire argument, but it seems that the fact that we are all simply the universe experiencing itself and the only thing holding us back from fully understanding that is our ego is universally agreed upon by all parties in this discussion. That would mean that these entities DO exist in some plane of existence, but I think to make that statement we have to find a different definition of what it is to exist...because I, along with the writer of the blog, don't believe that they exist in the same fashion that we as humans "exist" in this "reality." Also, apologies for the contradiction with my earlier statement about the article, as it would seem that a lot of what I'm saying in this post opposes my support of the article. I still think it's a great article but the discussion has sparked a lot of other thoughts from me.

but are they actually conscious in some form separate of our own consciousness? Can they perform actions free from any interaction with us? Do they exist while we are NOT in an altered state of consciousness? If our consciousness is not simply OURS alone but simply the universal consciousness, are these questions irrelevant? can SOMEBODY please explain SOMETHING to me and free me from this treacherous mindfuck? thanks xx

 

[TruffulaTree]

as far as psychedelic revelations go, I've only ever fully "tripped" 5 times, all of them with psilocybin mushrooms, but the same resounding takeaway message I've gotten every single time is "WHAT ARE REALLY SO AFRAID OF?" it seems fairly simple, but when it's being broadcasted at you at top volume through a haze of inundating psychedelia, one tends to take it to heart much more. Every time I've tripped, it's helped me remember that.

In my "sober" life, this mainly applies to trying new things and social anxiety. As an adolescent, my social anxiety is very high - the views and opinions of my peer group are very important to me and I'm insecure in lots of ways. I'm also not very susceptible to change, and this often does not serve me well. What psychedelics have taught me is that the consequences of trying new things and being more socially confident are really quite small, and the potential benefits and rewards are very high. So why the fuck not? DO IT.

It seems fairly infantile and inconsequential compared with some of the more mature and adult psychedelic revelations shared by other users, but it means a lot to me and has changed my life. When you have a so-called "revelation" during a psychedelic experience, I find it always seems much less groundbreaking when recounted during sobriety - in fact, mine seem quite obvious - I'm definitely not the first person to come up with those pieces of advice, and they sound quite cliché. But I wasn't just THINKING them, I was EXPERIENCING them, and it made a much bigger change to my psyche than it would have if someone had simply told me "stop being so socially anxious and try new things."

 

[phuckingnutz]

but it seems that the fact that we are all simply the universe experiencing itself.....

...these entities DO exist in some plane of existence, but I think to make that statement we have to find a different definition of what it is to exist...

...but are they actually conscious in some form separate of our own consciousness?

Can they perform actions free from any interaction with us? Do they exist while we are NOT in an altered state of consciousness? If our consciousness is not simply OURS alone but simply the universal consciousness, are these questions irrelevant? can SOMEBODY please explain SOMETHING to me and free me from this treacherous mindfuck? thanks xx

DAMN...good questions....none of which I have an answer for though....

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, "we have to find a different definition of what it is to exist..."

IMO, these things may possibly exist only for the time that you are aware of them and therefore give them substance by seeing and acknowledging them.

The same way, possibly, that dreams are real even if only for the fleeting moments in which you are dreaming...IDK...no one does.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

as far as psychedelic revelations go, I've only ever fully "tripped" 5 times, all of them with psilocybin mushrooms, but the same resounding takeaway message I've gotten every single time is "WHAT ARE REALLY SO AFRAID OF?" it seems fairly simple

That's a great lesson. And I wouldn't say "only" five times, that's 5 times more than most people ever do. IMO tripping is subject to diminishing marginal utility.

That is not to say I categorically deny that there are some people who benefit from frequent use (I won't even try to define that, my minimum to qualify keeps on increasing over time), but I have yet to see evidence that frequent use would be beneficial to most people.

As an adolescent, my social anxiety is very high - the views and opinions of my peer group are very important to me and I'm insecure in lots of ways.

Peer group evaluation becoming a primary concern/preoccupation is practically the definition of adolescence. Your contemporaries get just as nervous, and are quite insecure. You are starting to form your identities, it's the precocious ones who are the oddballs.

I wasn't just THINKING them, I was EXPERIENCING them, and it made a much bigger change to my psyche than it would have if someone had simply told me "stop being so socially anxious and try new things

Bingo. Though if you ever deal with professionals, here's how I think of it (and I think this distances me from the general PDer incredulity of the mental healthcare system): You don't have to trust the individual you are dealing with, you only need to trust the the methodology they have been trained to use.

 

[psood0nym]

While we can't absolutely discount the possibility of something existing on some non-physical or distantly removed plane of existence, I personally don't let such technicalities bother me. By the same account any entity we might imagine or dream about stone sober could have such a status, including those with blatantly contradictory or absurd properties. If anybody genuinely treated all such things as worthy of consideration they'd be wearing a straight jacket and diaper. Even granting, for instance, that some of what's impressed upon people about machine elves (they construct reality or consciousness or whatever) was reflective of some truth, it's nevertheless not practical or of benefit to even the most abstract or spiritual concerns to try to extrapolate from something so prohibitively alien. The value of such experiences doesn't extend too far beyond the fact that they open us up to new horizons of experiential possibility, understanding, and beauty (and that's hardly trivial despite it's relative modesty). It's not really profitable to pursue a line of inquiry or speculation about something that largely precludes the possibility of any sort of further confirmation or refinement of knowledge as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Psychonautical]

Well the man who discovered the double helix design to DNA did so while high on LSD.
You have to imagine that all concepts come to people through thinking and perhaps there is an natural oscillation required of the psychedelic receptors in your brain to produce actual profound and world altering knowledge. Given that alot of science was produced and proven to be true before LSD found its way into the slip steam. It becomes like a meditation when you are trying to figure out meaningful science. To be an expert in a field is to be like a Shaman or a Guru, just of "metaphysics" or whatever. I admit that i can literally almost do everything better under the influence of marijuana because i'm calmer, and more in tune and involved with whatever it is i am doing.
It would be foolish to think that the last how ever many years of genetic research is null and void because it is impart based upon someones psychedelic trip.

Ultimately i feel that if people are on the cusp of discovering something taking a psychedelic drug helps to break the Neuroplasticity you have developed towards solving the given situation that they are having a problem uncovering.
Now this might not be the case for everyone. But there does seem to be a literal CUP of knowledge one can drink from while they are tripping if the experiment is conducted in the right set and setting of course.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Thanks xork! A few more responses like that and this thread might become worthy of assimilation into a B&D.

During a trip I experienced my sense of self that I normally experienced as a unified whole, split into several parts. I experiences these parts as individual entities which were sometimes aware of each other and sometimes not. I witnessed how these parts interacted, and in some cases, interacted in conflict with one another, causing internal strife. Upon emerging from my psychedelic state I remembered these correlations and was able to apply them in such a way that I broke through the depression I had been feeling because I was able to understand where some of that conflict was coming from and put it in its place. Though it was not a permanent solution, it did launch me into a period of several years where I lived my life much more fully and happily.

I have experienced the multiplicity of self. It only contributed to the destabilization of my identity, which anomie had already done a number on.

Does this mean anything to you?

It has shown me that most positions are prisons.

Indeed, 'tis why the following is now more laudable than offensive in my eyes:

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

For everything you seem to think I believe in

I incorrectly assumed you still held views compatible with those of Buddhism.

Those intellectual markers are not very useful because consciousness alters on its own, without drugs, all the time. From sleeping to wakefulness. From calmness to adrenaline. From pain to bliss. As for stimuli, no one on this planet exists in a vacuum and science does not yet understand consciousness or the extent of its perceptual capabilities; therefore, what you currently see as lacking in stimuli may actually be teeming with unseen interactions.

Argument from ignorance.

Addendum: I liked the imagery of the first four sentences, I'm picturing crests and troughs, ebb and flow.

Edit: "what you currently see as lacking in stimuli may actually be teeming with unseen interactions"

Someone correct any deficiencies in my knowledge of the the English language, but I can only read this statement as "Acute psychedelic intoxication may not be a solely neuropharmacological phenemonon, some aspects might be drug facilitated ESP."

I'll put off unrolling my MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner until y'all can weigh in.


edit edit: Turns out my homage is actual just an unwieldy reformulation of its inspiration. I'll just give the original in post #50.

 

[perpetualdawn]

I didn't follow everything going on in this thread, but the purpose of this post is to give an example of a simple revelation that came about on a PD trip.

I realized i am 50% my mom, 50% my dad. I grew up being told I was just like my dad, and although intellectually I knew my genetic makeup comes equally from both parents, I had this idea embedded that I was "just like" my dad. During an LSD trip it became vividly clear that this was not so, that I really am positioned half way between the two, just that I have a few obvious traits I picked up from my dad. This observation was so detailed, rich and profound that it completely re shaped my understanding of myself.

Navel-gazey, but a very dramatic and permanent shift in view due to a single PD trip.

 

[pmoseman]

What about falling asleep, waking up, and remembering a vivid dream?

We do not always dream but I had a dream where Jesus told me that all of reality is concrete and that dreams are only illusions.

I can't rely on intellect alone to determine truth in my experiences. What prompts people to declare that what just happened "wasn't real" was a sum of what they were taught to believe and accept about reality, nothing more.

And who starts these rumours? Jesus.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

I can't rely on intellect alone to determine truth in my experiences. What prompts people to declare that what just happened "wasn't real" was a sum of what they were taught to believe and accept about reality, nothing more.

And who starts these rumours? Jesus

We cannot reason a rationalization for the rejection of reason out of somebody. Informative though our attempts me be to our audience, and useful for whetting our edge,* Edward Abbey offers a more elegant solutionto our problem, and it is well befit an empiricist:

To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist, all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks, then he's a liar.

I am not a monist

Are you an idealist, in the kitchen, with the candle stick?**




* Ecclesiastes 10:10, "If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct."
** Didn't get this reference either? Well then, I'll give you a clue.

 

[pmoseman]

We cannot reason a rationalization for the rejection of reason out of somebody.

Oh? Not so sure.

Apparently, a picnic table spent a LOT of time sussing it out. YOU had better not duck when you end up hitting your own head with the rock.

Can't wait for the whirlwind of hellfire that is looming destructively overhead. One of us will spontaneously combust any second.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

^I have no memory of it, but I once posted like that on meth + jwh-018 + alcohol. Found it the next day, it was terrifying. Then I reviewed my browser history, and found out that all I did besides the word salad was watch bad softcore porn (and that's I "woke up" doing, quite futilely.). Dodged a bullet there.

Here are those posts:

Heh, I think life is possible many sorts of demo. So demo graphic + demo anything = demo psychohelp.

I can't stop drip Ion sphere. I will go mesphereomeantoliopeme.

Don't look'em up, Great Ghost of Jimi Hendrix was I histrionic back then.

 

[phuckingnutz]

^ great ghost of jimi hendrix was i histrionic back then.

..."back then"?...

. One of us will spontaneously combust any second.

...We'll keep our fingers crossed...

 

[pmoseman]

Yes BUT, what if you were to view the video while tripping...the walls would be bendy again....all that the video does is film what is really there.
However, when you SEE the video straight your filters are, again, on-line and your mind sees the filtered version of reality regardless of what the video actually filmed.
So, video is not a valid way to tell if what you were experiencing was "real" or not.

You believe optical illusions, which can be recreated using cardboard and a magic marker, are underlying reality.

Strange unexplainable things do happen when you are on psychedelics which apparently go beyond simple optical illusions.

These are hallucinations, which are created by your mind. The evidence for this would be purely subjective. You have to stop believing, since your beliefs are driving the illusion, and see that you are, deep down, in control of these hallucinations.

It appears some have gone tangently into believing that these "filtered" hallucinations are the underpinnings of reality and that reality itself has the same property as a hallucination. Namely, that beliefs shape reality. Figuratively, that reality is created by the mind and that instead of being an instrument to tap into a larger universe, the mind is a machine that feeds us with illusion.

Check your facts.

Hallucinogens do not remove "filters". There are properly working minds and orderly observations by healthy people, which we have ONLY through science discovered flaws to, and then there are compromised sensors which are KNOWN to supply us with hallucinations when they are compromised.

You are losing your mind, not your beliefs. The mind comes out of millions of years of evolution to give us a shared interpretation of reality. These are not cultural manifestations of shared belief; those do shape EXPERIENCES, but your abnormal experience is not being shaped by altered beliefs; rather, by drugs and this, in turn, has altered your beliefs.

Observing reality is difficult for your mind to do and it makes mistakes. It is not in any way attempting to filter reality but filter those mistakes. It is giving us the most advanced version of reality and has made compromises along the way, eg abandoning UV light to improve fine detail and motion tracking.

Your brain is not magically enhanced and seeing a better "un-filtered" version of reality. It is seeing a dumbed-down version. It gains no new abilities through the chaotic incursion of a chemical in your brain. It has been compromised. What you are looking at is a world through the filter of a drug.

If you have short-term memory damage then the world is a confusing place. I "get" what you are saying. Don't delude yourself into thinking I am a dumbass just because you are crippled.

A sober person sees a straight line on the video. If you hold a ruler against the wall, the ruler is bent. If you believe the wall is straight then you can see it as straight.

So, how do you ever know a line is straight? How do you know our reality is not shaped by common beliefs?

Turn the ruler around and put it against the wall, now the ruler is bent the other way. Clearly, the ruler is not bent both ways. It is straight and your eye is bending the ruler.

 

[phuckingnutz]

OOOOH ...someone got their panties in a wad...

...pretentious people are easy to piss off...8)

 

[pmoseman]

OOOOH ...someone got their panties in a wad...

...pretentious people are easy to piss off...8)

Sanity is real. Glad I could help. Now fuck off.

 

[TruffulaTree]

oof this thread was so cool up to now

 

[pmoseman]

oof this thread was so cool up to now

Well... shit happens.

 

[phuckingnutz]

Awww P., I was only fucking with you.

I should have realized that your pretenses were just there to hide your insecurity...NOW I'll fuck off...

 

[PsyFrontier]

I guess because I've spent a lot of time with Buddhism and debunking mind, reality, and projection, it matters very little to me whether or not what I'm witnessing is real or an hallucination. This movie we're in is capable of producing anything, and it's all present awareness which perceives it. I feel that the author of the article is correct in saying you should not fill uncertainty with idle stories, but on the other hand he doesn't take his theory to its natural conclusion. He says the psychedelic state is like a dream, so then what is the state of sobriety, in that case? No, I'm not talking about psychotic breaks here... I'm talking about a logical interrogation of what people call stone cold sober reality. Why is "reality" not a dream but psychedelic hallucinations are?

Implying that all vision comes from "self" is distinctly modern western. From a place of present awareness, there is no reality and no self perceiving it, so I don't really agree with his belief that all psychedelic phenomena stem from self. It is very clear that at higher doses of LSD and comparable psychedelics, ego is dissolved to the point where the subject-object relationship ceases to matter, unlike in a dream (which the author compares it to) where there is often still that relationship even if we don't necessarily have direct control over it. It's all oneness, whether it's oneness hallucinating or oneness having tea at a cafe on a sunny day. Literary distinctions are mental masturbation over pseudo-separateness.

It's interesting to observe a seasoned psychedelic user attempt to parse projections through the duality of selfhood vs. hallucination, when the very notion of self within an intense psychedelic state is paradoxical. In other words, it's somewhat ironic that the author postulates all hallucinations come from "self" when self itself is not veritably real. Psychedelics taught me that I am not mind, I am not self, I am simply present awareness and there is no "I" in here.

His beliefs are interesting, but I do not resonate with all of them.

Some interesting thoughts here that I'd like to react to. You ask why I differentiate between sobriety and other states. Sober waking consciousness differs from dreaming, psychosis, and intense psychedelic experience in the degree to which it maps to reality. Sober consciousness models reality with an impressive degree of accuracy (but never perfectly or objectively). But when dreaming, psychotic, or tripping, your internal model drifts further and further from the real world. You may ask, what does it mean for a perception to map to reality? I would echo Never Knows Best and say the best measure of a model is its utility.

As George E. P. Box said, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." I think the "accuracy" of any model of reality lies on a spectrum -- no human construction perfectly or completely characterizes something as complex as "reality," but some models are demonstrably more accurate than others. An example: say I am about to cross the street. A bus is headed towards me down the road, but I do not see it -- I hallucinate an empty road in its place. I cross the road, only to get clobbered by the bus. Another man, standing next to me, correctly perceived the oncoming bus and remained safely on the sidewalk. In this example it's clear that one model of the world was closer to the truth, and that this model proved advantageous in navigating (and surviving) the environment.

Dreaming offers a similar example. I may dream that a lion is about to eat me. I try to run, but the lion is too fast. As he chomps down on my leg, I awake in my bed, gasping. I laugh, realizing that my predicament was in fact a simulation. So there are two internal models at play here -- the first, that I am trying to escape a very real, very dangerous lion; the second, that I was dreaming, and that the lion was only an internal projection. These models are not equal in their veracity or their value. If the first model was true, then I would be dead. Since I am living and my leg is intact, the second model appears to be more consistent with reality. The argument could be made that all human learning (and the basis of all science) is the refinement of models over time.

Now, the "good" models are flawed too. There is no such thing as a bus, or a lion -- these are human words, pointing to human ideas. But they are useful conventions. I think of "self" the same way -- it is a fiction, but a convenient one. When I say that hallucinated imagery is "self-generated," it's a shorthand way of saying the imagery does not map closely to the environment outside the brain, but is has a neurological basis. A hallucination feels real to the "present awareness" we call "I", but when it comes to navigating physical reality, it is not useful, and may even be harmful. A hallucination is bad intel, relayed by unreliable foot soldiers (drug-addled senses), and all decisions made based on the intel is suspect.

So yes, I agree with you -- the self is illusory, and "literary distinctions" are always, to some extent, artificial. Nevertheless I think there is a difference between "internally generated" perceptions -- which may reveal one's feelings and thoughts rather than the immediate environment -- and "externally generated" perceptions -- which may provide good information on physical reality but fail to inform you about your internal state. My view is that at any time, our experience is a mix of internal and external influences -- an interplay between Brain and World -- but that when tripping or dreaming, the dial turns towards "internal".

As pmoseman points out, some of the "filters" that get removed by psychedelics are error-correcting filters, normally responsible for parsing incoming sense-data to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. It is for this reason that I suggest we remain skeptical of externally-oriented insights gleaned from the introspective state.