Has anybody who is
not spiritual at all tripped on a psychedelic hallucinogen? I have some questions for you.
- Did you experience the insight into your own mind and personality change described by spiritual people?
- I assume that you experienced the same feel that spiritual people do but you interpret it in scientific terms. Can you describe this experience in scientific terms?
If you want meaningful answers to this, I think you should specify what you consider as "spiritual". My guess is that you refer to some form of religious/new age/esoteric/metaphysical faith?
"
the insight into your own mind" ..is there only
one insight and then you are done/finished, and subsequently spiritual for that matter?
"same feel that spiritual people do" ..again, what
feel are referring to and are there no further distinctions?
If you want scientific/secular results on what psychedelics do, I suggest you read brain imaging studies etc. since your question seems to be primarily about the mental effects. Contrary to what was thought before, many of these compounds seem to
decrease activity in the DMN (default mode network) and so allow the other parts of the brain to communicate more freely and/or in different ways than in a state of ordinary daytime consciousness. But what does that mean or what are the practical implications of that? How does it
feel to be in such a state? Is this where we leave science and enter into woo-woo?
I'm not very keen on putting any more labels on myself, but I would see myself
spiritual inclined, cause I acknowledge the fact that there seems to be more to experiencing a human life then the manipulation of physical objects. We have these complex brains and what we call minds and all the (non-material in the blatant sense, meaning for me: spiritual) stuff that comes along with it: thoughts, language, self-reflection, awareness itself, all sorts of mental structures that heavily propel our lifes every second. I'm interested in truth/what works/what makes sense (to me)/in learning etc., and what better toolkit to bring to bear on this than the scientific or a skeptical one? Just because western science/culture focuses ever more on the physical doesn't mean that the mental/spiritual stuff is not worth investigating. I'm trying hard to not fool myself, therefore I abstain from faith of all kinds. Faith is the opposite of wanting to find something out, it's a desease of the egoic mind I think. And we all experienced how folks that claim to 'know it all' come across..
Have psychedelic experiences changed my view on life? Sure! They provided a vast array of far-out experiences or raw material for me, which I had to work on, make sense of, integrate and I'm far from done yet. Whether this is considerd spiritual by some or not, I don't give a shit, cause it's as real as anything else in my life. Perhaps it's even more significant to attend to, as it seems to be more a
cause then a
effect to many aspects of living. But maybe that's just my schtik, I like to go to the source, want to know the working principle more then the many forms something is explicating itself. To put this into some neat ideological closet (scientific vs. spiritual) looks like another obstacle for potentially finding out some interesting stuff.
Just my take on this..