If weed isn't a "real" psychedelic how do you explain arabesque/hindu art?

[max_freakout]

We are talking right past each other:

I am claiming that it is not possible to trip without drugs
You are claiming that it is possible to get awareness that "we are all one" without drugs

so while our conversation has the surface appearance of being a "debate" (ie two people who disagree with each other exploring the disagreement) it isn't actually a debate, we are making two separate claims about two separate issues.

You agree with my claim that it is not possible to trip without drugs, and that is all i am saying, so there was never any disagreement between us about this, we both agree that without drugs it is not possible to experience a psychedelic trip. This has the further implication that without drugs it is not possible to gain the new awareness (memory) of what it feels like to trip.

The "thing" that i was referring to was the psychedelic experience, that is inaccessible without drugs (as we both agree)

The "thing" that you were referring to was the awareness (in the ordinary non-tripping state of consciousness) that we are all one. You claim that this can be achieved without drugs, whereas i have no opinion about that but I strongly disagree with the basic premise that people have to start believing that "we are all one" when they trip.

We are not all one, you and i are two separate people with two separate perspectives, and furthermore i don't agree that tripping on drugs would make people state such obvious falsehoods as "we are all one" when we clearly aren't all one. I have tripped and experienced ego death and meditated, yet i do not believe that "we are all one", so how do you explain that? How do I fit into your theory that everyone who trips will have to start to believe that we are all one (even when they can plainly see that we are more than one)?

Everybody agrees that taking psychedelic drugs automatically makes people trip, but at least one person disagrees with your assertion that taking psychedelics automatically makes people believe that we are all one. You have artifically construted an imagined after-effect of tripping (coming to believe that we are all one), and you are putting all your focus onto that imagined after-effect and ignoring the trip experience itself. Whereas I am keeping my focus on tripping itself, instead of some artificially constructed after-effect.

The vagueness of this constructed after-effect allows you to covertly suggest that tripping and meditating are similar (by saying they both have the same after-effect), when actually they are very different experiences.

You are clearly an intelligent person, so why do you insist on playing wordgames and making me have to untangle what you are saying? Why is it so difficult for you to plainly acknowledge that this particular experience (psychedelic tripping) is off-limits to people who do not take drugs? Stop deceiving yourself with self-contradictory wordgames! free your mind from the prohibitionist matrix! What do you *really* believe?

 

[Xorkoth]

The "thing" that you were referring to was the awareness (in the ordinary non-tripping state of consciousness) that we are all one. You claim that this can be achieved without drugs, whereas i have no opinion about this other than to say that i disagree with the basic premise, we are not all one, you and i are two separate people with two separate perspectives, and furthermore i don't agree that tripping on drugs would make people state such obvious falsehoods as "we are all one" when we clearly aren't all one. I have tripped and experienced ego death, yet i do not believe that "we are all one", so how do you explain that? How do I fit into your theory that everyone who trips will have to start to believe that we are all one (even when they can plainly see that we are more than one)?

I don't claim to believe that everyone who has ego death has to believe we're all one, but I did assume that was your conclusion so okay, point taken. When I say "we're all one", what I mean is that the experience of ego death, for me, showed me that we are all the universe experiencing itself subjectively. Of course, subjectively, you and I are different people with different viewpoints. I just believe that the force of awareness/sentience within both of us is the same awareness, experiencing itself differently.

My issue with your arguments stems from statements like this:

The typical sober meditation experience is the exact opposite of the typical high-dose psychedelic experience. Meditating typically makes people calm and chilled out, whereas a high dose of psychedelic drugs is an intense energetic mind-warp; these two experiences are entirely unlike each other, there is no real basis for comparing sober meditating to drug-tripping. - [Xorkoth] This seems unnecessarily absolutist... yes, the experiences will be different in character substantially, but there are reports of people experiencing fear and intense, powerful states from meditation. Comparisons can be drawn. When I try to meditate, it chills me out, because I have rarely practiced it at all, but I also believe the reports of people who have and who have reached profound states that I can see parallels to the psychedelic state in.

...And statements you've made about this at other times, in other threads, claiming that mystical/core religious experiences can only be facilitated through psychedelics (sorry if I am paraphrasing correctly or misunderstanding your position, I don't want to go hunting for an example but this conversation has been going on in various iterations over quite a while). I disagree with these statements for the reasons I have stated previously. I agree with you that a psychedelic drug can't be experienced without taking a psychedelic drug.

 

[max_freakout]

I I agree with you that a psychedelic drug can't be experienced without taking a psychedelic drug.

This ^ is meaningless category-fudging, you don't "experience" a drug, rather you TAKE a drug, then you "have" an experience.


So there are 2 different things:

1.psychedelic drugs, and 2.psychedelic experiences.

Psychedelic drugs CAUSE psychedelic experiences, that is why they are called "psychedelic drugs", that name is a reference to the type of altered state experience that they cause in the human mind when they are ingested.

the crucial point is that it is not possible to "have" this particular type of experience (psychedelic experience) , without "taking" this particular type of drug (psychedelic drugs).

Psychedelic drugs and psychedelic experiences belong in two separate ontological categories.

So the question is, can you have a psychedelic experience (trip) without taking a psychedelic drug? Do you agree with me that this is not possible, and that the only way to trip is by taking drugs.

 

[Xorkoth]

See, from my perspective now you're indulging in meaningless wordplay. I don't see what the difference is between our two statements. I said we agree you can't experience a psychedelic drug without taking a psychedelic drug. You say that you're saying something different because "you don't "experience" a drug, rather you TAKE a drug, then you "have" an experience". These mean the same thing, at least when I say them. Did you want me to say "we agree you can't experience the state that you get when you have an experience that is the result of taking a psychedelic drug, without taking a psychedelic drug"?

 

[max_freakout]

Did you want me to say "we agree you can't experience the state that you get when you have an experience that is the result of taking a psychedelic drug, without taking a psychedelic drug"?

this ^ can be shortened to - you can't trip without drugs, that is all i am saying, do you agree?

ie you cannot experience a psychedelic trip without taking psychedelic drugs.

 

[Listening]

So the question is, can you have a psychedelic experience (trip) without taking a psychedelic drug? Do you agree with me that this is not possible, and that the only way to trip is by taking drugs.

I think you've worked yourself into a corner and I agree with Xorkoth that most of what you are arguing is totally semantic. If you're right about what you're trying to say (and I'm not sure that you are) I don't think it has the meaning that you insist it does.

Anyway, to answer your question above, I disagree with your statement on two counts:

1. A psychedelic experience is not equivalent to a trip. A drug trip can be (or is) a psychedelic experience, but a psychedelic experience need not be a "trip". Maybe you disagree with this, but you're wrong because:
2. I've had plenty of psychedelic experiences outside of trips. I remember some from my childhood even.

So, yea, I don't think you know what a psychedelic experience is.

 

[Viv]

this ^ can be shortened to - you can't trip without drugs, that is all i am saying, do you agree?

ie you cannot experience a psychedelic trip without taking psychedelic drugs.

Sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations, as can high fever. There are a multitude of ways you can get trip-like effects without ever taking a drug. I do not understand how this is even an argument to be made. Drugs do not create any effects your brain can't create without them. They just force those effects strongly.

 

[Xorkoth]

this ^ can be shortened to - you can't trip without drugs, that is all i am saying, do you agree?

ie you cannot experience a psychedelic trip without taking psychedelic drugs.

Yes, that's what I said in my previous post. But I'm also saying that similar experiences can be had without psychedelic drugs. It's not the same, but it can have equal value and be as profound.

 

[max_freakout]

I've had plenty of psychedelic experiences outside of trips.

What do you mean by saying you were having a psychedelic experience but not tripping? That is a self-contradiction.

There is no difference between a psychedelic experience and a psychedelic trip, that is another example of evasive distracting wordgames.

A psychedelic experience IS a psychedelic trip, when you are having a psychedelic experience, you are said to be "tripping".
So the following two statements mean exactly the same thing:

1. Taking psychedelic drugs makes you trip
2. Taking psychedelic drugs makes you have a psychedelic experience

 

[max_freakout]

Yes, that's what I said in my previous post.

that is all i have been saying, you can't trip without taking drugs, so we were never disagreeing about anything, we have just been playing pointless wordgames and pretending to disagree about something.

I suspect that this is usually the case in these kinds of discussion, you don't really disagree with me but on the other hand you don't want to acknowledge that you agree with me, so you pretend not to.

 

[max_freakout]

Sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations

psychedelic drugs don't cause hallucinations, so this ^ is irrelevant, based on a primitive and outdated notion of what tripping is

Psychedelic tripping is a very different thing from hallucinating

 

[Xorkoth]

that is all i have been saying, you can't trip without taking drugs, so we were never disagreeing about anything, we have just been playing pointless wordgames and pretending to disagree about something.

I suspect that this is usually the case in these kinds of discussion, you don't really disagree with me but on the other hand you don't want to acknowledge that you agree with me, so you pretend not to.

Well, no, I disagree with important aspects of what you've been saying in this recurring debate (which I said in my last 2 posts). I agree with one specific statement you made. I'm not pretending to not agree with you, I have nothing against you personally and when you say something I agree with, I agree with it. But that one thing is not all you've been saying in this debate. Even in this thread you've made more claims than just this one. I disagree with some of those claims, for example these:

there is no real basis for comparing sober meditating to drug-tripping.

people do not ever experience bad-trip/control-loss phenomena while sober

Stan Grof is a good illustration of the mental distortion that prohibition creates. Grof had to start promoting drug-free techniques like hyperventilating when LSD was made illegal in 1967, just in order to save his career.

Grof's promotion of drug-free techniques was based on the illegality of LSD, and *not* on the effectiveness of the so-called "alternative" drug-free technique at making people trip.

Do you ever wonder why you get so much disagreement to your posts? It's not because of drug prohibition. But there is a reason, people don't just decide to not like you and refuse to agree with you.

 

[Viv]

psychedelic drugs don't cause hallucinations, so this ^ is irrelevant, based on a primitive and outdated notion of what tripping is

Psychedelic tripping is a very different thing from hallucinating

LSD and mushrooms both do with high enough doses. DMT visions definitely fit the definition of hallucinations as well.

 

[Doldrugs]

This is 100% arbitrary fabricated pseudoscientific nonsense

You could attach this to most posts I see from you.

 

[max_freakout]

Do you ever wonder why you get so much disagreement to your posts? It's not because of drug prohibition.

There is no real disagreement (eg everybody agrees with me that meditating doesn't make you trip), there is only avoidance and equivocation, caused by distorted thinking that is unconsciously contaminated by prohibitionism (ie the "drugs are bad" paradigm).

Think about how difficult it is for you to acknowledge that meditation doesn't make people trip. The verbal dance that you perform to avoid directly acknowledging that "meditation isn't the same thing as tripping" is a typical example of drug-war denial. You know the truth, but you can't admit the truth.

The warped prohibitionist mentality cannot openly admit to itself that the psychedelic state of consciousness is only accessible via drugs, because it would be fundamentally undermined by such an admission, - transcendence must be achievable via egoic power alone.

 

[Doldrugs]

Clutch that thesaurus!

 

[psy997]

bump for prune

 

[Shady's Fox]

This brain has some doors and you need keys to unlock them, sometimes those are psyhedelics, sometimes just weed. Egyptans were similar to arabs same to say to greek, mixing with liquors & plants old ceremonials, rituals, etc. Imagination doesn't always need to have boundary or be obtained by drugs + times back then were when Gods existed.

Libraries visited very often by leaders because it wasn't public. Books existed before drugs