Possible to contact the dead using DMT?

[Tunnelfission]

Anything is possible, out of everyone who says they've seen a ghost or talked to the dead... every single count can't be wrong.

the old Terence Mckenna UFO sighting defense heh!

 

[Splitz]

It depends on the person, what they need, what they are capable of seeing and what they are comfortable with understanding.

For "sockpuppet", losing all believe in "my" own existence and "free will" thanks to powerful fresh cubensis and a well primed set and setting has allowed "me" to cope with losing many people in the decades since, as well as to be at peace with "my" own "mortality".

YMMV

Yes, that's right. I suppose we can't just assume Voclano's broader belief system.

 

[Splitz]

I am going to have to agree with this.

It would be nice if you could, but the obvious answer is no. You can cope with it better, and you might be able to take drugs to trick yourself that you can contact the dead, but that just isn't going to happen.

Your mom is dead, and this might seem like a way to go into an alien world where you can communicate with her, but I am sorry, that isn't going to happen. I don't think you can overdose on DMT, so it wouldn't hurt to try, and hopefully be at peace with her demise.

You cannot state that as fact. The obvious answer is no? The obvious 'answer' might not be the right one.

 

[invert]

Perhaps psychedelics can facilitate a user's awareness of and access to their own internal model of a (dead or alive) loved one that they maintain within their own brain (cf Hofstadter's 'I am a strange loop'). That might be a possible way that someone could experience contacting the dead (to the extent of accessing things about the dead person that they were not otherwise conscious of, even) without having to suppose any life after death, disembodied souls, or anything other than normal psychology and the well established (anecdotally, at any rate) tendency for psychedelics to free up conscious-unconscious connections in the mind.

 

[Volcano]

Yes, that's right. I suppose we can't just assume Voclano's broader belief system.

I don't much have a belief system. Good ethics, karma, morality, all that good stuff. I align myself with no religion however

 

[Scoobysnacks]

im sorry to hear of your loss mate

personally i see humans as being blessed with oposable thumbs , thats it, just mammals no more no less albiet the most intelligent. we cannot contact the dead in any way, on or off drugs as and i dont mean to offend any religios folk but there are no spirits etc, we just goto where we came from which is mother earth

 

[Help?!?!]

Graham Hancock wrote a book about contacting the dead on psychedelics after his father died. It's called "Supernatural". He talks about taking DMT.

I could only imagine how horrible that would be(i'm sure it would be a godsend for some). Seeing my father again is one of the last things I ever want to do. I don't even think I would like it if someone I enjoyed in life tried to contact me. I love paranormal things but not as much when the paranormal involves family or other known people.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Thoughts of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.:

Each and every moment that HAS existed, THIS moment, and moments in the FUTURE, continue to exist FOREVER. Moments each have reality... just because it was in "the past" does not mean it has utterly evaporated.. it happened... it is part of reality... therefore it EXISTS. For someone to claim categorically that it does not, is laughably arrogant and evidence of delusion that the person making such a claim thinks they "know it all" when really our tiny brains/minds can only know just a microscopic fragment of "the big picture". DH

From novel Slaughterhouse Five (note - "Talfamadorians" are aliens that abduct main character and cause his mind go become "unstuck in time"):

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

 

[TheAppleCore]

^ This is exactly how I perceive the passage of time.

 

[vibrancy3]

The only person DMT will put you in contact with is yourself, imho.

that is one of the best answers i have seen about DMT all through-out browing the net! that's soooo true

lke with LSD a good trip is ''meaningfull''

 

[Dr Mamba]

I remember a trip i was in a sort of dreamy state were i was with my ex GF.
We was walking in the countyside, talking a bit, enjoyng the nature around.
It was very nice, i'm so sorry i dont remember which chemicals were envolve :/

 

[Matsuo Munefusa.]

yes its very possible.

 

[knock]

it's amusing when people speak with confidence about the nature of our conscious minds / souls / whatever you want to call the thing that is us which perceives, and how it relates to life and death.

The fact is our science has nothing to say on this. It can discuss the biological operation of the body and how sensory information gets into the brain, and it can show how neurons fire in certain ways, but the closer we look the more remote from our experience the results become.

The world is more mysterious than anyone knows.

 

[DwayneHoover]

^ VERY well put knockando.. Thank you.

 

[hobhead]

need to call ghost busters . your dead granny ain't gonna call you up ! carcass rots whether human or insect . chemicals alter your perception and that is all .

 

[!_MDMA_!]

give me some of that good shit u got which inspired this topic

 

[DwayneHoover]

need to call ghost busters . your dead granny ain't gonna call you up ! carcass rots whether human or insect . chemicals alter your perception and that is all .

I've thought and read about this, oh, just a tiny little bit.

First may I ask: What psychedelics have you done and in what amounts? Please don't fib.

Anyway, as a little starting exercise, please elucidate exactly what "red" is (intrinsically or as compared to say "blue") to someone who has been blind from birth. Not a frequency number, but THE MEANING OF THE TERM "RED" WHEN YOU SEE THAT COLOR. You may use as many scientific words, diagrams, equations, and computers as you like. Go ahead, Mr. Smartypants. Well? WELL???

So...if the contents of our subjective impressions and feelings and perceptions are 100% generated inside of our brains, explain exactly what/why it is that it should FEEL LIKE anything to be a set of firing neurons?

And WHAT, exactly is it that IS FEELING WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE A SET OF FIRING NEURONS???

In what ontological dimension are our subjective conscious perceptions and inner thoughts and feelings occurring, exactly?

How, exactly, does a mere set of molecules arranged into neurons, just because they are carrying electrical charges etc., suddenly acquire an internal subjective sensation that they "ARE" ANYTHING? i.e., how, exactly does dead matter magically generate the internal impression of consciousness?

There is a long history going back centuries in pure philosophy in which the idea of our awareness just being some sort of physical process running on a mechanistic bio-computer has been logically proven to be quite incomplete and insufficient.

ALL physicalist explanations are just arm waving and offer ZERO accounting for this aspect of the phenomenon, just brushing it off to the side as if it does not matter. Saying awareness "is just an epi-phenomenon" or something like that is a laughable way of saying "I have absolutely no idea" using a great big word and hoping the questioner would just go away.

Philosophers, physicists, and biologists are still arguing extensively about this.

It's known as "The Hard Problem", also the issue of "Qualia". Look those terms up on Wikipedia and do some reading and your certainty may waver.

Here are some starting points, Mr. Certainty:

Start here with the concept of "Qualia" and branch out from there to explore the philosophical history & current elaborations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_penrose

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind

http://consc.net/papers/extended.html

Chalmers' BLOG:
http://fragments.consc.net/

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html

Interview:
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue21/21chalmers.htm

A longer version of this interview can be found on
Andrew Chrucky's website at:

http://www.ditext.com/chalmers/chalm.html.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/pr.../104-2826501-0928752?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

http://www.infuzemag.com/reviews/book_reviews/illuminated/

http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html



MORE!!

Stuart Hameroff MD and Roger Penrose PHD. Their recent theory about the nature and mechanisms of subjective conscioussness/awareness is nicely sumarized by Hameroff:

"It is argued here that the physicalist premise alone is unable to solve completely the difficult issues of consciousness (e.g. experience, binding, pre-conscious conscious transition, non-computability and free will) and that to do so will require supplemental panpsychist/pan-experiential philosophy expressed in modern physics. In one such scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity. The proposed process is Roger Penrose's objective reduction (OR), a self-organizing "collapse" of the quantum wave function related to instability at the most basic level of spacetime geometry. In the Penrose-Hameroff model of "orchestrated objective reduction" ("Orch OR"), OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brain's neurons and links cognition with proto-conscious experience and Platonic values embedded in spacetime geometry. The basic idea is that consciousness involves brain activities coupled to self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality."

Above is from the following utterly fascinating and very well developed article:

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/fundamentality.html

This is the proposed mechanism whereby quantum physics is directly linked with the subjective experience of consciousness... as you may know quantum physics is already intimately associated with consciousness... uncertainty principle, collapse of wave function, Schrodingers cat, etc. This is not new age mumbo jumbo. Quantum physics is oh so very real... the very computer you are on now (the mechanism whereby transistors functon on an atomic level) would not be possible without it.

And don't say "quantum processes only occur at quantum sizes and cannot possibly affect things like living systems. WRONG:

For those still skeptical that biological systems can possibly have anything to do with quantum-type events & processes... not so fast! There is mounting evidence that macroscopic bio-organisms capture and USE even the fleeting flickers of the quantum world in the struggle for survival... the process of evolution via DNA mutations is, apparently, able to capture and utilize ANY physical qualities, even quantum ones:

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/qbupdate.htm

Support for the above theories is being collected here, for example:

<Tunneling and green tea J Am Chem Soc 129 (18) pp 5846 - 5854 " Tunneling is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature [...] We had a problem understanding how polyphenols work at such low concentrations. This paper gives theoretical credence to a large amount of experimental evidence of polyphenols as in vitro and in vivo antioxidants. ">

I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON I LIKED THE STUFF.... And I guess this explains how EGCG ended up being such a powerful, useful medication!

<Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems Berkeley Lab In Nature 446, 782-786, Fleming et al. report on coherent electron transfer in photosynthetic complexes. " We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis. This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer, because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one. " Covered also in Scientific American, Wired, PhysicsWeb,rose.blog.>
So, to implement that most magical of natural processes, photosynthesis, our greatest planetary magicians, THE PLANTS! figured out how to use manipulate matter's quantum properties!

And most spectacularly, scientific evidence that DNA managed to cook up a a biological structure/process that allows ANIMAL BRAINS to harness quantum properties to perform a function that increases the survival of the animal, and thus, of course, of the DNA... amazing!!!

<Birds do it!
Quantum Zeno Effect Underpinning the Radical-Ion-Pair Mechanism of Avian Magnetoreception
I. K. Kominis
I. K. Kominis
(Submitted on 16 Apr 2008)
Abstract: The intricate biochemical processes underlying avian magnetoreception, the sensory ability of migratory birds to navigate using earths magnetic field, have been narrowed down to spin-dependent recombination of radical-ion pairs to be found in avian species retinal proteins. The avian magnetic field detection is governed by the interplay between magnetic interactions of the radicals unpaired electrons and the radicals recombination dynamics. Critical to this mechanism is the long lifetime of the radical-pair spin coherence, so that the weak geomagnetic field will have a chance to signal its presence. It is here shown that a fundamental quantum phenomenon, the quantum Zeno effect, is at the basis of the radical-ion-pair magnetoreception mechanism. The quantum Zeno effect naturally leads to long spin coherence lifetimes, without any constraints on the systems physical parameters, ensuring the robustness of this sensory mechanism. Basic experimental observations regarding avian magnetic sensitivity are seamlessly derived. These include the magnetic sensitivity functional window and the heading error of oriented bird ensembles, which so far evaded theoretical justification. The findings presented here could be highly relevant to similar mechanisms at work in photosynthetic reactions. They also trigger fundamental questions about the evolutionary mechanisms that enabled avian species to make optimal use of quantum measurement laws.
Comments: 21 pages, 3 figures
Subjects: Biomolecules (q-bio.BM); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
http://q-bio.BM/
Cite as: arXiv:0804.2646v1 [q-bio.BM]>

 

[DwayneHoover]

I know thats alot of resources. I just came across something new to me that people here might find interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mysterianism

There you'll find links that eventually lead to most of the above. Here's the text:

New Mysterianism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about a response to the mind-body problem. For a general article on the limits of inquiry see cognitive closure.
New Mysterianism is a philosophical position proposing that the hard problem of consciousness will never be explained; or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage. The unresolvable problem is how to explain sentience and qualia and their interaction with consciousness.
Contents [hide]
1 Name
2 Philosophy
3 Adherents
4 See also
5 References
5.1 Citations
5.2 Other sources
[edit]Name

The "old mysterians" were not a discrete intellectual movement, but rather thinkers throughout history who have put forward a position that some aspects of consciousness may not be knowable or discoverable. They include Gottfried Leibniz, Samuel Johnson, and Thomas Huxley. Huxley wrote, "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djinn, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." [6, p. 229, quote]
Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book Science of the Mind that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness may never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group Question Mark and the Mysterians.[1] The term "New Mysterianism" has been extended by some writers to encompass the wider philosophical position that humans do not have the intellectual ability to solve many hard problems, not just the problem of consciousness, at a scientific level. This position is also known as anti-constructive naturalism.
[edit]Philosophy

Main article: cognitive closure
New Mysterianism is often characterized as a presupposition that some problems cannot be solved. Critics of this view argue that it is fallacious to assume that a problem cannot be solved just because we have not solved it yet. On the other hand, New Mysterians would say that it is just as absurd to assume that every problem can be solved. Crucially, New Mysterians would argue that they did not start with any supposition as to the solvability of the question, and instead reached their conclusion through logical reasoning. Their argument goes as follows: Subjective experiences by their very nature cannot be shared or compared. Therefore it is impossible to know what subjective experiences a system (other than ourselves) is having. This will always be the case, no matter what clever scientific tests we invent. Therefore, there are some questions about consciousness that will never be answered.
Noam Chomsky distinguishes between problems, which seem solvable, at least in principle, through scientific methods, and mysteries, which do not seem solvable, even in principle. He notes that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology, e.g. a mouse will never speak like a human. In the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding. For example, in the mind-body problem, emergent materialism claims that humans are not smart enough to determine "the relationship between mind and matter." [4] Strong agnosticism is an application of this position to religion.
[edit]Adherents

Colin McGinn is the leading proponent of the New Mysterian position among major philosophers.
Author and conservative columnist John Derbyshire has stated publicly that although formerly professing Christianity, he now considers himself to be a Mysterian. [1]
American mathematics and science writer Martin Gardner considered himself to be a Mysterian.
[edit]See also

Cognitive closure
[edit]References

[edit]Citations
^ Flanagan, Owen (1991). The Science of the Mind. MIT Press. pp. 313. ISBN 0262560569.
[edit]Other sources
Blackburn, Simon (19??), Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, chapter two
Flanagan, Owen (1991), The Science of the Mind, 2ed MIT Press, Cambridge
Horgan, John (1999), The Undiscovered Mind, Phoenix, ISBN 0-7538-1098-0
McGinn, Colin (1991), The Problem of Consciousness
McGinn, Colin (1993), Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry, Blackwell, ISBN 1-55786-475-6
McGinn, Colin (1999), The Mysterious Flame

 

[invert]

The so-called hard problem of consciousness is interesting, for sure, and I enjoyed Chalmers' The Conscious Mind; but I'm increasingly persuaded by the idea that the hard problem isn't as 'hard' as it seems, and that the apparent mystery of qualia may arise from peculiarities and quirks of how we talk about our experience.

A very different approach to understanding and explaining qualia from Chalmers' (iirc, Chalmers' account requires an additional 'stuff' of consciousness that is distinct from matter, and which has no impact on matter [and thus, surely, is useless in solving the problem it was supposed to solve, but hey]), which I find rather interesting too, is Kevin O'Regan's. He argues that differences in 'what it feels like' to, for example, see red vs see blue, or see vs hear, or whatever, is a direct consequence of the nature of the sensory-motor contingencies (i.e. what sensory changes occur when you make given motor actions relative to whatever it is you're experiencing) inherent in the way we and whatever it is that we are experiencing interact, and that there is no need to posit anything additional or non-material or otherly-material to explain our experience. See, for example, this paper of his.

Re: the mysterian position: I think this position depends on being ignorant of (or just deliberately ignoring) the last hundred or so years of scientific psychology, and specifically of psychophysics. But I may be being unfair. I'm pretty ignorant about mysterianism.

The logic of their position may not be flawed, but their starting point is, I'd argue: "Subjective experiences by their very nature cannot be shared or compared." Yes they can; we have language: that's what language is for. It's not perfect, but it works: if it didn't, our societies wouldn't function, or exist, at all.

 

[DwayneHoover]

This all may seem off-topic, but it does relate to the original question I think, since it addresses ideas about "what is the 'true' nature of our minds and the world they apparently inhabit", which certainly DMT is related to as well as musings about 'contacting the dead.' So it's a sidebranch, but I think sufficiently related to the original thought to belong here...

Deleted the dead links in long post above to infuse magazine, now some kooky newage place.

The Chalmers article on "Matrix" is still good if a bit long.

ALOT of very interesting web sites with innumerable off-shoots containing a surprising amount of rather serious though can be found by googling [are we living in the matrix]

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C...chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=are+we+living+in+the+matrix

First link is a nice summary page

Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Which might make it more likely you can contact the dead, and could possibly explain some of the really bizarre details of alot of DMT experiences. Why would there be seeming "alien" presences who are "annoyed" we suddenly appear in their realms? Well... if they are aware they are inside a matrix, or maybe they even created it, and suddenly in pops us totally clueless primates going "O my god, wtf? Bleah! Whoa!" wouldn't you be annoyed if you were them? Maybe DMT is some sort of meta-key, a "red pill" that exists here that temporarily unplugs us and allows us to see a higher level more true reality? Not saying I believe that but it seems possible anyway, and fascinating to contemplate.

And I still tend to think we are essentially in a "virtual matrix" composed of thoughts occurring inside the mindspace of some original solitary consciousness. call it "God" or whatever you like.