Psychedelics and Philosophy

[MysticMonist]

Hello!
I finished reading Huxley’s Doors of Perception on his experience with mescaline. I also really enjoyed some of descriptions of drug trips and related insights here on the forum.
As a mystic, I’ve been practicing meditation and self-hypnosis for several years (drug free). I’ve been really impressed with the similarities of my experience and that of famous mystics with descriptions of psychedelic use. My experiences lack the visual splendor or visceral nature but the insights gained are very simmilar.
I think this has profound implications for understanding of how we gain spiritual insight and how transcendent Reality interacts with us. Basically that spiritual insight is independent of belief. An atheist can take a pill and have a spiritual experience. This suggests that the Divine presence and Love is present to everyone and at every place and it only our modes of thought and perception that obscure it.

Any one interested in further discussion on this or any particular experiences that might have had?

Thanks
-MM

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

I'm a strong atheist and I have had what some might call spiritual experiences on mushrooms. The first time I meditated was on shrooms, it was unintentional and it brought on a strong feeling of unity with my body and the entire universe.

We all have the capability to have these intense experiences inside us, I don't believe these insights come from an outside source. Some might call it God, universal energy, or what have you. IMO all these revelations are just our brains connecting dots that have never been connected before.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

We all have the capability to have these intense experiences inside us, I don't believe these insights come from an outside source. Some might call it God, universal energy, or what have you. IMO all these revelations are just our brains connecting dots that have never been connected before.

Well said, this is how I feel about it after various experiences. I feel all religion was originally based from ingesting these substances and the spiritual experiences that resulted. If you read most religious texts they all pretty much say the same things with a different interpretation. It doesn't really matter if this comes from outside or in, the result is the same and the connections made are similar. For me is just boils down to: be good and have faith things will be okay no matter how bad they may be right now.

Also, for me I think the best thing I obtained through the use of psychedelics is begin able to let go of the fear of dying. Most religion is based around the idea of what happens after death. Some people need promises about what comes after to feel okay with the idea. I personally don't anymore and my attitude about life changed a lot when I managed to finally shake it. Not having a fear of death doesn't mean I take risks it means I spend as much time having as much fun here while I can. Since this happened I can tell right off who has and hasn't managed to get over the thought. Most that have are the most content, nicest, and caring people I know.

 

[MysticMonist]

Thanks for sharing. You two have used less spiritual terms to describe your experiences than other users I’ve talked to. I suppose it depends on how spiritual of a person you are before you take anything. Still it’s clearly a transformative experience.
Falsified, I take a more philosophical view of God than a large man who answers petty prayers and sends people to heaven and hell. Maybe something more along the lines of Plato’s Absolute or Spinoza’s conception of Monism.
The reason I’m so interested in psychedelics is that I think it suggests that “God” is something fully available to all of us, all the time thru any number of means of mystical experiences (drugs included but not the only). God therefore has little to do with religion and religion isn’t really needed.
Why go to church and listen to some guy tell you what he says God is telling us, when you can trip or meditate in your own home and “talk” to God yourself? There’s still an essential value in community but that’s a different conversation.

So what do psychedelic users do once they have these experiences or trips? Do many of them change their sober for lives for the better or more compassionate or do you think few do?

The biggest way my meditative practice helps me is in gaining a wider perspective that focuses on what’s really important like family and helping others and to worry less about worldly things. I’m better at this at sometimes than others. I think most meditative or prayerful people I know are better persons because of their practice but they are far from morally perfect. The really holier than thou folks I actually doubt they have a very self-reflective or humbling prayer practice, it’s all just about further puffing up themselves.

Headphones, dealing with death and getting over fear of it is awesome. For me it was Seneca’s book On The Shortness of Life that struck me. He says so few of us actually live but waiste our time away. If you dedicate what little time we have to things of virtue and meaning, then even one day is enough to die without regrets. Plato too says we must learn how to die.

Thanks, I hope this is interesting to you all. It’s really helpful to me.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

You may be interested in these trip reports I've posted, they deal with some of my spiritual experiences;

DPT: http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/776463-(DPT-120-140mg)-First-time-I-am-a-mouse-among-giants
Parasomnia: http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...BA-and-Parasomnia-experienced-a-Retrospective
DMT (accepting death): http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...t-Time-Quitting-Methadone-and-accepting-death

I'm mostly linking them so I don't have to re-explain everything contained within them. I think like you do that spiritual experiences/finding a higher power aka God is best kept between the person and whatever they find through exploration of the topic. I've started meditating again for the same reasons you do it. I've also been doing a lot of reading as of late on the subject of religion and attempting to connect dots in those old texts with other subjects that I read about. I was an atheist for most of my young life and was never really forced to attend church. I did go as a kid but I never took it serious or read the Bible until I was a young adult. My Grandmother is very religious, does bible study every day, and has total faith in Christianity. However, she will not force it on anyone else including her own kids/Grand Children. One of her sons became a preacher and the other never attends church.

I recently was baptized in that church and I will admit a lot of what made me do it was her and my Grandfather requesting that I do it shortly before he died. He said it was good insurance, and that he was baptized as an adult and helped to baptize someone else. He wasn't afraid of dying, I didn't understand it at the time but he told me before he went into the hospital that "I'll survive the surgery but I'm not going to come back out of there alive son". It turned out he was correct but he still went because he wasn't afraid. I never knew he even believed and he said that it was something between him and God. He told me if I simply explored the subject I would find peace with myself and the world. So I went through with it while grieving (it was only a week after he died). The entire day was planned around it and none of the regulars knew aside from a few in the know. I was baptized by my uncle and was only told the routine right before I was dunked in the water. There was a lot of happy people and tears of joy in the church that day. When I came home I sat in my Grandfather's chair and was at total peace for a good hour. It only felt like a few minutes, and I wasn't asleep, but before I knew it I was begin called for lunch and over an hour had passed.

The next weekend I would take DMT for the first time, it was something I'd be interested in for some time but never found locally. It just seemed right so I took it and I consider that experience to be my true baptism. I can't really explain what went on during that trip but afterwards I felt at peace for the first time in my adult life and was determined to continue a long a path I said I'd take when my Grandfather died. I took it on day 8 of opioid withdrawal and have stayed the course since then. DMT made me feel the same way I did the Sunday before, it was amazing.

Now all that said one would assume I have accepted Christ. I will say that no, I really haven't at least not in the way most would interpret it. However, I have accepted that there is something greater than myself out there. I do not attend church every weekend but I do go because it makes my Grandmother happy and the sense of community down there is really good. They are good folks, I will fix anything for them in there for free all they have to do is ask. I'll work on the computer, I'll roof, I'll mow, I'll cook...whatever. I want to help to provide an environment for people to be at peace in. The day I was baptized there was a kid of maybe 5 or 6 running around the back rooms just like I did all those years ago. Right after I was baptized this was the first person I saw, he said; "That's sooo cool, I want to get baptized to!" and I told him some day he'd could do it if he really wanted. So I mostly go down there for that because in this terrible place I call home it's one of the few places with an actual community. Plus, the church I go to doesn't teach the fire and brimstone Christianity. Hell to them is, in the words of my Grandmother; "Eternal separation from God". This is compatible with my own views on spirituality, hell is eternal separation from the community of people you care about.

I believe psychedelics are the true flesh of God, the spirit, or whatever you want to call it. They are gifts/tools for personal exploration that are here to be used and respected. Even when casually taking something like LSD I show it respect because I know there is the power within it to provoke a strong experience. Some substances are better for this than others; DMT, DPT, and Mushrooms are probably my top three for this. LSD is a bit more casual, the 2Cs are more about having fun than a head trip, MDMA is more about finding common ground with other people than exploring the self. MXE/K are good for traveling and exploring but for me lack the spiritual push of a Tryptamine. I'm sure this will differ for everyone. There are some substances like Iboga that I look forward to exploring that I know are good for this as well but it's hard to find the time.

I should mention before finishing this that I am a person that believes in the scientific method. I'm a programmer by trade, I work with technology every day, I'm the type of person you'd least expect to believe in a higher power. It's something I don't discuss with most folks and I don't spend much time around folks that have made it their entire lives. I explore these things in the privacy of my own home, mostly at night after my work is done for the day, and begin that I question everything I think long and hard about what I read when dealing with this or any other subject. As I said before I just try to be a good person, and while I don't try to force others to walk the same path as me I try to be an example to others and hope they may share my path for a little while and be better for it. I've come a long way in the last couple of years, I'd like to see friends make it out of the junkie life too, but I can not force them to change.

Keep meditating, only you can find the answers. I'm still looking for a lot of those too.

 

[Volsam]

Interesting discussion here, yes...

If you are into philosophy, psychedelics and computer games I highly recommend the game "Everything" - narrated by Alan Watts. Excellent spacey and thought provoking atmosphere that is perfect for active tripping mind!

 

[MysticMonist]

Headphones,

Thanks for sharing the links. Sorry it took me a few days to really read them.

I can totally see how these experiences changed your life. Just researching about psychedelics has changed mine.

At some point, I’d like to try something mild like shrooms or low dose LSD. But I suspect it won’t be all that different from what I already experience in deep meditation/hypnotic states.

What you’ve described with DMT is something all together different though and I get why people say I have no idea about this kind of experience. Personally, I think I’d be overwhelmed and couldn’t handle it. That level of experience is actually not what I’m looking for either. You’ve helped me see there is a big difference from one drug to another.

What I am going to do though is get more into hypnosis. (I’ve realized I’m describing the meditative techniques I use the most they are more self-hypnosis than spiritual meditation, which happened as a natural result of self-directed trail and error and not always listening to my teachers). It’s been extremely important to me to realize that I’m not more spiritual or holier than anyone on here. It’s freeing to see that my “visions” don’t have anything to do with my holiness. They are unconditional gifts from the God/Reality made possible by my highly hypnotizable nature and natural talent in those areas of my brain (like the temporal lobes for religious experiences). Practice too.

The changes I’m going to do now, since I’ve decided to not take any substances at this time, is to study and practice self hypnotism more seriously and study philosophy and theoretical stuff less. I also was inspired by the trip accounts here and want to start my own journal of my experiences. I’ll find a suitable forum to post those, not here since they aren’t drug based.

I think the way I might try to approach all of this is based off the wise sage in the Tao te Ching. Rushing to action leads to disaster. The sage gains wisdom and perspective before he acts and often learns than less is more, or even non-action is the right path. We need to seek insight and study the Way (Tao) that things work so we operate out of understanding, not blindness. We gain understanding by taking regular refuge in experiences of the really real. But we don’t stay there, we still act wisely in the world.

One last thought, a Zen master told me once about the value of memory. He said that you can’t always be in satori (meditative enlightenment) but the memory of those times are sacred. The memory of those moments can guide you in the now with the knowledge too that you can and will return to that stillness later. I think that relates to you all very much.

 

[Kallisti23]

Hi MysticMonad, I posted this reply in another thread you posted in, but I think it’s probably more appropriate here as there’s already a very good interesting thread going so I’m reposting it.

Although I wouldn’t consider myself a mystic (but who knows? I guess it’s a mystery) I do have an interest in mysticism and esotericism. I have had the classical mystical experience of the breakdown of duality and becoming part of the universal oneness whilst on psychedelics, most notably on high dose ketamine (although it wasn’t all positive).

While it is possible to experience mystical / spiritual states on psychedelics they are not reliably reproducible and certainly not guaranteed. For example it was probably around 7 years after my first ever trip until I had a ‘mystical experience’ on psychedelics, although I wasn’t using them consistently throughout all that time I did have several trips, but wasn’t approaching them in a strictly spiritual / philosophical manner.

As you probably know set and setting are paramount when it comes to psychedelics and can play a huge role in determining how the experience plays out. I don’t think psychedelics themselves are inherently mystical but believe that they function more like keys which can unlock what is already inside, and I believe we all have the capacity for all states of consciousness. If you are already of a mystical bent you are probably more likely to have a mystical experience, a psychological bent a psychological experience, a dark and chaotic state of mind a dark and chaotic experience etc. But again, the nature of psychedelics is that nothing is guaranteed and those states of mind won’t necessarily cause those trips.

I do believe that these states are also accessible without psychedelics but are a lot harder to achieve, with the same intensity at least. There is certainly lots of accounts of very psychedelic sounding experiences by people who haven’t taken psychedelics. I myself have induced mild ‘spiritual’ states in the past through dedicated meditation practice at a time when I wasn’t using any psychedelics apart from cannabis, these states took a relatively long time to achieve and weren’t as intense as a psychedelic experience but were very positive and fulfilling. Sadly I’ve fallen out of practice but would like to get into it again.

I attached a couple trip reports below that might give you an idea of the type of states that could be considered mystical that I have had with psychedelics.

(Mainly the first 4 paragraphs)
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...ught-on-the-implications-of-my-Ketamine-abuse

This one is long but you can skim through it and find the parts that interest you.
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/833276-(LSD-200-ug)-A-Psycho-Spiritual-Oddyssey

 

[pupnik]

- excerpted ---
We need to seek insight and study the Way (Tao) that things work so we operate out of understanding, not blindness. We gain understanding by taking regular refuge in experiences of the really real. But we don’t stay there, we still act wisely in the world.
---

I keep looking for ways to articulate the essence of what is spiritual and I think this circles closely around that idea.
by seeking this 'insight' we are spiritual or
spirit is seeker

 

[H>He]

Alan watts had great books and lectures on the subject ..a college radio station used to play alan watts lectures on very early sunday mornings ..i used to be coming down from my trip and listening to them..it was cool to connect the experience to his words..made the "come back" soft

 

[MysticMonist]

Alan watts had great books and lectures on the subject ..a college radio station used to play alan watts lectures on very early sunday mornings ..i used to be coming down from my trip and listening to them..it was cool to connect the experience to his words..made the "come back" soft

Alan Watts is great.
So if I have a philosophy that’s more centered on individual insight. So Watts and Huxley and those types of non-doctrinal thinkers are pretty good sources. Watts has a strong western Buddhist fan base and was very popular in my zendo. But he is not a Buddhist.