Psychedelics and the 'Blindsight' Phenomenon?

[Xorkoth]

I doubt that there's anything too unusual going on here -- human empathy is a powerful thing, and we're constantly giving off signals (and picking up on them) in ways that we're not conscious of, and it's not too surprising that you might be able to suggest certain thought patterns to them through subtle means (or maybe they're doing it to you!). I think this sort of thing is the cause of "contact highs" (assuming there's any validity to the idea at all).

I didn't mean to imply that the sensing of these energies was unusual. Quite the opposite in fact. I was trying to say that these energies and signals (or whatever you want to call them) are always there, but that over time most of us seem to filter them out because our society is telling us that it's imaginary and silly. For me, at least, psychedelics are the primary tool that helped me to understand that these things really are all around us and perceivable all the time, and that we can work with them. I can still do it much more naturally on psychedelics, but I'm working on becoming aware of these things without them, as well.

Not necessarily. Contrary to popular myth you actually do use pretty much all of your brain. Think about it: brains are thermodynamically expensive (your brain uses up about 20% of your body's energy *at rest*!), and there'd be no point in having anything up there that didn't serve any purpose, so evolution would tend to pare down the brain until only bits that had some adaptive sigificance were left. What's more likely to be changing under the use of psychs isn't the *number* of elements active in your brain but the *combinations* in which they're used.

An interesting theory, and perhaps correct. In any case, more importantly than my physical explanation, which is just a theory of mine, is that psychedelics seem to alter the way in which we use our brains, whether that's because they change the combinations that the parts of your brain are use in or if they increase the number of them, or both.

Physically? I'm not sure. But mentally? My belief is yes, that we're approaching a point of change in our race, or perhaps in the collective consciousness. I don't think this is caused directly by psychedelic, but I do think that psychedelics have provided the key and will continue to help. I also think that by using psychedelics in a mindful way is slowly beginning to affect us all.

Sure, I'd like to expand upon this idea, which has been introduced to me rather recently (in my latest and 4th +4 exprience in the TR forum, with AMT and 4-AcO-DMT). Perhaps it would be useful to give a brief overview my spiritual beliefs. I believe that one force of awareness/consciousness exists in the universe, which is where the idea of "god" or "allah" or whatever comes from. The dimensional physical universe, including time, are illusions, brought about by this universal consciousness because, without them, it exists in an empty void, devoid of any sort of subjective experience at all. Just a lonely, dimensionless point of consciousness all alone. So through some process, force of will, or whatever, this consciousness birthed the illusory physical universe, and every living thing within it, which is in my opinion every single thing and particle, since I don't believe there is any limit to how small things get on a subatomic scale nor is there a limit to how large things get - that is, at a large enough scale our external universe becomes the atomic structure of an effectively infinitely larger universe, and if we were to shrink down to a nearly infinitely small size by our standards, every subatomic particle would be its own entire system of space-time like our own. We are all this same force of consciousness experiencing itself subjectively in an infinite number of lifeforms, at the same time, and each lifeform is given a brain or other method of limiting awareness of signals so that we are fooled into believing we are separate, believing that we are our ego. But with sufficient meditation, a +4 psychedelic experience, or similar methods, we are able to "wake up" from this physical life momentarily. Many, many people have experienced themselves as this universal consciousness and realized beyond a shadow of a doubt (seemingly anyway) that this is the way it actually is. The irony is that many people, while alive (or dreaming as it were) can't wait until death so they can move on to paradise. But I find that incredibly funny and tragic at the same time, because the universal consciousness created your life (and all of our lives) in order to escape the staggering boredom and nothingness of the void.

If you believe that, then it's easy to also believe that any one of us, while dreaming the physical dream of separateness, has access to this flow of accumulated experience, the universal consciousness which, while we're "alive", we would probably call the collective consciousness or collective subconsciousness, since most people are unaware of it and are only affected subconsciously. Have you ever experienced this connection between us? Have you ever noticed how it often seems that everyone you know has had a bad day, or a good day, or felt a certain way? Once a person or creature or life form has experienced something new, it is part of the collective consciousness (in reality, everything is, since time is also an illusion and exists all at once just as the three dimensions of the physical world do, but it seems to be more difficult for time-limited life forms like us to access those thoughts/ideas). So just like any other experience, a psychedelic trip had by someone will also become a part of the collective consciousness. In this way, any time someone experiences something profound or new on such a drug or through meditation or other spiritual practice, it is out there for an intrepid explorer to also discover.

What I mean by an approaching point of change in our race is that it seem to me that my trips have been accelerating in purpose, a concept kind of hard to describe like much of the psychedelic state is. I know that I'm not the only one to feel this way. I just feel like something is building and approaching, and it's at least in part due to our collective trips. In the trip I mentioned above with AMT and 4-AcO-DMT, I sort of had a breakthrough with this, and my trip was shockingly similar to the profound trips of a few others I've spoken with on 4-AcO-DMT. I may be delusional in this respect, and I'm not trying to say it's true. I'm just saying it's impossible for me to ignore what I experienced and what I continue to experience every day. I'm not going to place all my bets on it or anything, but I suppose only time will tell.

Does that help to explain?

 

[solistus]

Xor:

Very interesting. Do you view egos/particularities as nothing more than illusions, then?

My beliefs are similar, but with a few key differences. The first one may be semantic, but I view the universal consciousness (which I tend to call the Thing) as one and the same with the Void, not "in" it in some spatial sense.

The next is the one where I suspect you and I actually have substantively different views. I agree that we are not simply autonomous egos; there is, in fact, a universal consciousness. However, IMHO, we are also not just that consciousness experiencing itself. Rather, existence is the parallax or gap between particularity and universality. The logic of particulars can never explain existence as a whole, as it can never account for the Thing in its universality; likewise, the logic of the universal can never explain the existence of individual things. In your articulation of creation, you assign the birth of particularity (i.e., physical reality) to some undefined force exerted by the universal. That force must always remain undefined within the logic of universality, because a full articulation of it would necessarily draw upon a very different sort of logic (that of particulars).

Existence as a whole and individual subjective existence is, in this view, neither the particular nor the universal. It is, rather, the impossible space between the two. No reconciliation or mediation between the two is possible - that is to say, it is not simply a matter of "finding the right explanation" that can account for both. Such an explanation is structurally impossible. Thus, self is neither one's ego-bound particular existence nor the infinite subjectivity of the Thing; it is the relationship between one's particular ego and the Thing, which are essentially opposite sides of the same coin.

To put it back in terms of psychedelics and your experience with AMT and 4-AcO-DMT, I agree that psychedelics may allow us to access the Thing in ways we normally could not (conscious access to collective unconscious, for example); however, I disagree that this means we all "really are" the Thing. You said you noticed your trips "accelerating in purpose;" in my mind, this can only be described through the logic of particulars. The Thing(/Void) does not change, nor does it have 'purpose' as such. What this suggests to me is, rather, that the relationship between your ego and the Thing (i.e., your Self) is changing.

As far as others having similar experiences goes, there are a few explanations that come to mind. The first is quite mundane: some of the shared aspects are probably quite easily explained by shared physiological effects of these particular compounds on the humyn body. Additionally, people you have more in common with in terms of outlook on life, Self, psychedelics, etc. are likely to articulate things in similar ways.

Finally, to bring it back to Lacan, perhaps the descriptions of others are simply using signifiers (words) for which your unconscious has Imaginary psychic registers relating to your views on these matters. When others try to 'describe the indescribable' of psychedelic experience to you, it's plausible to imagine that the indescribable elements that are necessarily missing from their description might be partially filled in by your own subconscious. This is similar to the process by which mainstream ideology propagates itself.

I find discussions of interesting/unusual/profound effects from psychedelics to be so much fun... Almost as much fun as discussing philosophy

 

[Xorkoth]

Very interesting. I've got to run but I'm just making this post to remind myself to re-read your post above and respond to it more fully.

In regards to your first point above, I think it's a semantical difference, as I was trying to imply no spatial or dimensional qualities to the Thing (as you call it; a good descriptor, indeed). The Void and the Thing are the same, I suppose, except that I sort of refer to the Void as the absence of subjective experience, an endless dizzying nothingness, an eternal free-fall of boredom and, when you exit your ego and enter it, sometimes extreme panic as the ego identified the emptiness with death and begins to struggle mightily against it.

EDIT: In other words, the Void is what the Thing experiences when unable to experience subjectivity through life.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Parallels are being bridged, chasms are being filled, the THING is awakening!!!

ROARRRRR!!!!!

THe metaphor is being completed!!!!! 8( 8( 8(







(ps. I've had a touch too much sun today! 8) )

 

[B9]

THe metaphor is being completed!!!!!

which metaphor would that be ?

the MEGALOMANIACS metaphor :D

 

[Xorkoth]

Do you view egos/particularities as nothing more than illusions, then?

In a sense, yes. Egoes are the result of the Thing's consciousness being restrained to a certain set of dimensional characteristics that particular iteration is able to perceive. But it is an illusion in the sense that, if you remove all those filters from a life form, it will transcend all dimensionality, the physical universe, and re-experience the lack of it, which I call the Void. The Void is not a space or a thing, really, bur rather the absence of anything. It's what the Thing experiences without the ability to experience the physical universe. The physical universe itself is a illusion, though, not part of the Real (to use your term, which perhaps I shouldn't since I believe the term means something specific). That's one point at which I am not quite clear yet, because I'm not sure if it exists, or if it's a massively gigantic encoded piece of information that all life has access to from within. I believe it is the latter based on my experience.

Basically, it appears that you believe that the Thing is the collective entirety of the universe, whereas I think that the collective entirely of the universe is an illusion somehow propagated by the Thing that we have access to in varying degrees. In some ways I think your theory makes more sense, but my experiences with reaching the void suggest to me that the entire reason for our lives right now is to escape the nothingness of the Void.

 

[B9]

^ I think both collective and individual consciousness is the reality of the situation !
I think this is seen from a psychedelic viewpoint , both the big picture and the tiniest part of it viewed in the same instant !

Does it actually matter though ?
Seriously does it really matter ?

If so why ?

 

[solistus]

Xorkoth: Interesting. Your theory, as I understand it, is that there is a universal consciousness that, in its 'natural' state, experiences nothing, the Void. Existence is an illusion/construction of that consciousness so that it can have particular experience, and it manifests itself in individual egos, who behave like independent beings but are actually all part of the same universal. Is that about right?

What I call the Thing is pretty much exactly what you call universal consciousness. I think we mean more or less the same thing when we refer to the Void; I tend to use the term primarily when describing the subjective experience of ego dissolution and the sort of non-being that follows. I view this experience as, essentially, experiencing the Thing directly. I'm not 100% sure regarding my thoughts on experienced reality; I agree that the 'force' behind it is the Thing, but I don't ascribe desire to the Thing, so I'm not sure I'd say the Thing 'did it' intentionally to create subjective experience; I lean more toward the school of thought that it's either some sort of accident/imbalance or, if not, it simply 'is' with no purpose. I agree that it is an 'illusion' in the sense that our experience of it is more along the lines of filtering the infinite than experiencing some external structure that "really exists" external to individual subjects and even the very domain of subjectivity. This is not to say that it's just a 'figment of our imaginations' in the petty sense of a dream of daydream; the consciousness of the Thing, not existing in our world of linearity, causality and such, is nothing like egoic consciousness. I'm sure anyone who's experienced the Void doesn't have to be told that.

One place where we differ slightly, perhaps, is on the issue of the ego. My interpretation of your theory is that egos are the Thing manifesting itself, and that the idea that we are separate beings is, I suppose, just the Thing tricking itself with its own creation. I agree that we are all the same, but we are also all 'really' distinct individuals. It is the impossible space between universal consciousness and particular existence that I define as self. This is why, in effect, we are all the same (we are all humyns, we share the same sorts of emotions, we seem to share a sort of collective subconscious, etc.), but we are also all different (we all have our own unique identities, internalised symbolic orders, thoughts, feelings, etc.). It is not simply that each of us contains two parts (the part that is one with everyone else and the part that is separate and individual); it is that we are at once both of these things, a sort of juxtaposition. There is a tension/impossibility there that cannot be resolved. Traditional egocentric thought processes tend to trivialise or ignore the universal element to consciousness and attempt to frame us as truly and completely separate individuals, which is problematic and, well, false. My system is not an abandonment of the ego, per se - I don't know that that's psychologically possible, and I certainly don't think it's desirable - but rather, a sort of rehabilitation of it. I accept both my ego's consciousness and that of Thing, accepting (embracing, even) the contradictions inherent in this existence. This contradiction, much like the divine imbalance that is reality, is the source of all normative value, of all that makes subjective existence 'good.'

This is just my stoned mind playing with thoughts, but one way to reconcile these two systems would be to imagine it as such: In the beginning (not of time, but of this thought process ), there was only the universal consciousness of the Thing. When reality was created (again, when is not really the right word, as time is a feature of reality and not of the Thing... our language is not equipped for describing such things accurately), and individual egos became conscious, a new sort of conscious structure had to emerge to make sense of individual subjective experience. This structure was, in a word, language. The core of language (at least in Lacanian theory) is the subject-object distinction; virtually every meaningful linguistic exchange explicitly defines at least the first and often the second, and most (all, it can be argued) other cases imply one or both of them. The subject is what's relevant here; the structure of language necessitates an "I", an individual subject that is distinct from other subjects ("you" and "him/her/it"). The linguistic subject thus becomes a new form of egoic consciousness, born from the structural excess of language. This subject, while 'the same consciousness' as the universal, must paradoxically also exist as an independent entity for subjectivity as such to emerge.

Time for a tangent! One really interesting Lacanian distinction is that between "I" and "me". It so happens in many languages that the first person subject is referred to by a different pronoun as a subject than as an object; Lacan was writing in French, about "je" and "moi", for example. Traditional egoic self is only the "me", because that is how the self is made to be an object so it can be analysed. I can know all about "me" - the rational subject who has various particular interests, tastes, identity labels, etc. - but, unless I also interrogate the "I" - the structural self, the unconscious ontological and epistemilogical assumptions that frame things in terms of a rational, individual subject in the first place - my understanding of self will be incomplete. Most people are 'trapped' within conventional structures of knowing and being and thus assume that they "really are" just independent, rational subjects, and so-called "objective" thought is self-legitimising because anything that contradicts it is, by definition, wrong; it's easy for people to laugh off or disregard reports of near-death experiences, those "crazy acid-soaked hippies" ( ) who question the philosophic applicability of scientific reasoning, etc. as 'impossible' simply because it implies the rules they have been taught are absolute are incorrect or inadequate. This method of thinking is so persuasive that it can literally induce people to deny the experiences of others and insist that they must have been mistaken because they cannot accept that such an experience is possible.

K, end tangent, queue bowl. Peace

edit: crap, forgot to respond to zopen:

Nope, you're right, it doesn't matter. As Bill Hicks was fond of saying, it's just a ride, and the fate of the universe does not rest on our attempts to come to an understanding of it. It's probably best not to insist on finding all the answers, in fact; it causes a lot of frustration and costs a lot of time, and you'd be better off enjoying your existence than studying it. That said, I find it fun to ponder these things from time to time and even more fun to discuss and attempt to articulate them.

Also, Xork, one last bit of clarification: I don't view the Thing as the entirety of experienced reality; like you (I think), I view it as a timeless, spaceless universal. It's what many cultures and faiths identify as God/Heaven/Nirvana/etc.

 

[perpetualdawn]

Bump to avoid 2018 prune