• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Psychedelics

Ismene said:
I think there's a tendency for people who use psychedelics to assume that to have a transcendental experience you must have drugs. I think people can have transcendental experiences off just about anything - from playing golf to walking the dog. Emerson spent a lot of time in nature which can also give people transcendental experiences. I think transcendental experiences are pretty common in the human condition.
Click to expand...

I agree, transcedence can come in may forms for many reasons, If someone knowingly takes a substance and "transcends" people tent to dismiss it as "just drug induced psychosis" and if the same person "transcends" w/o the use of chemicals, then they're just phucking nutz.
I think in Ralph's case it coulda been either way...does any of this make any sense, or am I just phucking nutz?
 
I agree that many psychedelic users tend to almost deify psychedelics, and assume that transcendental experiences MUST come from a psychedelic. This is just abjectly false, I know people who have never tripped who have had transcendental experiences and I have read of many other accounts. Psychedelics are one way to this type of experience, and a common one these days with the proliferation of psychedelics into our culture. And they are a great way to experience something like that as well, it's the only way I have personally experienced it. But when I hear people say "only psychedelic can do that" or even worse, "all religions must have come from psychedelics", I just roll my eyes. Humans seem to be drawn to spirituality as a concept and the human mind is an amazing thing, capable of almost anything on its own. Maybe Emerson tripped, and maybe he didn't. But does it matter one bit how he got there?
 
Xorkoth said:
I agree that many psychedelic users tend to almost deify psychedelics, and assume that transcendental experiences MUST come from a psychedelic.
Click to expand...

There's also the flip side of this where people who have experienced transcendental experiences through meditation, or other non-drug means discount a psychedelic induced trancendental experience as a fake one, or a simulation of the real thing.

Just like christians who think muslims are following a false god, and buddhists who think christians are missing the point, everyone else thinks everyone else is doing it wrong. Even the people who think everyone is doing it right think that the skeptics are doing it wrong for not believing in anything. And the skeptics think pretty much everyone is doing it wrong. In the end you're just kind of fucked.
 
"Actions speak louder than words..."

I wonder if he was on something when he said that.
 
Great quote, OP. Here's another of my favorites.

"The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart.

… We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

IMO, the man was a mystic...I agree with Ismene that mystical beliefs do not require psychedelic experience. They can be achieved through meditation, fasting, or even spontaneously given the right psychology and circumstances. Given the fact that there is no solid evidence that Emerson took psychedelics (no doubt people have looked), I'm going to assume that this was non-drug mysticism. I will say, I think he would have found the experience immensely valuable...but that is pure speculation.
 
I haven't been able to come to any sound conclusion.

I think it's pretty highly unlikely that he would have willingly experimented with any psychedelic (other than hashish, if you count that).

That said, I don't think we'll ever know for sure.

Personally, I would call his philosophy "proto-psychedelic" in nature. I don't associate that with drugs so much as transcendental experiences.

It doesn't matter to me how he got there, because his philosophy is important to me.

I just thought it would have been interesting if an individual who may have philosophically influenced the psychedelic movement may have had a drug-induced psychedelic experience.
 
Psychedelics can trigger peak experiences of boundary dissolution which suggest the truth of monist or non-dual philosophies. These kinds of experiences can also be brought about through meditation, fasting, or other sorts of ordeals. I think that's the connection here.
 
Ego-death is unusual outside of psychedelics? That's what mysticism is all about. It's enlightenment, nirvana, samdhi. I don't think the Buddha was tripping, nor do I think Emerson was.

Ego-death is one of the primary purposes of meditation. No drugs needed.
 
I don't believe the state you reach through meditation, fasting, or whipping yourself is anything remotely like the psychedelic experience. Psychedelics are their own, utterly unique path.
 
IMO there is some overlap at least between "eastern" meditation practices, and certain kinds of head spaces that are readily occupied during psychedelic experiences.

It's pretty ineffable stuff, so it's a bit difficult to quantify and put into words, but this headspace that I'm talking about includes the breakdown of dualistic/analytical thinking, the disapearance of the separation of self from others/environment, the realization of the absurdity of categorization that we constantly do...

They're definitely different from each other, definitely their own unique path, but they seem to point in somewhat the same direction to me. A lot of people come out of an LSD or mushroom experience with similar insights to what people come away with after intensive meditation sessions.

I personally know of a lot of people whose interest in yoga, meditation etc was kickstarted by psychedelic trips. I bet you do too.

The hippies in the 60s-70s really embraced and popularized eastern meditation practices, simultaneous to the vast circulation of LSD. I think that the use of LSD made these practices make a lot more sense to a lot of people. Today, in the cultural pockets where you find a lot of psychedelic usage, you also find a lot of this interest in meditation and what not.

It might just be a learned cultural association, but I think there's more to it than that. I think that fundamentally there is some overlap between the two. I also think that Ismene is going to contest this quite vehemently :) and that's why we love you Ismene <3
 
Ismene said:
I don't believe the state you reach through meditation, fasting, or whipping yourself is anything remotely like the psychedelic experience. Psychedelics are their own, utterly unique path.
Click to expand...
Not a typical session of fasting or meditation. No way. But what I was referring to was the experience of enlightenment. Very different and very, very few have experienced.
 
^^

Have they really tho? Or is it just some myth from 2000 years ago that no-one dare question? Did Buddha really do all the things in the stories? Did Jesus? If enlightenment actually happened then we could surely point to a person alive today and say "That guy is enlightened". I can't think of anyone apart from Tom Cruise.
 
perpetualdawn said:
I personally know of a lot of people whose interest in yoga, meditation etc was kickstarted by psychedelic trips. I bet you do too.

The hippies in the 60s-70s really embraced and popularized eastern meditation practices, simultaneous to the vast circulation of LSD. I think that the use of LSD made these practices make a lot more sense to a lot of people. Today, in the cultural pockets where you find a lot of psychedelic usage, you also find a lot of this interest in meditation and what not.

It might just be a learned cultural association, but I think there's more to it than that. I think that fundamentally there is some overlap between the two. I also think that Ismene is going to contest this quite vehemently :) and that's why we love you Ismene <3
Click to expand...

I won't let you down willow ;)

I'm not quite sure how the eastern thing actually came to be linked to psychedelics. Tim Leary, Ram Dass and George Harrison seem to have been the originators of it. And there was that unsufferably smug 60s idea "Oh, LSD only gets you high for a few hours but studying Hinduism gets you high permanently". Perhaps that was best typified by the hilarious Ram Dass giving his guru 900mics and the guru palming it and pretending it had no effect because every waking moment of his life was like being on 900mics of acid. Maybe people thought the ways of the east were somehow "mysterious" and "unknown". Now we know it's all a load of bollocks.
 
^I feel like putting 'goto 10'; or as i'm in the uk 'i refer the honourable gentleman to the reply i gave some moments ago' ;)

"Maybe people thought the ways of the east were somehow "mysterious" and "unknown". Now we know it's all a load of bollocks. " if anything's a load of bollocks it's that sentence there - the eastern traditions of mind exploration and manipulation make most west european 'barbarian' traditions look like toddlers in comparison - without saying i agree with everything ever said there, it's hard to deny the depth and sophistication of the collective philosophies of india and china. Have you ever read the bhagavad gita?
 
But you have to admit they talked some quality bollocks in the late 60s when nobody knew any better - like Ram Dass saying his gurus normal state was being high on 900mics of acid. You couldn't get away with that kind of premium bollocks these days could you. Or at least not quite as easily. Back then everyone just sucked in their breath and went "Oh my god dude - his every waking moment is like being on 900mics? Far out!!"
 
Ok, well, I've never tried fasting or whipping myself (owww). But I have meditated quite a bit, and there is a cycle of expanding and contracting focus that you go through that is similar to a psychedelic trip. You start off thinking about your mundane everyday concerns about work or school or whatever, and then as you go deeper into meditation your awareness expands to where you're thinking over your entire life and your relationships and your place in society, and if you go deep enough you get into really abstract territory concerning the entire world and its history, the universe, and your place in all of this (for most of us, very small :)). Then it all goes in reverse and you come back to the everyday world as the meditation ends, hopefully with a better sense of perspective.

Sure, as far as visual or bodily effects go, you might see a few phosphenes here and there and feel a little energy inside, but you aren't going to be tripping your nipples off like you would be on a milligram of LSD. But mentally and spiritually, you go through similar patterns of movement while meditating or on psychedelics. You go up, up, up, and then you come back down. And combining the two is pretty spectacular. <3

(And for the record, I despise the term "ego death" - I think it's poorly defined, overly dramatic, and encourages reckless behavior.)
 
Ismene said:
I won't let you down willow ;)

I'm not quite sure how the eastern thing actually came to be linked to psychedelics. Tim Leary, Ram Dass and George Harrison seem to have been the originators of it. And there was that unsufferably smug 60s idea "Oh, LSD only gets you high for a few hours but studying Hinduism gets you high permanently". Perhaps that was best typified by the hilarious Ram Dass giving his guru 900mics and the guru palming it and pretending it had no effect because every waking moment of his life was like being on 900mics of acid. Maybe people thought the ways of the east were somehow "mysterious" and "unknown". Now we know it's all a load of bollocks.
Click to expand...

I'm not willow!? :)

Yeah a definite load of bollocks emerged from that old psychedelic guru world. I think that a lot of good came out of it too though! Maybe hucksters like Tim Leary and Ram Dass had an important role to play, a clumsy way of getting an important message out. They're horribly embarrassing to look at now, but it was a very different time back then, and people were breaking out of a very different and repressive culture.

I remember an interview with U.G. Krisnamurti (at least I think it was that Krisnamurti, and not the more well known J Krisnamurti) where he claimed the typical story that the ancient spiritual teachers (in india at least) were tripping off of mushrooms and such. Except his perspective is that it's all bollocks, and that the whole tradition is based on this bullshit that people come up with when they're stoned. So, from his persepective, the hippie movement embraced the eastern mysticism because they were taking (almost) the same drugs as the saddhus who went into the forests and smoked hash and found mushrooms, but from his point of view the whole thing is phoney baloney drug induced delusions that sound nice. The guy is a skeptic to the extreme, pretty interesting.

I think that along with the bollocks and egotism is mixed in some profound wisdom. I appreciate this extreme skepticism though. It's a safer bet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top