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Do you believe drugs brings us closer to God?

I guess I'm closest to an atheist, but I truly hate this term. Atheists often get caught up in that whole anti-theist thing, which I am expressively not. I have no problem with religion, but I just don't believe in anything without evidence. I don't get along with most atheists. Many of them I find to be dogmatic in very similar ways to the christian fundamentalists whom they love to hate. That being said, the idea the drugs bring us closer to God seems pretty fishy to me. Peoples ideas of God just seem too different and drugs seem to push everyone in almost the same way (most of the time at least; I have had a friend who got depressed from MDMA, I can't imagine that but whatever).
 
"Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means." - William Burroughs
 
Bardo5 said:
Psychedelics have definitely opened me up spiritually. I feel alot closer to my environment and my place in it. I'm still an atheist, or atleast a very skeptical agnostic but I can feel a deeper appreciation for my life and lifestyle compared to just a few years ago. Mainly I've been drifting further and further from traditional western values such as materialism and religious fervor, replacing them with a thirst for knowledge and understanding of myself and the universe.

Or maybe I'm just getting older :)
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I love hearing about transformations like these.
 
Lysis said:
I don't know how anyone can think that chemicals bring you closer to nature. I think people grasp for reasons that drugs are a good thing.
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I used to say the same thing. I grew up a Christian, so obviously I thought drugs and drug users were exactly what 'Above the Influence' showed they were. My first drug experience(even before having a cigarette or alcohol) was 80 grams of mescaline containing Peruvian torch. The reason I did it was because it was described to me and "God smiling down on me" and "seeing the artwork of God everywhere". And that's exactly what it was-it was the most beautiful experience I had ever had. Drugs can be a good thing or a bad thing, just like anything else. Even water can be good or bad-if you drink too much water, you die. I think it's all about your intents. That's just my view, keep your own if you'd like :)
 
nahh, they just alter our brain chemistry in bizarre and unspeakable ways. Doesn't mean that they bring us closer to God. It's a common misconception, even with psychedelics. You might ''feel'' closer to God or have 'otherworldly vibes' but it's not like they've made you break through substances & matter, space & time, they just merely distort it. They reveal things in our mind which we didn't know were there before and give us revelations about our situation because we look at them from a drug induced perspective. Truly fascinating!
 
Garden Man said:
nahh, they just alter our brain chemistry in bizarre and unspeakable ways. Doesn't mean that they bring us closer to God. It's a common misconception, even with psychedelics. You might ''feel'' closer to God or have 'otherworldly vibes' but it's not like they've made you break through substances & matter, space & time, they just merely distort it. They reveal things in our mind which we didn't know were there before and give us revelations about our situation because we look at them from a drug induced perspective. Truly fascinating!
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Actually, I agree with the fact that they let us see things in our mind that we could not before. I think that they show us potentials we didn't know we had. They open us up to things we would not normally consider and help us to analyze our minds and other's minds. I also think that if one believes and feels he is closer to God because of this, that he is-but that's just one of my beliefs.
 
blankcanvas said:
I also think that if one believes and feels he is closer to God because of this, that he is
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I would also agree with you here.

How can an individual devalue another's experience to the point as to say "its just the chemicals altering your mind", you've pointed out the obvious.. i dont think that anyone's going to disagree that the experience is been created through the use of a chemical, but the experience itself can transcend beyond that of logic, its entirely subjective.. if that person truly 'feels' they've become closer to god in whatever way.. then they probably have.

It's this fear of losing our sanity that drives us to rationalize our experiences.

It's a matter of letting go of 'everything', complete surrender.. that first step of 'faith'.. "belief in oneself" that if you let go of all rationality, if you stop trying to think about it and just flow with it.. that you will still exist, you won't go insane, but instead gain enlightenment into all that is.. you.

I find in most people i meet who have these experience's, this is the point of self-transformation.. the letting go of logic and reason and taking that leap of faith, believing in themselves.. that they will be fine, conquering that ultimate fear of losing 'control over the mind', and realizing divinity.
 
malakaix said:
It's a matter of letting go of 'everything', complete surrender.. that first step of 'faith'.. "belief in oneself" that if you let go of all rationality, if you stop trying to think about it and just flow with it.. that you will still exist, you won't go insane, but instead gain enlightenment into all that is.. you.

I find in most people i meet who have these experience's, this is the point of self-transformation.. the letting go of logic and reason and taking that leap of faith, believing in themselves.. that they will be fine, conquering that ultimate fear of losing 'control over the mind', and realizing divinity.
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That is so important I thought I'd quote it again. That is life in a nutshell. Letting go, floating downstream. (As John Lennon said "turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, this is not dying")

Logic and reason have their place and are useful tools in many areas of life. But clinging to them as answers can hold us back.

If anything psychedelics can temporarily remove blocks, barriors, and resistance to see things as they are unhindered by our own thoughts and belief patterns.

Answers to many things are already here. The letting go and allowing that malakaix mentions is a way to let in what is already here. It takes a Mind to process and let in answers to questions, in the same way it takes a Mind to even have a question in the first place.
 
JJ-180 said:
IMHO psychedelics do not express spirituality or expand the mind-they simply lower the threshold of criticality-"Wow, craaazy,man"- I am a Muslim and in Islam all intoxicants(khamr) are haraam- and before anyone asks, I never said I was a good Muslim.....
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This strikes close to home, so I think I need to ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind:

a. Why do you insist on calling yourself a muslim if you accept what seems to be a hypothetical authority's judgement on the fact that you're a bad muslim? Why not just not be muslim, and save yourself a headache? I mean this doesn't mean that you should toss Islam in the garbage - what I mean is that if you're not following what you consider to be Islamic authority, why do you bother calling yourself a Muslim in the fist place?

b. As for khamr - the word itself literally means "ferment" as you probably know. There are intoxicants which are not fermented and have effects that are the complete opposite of Alcohol (e.g. Cocaine), and which were completely unknown to Muhammad and to pretty much all authorities on Islam before the 19th century. Indeed, before its discovery by muslims, Cocaine still existed and was, as far as Islam is concerned, halal. I actually think it is not correct to equate any intoxicant with khamr, but rather specifically the one by which it is named: alcohol.

Let me know what you think...
 
Salaam Jamshyd,
A. I never said I was a 'bad muslim'- I said I was not a good muslim. There is room for improvement in all of us. Fighting the greater Jihad, if you will.I am a 'Qu'ran Alone' muslim. I do not accept the authority of the hadith and sunnah. I call myself muslim because I have made submission to the will of god- the basic meaning of the ''slm'' group in words like Islam Muslim Salaam : peace through accordance with God. All the Imams and Ayatollahs on the planet have no authority to intervene in my relationship with Him. No intercessor between God and man.

B. Sorry if that got a bit doctrinaire. As for khamr-I agree, but the term has unfortunately come to be extended by usage to embrace any consciousness altering drug. The Qu'ran itself does not out-and-out prohibit alcohol, although it strongly advises against it(al-baqarah 219). There is some speculation that the hadith prohibiting alcohol was a later fabrication aimed at heavy-handedly tackling a major social problem in the Arab world at the time. Much like Prohibition was held to be scripturally sanctioned by some in the USA.

Oddly enough I have a friend who is happy to hoover up cocaine but looks with horror on a glass of ice-cold german beer. He justifies this on the grounds that the Qu'ran does not forbid cocaine use. Come to that, it has nothing to say about MDMA, Ketamine or Meth.......the current tragedy of Islam is that it is needlessly proscriptive. People seem to have lost sight of the fact that to ''surrender" to God, you have to first trust Him implicitly.
 
^ That is a very reasonable approach, and you have my respect for it.

Funny that you mention Ketamine - I find that this drug in particular lends itself very freely to Islamic mystical terms (such as fana') that other spiritual systems do not capture as sufficiently. I feel that if Ketamine were available to medieval mystics, they'd be all over it :).

Salam/
 
i used to be a strong athiest... until i tried DMT. now im not sure
 
drugs that facilitate ego-death like lsd "bring us closer to god" only in the sense that they show us what we're missing.. how close to god we already are.
 
Actually Jamshyd, I hate to think what mediaeval mystics of any ilk would have made of our modern pharmacopeia . It would have put the drunken Sufis to shame.God is transcendent and ultimately unknowable. So we might as well just enjoy our drugs for what they are.
 
I feel like, if one defines God to be that which is external to ("greater than") this universe, then allowing one's consciousness to be severely altered in order to get a broader picture of what is internal to this universe may provide one with greater insight into what could possibly be external.

I.e. "closer to God". But, "closer" not necessarily implying that one would eventually "reach" God. Good math analogy imo: lim(x-->inf) x/(x+1), where God is at 1 on the y axis, and taking drugs being increasing your value of x.
 
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I've gotten high enough that I was actually touched by God. However I don't think the experience was real. I experienced it but it was because I was so high that I thought I experienced it. I do believe that drugs can make you think you are communicating with gods, or that you are closer to gods because it has happened to me several times. When I finally come down I always realize how irrational it is to believe in a god. I have seen, heard, smelled and touched many things that are not real while I've been on psychedelics. After a trip it is important to distinguish what really happened from what you experienced.
 
MistaJeff said:
I've gotten high enough that I was actually touched by God. However I don't think the experience was real. I experienced it but it was because I was so high that I thought I experienced it.
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Maybe you did experience it, infact im certain you did experience it. Divinity/Infinity is that of no thought, to think is to be. It's impossible to understand that which exists without thought, because as soon as thought exists, you exist.. thus creating the illusion of separation from all.

The last step of realizing everything, is to realize you know nothing.

Be nothing, know everything. Know everything, be nothing. Self Realization.
 
Eyes-
Thanks for posting this-I often wonder about this on a similar vein of thought. Like people posted previously-when your Brain Chemistry is altered in such a way by a drug/new physical/emotional/mental experience you will interpret it in a certain way; in that state and want to attach meaning to it and make sense of it.
I myself believe the important thing is that you draw your boundaries between how something effects you subjectively, and what, objectively, has caused you to interpret what experience the way you have.
Drugs only alter your states of conciousness but they are not responsible for the meaning you will attribute to those states. Drugs alone do not hold any spiritual power-living things do hold some power however. Think alot of addictions may be (partly) based on the concious/unconcious belief that drugs cause one to be more spiritual. I believe as a cultural species our spiritual and mental evolution is out of sync and we are all a little lost.
I used to think that Euphoria was the only experience I could attach the 'Enlightening'/'Near God Conciousness' label to but now realise this is just egoistic wish fullfillment: One person's reactions to something may be ecstatic while another one's agony- but how can anyone really judge whether its Good/Bad, Right/Wrong simply based on feelings alone?!
In my life, if I have had 'Enlightening' experiences(sober/otherwise) I (try)to actively aknowledge and appreciate them and store it in my memory so that I can hopefully access the 'tone' of them in darker times to console myself when I am stuck in my ego and run into obstacles in life(aka my own negative shit). Real 'Divine' experiences I believe are Simple but Powerful and one has unconditional access to them. l I am not religious (in the common socio-political sense) but I do have a yearning to learn about the nature of life and want to have more understanding of the metaphysical mechanisms that influence human beings and I think most people do; seeing as life is so complex and there seems to be alot of unwaranted dysfunction going on (ie Distructive Crazy vs. Constructive Crazy!)
I always try to remind myself not to worship/judge too enthusiastically anything that gives me a sense of well-being. Just enjoy the well-being as a state but being in that state isnt 'Better' over any other state -it just FEELS better. Its easy to deceive ourselves.:)
 
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intoxicants are just that . gods are superstitious constructions of man. get over yourself and pondering ''what's the purpose of this life''.
these youthful magic moments are soon eclipsed by making a livelihood and finding the direction where one's fulfillment needs to be followed . and that is not scarfing, snorting, shooting, dropping, plugging, parachuting, flipping, guzzling, toking etc.
there are some hard case middle age burnouts flying signs in city intersections . they certainly have not found happiness in intoxicants of any description - they have no sense of balance or integrity of self .
 
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