Esoteric Feelings of religios experience and sacred truths induced by psychedelics

[Vastness]

My apologies in advance if this post comes out a little less clear than I intend - in any case, I am finding that with a few recent experiences with classical hallucinogens I have been overcome with a strong feeling of a presence of a protective and benevolent entity. Typically I am agnostic as far as belief in the actual reality of supernatural beings, even effectively atheist, and these experiences have not come (as far as I can tell) with any actual effort on my part to induce them. If anything, both trips have been somewhat unplanned and spontaneous and these feelings have taken me a little by surprise. I'm aware of my overall ability to apply reason still so there is a duality even within the depths of the trip but this doesn't affect the otherworldly, transcendental nature of them.

Yesterday somewhat uncharacteristically I decided to dose 600mics of LSD on a whim around 2 PM in the afternoon - and it turned out to be hands down the most amazing, incredible and beautfiul trips of my life.

The last time I did LSD was 5 years ago at half this dose so this was perhaps a little excessive and within the first 45 minutes I was actually concerned enough at to try to abort and took 20 mg diazepam - I have minimal if any benzo tolerance, and while this probably did affect the outcome somewhat it wasn't enough to stop the oncoming psychedelic onslaught blasting through. I actually ended up having one of the best trips of my life, and I'm still reeling from the intensity of it, but I remember very strongly at one point feeling like I had touched this otherworldly, celestial plane that was always parallel to our own reality, and I remember being overcome with something like an insatiable hunger to write something down, express this feeling of blissful, pure euphoria. At some point during the trip I was also dosing small amounts of Ketamine, and despite this maniacal desire to express this fountain of God-given truths welling up within me, I was frustrated first by the physical difficulty in writing, and secondly by the fact that I just couldn't find the words... I couldn't express the ineffable. I ended up just laughing with resigned joy at both the absurdity of the situation and the sense of overwhelming gratitude and love I felt for existence and the phantoms of eternity I felt were beside me... I remember at points just shouting ecstatically "Oh my god this is the best thing ever! This is the best feeling ever!"

Haha, it was pretty mad in retrospect and I do mean to write a full trip report once I can re-integrate, but I'm just blown away by this feeling of being a temporary conduit for some kind of sacred truth about reality... and this insatiable, but frustrating hunger to describe the indescribable. I really felt at the time that it was going to change my life and I still believe that now, although I am still a little wary how much I can trust this idea given that I'm probably still a little altered.

Anyway, this isn't the first time I've had a strong feeling of being in the presence of some "god" for lack of a better word, the last one was about a year ago on 25mg of 4-AcO-DMT, although less overwhelming in it's intensity, still quite profound and moving. So, my questions are...

1) How many of you experience feelings of great "religious" profoundness duing your trips, and if so how often, what are your normal "spiritual" beliefs (in summary is fine, no need to get too involved in the specifics of any particular spiritual paths or religions), and, finally, do you attempt to induce this, or does it come on unbidden and unexpected?

2) How can I induce these sort of trips intentionally?

3) Would anyone care to share, this time in a specific sense if possible, if they have had a similar experience of being connected to some ethereal dimension parallel to our ownw , at least, as far as you feel like it resonates with my own experience (I know that sentence could well apply to almost any trip), and if so what were your experiences reintegrating and bringing something back from this? If that is a little hazily explained, to simplify, what forms of expression have any of you used either, artistic, or purely intellectual or philosophical, either in the midst of the trip of afterwards, to preserve these sacred truths if that is what they are?


Thanks for reading! :0

 

[nameiwillforget]

Ad 1. I never had any classical spritual experiences myself, though I would like to have the feeling at least once, and it always fascinated me how some people, even complete atheists, seem to have them sometimes, while others, like me, do not, at least until now.

Ad 2. Given my lack of experience I am not really qualified to speculate, but I will do it anyway, based on what I gathered by other people: a higher dose seems to increase the likelihood, as does a natural environment, as does a guide of some way, be it a shaman or just a guy that tells you about the beauty of the universe. But there seems to be an inherent unpredictibility in their appearance. By the way, you might be interested in the story of vladimir voevodsky, a great mathematician and fields medaillist that died recently. He was an atheist for most of his life, until he was hit (hard) by a series of spiritual experiences. You can read his own testiment here: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2017/10/vladimir_voevodsky_19662017.html#c052807

Ad 3. Again, no personal experience, but a large part of psychedelic art is to convey the unspeakable, isn't it? For the rest, I would guess a tape recorder would be the easiest soulution to save information before it slips through your fingers.

Ah, also, there is a youtube channel called psychedsubstance that has several videos on this topic, where he also speaks about his own spiritual experiences and what he made of them. You might find them interesting too.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

1) I am an athiest/agnostic. i have had such an experience with 3meoPCP where It was some sort of rapture happening to the whole world. or MXE holes that i could swear are real places. I'm torn between whether these experiences are just some result of the way our brain is evolutionarily hardwired or maybe there is something real about it. Im leaning more towards it being delusion though.

If you don't believe in god, and/or take a scientific approach there MUST be some survival/evolutionary reason that our brains are hard wired for religious experiences. Anyone venture a guess at what that evolutionary reason is or have read theories?

 

[nameiwillforget]

If I wanted to be reductionist I would just say that these experiences are a way our brains devise to bring our longing for some reason in line with the absense of any, satre-style. I don't want to commit to any particular line of side, although I think it is beyond doubt that, whatever truth may be in mystical experiences, there is a lot of of potential delusion too, and people discovered far too many ultimate truths for them to be true. But then again, a lot of these experiences also make people doubt what they thought they knew, to the point of making religious people atheists. In the end, one of the few things we can say is that mystical experiences almost always benefit the people that have them, so whatever they are, they seem to be pretty good for you.

By the way, there was a study done about that:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment

 

[psy997]

1) How many of you experience feelings of great "religious" profoundness duing your trips, and if so how often, what are your normal "spiritual" beliefs (in summary is fine, no need to get too involved in the specifics of any particular spiritual paths or religions), and, finally, do you attempt to induce this, or does it come on unbidden and unexpected

I experience what you are describing as religious profundity almost every time I take psychedelics. I'm not exactly sure how to express my beliefs, however. I would say that all major religions hold great truths, although I don't see any single one as being comprehensive enough to solely identify with. Practically, I would identify most closely with shamanistic beliefs/practices because of it's direct experience and perception of energies other than oneself, as well as Christianity, because of it's focus on relationship with other. I have yet to research a major religion and find myself completely off-put and in disagreement, though.

If we're talking the nature of reality, the Kabbalistic tree of life does a nice job illustrating the manifestation of nothingness into somethingness, if you will. I believe, and at this point due to experience, more accept as fact, that we are ultimately singular spirit split into infinite divisions, rediscovering and learning aspects of ourselves, experiencing and interacting with other pieces so that we may more fully know ourselves as a whole. The story of creation thus really a story of separation, healing then the story of integration.

However, I was having deeply spiritual and profound psychedelic experiences before I even so much as acknowledged the possibility of something other than the material universe existing. My first five years of tripping were filled with deeply spiritual experiences colored over a militaristically atheist background. I couldn't even begin to explain how that worked, at this point. My point, though, being that my experiences were not shaped by belief. In fact, the opposite.

2) How can I induce these sort of trips intentionally?

I have no idea. Are you open to the idea that there is more to this than meets the eye?

I would recommend A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. A nice introduction to his work, integral theory as a whole, and illustration of how and why there has to be more to reality than materialist reductionist Modern, or even Post-Modern, philosophy would postulate. Really, it's one of the best reads I've ever found. Ken is brilliant, and the accessibility he's able to maintain despite the material is great.

3) Would anyone care to share, this time in a specific sense if possible, if they have had a similar experience of being connected to some ethereal dimension parallel to our own , at least, as far as you feel like it resonates with my own experience (I know that sentence could well apply to almost any trip), and if so what were your experiences reintegrating and bringing something back from this? If that is a little hazily explained, to simplify, what forms of expression have any of you used either, artistic, or purely intellectual or philosophical, either in the midst of the trip of afterwards, to preserve these sacred truths if that is what they are?

I've had similar experiences not only in most ever psychedelic trip of mine, but many times sober now, as well. It sounds like you're asking what you can do to maintain that feeling of connection to a higher or 'other' energy/force? The only advice I can give is to continue down your path. For me that looked like jumping into meditation and the idea of transcending ego, which then over time morphed into a slight opening to the possibility of spirit/souls being real, which was then blown open by meeting the most fantastic woman I ever had at that point, that had been totally submerged in spirit since her childhood, which then led me, albeit indirectly, to emotional therapy. Which then, led me to further knowing the depths of my self and my emotions, consequently leading to more and more frequent feelings of connection to something deeper and higher. Etc., etc.

Your path is your path. Follow where you're being led, it's the only way. It sounds like you're doing it already. That's great.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

If I wanted to be reductionist I would just say that these experiences are a way our brains devise to bring our longing for some reason in line with the absense of any, satre-style.[/url]

but how does perceiving some sort of reason to life result in an evolutionary advantage that would get passed on and end up in humans?

it seems like anything besides worrying about food and sex and social cooperation would result in the failure of the species. It seems like if primitive humans or primates sat around praying or thinking about god it would be taking away from survival and therefore not get passed on to modern humans.

 

[nameiwillforget]

I would think of it as a phenomenon that only developed once we reached a point where we had the compacity to think beyond our immediate needs for food and sex and ask questions like “what is the meaning of life?“ etc. Confronted with the brutality and banality of our existence and a lack of answers to justify it, our minds developed a coping mechanism in the form of feelings and experiences that allow us to find meaning without having to percieve any in our environment. Basically, nature made us too smart and needed to find a fix.

Seen from this perspective, the voevodsky-interview I linked to above takes on an (even) darker tone: a genius, but nihilistic and deeply depressed person, reaching for meaning without finding any and despairing in the process, until finally his subconicousness solves the problem in a most brutal way: by just imprinting the faith in meaning into him and rewriting any parts of his personality that would conflict with that believe, in a torturous process that left him in a psychotic state for long periods of time. Pretty scary, huh?

But again, this is not necessarily what I am saying, just my most reductionist explanation. And there are things I have heared about, and even one I have seen myself, that I cannot explain rationally, except by saying, they are just giant coincidences. Which is totally possible, but I don't see it as the only possibility.

 

[psy997]

I'm hereby drunkenly recommending Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything for everyone in this thread: https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Everything-20th-Anniversary/dp/1611804523

 

[nameiwillforget]

I will take a look at it.

 

[pupnik]

I experience perpendicular universes when stoned, not parallel ones.
each lingering moment is perpendicular to the main universe.
the stronger the dose the longer they persist and the more populous they become.
tangential side trips erupt from perpendicular persisting moments, while the main universe continues.
some side trips become entities, some are dreams, some are mental experiences processing reality that deliver really great revelations,
some are time travel, some slap back to the main universe as Deja Vue.

I am a very religious person in this way with so much of my mind striving perpendicular to the flatness of ordinary life, but I do not subscribe to any religion.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

I would think of it as a phenomenon that only developed once we reached a point where we had the compacity to think beyond our immediate needs for food and sex and ask questions like “what is the meaning of life?“ etc.

I think by the time humans got to that point it was too recent to actually evolve .

I was just thinking that maybe this religious part of the brain is coupled to some other aspect of intelligence and it just ends up getting carried on throughout evolution.

....what that other aspect of intelligence is that results in these religious phenomenona I have no guess.


I started a similar thread back in March asking why the psychedelic experience exists or is possible. It's a topic I wonder about a lot

 

[Moxious]

1) If you don't believe in god, and/or take a scientific approach there MUST be some survival/evolutionary reason that our brains are hard wired for religious experiences. Anyone venture a guess at what that evolutionary reason is or have read theories?

I think this line of reasoning is misguided; we don't evolve capacities for the sake of survival, we survive thanks to our evolved capacities. If you're asking the evolutionary question it becomes 'how does spiritual experience improve survival odds', and I would think it has to do with increased confidence and an experience that can be used to influence others.

I want to carry on but I'm short on time now, interested to see how this thread develops.

 

[nameiwillforget]

I think by the time humans got to that point it was too recent to actually evolve .

I was just thinking that maybe this religious part of the brain is coupled to some other aspect of intelligence and it just ends up getting carried on throughout evolution.

....what that other aspect of intelligence is that results in these religious phenomenona I have no guess.


I started a similar thread back in March asking why the psychedelic experience exists or is possible. It's a topic I wonder about a lot

I am no biologist, so I cannot say for sure, but since we know of burial rituals since the early stone ages, we know people thought about those things for a long time, and we also know about several different human subspecies that came before us (homo australopiticus and all the other homos), without much of an idea about their mental capacities, except that they too were able to build primitive instruments. So I think it is entirely possible that the had also started to think about these things, and we know that we evolved since then. Also, thanks to the fluidity of our minds psychological mechanisms do not have to be immediately reflected in the gene pool, they can also be spontanous reactions to psychological imbalances, although I admit that would not explain their appearence in people that do not seem to be imbalanced.

 

[protovack]

Yes to all your questions and I'll raise you the following--the creator placed psychedelics here intentionally.
You experienced what basically everyone who does psychedelics experiences.
You cannot fully translate everything back to sober life. If you were tripping all the time, things would be very chaotic.
There's a reason he didn't make us tripping all the time. On my last trip I figured it out.
The experience of daily life non-tripping is a gift of quiet and peace.
The underpinnings of reality are so forceful, chaotic, creative, that it is overwhelming to a soul such as ours.
When we are learning what it means to live and be who we are, it would be too much.
Therefore God made us NOT tripping all the time, so we could have the years of peace and quiet it takes to learn.
But, a back door was left (psychedelics) because he knew we would grow weary and wonder "is this it?"

 

[pupnik]

she

 

[psy997]

That's quite a lot of declaration about reality, protovack. Would you truly defend knowing the actual causes of psychedelics inducing the effects they do? I don't disagree, but I feel a sense of limiting declaration in reading your post.

Also, to pupnik and the point of female vs male creator/deity. I think it's silly to argue over gender. On one hand, god is both, as "it" has to be. On the other hand, god is female, as studying the nature of creation and reality, it becomes obvious everything we experience in this plane is viewed and manifested from the divine feminine, so yes, the god we experience is female. Knowing this to be the case, it becomes silly to argue about he vs she, especially if correcting another. Unless, of course, you feel like educating as to the inaccessibility of the original divine masculine force and the ways in which this is all from the feminine. But, you just said "she".

 

[pupnik]

i just was fooling around.
there s no evidence of a creator, or of any purpose for psychs.
we use them according to what we know and like.

sexing the creator is just goofy for me. some take it very seriously.
i cant blame them

 

[vegan]

Hi

People react differently to 5-MeO-DMT; but in my case, every single time I breakthrough, I experience "the reason for existence", "ineffable bliss", "absolute transcendence", ...

I'm as atheist as you can get, but I understand why anyone who is not a convinced atheist would interpret the experience as "becoming god" or "having a cosmic orgasm with god".

Ayahuasca has also given me mind-blowingly transcending experiences, although not with the consistency of 5-MeO-DMT.

So, yes, those two are my answer to question #2.
However, different people react differently to different drugs, and no one can guess which ones will work for you.

As for #3, I haven't really had to do anything; these experiences are so overwhelming that what I got from them just stays with me.

 

[nuube]

1) How many of you experience feelings of great "religious" profoundness duing your trips, and if so how often, what are your normal "spiritual" beliefs (in summary is fine, no need to get too involved in the specifics of any particular spiritual paths or religions), and, finally, do you attempt to induce this, or does it come on unbidden and unexpected?

2) How can I induce these sort of trips intentionally?

3) Would anyone care to share, this time in a specific sense if possible, if they have had a similar experience of being connected to some ethereal dimension parallel to our ownw , at least, as far as you feel like it resonates with my own experience (I know that sentence could well apply to almost any trip), and if so what were your experiences reintegrating and bringing something back from this? If that is a little hazily explained, to simplify, what forms of expression have any of you used either, artistic, or purely intellectual or philosophical, either in the midst of the trip of afterwards, to preserve these sacred truths if that is what they are?

(1,2&3 Its long but it flows, I think.) I only trip to experience spiritual insights and experiences it is without a shadow of a doubt the greatest thing about them - the ability to dissolve the me and introduce the we. I hate a trip that does not have a deeply spiritual side.

I was brought up a flavour of Christianity that never appealed to me, I couldn't understand it and I felt like an outsider. I rebelled against it and with the absoluteness of any teen I KNEW there was no God and death was nothingness. As I got older and into 1960's USA, hippies, Vietnam and the Panthers I became aware of acid and the doors of perception, etc, etc.

The LSD opened me up to spirituality and Eastern thought which resonated more than I had heard before. The oneness of the universe I felt was reflected in Buddhism. Anyway I put all that behind me in my early 20's as I became unable to get any drugs and focused on a career and life not taking any real look at spirituality but a lot of looking at reality from a philosophical point of view.

Anyway very long story short with the whole RC market opening up I heard of MXE and decided I liked the spiritual talk about it and got a couple of grams. That ended any thought of no God. I felt proper oneness with the universe - the LSD was a shadow in comparison. Then when I added MXE with 4-HO-MET not only did I feel at one with the universe I became the universe. It seems when I mix the dissociative with the psychedelic there is a synergy that seems to guarantee an intense spiritual trip.

This provoked a deep interest in spirituality and intensified my look at reality and I have fed that as much a possible since.

One particular night I had what was a very disturbing trip which was a strange take on dimensions. Prior to this I felt complete within a multitude of multiverses I was them, they were me and we all existed as one. Anyway this particular night I got disturbed just as I was peaking, (1am and one of the kids shouted out in their sleep). This forced me to get up and listen to see all was OK and if I needed to make myself scarce. So on the back of this disturbance instead of lying in the dark maybe listening to some tunes and surfing the psychedelic universe I was up pottering.

At some stage I became convinced I was part of a universe that was existing as a minute part within a larger universe, (think a speck of dirt on a giants nail), with time appropriately different that aeons of our time might be nanoseconds in the bigger universe. I then started to realise that the overlap of the two continued outwards in size; the larger universe was a speck in an even larger universe and carry on infinitum same with a universe on my nail and continue on down. (I hope this is making sense).

I then began to panic that the combination of drugs had awoken me to this and that every movement we do wipes out multiple universes. I get to thinking I have to write a note to myself so that when I sober up I don't forget this insight. As I write I know I have to use as little space so I kill as few as possible and the enormity of all these lives are weighing on me so I need only the very basic words. I spend ages trying to think what I have to write. Eventually I start to scrawl, killing countless to save many many more. I notice the familiar scrawl from previous attempts at recording insights. This makes me remember previous attempts to record trips and scrawls being thrown out as irrelevant - there were times I came round clutching a piece of paper to my breast with scrawls. SO of course I get to thinking of all deaths I could have prevented if I had realised what I had written, (it was obvious to me it was to warn of the destruction, it could be nothing else). So now I am hit with even more guilt and fear and it wasn't until I started coming down that I could rationalise the whole disturbing experience.

On the plus side I had some very valuable insights and a good tale to tell so all in all not too bad

 

[Hodor]

1) I am an athiest/agnostic. i have had such an experience with 3meoPCP where It was some sort of rapture happening to the whole world. or MXE holes that i could swear are real places. I'm torn between whether these experiences are just some result of the way our brain is evolutionarily hardwired or maybe there is something real about it. Im leaning more towards it being delusion though.

If you don't believe in god, and/or take a scientific approach there MUST be some survival/evolutionary reason that our brains are hard wired for religious experiences. Anyone venture a guess at what that evolutionary reason is or have read theories?

I don't think you can necessarily say that our brains are "hard-wired for religious experiences".

Look at it this way:
Eat too much ephedrine, you get a hypertensive crisis and die.
Eat too much nicotine, and you'll start seizing up and die.
Eat too much morphine, and you'll stop breathing and die.

All of these conditions are caused by the activation of specific receptors built into our nervous system, yet I wouldn't say that our bodies are "hardwired" to experience hypertensive crises, respiratory depression or nicotine poisoning.

Likewise, when parts of your brain that are responsible for the detection of novelty, patterns, causality and significance become overactive, it is only "logical" to assume that the super-interesting, super-revolutionary, and super-important revelation we are experiencing has to come from some entity, and the only "explanation" we can offer to ourselves is a religious one.
Not sure how I'd explain religious experiences caused by dissociatives... maybe, as our consciousness is fractured and removed from the outside world, we find new "gaps" to fill with supernatural explanations, or it's just plain mania. Of course, it also raises the question as to why god would have us invent synthetic arylcyclohexamines to open this channel of communication with the supernatural, instead of providing us with plant- or mushroom-based NMDA antagonists.

As for the evolutionary advantage of religious behavior, it might just serve to strengthen social bonds.
You know how our closest relatives, the bonobos and chimpanzees, have lots of gay sex, even though it doesn't produce children, "wastes" energy, and increases their risk of catching an STD? Yet there is an obvious evolutionary advantage if these monkeys can live and work together as a bunch of free-loving hippies that see each other as potential sex partners, instead of merely seeing each other as competition. Likewise, religion might provide a means of peacefully cementing social hierarchies, and building cohesion within a group.