If weed isn't a "real" psychedelic how do you explain arabesque/hindu art?

[Ismene]

they can impress you with all their fake wizardry, but they could never cause you to have a mystical/religious/spiritual experience (not unless they spike your drink)

How do you know the experiences they're writing about in religious texts were genuinely mystical/spiritual/religious? They wern't even written by the people who allegedly "experienced" them. They were written by people who lived hundreds of years later making up stories to ensure people believed their religion.

 

[perpetualdawn]

truth and falsity, right or wrong, correct or incorrect etc arent relevant to this issue, because we can never possibly know either way.

The entheogen theory is one way of interpreting what religion is all about. There is also the various drug-free explanations of what religion is about. The crucial question is which from among the various alternatives provides the best explanation of religion.

I'm glad you can see that the entheogen theory is just a notion, and that we can't ever know if it's true. So can you please stop stating it as fact?

The entheogen theory is a very well accepted way to understand Rastafarianism, the Native American Chuch, Santo Daime, Bwiti spiritism, lots of other religions, cults, and the spiritual practices of many hippies.

There is no convincing evidence that drugs form basis to these major world religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism.

I'm not talking about Hinduism here, that's a whole hodge-podge of different practices and religions, some of which definitely do include smoking weed as part of their thing. Not sure about Sikhs either. They're pretty straight edged, but a lot of them smoke weed too. I'm not sure if that's considered OK in their religion or not.

 

[Doldrugs]

I don't really understand max's perspective. He says stuff like "we can't possibly understand this" and in the same breath presents his totally unfounded interpretation as fact like "all religious experiences are caused by drug use."

 

[perpetualdawn]

Yeah it's frustrating because this is a repeating cycle.

 

[max_freakout]

He says stuff like "we can't possibly understand this"

i didnt say this ^

 

[perpetualdawn]

He's paraphrasing your statement "truth and falsity, right or wrong, correct or incorrect etc arent relevant to this issue, because we can never possibly know either way."

 

[Ismene]

The entheogen theory is a very well accepted way to understand Rastafarianism, the Native American Chuch, Santo Daime, Bwiti spiritism, lots of other religions, cults, and the spiritual practices of many hippies.

There's an awful lot of bullshit involved in those religions that don't relate to the entheogens tho. Rasta for example want to see gay people crucified - that's not something that comes from an entheogen. So while there might drug use involved - whether they're learning anything from the entheogen is another question entirely. If you can smoke weed and still want to beat a gay guy to death then perhaps you're not getting the point.

 

[swilow]

I don't really understand max's perspective. He says stuff like "we can't possibly understand this" and in the same breath presents his totally unfounded interpretation as fact like "all religious experiences are caused by drug use."

He has basically says that his 'truth' is completely subjective so don't hold your breath waiting for evidence...

Most people who claim to be party to unconventional truths also claim that other parties will not be able to understand it. This negates their obligation to provide evidence because you wouldn't get it if they did. Its convenient isn't it?

 

[max_freakout]

He's paraphrasing your statement "truth and falsity, right or wrong, correct or incorrect etc arent relevant to this issue, because we can never possibly know either way."

It is a completely inaccurate paraphrase, i am not saying that these issues cannot be understood, but without a time machine we can not know either way, so it comes down to the relative plausibility of the various competing explanations, in particular the drug explanation versus the drug-free explanation of the origins of religion.

 

[max_freakout]

There is no convincing evidence that drugs form basis to these major world religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism.

Only if you ignore all the evidence, including the writings of the various entheogen scholars like Carl Ruck, Mark Hoffman, Gordon Wasson and Dan Merkur etc. who have presented evidence for a moreorless unbroken tradition of entheogen use at the heart of all the major religions

 

[Ismene]

I'm not sure I'd call all of Wassons writings "evidence". His accounts of Maria Sabina are evidence, his work on "Soma" is just supposition and guesswork. And it's guesswork influenced by his own desire for it to be true so that means you have to be doubly wary of it.

And what does it matter if there even was drug use involved in the early days of the major religions? There's so much bullshit added on top that it makes no difference anyway. Even the religions we have today that are clearly based on drugs like rastafarians and santo daime are barking mad and utterly deranged.

The moment you start trying to a turn a drug experience into a "religion" you simply pollute and destroy every good thing about it. It misses the whole point - psychedelics were never meant to be religions - they're far too valuable and good for that.

 

[Vurtual]

Max: The mind can have mystical experiences - these can be catalysed by drugs or in many other ways - the action of psychedelic drugs and dissociatives can be thought of as sensory deprivation at a molecular level (blocking up neural inputs causing internal feedback) - meditation, mantras, fasting, retreats etc are all different methods of sensory deprivation in some sense. Your position is a bit like insisting "all happiness is caused by serotonin": it misses the point (the mind). When people trip out on drugs, the psychedelic molecule is just the very last component in a long chain of complexity and intelligence built into the mammal brain/experiences - the straw that broke the camel's ego if you like - this is the same for any other method of breaking down our linear consciousness. Trying to judge people's mystical experiences as more or less worthy because they took some chemicals is silly - shall we compare people's experience of love too? (i found it a bit like a mix between OCD and flu)

It's a bit chicken and egg (though we know the egg came first, cos of fishes/reptiles); all religions ultimately derive from shamanic ancestors - shamans are often well into practical use of drugs to do their magic, though most don't need the drugs to do a bit of spirit dancing or what have you. I think there's something to your general point about esoteric/exoteric religion, and that sometimes this would involve secret use of drugs (eg delphi), but in general it's just a vessel for a more sophistcated version of the religion than the masses get (those monks must get bored) - like in buddhism the average person is given some basic morality guidelines and simple meditiation, where the monks might get into some more hardcore yogic practice: not a psychedelic in sight (buddhist retreats would be more popular if there were). You can't use religion's propensity for secrecy and initiated traditions as a way to lever in any theory you'd like to about its origins on the back of some word association (well you can, but you won't take many people with you).

 

[swilow]

It is a completely inaccurate paraphrase, i am not saying that these issues cannot be understood, but without a time machine we can not know either way, so it comes down to the relative plausibility of the various competing explanations, in particular the drug explanation versus the drug-free explanation of the origins of religion.

You are saying that it is plausible for all world religions to have completely obscured their origins to the point that not even they know how/why they started. Given the masses of people involved in religion and the paucity of evidence for the entheogen theory, I feel like it has to remain just wishful thinking for now...

 

[Jesusgreen]

If wine isn't a psychedelic how come that God/Jesus/Holy moly spirit dude made shit like these mountain ranges in Alaska?!

On a more serious note the archetypes present in the psychedelic trip come from within nature itself and within our minds and the things we see from day to day, psychedelic by very definition is meant to mean 'mind-manifesting' and those patterns we see can be seen and thought up without their use.

Besides it really depends what we're using to define "psychedelic" - here at Bluelight we usually classify weed separately to hallucinogens because it takes a whole lot of it to get even the mildest psychedelic/dissociative like effects, then typically hallucinogens are split further into Psychedelics (5HT2a agonists and related, a few exceptions here and there like 2C-I, 2C-B, 2C-D and 2C-H which are only partial agonists at 2A or even full antagonists, and seem to exert their effects through the other 5HT subtypes being agonised), Dissociatives (Primarily NMDA antagonists, but some there are some drugs I'd also group with them that exert their action in another manner, like Salvia Divinorum which is a k-opioid antagonist), and Deliriants, (which to be honest can pretty much be a term used to describe any drug that interacts with acetylcholine or dopamine in excessive amounts, but usually refers to the anti-cholinergics and anti-histamines in larger doses).

Some people prefer to use the term more broadly and just go with its linguistic definition which as I said earlier means "mind manifesting", which could extend to all hallucinogens, cannabinoids, and depending on how broad your definition of mind-manifesting is, almost any psychoactive drug known to man (which is why I prefer the earlier definitions).

What that means though is sure I don't see weed as a psychedelic but that doesn't mean you can't see visuals on higher doses (I've only seen open eyed visuals with cannabis maybe once or twice in > 1000x smoking, but CEVs are normal, and often similar to psychedelic CEVs, albeit milder).

Also I've seen psychedelic type visuals during deep meditation, and as mentioned earlier these types of imagery are everywhere in nature, we just don't tend to notice them and they become ever more apparent when one goes out for a walk in the woods while tripping, fractals errywhere! :D

Furthermore, these kind of patterns and art can come from experimenting with math and geometry too, and we all know that the Arabic speaking countries and India had some of the finest mathematicians back in the day.

It's really something that we're just going to have to assume came from multiple sources, I'm sure some art came from spiritual experiences, meditation etc, while others were imitations of previous pieces, some may have just been pure creative spark, some may have come from a few tokes on some nice hash, and hell maybe there was some consumption of N,N-DMT plant mixtures and/or psilocybin mushrooms to thank for some of it.

 

[max_freakout]

Trying to judge people's mystical experiences as more or less worthy because they took some chemicals is silly

I agree, mystical experiences are only judged in terms of their subjective content, not in terms of how they were caused. If someone meditates and has a mystical experience, that is just as "worthy" of an experience as a mystical experience that someone has when they take drugs

OTOH it is valid and highly pertinent to judge the methods by which people attempt to make themselves have mystical experiences, in terms of their efficacy and practicality at causing such experiences. No other method other than taking drugs comes anywhere close to matching the sheer superiority of the drugs, there is no other way to easily, repeatably and reliably access and explore the intense mystical state of consciousness without taking drugs.

For this reason the entheogenic explanation of religious origins is far more plausible than any other explanation. Given that religious stories all depict people undergoing intense transformative religious experiences (commonly after they eat 'holy food and drink'), it is most natural and plausible to explain this as a reference to entheogens and tripping.

 

[max_freakout]

You are saying that it is plausible for all world religions to have completely obscured their origins to the point that not even they know how/why they started.

No that is completely inaccurate that is not what i am saying. Religion has two fundamental levels, the esoteric level and the exoteric level. Esoteric psychedelic insiders know (and have always known) that the religious stories are about entheogenic experiences. Esoteric insiders are able to recognise the psychedelic level of reference in the religious stories because they are familiar with the psychedelic altered state of consciousness, they interpret the religious stories as allegorical descriptions of the psychological dynamics of the altered state experiences (in particular the ego death experience). For example the story that Jesus *walked on water* is an allegorical reference to the wavy visual alterations that people see when they trip (compare this to Moses who parted the red sea then *walked between two walls of water*).

Clueless exoteric outsiders cannot recognise (and have never been able to recognise) this level of interpretation because they are unfamiliar with the psychedelic altered state. Because they do not know what it is like to trip out and experience ego death, they do not recognise the psychedelic references in the religious stories.

These two levels of religious interpretation esoteric/exoteric have always existed alongside each other. The history of religion is the history of the dynamic relationship between these two levels.

 

[Doldrugs]

If it's been around as long as religion has been around, why isn't there a single shred of hard evidence that anyone has thought this until the 20th century? That's a secret kept impossibly well.

 

[DrGreenthumb]

There's plenty of evidence of opium, scopolamine & cannabis use across most of the world, also some evidence of how important they were to early religions, it's slightly harder to prove use of mushrooms & dmt. There are at least a few historical artifacts that seem to show psychedelic mushroom use & dmt containing plaints are known in traditional Indian medicine.

 

[Ismene]

I'm not sure indian medicine used any mushrooms or DMT - at least not for their psychedelic properties anyway. Do indian traditional medicines follow the same ideas as the silly bastards do in chinese medicine? Most of their "cures" are based around using endangered animals to help give some arsehole a hard-on.

 

[Doldrugs]

Evidence of use is not the same thing as evidence of a giant psychedelic conspiracy spanning millennia.