Did all religions come from the use of psychedelics?

[Ismene]

"Which was more likely to happen first: the SPONTANEOUSLY generated idea of an afterlife

It's not "spontaneously generated" tho is it. It's generated when the person you have loved for the your entire life drops dead in front of you and you know that's how you will end up one day too. With no understanding of death or why it happens.

Dreaming up an afterlife would have been a necessity to cope with that. You certainly wouldn't need psychedelics.

 

[Jesusgreen]

No, religion arose from the need to control large groups of people.

^ This is why we need +rep on Bluelight.

Agreed oh so wholeheartedly.

 

[Quantum Perception]

It's not "spontaneously generated" tho is it. It's generated when the person you have loved for the your entire life drops dead in front of you and you know that's how you will end up one day too. With no understanding of death or why it happens.

Dreaming up an afterlife would have been a necessity to cope with that. You certainly wouldn't need psychedelics.

Death happens to animals all the time, why should humans be crippled by it, if we are so intelligent? The psychedelic experience kills ones ego and brings it back. This self-dying is what I think caused the shift in perception. Its one thing to see another die, death is apart of life. But its quite another to see you yourself die, and go into a state of ego-loss, experience bliss and transcendence, and come back into a immediate body-mind frame. The latter will definitely cause more of a stir then the former. And I know for sure we as a species have tried every plant and fungi out there.

I think an afterlife is more conceivable if you actually experience death and come back- there are plants in the environment that do just that. We are a generalist species, we pick from everything out there, most animals don't do this. SO one can see how this survival based curiosity got over amplified by psychedelics and caused new contemplations, like the nature of life and death and not just how to hunt better.


Also, many people have demonized mushrooms and other plant hallucinogens because of their tie to pagan and nature worship which was shunned by the catholics who pretty set much of the cultural standard of the world (I mean we count our years from the "birth" of Christ). So of course they are negatively looked at.

 

[Ismene]

Death happens to animals all the time, why should humans be crippled by it, if we are so intelligent?

I think that's the reason humans would be crippled by it - because we're the only animal that knows it's going to die. Death is terrifying enough for 21st century man - it's impact on primitive people would be profound. Plus there's the obvious link, what does every human society have in common? Death. What does every religion have in common? "Death is not the end".

This self-dying is what I think caused the shift in perception

How common do you think the self-dying is tho quantum? Whenever i take mushrooms I have a euphoric, beautiful time. It's about as far from death as I can possibly imagine. I know the old Leary theory that the ego "dies" but to be honest, if I'd never read Leary, the thought would never have crossed my mind. Would a guy 2000 years ago think taking mushrooms was like dying? You feel fucking fantastic on them don't you.

Also, many people have demonized mushrooms and other plant hallucinogens because of their tie to pagan and nature worship which was shunned by the catholics who pretty set much of the cultural standard of the world

True, but I must admit I found it striking how Maria Sabina lived in the mexican village. I'd always read that the "shaman" was some respected leader of the village. In Maria Sabinas case nothing could be furthur from the truth. There was absolutely no reverence for Maria among the local community - she was just viewed as the local nut who ate mushrooms.

 

[Quantum Perception]

I think that's the reason humans would be crippled by it - because we're the only animal that knows it's going to die. Death is terrifying enough for 21st century man - it's impact on primitive people would be profound. Plus there's the obvious link, what does every human society have in common? Death. What does every religion have in common? "Death is not the end".

This self-dying is what I think caused the shift in perception

How common do you think the self-dying is tho quantum? Whenever i take mushrooms I have a euphoric, beautiful time. It's about as far from death as I can possibly imagine. I know the old Leary theory that the ego "dies" but to be honest, if I'd never read Leary, the thought would never have crossed my mind. Would a guy 2000 years ago think taking mushrooms was like dying? You feel fucking fantastic on them don't you.

Also, many people have demonized mushrooms and other plant hallucinogens because of their tie to pagan and nature worship which was shunned by the catholics who pretty set much of the cultural standard of the world

True, but I must admit I found it striking how Maria Sabina lived in the mexican village. I'd always read that the "shaman" was some respected leader of the village. In Maria Sabinas case nothing could be furthur from the truth. There was absolutely no reverence for Maria among the local community - she was just viewed as the local nut who ate mushrooms.

I agree with you that our intelligence brought upon death anxiety as the uniquely human concern. But when do you suppose that point was when we went from every other like animal, death not a big concern, to creating metaphysics concerning an afterlife?
That's why i see our ability as a double edge sword, and i challenge the notion that natural selection produced us because of this trait being so empowering yet bringing with it tons of emotional baggage and existential fear. But I digress....

As for how common this ego death experience is? These compounds make u reflect on life on lower doses, and at high they dissolve boundaries and identity. So its a common occurrence. Psychedelics make u focus on the self and the environment more deeply. That is why some feel bliss and others terror. But the fact is always the same, shifts in perception leading to the point of dissolution of previously held identities for a new model or understanding of a relation to the world and self. I myself on low dose always reflect on things, and I feel that the sensory enhancement, if not sought after, can always lead to a grappling with existential question as one perceives in a way they haven't before.

Also, this argument about ancient people not taking psychedelics the way we do is a facile argument. Its true that cultural conditioning has a lot to do with how one contextualizes the trip, but the affect is always the same, a reorganization of what was known in light of these novel forms of experience. Thus when ever that happens, no matter what culture you are, you are going to reevaluate your values, thereby bringing tremendous change of some sort.

BTW the ego death theory of drugs is not a discovery by Leary, he just popularized it. And if it wasn't for his misguided antics, none of us would be here discussing these topics.

Finally, your mistaken about shamanism, although some are respect heads of the tribe, others exist one the verges of society, only coming to the main populous for special ceremonies or times of healing, and are not very social. And where do you get that Maria was viewed as a nut job? Aztecs have used mushrooms for centuries, and so has the lineage of Maria's family and peoples. I never heard of her being called a nut job anywhere.

 

[Quantum Perception]

Forgot to mention, not all religions promise after lives, few examples are Buddhism, Judaism, and Taoism.

Religion is really a form of psychotherapy for our illness of existential anxiety, but again that is a digression.

 

[grimble crumble]

no,

i think assuming all religions came from psychedelics is just a way of putting psychedelics on a pedestal
believe it or not lots of great philosophy has come from sober people who were just flat out amazing thinkers.

im not saying psychedelics havent played there part in many different aspects of the development of modern thought and human history, but too often I hear people refer to psychedelics like some kind of mythical object which all human achievement/creativity/philosophy can be linked to, so acrrediting entire religions to a psychedelic, unlikely... some religions? - I dont know its possible.. aspects of certain religions? - yes highly likely.

just my opinion

I also really like this statement from page 1

Religion originates as an answer to many pressing existential questions that arose from higher cognitive functioning, IMO

and this

People in our era in the western world would certainly say that, we have busy lives, much complication and we are usually wired to be conscious and attentive through out the day up to the point that we are on the edge of stress and hyper-vigilance. That makes it more difficult to meditate long and often, So now imagine eastern cultures where it is much more common and a tradition, imagine those cultures and places much more quiet and peaceful than metropolitan areas... then I think it's not unrealistic at all that someone or multiple people in the course of time take meditation so far and deep that they find a message to carry out at some point.

 

[Ismene]

Forgot to mention, not all religions promise after lives, few examples are Buddhism, Judaism, and Taoism.

I actually said they promise that "death is not the end". You never heard of reincarnation?

 

[TangerinO]

It's also wishful thinking to presume that the modern epistemology is the only one that is valid that has ever existed. What does a person being "educated" in the modern sense have anything to do with them deriving spiritual or philosophical value from a trip? What does them living in a hut and shitting into a hole have to do with being spiritual? Are you judging them for not having our modernisms?

How do you even know what some person's idea of a trip was 2000 years ago, and why does the fact that it happened 2000 years ago mean the account is somehow less trustworthy?

Yes, I'm sure bad trips have happened all over the world and throughout all time - does that mean good trips were impossible? Did they even think of them as "trips"? There are cultures who use entheogens who don't even see them as substances, but as Beings that enter them and grant them specific teachings. The way people view entheogens around the world is just as diverse as the number of creation stories that exist.



First of all... when I talked about plant spirit medicine, I was not referring to psychedelics, but those are included too. If you read the anthropological research about herbal medicine in indigenous cultures, the stories are very fascinating. Whenever modern scientific researchers go to indigenous regions (like the Amazon) to discover new medicines, they often turn to locals. The trial and error theory is always applied by modern science in terms of how these people discovered the medicines they use, but when asked how the discovered the medicine, the answer is universally the same around the world: they talked to the plants.

How is it that in the Amazon rainforest, where there are millions of plants and billions of potential plant combinations, Ayahuasceruos figured out that ayahuasca + datura = a deep, entheogenic and spiritual experience? Beyond psychedelics, how were medicines discovered in the first place? Do people seriously believe that villages of limited resource would send their own people into the woods to randomly sample plants, and maybe dying, to figure out what does what? Impossible, especially in a place like the Amazon.

Clearly humans have always had some connection to plants that we have lost touch with in the modern. I am not claiming that I know how it works and I'm not saying all this to try and validate my modern entheogen use like McKenna is. What I'm saying is that this goes way, way beyond just tripping. These are entire epistemologies unto themselves and writing them off as pre-modern and primitive is INCREDIBLY short sighted.

I highly recommend those two books I mentioned earlier, especially the first one by Buhner. He offers plenty of scientific research that you can verify that will shed light on this for you. He's not so agenda based like McKenna.

I recommend if you're just joining the thread out of genuine interest in the subject, this post is the most clear and informative. Definitely couldn't have said better myself.

 

[Ismene]

I agree with you that our intelligence brought upon death anxiety as the uniquely human concern. But when do you suppose that point was when we went from every other like animal, death not a big concern, to creating metaphysics concerning an afterlife?

I don't know whether you'd call it "creating metaphysics". If someone is trying to make death less frightening then obviously you come up with stories about how there's a caring God and there's 72 virgins waiting for you - I can't see the 72 virgins story coming out of psychedelic contemplation.

I mean how far do you go with this theory that stories have to come from psychedelic use? Do Grimms fairy tales come from psychedelic use? You can make up fanciful stories without taking psychedelics - just ask a 5 year old to make up a story and you'll get the most incredible stories.

and i challenge the notion that natural selection produced us

I'd have to disagree with you on that one quantum.

Thus when ever that happens, no matter what culture you are, you are going to reevaluate your values, thereby bringing tremendous change of some sort.

But you're assuming that people took psychedelics like people do nowadays. I don't believe ancient cultures used them like that. I've been reading about the aztec use of mushrooms and it's disappointing - their use seemed limited to the Kings and they were usually used in ceremonies often based around sacrificing children to the sun. There wasn't much tripping for contemplation.


Aztecs have used mushrooms for centuriesand so has the lineage of Maria's family and peoples

Well you say "used" but they wern't "used" like me and you would understand the term. Young aztec kids didn't get up and say "Hey, lets go and trip today eh?".

And, mushrooms wern't particularly big in Sabinas village. They were frowned upon - whenever Marias parents caught her taking mushrooms they would tell her not to. And once again there doesn't appear to be any use of them for fun or psychedelic contemplation - their use is strictly limited to witchdoctor type ceremonies where someone would ask Sabina to trip to try and help their sick child. Like you'd ask a guy to perform a voodoo ceremony if you lived in Haiti.

The information about her life I got from the book "Maria Sabina: Her life and chants" by Alvaro Estrada.

It might be disappointing but I think the greatest and most valuable period of psychedelic use in human history has been the last 50 years.

 

[Quantum Perception]

I don't know whether you'd call it "creating metaphysics". If someone is trying to make death less frightening then obviously you come up with stories about how there's a caring God and there's 72 virgins waiting for you - I can't see the 72 virgins story coming out of psychedelic contemplation.

I mean how far do you go with this theory that stories have to come from psychedelic use? Do Grimms fairy tales come from psychedelic use? You can make up fanciful stories without taking psychedelics - just ask a 5 year old to make up a story and you'll get the most incredible stories.

and i challenge the notion that natural selection produced us

I'd have to disagree with you on that one quantum.

Thus when ever that happens, no matter what culture you are, you are going to reevaluate your values, thereby bringing tremendous change of some sort.

But you're assuming that people took psychedelics like people do nowadays. I don't believe ancient cultures used them like that. I've been reading about the aztec use of mushrooms and it's disappointing - their use seemed limited to the Kings and they were usually used in ceremonies often based around sacrificing children to the sun. There wasn't much tripping for contemplation.


Aztecs have used mushrooms for centuriesand so has the lineage of Maria's family and peoples

Well you say "used" but they wern't "used" like me and you would understand the term. Young aztec kids didn't get up and say "Hey, lets go and trip today eh?".

And, mushrooms wern't particularly big in Sabinas village. They were frowned upon - whenever Marias parents caught her taking mushrooms they would tell her not to. And once again there doesn't appear to be any use of them for fun or psychedelic contemplation - their use is strictly limited to witchdoctor type ceremonies where someone would ask Sabina to trip to try and help their sick child. Like you'd ask a guy to perform a voodoo ceremony if you lived in Haiti.

The information about her life I got from the book "Maria Sabina: Her life and chants" by Alvaro Estrada.

It might be disappointing but I think the greatest and most valuable period of psychedelic use in human history has been the last 50 years.

I never said that psychedelics immediately caused people to make up stories and metaphysics, like if they were high when they deiced to make up stories. I only said that it brought a shift in awareness that LEAD to questions which brought these metaphysics and belief systems, once they were down! They would only have to take it once, so its not about getting high and making up stories like some kids do today.
Ancient people make their own stories based on their own psyche, psychedelics only open the mind up to ask such questions instead of being the source of information themselves.

Look, I know that me saying no to natural selection shaping us is radical.
But if you research the facts surrounding our quick and uniquely special emergence out of life, its too different. For one our brains grew tremendously in size due to environmental change that only affected our species for some reason, this was the first time something in evolution ever happened like this. There are many other points and I wrote a paper on it.

No i am not assuming they took it they way they we did. I am only pointing out its universal function, which is to mimic, block, and bring about changes neurotransmitters in the neuron synapses which cause radical shifts in behavior and perception. So you have this experience, plus the intelligence and social-ness of humans- that unique combination only exists in is- and you get this unique reaction of not only a weird experience, but the desire to communicate it to others and make symbols for it (i.e. make up stories and myths of reality).

And just because ancient people took them does not make them civilized at all! My whole point is that they are central to why we are they way we are. Now some may say that's putting it up on a pedestal, but I think that to say its not is to degrade it and not see it for what it truly is. This negativity toward it for being the consciousness changer that it is was mixed up with the overall drug sentiment the west has. We in this society are very xenophobic and do not like customs which do not help us in work. And during the Calvinistic times (lol i know) the church did not want you to have a direct experience of anything numinous, that's why they suppressed pagan plant cults. So today we have inherited this attitude and it infests out perceptions today.

Therefore we should see these plants and fungi for what they are, the Pandora box which revealed to us our own existence.

And as for Maria, I did not read that book and if that's true they made fun of her, then those people are arrogant assholes lol.
But the last you said may be true only because today would be greater then before because we are using these chems not just accidentally, but consciously. So although in the past these plants and fuingi catalyzed our symbolic culture, these last 50 years may be the most valuable period because people are using them consciously and not just accidentally, and in larger numbers in conjunction with technology and information.

 

[Quantum Perception]

Also i am not referring to how people used psychedelics after creating a culture. I am pointing to the hunter-gather nomadic peoples that were preliterate and prehistoric.

 

[Pegasus]

But if you research the facts surrounding our quick and uniquely special emergence out of life, its too different. For one our brains grew tremendously in size due to environmental change that only affected our species for some reason, this was the first time something in evolution ever happened like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_intelligence

 

[Quantum Perception]

^yeah and dolphins have bigger neo-cortex then us. But as smart as some of these animals are, and don't get me wrong they are, none of them are on par with us.

We say, wow an elephant an paint and remember. If a human does this we say so what. Show me an elephant that designed an alphabet to communicate to other elephants or something in that range and then your post would be more of an attack against mine. Till then many animals will use tools in innovative ways, but show me animals that make tools that make tools for building other tools, and then I'll say OK we have some contenders.

If evolution is a game, we as humans are cheating if you compare our success with that of others.......

 

[Pegasus]

^I'm not trying to pick apart your post, I'm just giving you food for thought. Did you read this part?

In the 1970s, at Marine World Africa, USA, there lived an Asian elephant named Bandula. Bandula worked out how to break open or unlock several of the pieces of equipment used to keep the shackles on her feet secure. The most complex device was a brommel hook, a device that closes when two opposite points are slid together. Bandula used to fiddle with the hook until it slid apart when it was aligned. Once she had freed herself, she would help the other elephants escape.[33] In Bandula's case and certainly with other captive elephants, there was an element of deception involved during the escapes, such as the animals looking around making sure no one was watching.[33]

 

[Quantum Perception]

Ive tasted this already .

Yeah its pretty amazing, I saw this dog save another dog crippled by a car on a freeway. It dragged the dog not by its teeth, but used its paws to help push it to safety. Like i said this stuff is amazing, yet I don't think it touches our achievements as a species.