A felt presence from a tree, real and objective, or an hallucination?

[astralprojectee]

So I was wondering what you guys thoughts on psychedelics unfiltering our minds to other dimensions or perceptions physical and even our multiverse experience. But more specifically I want to know if taking a psychedelic really does open you up to a real presence of things. So like I have heard of people that just bask in the presence of something. Weather it's a tree, mountain, something else. So the idea is that our brain and it's chemistry acts as a filter to other dimensions of being. And that by taking a psychedelic you can tap into the very real presence of things. Alexander Shulgin took MDMA and just stood in awe at a mountain. Now I know that some psychedelics do give you hallucinations, or visions or whatever. But do they or can they also unfilter your mind and perceptions to a very real and even objective presence that is real in every way in this dimension or other dimensions. And when I say other dimensions I may not necessarily mean other parallel universes, but just being able to feel and see perhaps a higher spectrum in the electromagnetic field or something like that.

So is this a real phenomena that people are feeling and perhaps even seeing, or is it all just made up by the mind from the drug?

I will say that science has proven that our hearts have an electromagnetic field that goes out and around us for like 10 feet at least from what I remember. So perhaps some kind of presence can emit from that.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

 

[johannes kreisler]

it is quite real that everything is connected and that everything makes sense if you dig deep enough. and it is absolutely real that reality is nothing but a very, very dynamic and very, very, very complex array of electromagnetic radiation (with the setup of human radiation sensors having developed to focus on the very narrow spectrum most useful for our survival).
but it's not only about sensual perception. what some decent psychoactives do is to deconstruct the deception (imprinted in the structure of our brain/mind by evolution; same mechanism as with the sensory input) that reality is discrete, dichotomous, causal, deterministic, materialistic, arbitrary and mundane and that it can be understood by reducing the whole into particles small enough for human beings to press them into patterns, concepts and numbers - which is ultimately impossible as reality is not a state but a process.

how you interpret - and act out - the sudden realization of insights like those is up to you. maybe you will stare at a mountain or you hug a tree or you just close your eyes and see yourself. affection-wise you are probably engulfed in feelings of awe, humility, love, peace and gratefulness.
the "presence" you have in mind is a principle that seems to be deeply imprinted in everything there is. in a tree, in a mountain, in the keyboard in front of you eyes, in every atom of your body, your brain, everything. and everyone. truly universal. being aware of it is a mere matter of concentration. but it's easier with things that are aesthetically appealing to the human mind (reasons above^).

btw: one of those insights might also be that there is no such thing as "real phenomena" versus phenomena "just made up by the mind [from the drug]". it is the same. inseparable. however that doesn't explain anything about the "true nature of reality" or if there even is one "true nature of reality". it just shows what the human mind is capable to comprehend and what not. or what is actually meant to be directly comprehensible for the human mind - and what not.


this is the perspective of the psychonaut but this very story can be told be a psychologist, a physicist, a philosopher (and maybe a good theologist) - just in a different language. no esoterics involved.


[sorry, poor english on this topic ...and disorderly mind from my aMT+2c-B+weed post-(pre-)fuck-up regimen of piracetam, lorazepam, ethylphenidat and beer. 8) ]

 

[freedstar]

I remember my first high dose LSD trip gave me a taste of slightly delusional thinking. These thoughts would pop into my head and seem pretty reasonable for a few seconds or maybe a minute or two, before I could dismiss them as silly nonsense.

Grid type patterns overlaying stuff similar to Alex Grey paintings. I thought how this was some sort of underlying energy that is everywhere, but I can only see on LSD 8)

Moving my cell phone in a small circle left such tracers that all I would see was a lighted circle. This led me to believe that I was spread throughout time. Seeing things that happened maybe 2 seconds in the past and 2 seconds into the future.

I think its just silly ideas.

 

[johannes kreisler]

@freedstar: the perception is as "real" or "silly" as any other perception you can have.
knowledge and experience will give you more room to stay in the "delusional" moment long enough to see where those phenomena come from and what they mean - before your ego makes you judge them.
and I'm not only speaking of knowledge about and experience with drugs but primarily about hard scientific knowledge and experience in life...

 

[freedstar]

@freedstar: the perception is as "real" or "silly" as any other perception you can have.
knowledge and experience will give you more room to stay in the "delusional" moment long enough to see where those phenomena come from and what they mean - before your ego makes you judge them.
and I'm not only speaking of knowledge about and experience with drugs but primarily about hard scientific knowledge and experience in life...

So are you asking if trees give off a "presence" that humans have the ability to detect? Which is scientifically provable?

Similar to Shulgin I have been amazed by things while on psychedelics. The vastness of the sky. The motions of the ocean. When I become aware that everything I see is made up of tiny atoms. Somewhat real and objective hallucination/drug induced thoughts.

I once took 4-aco-dmt and walked through a very dark forest. Somehow I felt the trees around me were actually people. Can't really describe it any other way but sensing that I was surrounded by people. This is actually quite similar to what you describe, but I would go with hallucination over real and objective.

This seems like it'll lead to a bunch of talk about what is "real" and whats not. I'm not smart enough to get into this stuff

edit: I have felt this phenomenon to a much lesser extent while sober. Working at a new job with lots of machines and tools around. For a moment I would think that a human sized/shape object at the corner of my vision is actually a person. Now that I'm familiar with my work area it never seems to happen. Mind tricks.

 

[TCMVegas]

Drugs make your brain feel strange. No shit.

 

[Ligaturd]

I once took a decently high dose of acid and mushrooms out in the mountains with a few people very close to myself, one person took off and wouldn't answer to any of our calls. We were all so worried because we were in the middle of bear, cougar infested land with nobody for miles. It turns out she just wanted to be alone for a bit but it was very selfish, I was going through all of these scenarios where something bad happened to her such as getting mauled to death by a bear. Anyways, in the middle of all this panic, anger, and sadness; I was peaking very suddenly and nobody was talking, there was a dead tree right in front of me...it was strange, very suddenly everything got very intense and I could feel this powerful energy current coursing through me and being pulled towards this tree, the ground felt like it was vibrating beneath me and my vision changed in an indescribable way. The tree turned purple, it's limbs all curled downward and it started growing, i would liken it's movement to some sort of centipede rising from the ground in an attack pose, ready and quite capable of ending me right then and there. I heard a very low sort of hum, very alien like but also very intense and It seemed as though the tree was some kind of powerful sentient being...it was absorbing me and it everything else around it like it had a sort of magnetic field emanating from it and pulling everything around it into itself, communicating with me. I felt so vulnerable and it was as if the tree was telling me that this is how things are, this is nature. A seemingly cruel but necessary thing had happened, my friend was just a meal for some creature, we were trespassing on it's territory and that person became part of the vicious cycle that is the circle of life.

It was humbling, we've removed ourselves from this reality as humans. But out here killing has it's purpose, a necessary occurrence for the continuance of the cycle. I can't really word this as elegantly as I would have wanted; I think I did an alright job of portraying what happened as I experienced it.

I know that the tree wasn't a sentient being capable of communication with myself, you could call it a delusion and it's important to keep things in perspective but within these "delusions" there is always a constant theme of empathy, humility, and acceptance, it's important to derive something beneficial that doesn't distort our sober perspectives and not take everything so literally, this will only serve to lead you far off the path into a world that doesn't even exist. You need to read between the lines, extract something real from the very abstract and crazy experiences that psychedelics allow you to experience.

 

[freedstar]

Trees are living things. Like all living things, extremely intricate and amazing. I'm not surprised other people have tree stories.

To say trees give off a "presence", to me, is along the same lines of experiencing mind reading with your cat. I've had moments when I would of told you 100% my cat was aware I was tripping and we had a thing going on. But in reality I was probably being extra attentive to him. No doubt he knew I was probably more friendly than usual, but nothing more was going on.

Like you said, psychedelics cause a loss of ego, which sometimes I feel makes these ideas seem more "real" to us than they should.

^^ Ligaturd said it very nicely " You need to read between the lines, extract something real from the very abstract and crazy experiences that psychedelics allow you to experience. "

 

[sekio]

There have been studies showing people can't even sense which pocket their phone is vibrating in; I doubt there exists such a thing as true extrasensory perception.

That is not to say that mental constructs like 'auras' / 'presences' may not be caused by social or environmental cues that are not interpereted objectively. Psychedelics don't allow humans to have extraordinary sensory abilities all of a sudden. They just modify sensory processing and physiological state. You're not going to be able to see into the UV, but your dialated pupils will definitely see better in the dark...

A real problem with the research of sense-distorting compounds is it becomes difficult to have reliable reporting, when the reporter is fucked up on drugs.

 

[Ligaturd]

A real problem with the research of sense-distorting compounds is it becomes difficult to have reliable reporting, when the reporter is fucked up on drugs.

Haha, this made me laugh. Very direct and right on point as always.

 

[kingme]

+1 to sekios post... i dont believe drugs give you anything extra in an objective sense, but, just like (psycho)therapy, they may help (or indeed harm) one see things differently, understand concepts and visualize ideas in a new way

 

[Crashing]

My thoughts are that, taking a psychedelic will bring out the person you want to be, and the things that you wish to believe. I think that everybody's world is perceived completely differently, and such is molded by experience. Just because there is no 'objective evidence' to say that trees aren't conscious beings doesn't mean it isn't true, or that you can't believe it. So you may develop a lot of "crazy" and "Far out" beliefs about life and the world in which you live... i say the more power to you. Don't let other people tell you it's just a hallucination, because if the effect was positive then it doesn't matter if it was hallucinated, a dream, or objective. It can have the same positive impact on your life regardless.

 

[SONN]

Learn some fucking systems neuroscience. Particularly as it relates to perception of others' perception.

And yes, you're one of those people who took psychedelics and ended up with some looney beliefs. Sounds harsh, but you wanted to know the truth.

Drugs make your brain feel strange. No shit.

quit being a douche.

A bunch of my friends recently went to the art museum and there was this really awesome interactive exhibit there (unfortunately I was unable to go) where machines measured the energy production or electromagnetic charge of plants and analyzed the ratios of the changes in charge and then turned it into synthesized music. And apparently, it was beautiful music (at least according to all of my friends who saw this in person). Not incoherent notes, real harmonies and arpeggiated chords and key changes et cetera.

ON TOP OF THAT, the music changed when you touched it. Apparently the guy running the exhibit allowed everyone to go up and touch it and each person affected it in a different way, but it always remained harmonious and beautiful (and just about every one of my friends who did this was a musician so they weren't just assuming there was harmony involved they could actually hear it and analyze it). Eventually he had everyone stand in a circle and hold hands and had the plant be a part of the circle of people and what do you know, the music became more complex and changed at a faster rate.

Maybe that isn't evidence of tree spirits, but there are greater connections going on than you know dude.

 

[astralprojectee]

That is really interesting SONN. Do you know the name of that art museum? If you don't know can you find out? I want to find out more about that.

Thanks to all the rest of you too for your replies.

Peace.

 

[Jakeperson]

I've had moments when I would of told you 100% my cat was aware I was tripping and we had a thing going on. But in reality I was probably being extra attentive to him. No doubt he knew I was probably more friendly than usual, but nothing more was going on.

What about the people that have communicated telepathically whilst tripping and both remember the conversations?

Grid type patterns overlaying stuff similar to Alex Grey paintings. I thought how this was some sort of underlying energy that is everywhere, but I can only see on LSD 8)

When I become aware that everything I see is made up of tiny atoms.

Why do you think DMT is in every living being and is the master of this "delusional" thinking?

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

And when I say other dimensions I may not necessarily mean other parallel universes, but just being able to feel and see perhaps a higher spectrum in the electromagnetic field or something like that.

You're not the first person to think this, so check out the first page of this thread to learn how you are in fact not doing that.

Appreciate the phenomenon as it happens, but realize it is purely psychological, and does not correlate with empirical reality.

 

[freedstar]

What about the people that have communicated telepathically whilst tripping and both remember the conversations?

People talk about some pretty far out stuff. I would just ask for proof.

There's a difference between recognizing you are hallucinating patterns and believing what you are seeing is some sort of electromagnetic field.

 

[Crashing]

In my world, telepathy is absolutely real. I don't care who decides to make it a reality in their world, nor do i feel obliged to prove it. It doesn't matter to me if other people believe in it or not. No harm, no foul. I just feel goddamned lucky as hell to have experienced it, and wish everyone could.

 

[5HToInfinity]

Learn some fucking systems neuroscience. Particularly as it relates to perception of others' perception.

And yes, you're one of those people who took psychedelics and ended up with some looney beliefs. Sounds harsh, but you wanted to know the truth.

Drugs make your brain feel strange. No shit.

How typical of those minimally versed in science to dare propose that reality is purely materialistic and objective. The nature of reality is just as much subjective (consciousness) as objective (material). Good thing that this pseudo-philosophical scientific bullshit has been bashed by quantum physics. Quantum physics show that the nature of a particle is dependent upon the mode of observation, thus showing that experience is part of the fundamental fabric of reality. Reality is what one experiences, and there is no objective reality independent of perception. And if there were, it would be forever inaccessible to us. Reality is a pragmatic thing, an individually constructed thing. What one believes becomes true. If one changes ones mind, then reality shifts to accommodate a new belief. The only truly objective thing is subjectivity itself. So if you think the tree was real, then it was real. If you think the tree was not real, then it was not.

Psychedelics show that experience IS reality. Experience is forgiving and all-encompassing to the point that it paradoxically allows one to believe that what one is experiencing is not an experience, and only atoms colliding.

If you believe that reality is material and objective, then that becomes your reality. But that's only because reality is subjective, and the truth is yours to decide.

 

[Crashing]

Speaks volumes ^